"My dear," replied he, " as you charged yourself with all, I thought it would be letting you off cheaply by naming only two or three, such as

Here Coelebs, fearing matters might go too far between this amiable couple, tried to soften matters a little for the lady, saying that he thought Ranby meant that she partook of the general corruption.

His speech was interrupted here by Mr. Ranby, who exclaimed that he did not mean to infer that his wife was worse than other women.

"Worse, Mr. Ranby! Worse?" cried she, and then Ranby, for the first time in his life, not minding her, went on :

"As she is always insisting that the whole species is corrupt, she cannot help allowing that she herself has not quite escaped the infection. Now to be a sinner in the gross and a saint in the detail, that is, to have sins and no faults, is a thing I do not quite comprehend." And he left the room, whereupon Mrs. Ranby apologised for him as a well-meaning man, who acted up to the little light he had, but was unacquainted with religious feeling, and knew little of the nature of conversion.

In the next few years, from 1811 to 1824, Miss More published Practical Piety, Christian Morals (both sold out before they left the press), Essay on the Writings of St. Paul, Moral Sketches, and lastly (when she was seventy-nine) The Spirit of Prayer, 6000 copies of which sold in a year.

The authoress lived until 1833, but her health was very feeble for some years before her death. To the end, however, she took interest in philanthropic schemes, such as the efforts of the Bible Society.

Her last word was Joy," and no small witness to the part which she had played in increasing the happiness of others was borne by the enormous procession, including many parish priests and schoolchildren, which followed her coffin to its last resting-place.

When we review the considerable writings which Hannah More left, it must be confessed that-though they are still worth some study-they do not contain much which is likely to find a permanent place in English literature. Yet, in her own days, they enjoyed an enormous popularity; and though this popularity was doubtless partly due to the great lack, in those days, of simple, persuasive writings upon practical religion (there were countless writers upon the theoretical side of religion), her books must have exercised an immense influence in uplifting the trend of popular literature and taste. She was able to say, a few years before her death, that she had lived to see a real increase of genuine religion among the higher classes of society. That increase was, in no small measure, due to her own brilliant gifts and personal influence; whilst her efforts for the physical and spiritual welfare of the workingclasses were still more abundantly blessed. If she does not take that high place in English literature which Dr. Johnson and other contemporaries prophesied for her, she takes a very high place amongst those English leaders who have laboured for the advancement of God's kingdom. And she will ever remain one of the most striking instances of how love of our Lord can in every age lead the highly talented to turn their backs upon applause and success in order to follow resolutely, in the face of opposition and opprobrium, the paths of humble and self-denying service.

GEORGE CRABBE

I

Apprentice to a surgeon; tax-collector; apothecary; writer and priest -Domestic chaplain-Pluralist and absentee from his parishesHis poems-Crabbe's Churchmanship, judged from his writings —His sympathy with, and close knowledge of, the poor-His Tales.

GEORGE CRABBE was a typical eighteenth century parson and a typical eighteenth century poet. As a parson, he was typical of the priesthood of his time in his decent morality, his thorough lack of enthusiasm, his shameless pluralism and absenteeism; and also in the way in which his flock, hitherto somewhat hostile, accepted him when he became a "successful man." On the literary side, his style, with its couplets and its neat antitheses, was also characteristic of the age, though he had his original contribution to add to contemporary literature. In this brief account of him, it will be convenient to deal first with his life, and then with his writings.

Crabbe was born at Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, in 1754, the eldest son of a collector of salt duties; and his first twenty-five years were spent here and in the surrounding district. From early days he showed a taste for poetry, and accordingly was given a somewhat better education than other lads of his class, including some knowledge of the Latin classics. He was still under fourteen, however, when he was apprenticed in 1768 to a surgeon living near Bury St. Edmunds, who combined medicine with farming. Three years later

the lad was transferred to the service of another doctor at Woodbridge, with whom he stayed four years.

His heart was less in his profession than in verse making, at which he was always trying his hand. In 1775 he published, through an Ipswich bookseller, a long poem in the usual Popian couplets, called Inebriety. This professed to describe the different phases of intemperance in the different classes of life-villager, farmer, squire, parson, etc. Though it spoke of some promise in its youthful writer, the booklet seems to have made no stir in the literary world.

In 1775 he left Woodbridge to help his father, who had fallen on evil days, in his work on Slaughden Quay. A little later he set up in business at Woodbridge as an apothecary, but met with the slenderest success. During all these years he was studying botany diligently, with a very observant eye for the scenery and natural history of his native district. Throughout his poetry, all his life, he reproduced, often in passages of no little skill and beauty, these early scenes of his boyhood and youth.

In 1780, wearied at last of failure at home, he borrowed £5 from a neighbouring gentleman, paid his debts, and with the three remaining pounds, a box of clothes, and a few surgical instruments, set out to try his fortune in London.

Here the money, and the instruments too, had vanished before he was fortunate enough to find a patron in Edmund Burke, the great orator and politician. With his assistance the Library was published, and help from Lord Chancellor Thurlow was forthcoming. A little later, in 1781, he was ordained by the Bishop of Norwich to serve a curacy in his native town. But the ex-apothecary did not get on very well

with his fellow-townsmen, and was relieved to accept a post offered him through Burke's influence a few months later, as private chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle.

The somewhat rustic chaplain, however, could hardly enjoy the social amenities which this new work involved; and, indeed, the post of domestic chaplain was, at this time, often regarded as little higher than that of domestic servant. Both Crabbe's diary and verse express the sensitive awkwardness which now made his lot a difficult one.

Arriving at the Hall, he tried

For air composed, serene, and satisfied;
As he had practised in his room alone,
And there acquired a free and easy tone:
There he had said, "Whatever the degree

A man obtains, what more than man is he?
And when arriv'd-" This room is but a room;
Can aught we see the steady soul o'ercome ?
Let me in all a manly firmness show,
Upheld by talents, and their value know."

This reason urged; but it surpassed his skill
To be in act as manly as in will:

When he his lordship and the lady saw,

Brave as he was, he felt oppressed with awe;
And spite of verse, that so much praise had won,
The poet found he was the bailiff's son.

The Village was published in 1783, and at once won attention by its vivid realism. A short while before Gray's Elegy and Goldsmith's Deserted Village had painted village life in idealistic colours. Crabbe, with unerring instinct, painted the sterner and sadder side of country life, and held his readers spell-bound with the horror of humble tragedies.

In 1783 the Lord Chancellor presented him two small Dorsetshire livings, Frome St. Quentin and