It

But we must leave the old reprobate, and go on to a far subtler delineation of character. In describing Sir Denys Brand, Crabbe admits maybe "somewhat too highly placed for an author, who seldom ventures above middle life to delineate." is admitted that Sir Denys was a real person, and the biographer withholds his name out of consideration for his family.* It must be remembered that Crabbe's nature was both proud and sensitive, and the scathing satire he expends on Sir Denys was probably provoked by some real or fancied slight. He is one of the trustees of the almshouses. He took the office

"True 'twas beneath him; but to do men good

Was motive never by his heart withstood."

Sir Denys is an aristocratic prig of the first water, and Crabbe hated prigs. He is one of those men who can be, with a certain amount of truth, described as possessing all the virtue :

"In him all merits were decreed to meet,

Sincere though cautious, frank and yet discreet,
Just all his dealings, faithful every word,

His passions' master and his temper's lord."

His benevolence was splendid, and known to all

men:

"He left to meaner minds the simple deed,

By which the houseless rest, the hungry feed;
His was a public bounty, vast and grand,

"Twas not in him to work with viewless hand.

He is said to have been "Challoner Arcedekne, who built Glevering Hall," near Parham. Huchon, George Crabbe,' etc.,

p. 309.

He the first lifeboat plann'd; to him the place
Is deep in debt-'twas he revived the race."

Yet nobody liked him

""Twould give me joy [says Crabbe] some gracious deed

to meet

That has not called for glory in the street;
Who felt for many, could not always shun,
In some soft moment to be kind to one;
And yet they tell us, when Sir Denys died,
That not a widow in the borough cried."

III. Perhaps it may be said that the subject of my lecture was after all rather a common-place old gentleman, and if what I have read leaves this view, it is because I have failed to convey the effect which the study of his works has left upon me. He certainly made a great impression in his time, and was hailed as a true poet in an age of poets. Nor is an age always wrong when it acclaims a man in whom posterity sees little merit. To compare Crabbe with Byron as a poet would be as absurd as to place his little stories on a level with the romances of Scott, whether in prose or verse. But in his own time men rated him very highly, and this is the more remarkable because he was essentially a man. of the eighteenth century, who achieved his reputation in the nineteenth. He saturated himself in Pope and Dryden, and the wits of a bygone age, and never conformed to the taste of his own. The romantic movement, much as he admired Scott's writings, never influenced Crabbe nor does he seem to have been affected by the Lake Poets. He was simply himself: simple-minded if sensitive, full of

courage, and with a quiet dignity of his own. Unworldly, yet remarkably shrewd, curiously blind to the beauties of Nature and of art, yet wonderfully alive to the marvels of the world and the pathos of life. Stern and uncompromising as a realist, he lacked neither sympathy nor imagination, and possessed a saving sense of descriptive humour. Lord Thurlow said of him, "He's as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen by G-d," and he has much of the winning simplicity of Feilding's charming clerical creation. And yet he had the elevation of character and the genius with fearless hand to take the veil which hid the lives of the poor from their richer neighbours, to expose the cruelty, injustice, and rapacity of an age, which for all its greatness was singularly callous and unsympathetic of weakness and suffering; and Crabbe may take his place not only with the poets of his time, but with the Clarksons, the Howards, the Frys, and the good men and women who succeeded in inaugurating an era of practical humanity. We need not grudge him the generous commendation of the greatest among his contemporary poets—

"Nature's sternest painter and her best."

VOL. XXXIII.

8

GEORGE MEREDITH, FRANCE, AND THE FRENCH.

BY DR. W. G. HARTOG, M.A., F.R.S.L.

[Read February 24th, 1914.]

IN the many essays and writings that deal with various phases of Meredith's genius, the attitude of our great novelist and poet towards France and the French has met but with scant attention. A brief survey of this aspect of Meredith's work may shed a new light on the man himself, and lead to a fuller appreciation of his mental outlook and philosophy.

It was not till his thirty-fifth year that Meredith visited France. In 1863 he accompanied Sir William Hardman on a journey to Rouen and Paris, and Sir William has left us a pleasant account of their wanderings. He writes of their nocturnal rambles in the Champs-Elysées, their dainty suppers at Véfour's, and their visit to Versailles.

Meredith left Sir William in Paris, and went on to Grenoble and thence to Chamounix. That this first visit to France bore fruit is evident, for his poem, "A Faith on Trial," begins with a passage describing the lovely scenery of Normandy, through which he passed. We may also take it for granted that the gaiety and brightness of Paris and the Parisians produced their effect on a mind so impressionable, and so willing to be charmed.

Meredith re-visited France at various times, and in his later life, when paralysis prevented his leaving his home at Box Hill, he had ever a cordial welcome for any French men or women of letters who came to see him in his hermitage at Flint Cottage. Alphonse Daudet went there, and so did Madame Daudet. We have some very delightful letters in Meredithian French which he wrote to them. Marcel Schwob relates his pilgrimage to Box Hill in his Spicilège (1894). And quite recently, in 1908, M. Constantin Photiadès, a young Frenchman of Greek extraction, called on Meredith, and in his book gives a delightful account of how he was received. Meredith told his guest of his own veneration for France, and of his love for her great paintersWatteau, Latour, Chardin, Fragonard-and. Corot, whom he (1) George Meredith. Sa vie-son imagination—son art-sa doctrine. (Armand Colin.) Paris, 1910.

VOL. XXXIII.

1

9