he was prostrated by a severe cold.  Other complications supervened, and it soon became apparent that he could not rally.  After a few days of much suffering, and pious resignation, he passed away on the third of February 1832, with his two sons and his faithful nurse by his side.  The death of the rector was followed by every token of general affection and esteem.  The past asperities of religious and political controversy had long ceased, and it was felt that the whole parish had lost a devout teacher and a generous friend.  All he had written in The Borough and elsewhere as to the eccentricities of certain forms of dissent was forgotten, and all the Nonconformist ministers of the place and neighbourhood followed him to the grave.  A committee was speedily formed to erect a monument over his grave in the chancel.  The sculptor chosen produced a group of a type then common.  “A figure representing the dying poet, casting his eyes on the sacred volume; two celestial beings, one looking on as if awaiting his departure.”  Underneath was inscribed, after the usual words telling his age, and period of his work at Trowbridge, the following not exaggerated tribute:—­

  “Born in humble life, he made himself what he was. 
    By the force of his genius,
  He broke through the obscurity of his birth
    Yet never ceased to feel for the
      Less fortunate;
    Entering (as his work can testify) into
  The sorrows and deprivations
    Of the poorest of his parishioners;
  And so discharging the duties of his station as a
    Minister and a magistrate,
  As to acquire the respect and esteem
    Of all his neighbours. 
  As a writer, he is well described by a great
    Contemporary, as
  ‘Nature’s sternest painter yet her best.’”

A fresh edition of Crabbe’s complete works was at once arranged for by John Murray, to be edited by George Crabbe, the son, who was also to furnish the prefatory memoir.  The edition appeared in 1834, in eight volumes.  An engraving by Finden from Phillips’s portrait of the poet was prefixed to the last volume, and each volume contained frontispieces and vignettes from drawings by Clarkson Stanfield of scenery or buildings connected with Crabbe’s various residences in Suffolk and the Yale of Belvoir.  The volumes were ably edited; the editor’s notes, together with, quotations from Crabbe’s earliest critics in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, were interesting and informing, and the illustrations happily chosen.  But it is not so easy to acquiesce in an editorial decision on a more important matter.  The eighth volume is occupied by a selection from the Tales left in manuscript by Crabbe, to which reference has already been made.  The son, whose criticisms of his father are generally sound, evidently had misgivings concerning these from the first.  In a prefatory note to this volume, the brothers (writing as executors) confess these misgivings.  They were startled on