There can be no question that within the last twenty or thirty years there has been a marked revival of interest in the poetry of Crabbe.  To the influence of Edward FitzGerald’s fascinating personality this revival may be partly, but is not wholly, due.  It may be of the nature of a reaction against certain canons of taste too long blindly followed.  It may be that, like the Queen in Hamlet, we are beginning to crave for “more matter and less art”; or that, like the Lady of Shalott, we are growing “half-sick of shadows,” and long for a closer touch with the real joys and sorrows of common people.  Whatever be the cause, there can be no reason to regret the fact, or to doubt that in these days of “art for art’s sake,” the influence of Crabbe’s verse is at once of a bracing and a sobering kind.

INDEX

  A

Aaron the Gipsy Addison Adventures of Richard, The Aldeburgh Allegro (Milton) Allington (Lincolnshire) Ancient Mansion, The Annals of the Parish, The (Galt) Annual Register, The Austen, Jane Autobiography, Crabbe’s

  B

  Baillie, Agnes
    —­Joanna
  Barnes, William
  Barrie, J.M. 
  Barton, Bernard,
  Basket-Woman, The (Edgeworth)
  Bath
  Beccles
  Belvoir Castle
  Biography, Crabbe’s
    “Blaney”
  Borough, The
  Boswell
  Bowles, William Lisle
  Boys at School
  Bristol
  Bunbury, Sir Henry
  Burke
  Burns
  Butler, Joseph
  Byron

  C

Campbell, Thomas Candidate, The Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer) Castle Rackrent (Edgeworth) Celtic Club Chatterton Chaucer Childe Harold (Byron) Church, English Churchill (poet) Clarissa Harlowe (Richardson)
  “Clelia”
Clergy, non-residence of
  sketches of
Clifton Coleridge Confessions of an Opium Eater, (De Quincey) Confidant, The Courthope, Mr. Cowley Cowper Crabbe, George, birth and family
  history of;
early literary bent;
school days;
apprenticed to a surgeon;
life at Woodbridge;
falls in love;
first efforts in verse;
practises as a surgeon;
dangerous illness;
engagement to Miss Elmy;
seeks his fortune in London;
poverty in London;
keeps a diary;
unsuccessful attempts to sell his poems;
appeals to Edmund Burke;
Burke’s help and patronage;
invited to Burke’s country seat;
publishes The Library;
friendship with Burke;
second letter to Burke;
meetings with prominent men;
takes Holy Orders;
returns to Aldeburgh as curate;
coldly received by his fellow-townsmen;
becomes domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland;
life at Belvoir Castle;
The Village;
receives LL.B. degree;
presented to two livings;
marriage;
curate of Stathern;