Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor,
From thence a length of burning sand appears,
Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears;
Rank weeds that every art and care defy,
Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye;
There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,
And to the ragged infant threaten war,
There poppies nodding mock the hope of toil,
There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil;
Hardy and high above the slender sheaf,
The shiny mallow waves her silky leaf;

O'er the young shoot the sharlock throws a shade,
And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade;
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,
And a sad splendour vainly shines around.
Here joyless roam a wild, amphibious race,
With sullen woe displayed in every face;
Who far from civil arts and social fly,
And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye;
Here, too, the lawless merchant of the main,
Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain;
Want only claimed the labours of the day,
But vice now steals the nightly rest away.*

Ye gentle souls who dream of rural ease,

Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please:
Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share,
Go! look within, and ask if peace be there;

If peace be his-that drooping, weary sire,

If theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire;

Or hers-that matron pale, whose trembling hand
Turns on her wretched hearth the expiring brand.

No small portion of the interest Crabbe's writings have excited, is to be ascribed to his ingenious stories. Some of them are entertaining from the incidents they narrate, and others on account of the sagacious remarks with which they are interwoven. These attractions often co

• This admirable description refers to Aldoborough, the author's birth-place.

exist with but a slight degree of poetic merit, beyond correct versification and an occasional metaphor. Most of the tales are founded in real circumstances, and the characters were drawn, with some modification, from existent originals. Scarcely a feature of romance or even improbability belong to these singular narratives. They are usually domestic in their nature, and excite curiosity because so near to common experience. As proofs of inventive genius they are often striking, and if couched in elegant prose or a dramatic form, would, in some cases, be far more effective. Lamb tried the latter experiment in one instance, with marked success.* These rhymed histories of events and personages within the range of ordinary life, seem admirably calculated to win the less imaginative to a love of poetry. Crabbe has proved a most serviceable pioneer to the timid haunters of Parnassus, and decked with alluring trophies, the outskirts of the land of song. We can easily understand how a certain order of minds relish his poems better than any other writings in the same department of literature. There is a singular tone of every-day truth and practical sense about them. They deal with the tangible realities around us. They unfold" the artful workings of a vulgar mind," and depict with amusing exactitude, the hourly trials of existence. A gipsy group, a dissipated burgess, the victims of profligacy, the mean resentments of ignorant minds, a coarse tyrant, a vindictive woman, a fen or a fishing boat-those beings and objects which meet us by the way-side of the world, the common, the real, the more rude elements of life, are set before us in the pages of Crabbe, in the most bold relief and affecting contrast. There is often a gloom, an unrelieved wretchedness, an absolute degradation about these delineations, which weighs upon the spirits the sadness of a tragedy withThe Wife's Trial.

out its ideal grandeur or its poetic consolation. But the redeeming influence of such creations lies in the melancholy but wholesome truths they convey. The mists that shroud the dwellings of the wretched are rolled away, the wounds of the social system are laid bare, and the sternest facts of experience are proclaimed. This process was greatly required in Great Britain when Crabbe appeared as the bard of the poor. He arrayed the dark history of their needs and oppression in a guise which would attract the eye of taste. He led many a luxurious peer to the haunts of poverty. He carried home to the souls of the pampered and proud, a startling revelation of the distress and crime that hung unnoticed around their steps. He fulfilled, in his day, the same benevolent office which, in a different style, has since been so ably continued by Dickens. These two writers have published to the world, the condition of the English poor, in characters of light; and thrown the whole force of their genius into an appeal from the injustice of society and the abuses of civilization.

SHELLEY.

"Was cradled into poetry by wrong,

And learned in suffering what he taught in song."

It is now about eighteen years since the waters of the Mediterranean closed over one of the most delicately organized and richly endowed beings of our era. A scion of the English aristocracy, the nobility of his soul threw far into the shade all conventional distinctions; while his views of life and standard of action were infinitely broader and more elevated than the narrow limits of caste. Highly imaginative, susceptible and brave, even in boyhood he reverenced the honest convictions of his own mind above success or authority. With a deep thirst for knowledge, he united a profound interest in his race. Highly philosophical in his taste, truth was the prize for which he most earnestly contended; heroical in his temper, freedom he regarded as the dearest boon of existence; of a tender and ardent heart, love was the grand hope and consolation of his being, while beauty formed the most genial element of his existence.

Of such a nature, when viewed in a broad light, were the elements of Shelley's character. Nor is it difficult to reconcile them with the detail of his opinions and the tenor of his life. It is easy to imagine a state of society in which such a being might freely develope, and felicitously realize principles and endowments so full of pro

mise; while, on the other hand, it is only necessary to look around on the world as it is, or back upon its past records, to lose all surprise that this fine specimen of humanity was sadly misunderstood and his immediate influence perverted. The happy agency which as an independent thinker and humane poet might have been prophecied of Shelley, presupposed a degree of consideration and sympathy, not to say delicacy and reverence, on the part of society, a wisdom in the process of education, a scope of youthful experience, an entire integrity of treatment, to be encountered only in the dreams of the Utopian. To have elicited in forms of unadulterated good the characteristics of such a nature," when his being overflowed," the world should have been to him, "As a golden chalice to bright wine

Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.”*

Instead of this, at the first sparkling of that fountain, the teachings of the world, and the lessons of life, were calculated to dam up its free tide in the formal embankments of custom and power. What wonder, then, that it overleaped such barriers, and wound waywardly aside into solitude, to hear no sound "save its own dashings?"

The publication of the posthumous proset of Shelley, is chiefly interesting from the fact that it perfectly confirms our best impressions of the man. We here trace in his confidential letters, the love and philanthropy to which his muse was devoted. All his literary opinions evidence the same sincerity. His refined admiration of nature, his habits of intense study and moral independence, have not been exaggerated. The noble actions ascribed to him by partial friends, are proved to be the Prometheus Unbound.

† Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley: London.

1840.