[In the essay that follows, Östman examines Crabbe's literary activities between 1785 and 1807, a period during which he did not publish, and looks at what he read, how it influenced him, and what he wrote.]

George Crabbe's long and varied life presents the literary student with several problems. What, for example, is the significance of his almost silent period 1785-1807 and what is his debt to contemporary literature during these years? These questions are interesting since they may lead not only to a better understanding of the poet's own development but also to an insight into the way in which English literature was changing at the end of the 18th century.

Between The Newspaper and Poems of 1807 Crabbe did not publish any poetry at all. Therefore the reading public usually knew him only through various anthologies and regarded him as a former poet rather than a living author participating in the development of contemporary literature. For many years he led a quiet life in various provincial parishes and to some extent his silence as a poet can be explained by his being engaged in other matters. On the whole these years seem to have been happy both for him and for his wife. The family grew and Crabbe, who was very fond of children, devoted much time to them.

As is already evident in his early poetry, Crabbe had strong scientific leanings. During excursions he never failed to make botanical observations and to pick flowers for his collection, though his botanical work was never published because it was written in English. This is the picture of Crabbe we get in his son's biography, the picture of a clergyman and family man whose rather commonplace interests were able to find an outlet in a provincial parish.¹ This is perhaps one of the reasons why students of literature pass over this phase of the poet's life without paying much attention to it.

The “biographer” gives us little information about the intellectual life of his father, and René Huchon in his detailed work devotes comparatively few pages to it;² (one) almost gets the impression that for 22 years Crabbe lived in an intellectual vacuum only to be an immediate success at his new “début”.

The picture created by “the biographer” and others is that Crabbe, consigned to oblivion in his parish, comes to maturity as a poet without being disturbed by the whims of the reading public.³ This is not in accordance with what is known about his personality and his usual way of working. His son bears witness to the fact that Crabbe was a restlessly active man who devoted much time to writing poetry.⁴ In view of this it does not seem probable that he isolated himself completely from the intellectual life and literary fashions of his time. Quite possibly his circle of intimate friends was limited because of his wife's illness but to maintain that he lived intellectually isolated is going a bit far. The difficulty is to demonstrate this with the little material at our disposal. One can, however, find some relevant information, especially about indirect contacts, in the Biography. This tells us that Crabbe did a lot of reading and that the classical authors were still his favourites, as can indeed be seen in his poetry. What interests us rather here, however, is whether he was influenced by the literature of his own day. With our knowledge of his receptive nature it is hardly likely that he would have paid no attention to it or to the demands of the public, especially as he was writing poetry himself with the aim of publishing it. One small item of information in the Biography which might be relevant here is the following:

a friend lent us every Christmas a large box of the most reputable works recently published, especially of travels;⁵

Thus Crabbe to some extent did read contemporary literature, and as he was fond of fiction there is good reason to suppose that a number of novels were to be found in the box too. It is also to be suspected that not only the masterpieces of the genre were represented there because, in spite of being scrupulous in his choice of poetry and drama, Crabbe seems to have liked even novels of inferior quality. With the exception of Mrs. Inchbald's Nature and Art no titles are given, but it is possible to form some idea of what many of them may have been like by looking at Letter XX of The Borough. The absurd elements of Ellen Orford's story are a medley of what popular novels could offer at the turn of the century. However, Crabbe's reading is not the only evidence of his interest in the novel as a genre. He himself tried his hand at it, although little is known about the results. One of his three unpublished novels, Reginald Glanshaw, may, however, show some contemporary influence. According to his son it was

a portrait of an assuming, overbearing, ambitious mind, rendered interesting by some generous virtues, and gradually wearing down into idiotism.⁶

This subject probably might have shown the same strong effects which Crabbe found in the popular novel of his day. That he was fascinated by subjects such as idiocy and mental aberration may be due to the immediate importance these matters had for him because of his wife's illness and his own addiction to opium. However, I think it should be emphasized more strongly than has so far been the case that such works as “Sir Eustace Grey” and “Peter Grimes” belong to a mode of writing which characterized much of late 18th century literature.

But the novel was not the only genre that interested Crabbe. The Biography indicates that he was by no means ignorant of the poetry which was gaining popularity around 1800. His discovery of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” made him call Scott “a new and great poet”,⁷ and not only Scott but also Burns won his heart. His relations to the “Lake School” are more complicated and his attitude towards these poets somewhat reserved. The main obstacle was apparently their language, but by and by he grew more fond of their poetry and came to acknowledge their talents.⁸

So far the question has been whether, and to what extent, Crabbe was acquainted with certain contemporary works or modes of writing. There is, however, another formative factor to be taken into account, namely the personal contact he had with certain men of letters. In Crabbe's youth Edmund Burke had been the most important of these but after losing contact with him, the poet had less chance than previously of being introduced into the literary circles of his day. Two years after Burke's death, when he was negotiating with John Hatchard about the publication of his new poems, he felt it necessary to have them criticized by some person of taste and applied to Richard Turner for help.⁹ As the latter did not consider the poems good enough, Crabbe postponed their publication for another eight years. It is impossible to evaluate the influence of men such as Turner and Cartwright, but the episode is anyway proof that Crabbe did not fully rely on his own taste and that he still needed literary advice.

To confirm the hypothesis that Crabbe was never intellectually isolated it would of course have been a great help to know something of the poetry he wrote during these years. One can at least get an idea of his productivity from his son's account of how his works were destroyed—it was feared that the burning of such an amount of paper in the fireplace would endanger the whole house. What these sheets contained, however, we shall never know, but many of these poems probably found their way into his later production in a revised form.

It was characteristic of Crabbe's way of working that he did not write down his poems in moments of inspiration and then consider them finished. True, he said himself that he got many of his best ideas when sleeping, which sounds romantic enough, but he was too much of a craftsman to leave them that way. On the contrary, he attached much importance to the revision of his works, often with the help of someone else. That is why it is not particularly suitable to select a poem such as “Sir Eustace Grey” for an investigation into his silent years. It was written before 1807, it is true, but it was not published and probably not revised until that year. It is important, therefore, that scholars have called attention to some of the poetry never included in the Ward edition.¹⁰ These works are part of the “Murray Collection” and are the same sort of first-hand material as the Biography was built upon. The reason why these poems were never published is probably that they were not up to his usual standard. Even if this is the case, however, one poem, “Hester”, has great interest for anyone who wants to understand Crabbe's development as an artist. Both Chamberlain and Pollard have dated it back to 1804 and we have no reason to suspect any later revision. A study of this poem should give us a better idea of Crabbe's progress as a poet up to the turn of the century and also show whether “Hester” confirms the very general conclusions drawn from the biography by his son.

The poem is a partial paraphrase of the “Book of Esther” and is not the only example of Crabbe being inspired by the Bible.¹¹ The theme, a prostitute's life, was as melodramatic as the author could wish. Love always remained one of his favourite subjects, especially guilty love duly punished. The story is simple and conventional. Hester is here an ordinary girl growing into a beautiful woman. Her father has taught her to be virtuous but not how to remain so. She is enticed into the castle where she is seduced by the young lord in spite of her resistance. For a time she is his mistress as well as mistress of the castle but she soon becomes a whore. Almost insane with self-reproach, she spends the rest of her days as a penitent.

This short summary probably makes it clear that the excellence of the poem is not dependent on the story. It is too trite to hold the interest of the modern reader, and the same is true of the characters themselves. They are as stereotyped as if they had been taken straight out of a contemporary popular novel. The heroine is, of course, incredibly virtuous and beautiful

I then was innocent and fair,
And fearful as the Hind,

(“Hester”; hereafter cited as H. vv. 89-90)

and the young lord is as a lord should be

/ … / youthful, handsome, tall,
“In dress a very King,

(H. vv. 271-72)

The remaining characters are, if anything, even more unreal, and their only raison d'être is to make the plot plausible. The value of this poem, however, lies in its analysis of the relationship between a person, however stereotyped, and her surroundings. The reader can follow how the heroine is gradually broken down by a hostile environment. At the beginning she is quite unconscious of love and sin, and when a shepherd, a man of her own class, courts her she feels both happy and afraid. By and by she grows accustomed to love and what once was frightening becomes a temptation:

Trembling, at first we look at Vice
To dread her and despise,
But when we view her Aspect twice,
With our Contempt arise
Some curious thoughts, and looking thrice,
The Guardian Terror flies.

(H. vv. 127-32)

This is a psychological premise for her further vicissitudes. She is more or less enticed into the castle, where she cannot at first accept the manners of those living there. She despises their frivolity and immorality. Soon, however, she unconsciously betrays her secret thoughts:

The Men indeed were trim and smart,
And civil in their Way,
But all were profligate at heart,
And insolently gay;

(H. vv. 177-80)

It is as if temptation were peeping out in the first two lines to be unwillingly silenced again. Gradually the last vestiges of resistance are broken down. The charm of the new manners together with the influence the persons in the castle have gained over the simple girl make her finally accept the new manners. Her sense of guilt is, however, awakened, perhaps to a certain extent because of her rootlessness and she gradually sinks deeper into physical and spiritual destitution.

We have here a fairly complex story which is incompatible with Crabbe's early style of writing. “Hester” is a transitional stage on the poet's way to such masterpieces as “Peter Grimes” and some of the Tales. It is noticeable too that he is here capable of handling more than one psychological theme. His main analysis is of a girl growing accustomed to love, but he also demonstrates how a lonely, rootless person reacts to the authority of a group and how important the social superiority of that group is. One can also notice the abnormal element in Hester's development which played a part in his second novel too (H. vv. 493-500). A contributory factor to his developing a psychological style of writing was probably the vogue of such literature, which must have been known to him if only because of its general impact on contemporary literature.

Though Crabbe can be said to have attained a certain skill as an author of psychological poems he had not yet found the medium that suited him. “Hester” is a hybrid and is symptomatic of the poetry being written around 1800. It contains much traditional satire which is always a strong element in Crabbe's works. However, the poem is no true satire because of other new poetical impulses. The background in “Hester” is hardly characteristic of 18th century satire or even of pastoral poetry:¹²

Upon an heathy Mountain stood
My Father's decent Shed;
Beneath, a deep and winding flood
Ran softly in its Bed,
A Wide and venerable Wood,
Behind was proudly spread.
A Castle, frowning to the North,

(H. vv. 63-69)

This is the setting of the ballad and the Gothic novel rather than that of pastoral poetry. We know Crabbe loved these kinds of literature all his life and it is hardly a coincidence that the setting makes us think of Scottland. Crabbe was obviously influenced by primitivism when he wrote “Hester” and he certainly tried to imitate the ballad form. The stanzas may be irregular and lack many characteristics of the genre, but his choice of a stanza-form with simple rhymes points in that direction. The same is true of his vocabulary. He has carefully tried to create an atmosphere with a vocabulary which breaks with his usual neo-classical language. Where we would have expected “swains” and “nymphs” we find instead “lads” and “blooming maids”, and in another part of the poem we are inevitably reminded of the ballad:

‘Say who art thou, my rosy Maid?,’
‘I'm Hester of the Hill,’

(H. vv. 145-46)

This was not, of course, to become an important element in Crabbe's future production, but in “Hester” we can already observe one characteristic feature of his later poetry: the epic vein which from this time becomes more and more apparent.

The epic situation which serves as an introduction and a plausible excuse for the narrative is a commonplace one. The omniscient author conducts his readers into a room where some women are sitting round a fireplace. Hester is among them and they get her to tell them the story of her life. Her tale, in direct speech and tending towards the dramatic, is framed by the epic situation. The method is far from original but since it had not been employed before by the author, we may wonder why he selected it at this particular time. Crabbe must, of course, have been a born story-teller, but the ballad with its epic element is also a factor that should be taken into account. Another factor may have been that narrative in verse was common at the time and that its popularity may have helped to free Crabbe's epic gift.¹³

For our purposes it is not necessary to make a further analysis of “Hester” because it has already given us a notion of how great Crabbe's poetical progress was by 1804. It proves both that he developed an epic style of writing during these 22 years, and that he no longer regarded men just as types but as individuals whose personalities were worth understanding. We also know from “Hester” that he was interested in experiments in form and language, even if this does not change the almost wholly Augustan impression of his poetry. The poem has confirmed the impression gained from the Biography about his relationship with contemporary literature. If he did not accept the new ideas completely it was not because of any neo-classical stubbornness but because they did not always suit him. After reading “Hester” I consider it hardly possible that Crabbe could have stood apart from contemporary literature and developed his style of writing independently of it. What seems most probable is that through his reading Crabbe acquired a keen sense of the intellectual climate of his time, and that his position was never outside the mainstream of literary development, not even during his “silent” years.

Another way for us to confirm our hypothesis is to look at Crabbe's revisions of his earlier poems. The collection of 1807 was to contain not only new poems like “The Parish Register” or “Sir Eustace Grey” but also some works published before, and the author obviously thought them in need of improvement to meet the demands of the public. As to the revisions of, for example, The Village and The Newspaper, they are less illustrative and will not serve our purpose here. Of more importance are some changes in The Library which may indicate that Crabbe was not completely ignorant of what his readers wanted and that the state of literature had altered during these 22 years.¹⁴ As a matter of fact the revision is concerned with ideological rather than artistic flaws. In the version of 1781 Crabbe pays homage to philosophy:

Where all combin'd their decent pomp display,
Where shall we first our early offering pay?
To thee, Philosophy! to thee, the light,
The guide of mortals through their mental night,(15)

while in the revision philosophy is changed into divinity.¹⁶ Thus after having been in the foreground earlier, philosophy and science have been put aside and religion has taken their place. This insistence on the importance of “divinity” is completely lacking in the original version, where Crabbe looks upon religion with the eyes of an Augustan gentleman, which does not preclude criticism. There, too, he points out the endless religious disputes that authors have carried on:

Methinks I see, and sicken at the sight,
Spirits of spleen from yonder pile alight;
Spirits that prompted every damning page,
With pontiff pride and sacerdotal rage;
They pray, they fight, they murder, and they weep,
Wolves in their vengeance, in their manners sheep;
And each, like Jonas, is displeas'd, if God
Repent his anger, or with-hold his rod.(17)

With mild irony he observes that the disputes are ended and that the Pope and Luther have found rest side by side. Not only religious zeal, however, but also scepticism is included in his criticism. No doubt his deprecation of fanaticism concerns many philosophers as well as religious thinkers but Crabbe was himself too much a product of the Augustan age not to have strong rationalistic leanings.

In the version of 1807 similar ideas are found, but he introduces this section with a pious wish that the tenets of true religion may prevail. His attacks have been toned down and are less witty. Instead of

Calvin grows gentle in this silent coast,
Nor finds a single heretic to roast:(18)

we find

Socinians here with Calvinists abide,(19)

The new and less polemic tone in these and similar passages obviously mirrors a new way of looking at the relationship between secular and spiritual wisdom, but there is no doubt which one of the two is considered the more important.

To explain the reasons for such a change The Library must be assessed in the light of the literary trends and the cultural climate of the period. The most important factor is perhaps the growing fear of revolution which led many people to support less radical values than freedom and liberty of thought. In conservative circles rationalism rather than social reality was regarded as a danger, and the old philosophy came by and by to be connected with scepticism and even atheism. Religious and political conservatism allied itself with utilitarianism in the battle against art and especially against literature, the impact of which Paine had shown. It is easy to exaggerate the intolerance of the period but it is obvious that a large public with such conservative ideals was bound to leave its mark on contemporary literature.

It seems indisputable that the editions of Crabbe's works in 1807, 1810 and 1812 would not have been so large had not the author complied with the prevailing taste. A measure of Crabbe's popularity is the £3,000 John Murray offered him for the copyright of his works. It is a considerable amount of money even if you compare it with what Scott and Byron got from their most successful works and it proves that Crabbe was one of the most popular authors of the early 19th century.

Most certainly his success was partly due to his ability and willingness to adapt. Of course, he did not always strike the right note, and sometimes he went too far for contemporary taste. We can form some idea of the power of the reviewers, and through them of the public, if we compared two editions of “The Parish Register.”²⁰ It tells the story of Nathan Kirk and his marriage with a young girl. In the original version the language is rich and wonderfully concrete:

The dryest faggot, Nathan, once was green,
And laid on embers, still some sap is seen;
Oaks, bald like thee above, that cease to grow,
Feel yet the warmth of spring, and bud below;(21)

When Jeffrey reviewed it he did not consider the author “scrupulously delicate” and dared not quote any long passage from it.²² Crabbe immediately took the hint and a year later he gave the poem a story and a language that could not possibly offend anyone.

Those are not the only examples of controversial passages that Crabbe later toned down. The description of nature in The Library was originally very similar to Erasmus Darwin's style of writing, so similar in fact that the influence of Crabbe on the latter is highly probable.²³

Next to the vegetable tribes they lead,
Whose fruitful beds o'er every balmy mead
Teem with new life, and hills, and vales, and groves,
Feed the still flame, and nurse the silent loves;
Which, when the Spring calls forth their genial power,
Swell with the seed, and flourish in the flower:
There, with the husband-slaves, in royal pride,
Queens, like the Amazons of old, reside;
There, like the Turk, the lordly husband lives,
And joy to all the gay seraglio gives;
There, in the secret chambers, veil'd from sight,
A bashful tribe in hidden flames delight;
There, in the open day, and gaily deck'd,
The bolder brides their distant lords expect;
Who with the wings of love instinctive rise,
And on prolific winds each ardent bridegroom flies.(24)

When literary taste changed at the turn of the century and Darwin was violently attacked, Crabbe in the version of 1807 altered everything that could be associated with that style and did this so strikingly that the alteration is actually a denunciation of his colleague:²⁵

And next, the vegetable Robe it wears;
Where flow'ry Tribes, in Valleys, Fields and Groves,
Nurse the still Flame, and feed the silent Loves;
Loves, where no Grief, nor Joy, nor Bliss, nor Pain,
Warm the glad Heart or vex the labouring Brain;
But as the green Blood moves along the Blade,
The Bed of Flora on the Branch is made;
Where without Passion, Love instinctive lives,
And gives new Life, unconscious that it gives.(26)

The reason for this change was probably the conservative attacks on works like The Loves of the Plants and other “dangerous” literature. Although less prominent in this respect than, for example, Darwin he might himself be held up to ridicule as he knew other authors were. I say “knew” for in the Biography there is evidence that Crabbe was acquainted with the most famous medium for contemporary satire, The Anti-Jacobin. The younger Crabbe relates incidentally that his father quoted Rogero's song “Whene'er with haggard eyes I view” from “The Rovers”,²⁷ and although he might have appreciated the witty parody, he was probably not anxious to appear in these pages himself. That Crabbe consciously tried to enlist conservative critics on his side becomes evident when we read some of his prefaces. Together with the long excuses, these prefaces reveal something of the author's view of literature. He admits that he has no theory of literature but that his aim is to please and instruct. However, with a certain incisiveness he points out that his poems do not contain anything that might offend morals or religion:

Credit will be given to me, I hope, when I affirm that subjects so interesting have the due weight with me, which the sacred nature of the one, and the national importance of the other, must impress upon every mind not seduced into carelessness for religion by the lethargic influence of a perverted philosophy, nor into indifference for the cause of our country by hyperbolical or hypocritical professions of universal philanthropy;²⁸

This way of reacting is to some extent characteristic of Crabbe. As he wrote poetry not least for economic reasons,²⁹ it was necessary for him to adapt to the taste of his readers, and to ensure that his own political and religious opinions did not differ too much from theirs. All the examples referred to above seem to illustrate his awareness of public demands and of the way contemporary literature changed during these 22 years.

Notes

1. “from his thirty-first year to his fifty-second, he buried himself completely in the obscurity of domestic and village life, hardly catching, from time to time, a single glimpse of the brilliant society in which he had for a season been welcomed”. Crabbe, G. Jr., The Life of George Crabbe, London 1947, p. 114.

2. Huchon, R., George Crabbe, Paris 1906.

3. Cf. Sigworth, O. F., Nature's Sternest Painter, Tucson Arizona 1965, pp. 118-19.

4. Crabbe, G. Jr., p. 116.

5. Ibid., p. 137. Cf. Crabbe's letters of 30.1, 5.2 and 24.2 1788 in MS. Montagu, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

6. Crabbe, G. Jr., p. 143.

7. Ibid., p. 147.

8. Ibid., p. 148.

9. Ibid., p. 144.

10. Chamberlain, R. L., Unpublished Poetry of Crabbe from the Murray MS. Collection, Unpublished Diss., Syracuse Univ. 1956.

    New Poems by George Crabbe, ed. A. Pollard, Liverpool 1960. In my analysis of “Hester” I use Pollard's edition.

11. Crabbe, G. Jr., p. 144.

12. Cf. Chamberlain, R. L., Unpublished Poetry of Crabbe from the Murray MS Collection, p. XXXI.

13. Cf. Fischer, H., Die Romantische Verserzählung in England, Tübingen 1964, pp. 164-73.

14. Cf. Chamberlain, R. L., George Crabbe, New York 1965, pp. 58-59.

15. The Library, London 1781, p. 11.

16. Huchon has compared the two versions. Huchon, R., pp. 638-40.

17. L., 1781, pp. 21-22. L., 1807, p. 146. The two passages are almost identical.

18. L., 1781, p. 22.

19. L., 1807, p. 146.

20. The version of 1808 has not been available to me, and I therefore rely upon Huchon.

21. Huchon, R., p. 641.

22. Edinburgh Review, vol. XII, p. 144. Cf. Huchon, R., p. 641.

23. Cf. Huchon, R., p. 153 and Chamberlain, R. L., George Crabbe and Darwin's Amorous Plants, JEGP [Journal of English and Germanic Philology], 61, (1962).

24. L., 1781, pp. 11-12.

25. Chamberlain, R. L., George Crabbe, p. 59.

26. L., 1807, p. 149.

27. Crabbe, G. Jr., pp. 137-38.

28. Preface to Poems 1807, in Poems by George Crabbe, ed. A. Ward, vol. I, Cambridge 1905, pp. 96-97.

29. Crabbe, G. Jr., p. 156.