and another. If four or five arrived, the punch-bowl was taken down, and emptied and filled again. But whoever came, it was comparatively a dull evening, unless two especial knights-companions were of the party. One was a jolly old farmer, with much of the person and humor of Falstaff, a face as rosy as brandy could make it, and an eye teeming with subdued merriment, for he had that prime quality of a joker, superficial gravity. The other was a relative of the family, a wealthy yeoman, middle-aged, thin, and muscular. He was a bachelor, and famed for his indiscriminate attachment to all who bore the name of woman-young or aged, clean or dirty, a lady or a gipsy, it mattered not to him; all were equally admired. Such was the strength of his constitution, that, though he seldom went to bed sober, he retained a clear eye and stentorian voice to his eightieth year, and coursed when he was ninety. He sometimes rendered the colloquies over the bowl peculiarly piquant; and as soon as his voice began to be elevated, one or two of the inmates-my father and mother, for example-withdrew with Mrs. Tovell into her own sanctum sanctorum; but I, not being supposed capable of understanding much that might be said, was allowed to linger on the skirts of the festive circle; and the servants, being considered much in the same point of view as the animals dozing on the hearth, remained to have the full benefit of their wit, neither producing the slightest restraint, nor feeling it themselves."

This jolly old Mr. Tovell being carried off suddenly, Mr. Crabbe, induced by the desire to be in his own county, and among his own relatives, placed a curate at Muston, and went to reside at Parham in Mr. Tovell's house. It was not a happy removal. It was a desertion of his proper flock and duty in obedience to his own private inclinations, and it was not blessed; his son says, that as they were slowly quitting Muston, preceded by their furniture, a person who knew them, called out in an impressive tone-"You are

wrong, you are wrong!" The sound, Crabbe said, found an echo in his own conscience, and rung like a supernatural voice in his ears, through the whole journey. His son believes that he sincerely repented of this step. At Parham he did not find that happiness that perhaps the dreams of his youth-for there lived Miss Elmy during their long attachment-had led him first to expect there. Mrs. Elmy, his wife's mother, and Miss Tovell, the sister of the old gentleman, were the coheiresses of their brother, and resided with him. The latter seems to have been a regular old-fashioned fidget. She used to stalk about with her tall ivory-tipped walking-cane, and on any the slightest alteration made, were it but the removal of a shrub, or a picture on the walls, would say, "It was enough to make Jacky (her late brother) shake in his grave if he could see it," and would threaten to make a cadicy to her will.

Mr. Crabbe stood it for four years-memorable instance of patience!-and then found a residence to his heart's content. This was Great Glemham Hall, belonging to Mr. North, and then vacant. He took it, and continued there five years. We may imagine these five of as happy years as most of Crabbe's life. The house was large and handsome. It stood in a small, but well wooded park, occupying the mouth of a glen; and, in this glen, lay the mansion. The hills, that were on either hand, were finely hung with wood; a brook ran at the foot of one of these, and all round were woodlands, "and those green, dry lanes, which tempt the walker in all weathers, especially in the evenings, when, in the short grass of the dry, sandy banks, lies, every few yards, a glowworm, and the nightingales are pouring forth their melody in every direction." Just at hand was the village; and the church at which he preached at Sweffling was convenient. At Parham, he was not more popular out doors than he was in, because he was no jovial fellow, like Mr. Tovell, and did not like much visiting. Here, he was popular as a preacher, drew large congregations, and, in

Mr. Turner, his rector, had an enlightened and admiring friend. In such a place, too, a paradise to his boys, he was as busy in botany as ever; wrote a treatise on the subject, which, however, he was advised, to the public loss, not to publish, because such books had usually been published in Latin! He therefore burned it, as he used to do novels, which it was his great delight to write scores of, and then make bonfires of; his boys carrying them out to him by armfuls in the garden, and glorying in the blaze as he presided over it.

He returned in 1805, to Muston, to which he was called by the bishop. At the end of five years he had been obliged to quit his beautiful retreat at Glemham. It was sold, the house pulled down, and another built in its place. For the four further years that he continued in Suffolk, he lived at the village of Rendham. At Muston, the shepherd being absent, all had gone wrong; the warning voice had been fulfilled. The Methodist and the Huntingtonian had, in the absence of the pastor, set up their tabernacles, and had become successful rivals. Crabbe was not destitute of professional feelings or zeal. He preached against these interlopers, and only increased the evil. The farmers here were shy of him, for they had heard that he was a Jacobin, of all things! that is, he was no advocate for the terrible war which was raging with France, and which kept up the price of their corn. In this cold, clayey, and farming county, he continued nine years. Here he issued to the world his Parish Register and his Borough, perhaps, after all, his very best work, for it is full of such a variety of life, all drawn with the force and clearness of his prime; here also he published his Tales in verse; but here, too, he lost his wife, who had been an invalid for many years. It was therefore become to him a sad place. His health and spirits failed him; and it was a fortunate circumstance, that at this juncture, the living of Trowbridge was conferred on him by the Duke of Rutland. He removed thither in June, 1814.

From long before the time of Mr. Crabbe's removal to Trowbridge, he had been in the habit of making, during the season, occasionally a visit to London. His fame, especially after the publication of The Borough, was established. His power of painting human life and character, the bold and faithful pencil with which he did this, the true sympathies with the poor and afflicted and neglected which animated him, were all fully perceived and acknowledged; and he found himself a welcome guest in the highest circles of both aristocracy and literature. He who had been the humble curate of Belvoir, subject to slights and insults from pompous domestics, which are difficult to complain of, but are deeply felt, had, long before quitting the neighborhood of the castle, been the honored guest in the midst of the proudest nobles. In London, all the literary coteries were eager to have him. Holland-house, Lansdowne-house, the Duke of Rutland's, and other great houses, found him a frequent guest amid lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses; and at Holland-house, and Mr. Rogers's, he was surrounded by all that was at the time brilliant and famous in the political and literary world. These visits, after the death of his wife, became annual, and the old man wonderfully enjoyed them. The extracts which his son has given from his journal, teem with men and women of title and name. He is dining or breakfasting with Lady Errol, Lady Holland, the Duchess of Rutland. He meets Mr. Fox, Mr. Canning, Foscolo; Lords Haddington, Dundas, Strangford, etc.; Moore, Campbell, Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh; Ladies Spencer and Besborough; Duke and Duchess of Cumberland; in fact, every body. He became much attached to the Hoares, of Hampstead, and used to take up his quarters there, and with them make summer excursions to Hastings, the isle of Wight, and the like places. With them he saw Miss Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, etc. So popular was he become, that John Murray gave him £3000 for his Tales of the Hall, and he carried the bills for that sum home in

his waistcoat pocket. His meeting with Sir Walter Scott caused him to accept a pressing invitation from him to Scotland, whither he happened to go at the time of George IV.'s visit to Edinburgh; by which means, though he saw all the gala of the time, and all Highland costumes, he missed seeing Scott at Abbotsford. At Scott's house, in Castle-street, occurred his adventure with the three Highland chiefs, which has caused much merriment. He came down one morning and found these three portly chiefs in full Highland costume, talking at a great rate, in a language which he did not understand; and not thinking of Gaelic, concluded that they were foreigners. They, on their part, seeing an elderly gentleman, dressed in a somewhat antiquated style, with buckles in his shoes, and perfectly clerical, imagined him some learned abbé, who had come on a visit to Sir Walter. The consequence was, that Sir Walter, entering the breakfast-room with his family, stood a moment in amazement to hear them all conversing together in execrable French; and then burst into a hearty laugh, saying,-" Why, you are all fools together! This is an Englishman, and these Highlanders, Mr. Crabbe, can speak as good English as you can." The amazement it occasioned may be imagined.

Trowbridge is not the sort of place that you would imagine a poet as voluntarily choosing as a place of residence. It is a manufacturing town of about twelve thousand inhabitants, chiefly of the working class, with a sprinkling of shopkeepers and wealthy manufacturers. It has no striking features, but, to a person proceeding thither from London, has a mean, huddled, and unattractive aspect. The country round is a good dairy country, but is not by any means striking. Crabbe, however, found there families of intelligence and great kindness. His sons married well among them, and John acted as his curate; George, the writer of his biography, had the living, and occupied the parsonage of Pucklechurch, about twenty miles only distant. These were all circumstances, with a good parsonage, and