she was asking her mother yesterday was dictated by the most simple and comwhether the beads would carry all her monplace arguments of prudence, such love to you, for she did not think it possi- as would govern the conduct of any sane ble herself. Well, good-bye, girls; don't man. you be ashamed of having a race togeth- He resolved, too, that he would clearly er," with which the kindly-faced clergy-impress on Harry Trelyon whom he man resumed his task of ascending the expected to see at Nolans's that this hill, and the two girls, abandoning their project of marriage with Miss Rosewarne racing, walked quickly down to the har- was precisely what a man of the world bour, to see if they could persuade the placed in his position would entertain. silent and surly Mr. Pavy to let them He did not wholly like Master Harry. have his boat. There was an ostentatious air of youth about the young man. There was a bluntness in his speech, too, that transgressed the limits of courtesy. Nor did he quite admire the off-handed fashion in which Harry Trelyon talked to the Rosewarnes, and more especially to the girls; he wished Miss Wenna Rosewarne, at least, to be treated with a little more formality and respect. At the same time he would endeavour to remain good friends with this ill-mannered boy, for reasons to be made apparent. Meanwhile Mr. Roscorla drove along the silent highway in George Rosewarne's dog-cart, and in due time he reached Launceston, and took the train for Plymouth. He stayed in Plymouth that night, having some business to do there; and next morning he found himself in the "Flying Dutchman," tearing along the iron rails towards London. Now it was a fixed habit of Mr. Roscorla to try to get as near as possible to a clear and definite understanding of his relations with the people and things When he arrived at Nolans's Hotel, he around him. He did not wish to have took a bedroom there, and then sent in a anything left vague and nebulous, even card to Harry Trelyon. He found that as regarded a mere sentiment; and as young gentleman up on a chair, trying to this was the first time he had got clear catch a Virginian nightingale that had esaway from Eglosilyan and the life there caped from one of the cages; and he since the beginning of his engagement, nearly stumbled over a tame hedgehog he calmly set about defining the position that ran pattering over the carpet, bein which he stood with regard to Wenna cause his attention was drawn to a couple Rosewarne. of very long-eared rabbits sitting in an There were a few unsatisfactory mat-easy-chair. Master Harry paid no atters to dispose of. In the first place, he was conscious of a little hypocrisy in his bearing towards her; and he would not have minded the hypocrisy - for he did not believe that anybody was quite honest - but that the necessity for it made him impatient. Besides, might she not reproach him afterwards when she found it out, and consider herself aggrieved, and grow sulky? But the chief matter for discontent that he had was the probable wonder of the world over the fact that he meant to marry an innkeeper's daughter. All the world could not know the sufficient reasons he had advanced to himself for that step; nor could they know of the very gradual way in which he had approached it. Every one would consider it as an abrupt and ludicrous act of folly; his very kindest friends would call it an odd freak of romance. Now Mr. Roscorla felt that at his time of life to be accused of romance was to be accused of silliness; and he resolved that, whenever he had a chance, he would let the people know that his choice of Wenna Rosewarne LIVING AGE. VOL. VIII. 390 tention to him until the bird was caught; then he came down, shook hands with him carelessly, and said "How odd you should stumble in here! Or did Wenna Rosewarne tell you I was at Nolans's?" "Yes, Miss Rosewarne did," said Mr. Roscorla. "You have quite a menagerie here. Do you dine here or down-stairs?" "Oh! here, of course." I thought you might come and dine with me this evening at my club. Five minutes' walk from here you know. Will you? " "Yes, I will, if you don't mind this elegant costume." Mr. Roscorla was precisely the person to mind the dress of a man whom he was taking into his club; but he was very well aware that, whatever dress young Trelyon wore, no one could mistake him for anything else than a gentleman. He was not at all averse to be seen with Master Harry in this rough costume; he merely suggested with a smile that a few feathers and bits of thread might be removed;. and then, in the quiet summer evening,. they went outside and walked west-dinner-particularly a draught of ale he ward. had with his cheese; after which the two strangers went up to a quiet corner in the smoking-room, lay down in a couple of big easy-chairs, and lit their cigars. During dinner their talk had mostly been about shooting, varied with anecdotes which Mr. Roscorla told of men about town. "Now this is the time," Mr. Roscorla said, "when Pall Mall looks interesting to me. There is a sort of quiet and strong excitement about it. All that smoke there over the club chimneys tells of the cooking going forward; and you will find old boys having a sly look in at the diningroom to see that their tables are all Now, however, Mr. Roscorla becime right; and then friends come in, and more communicative about his own smooth out their white ties, and have a affairs; and it seemed to Trelyon that drop of sherry and Angostura bitters these were rather in a bad way. And it while they wait. All this district is full also occurred to him that there was perof a silent satisfaction and hope just now.haps a little meanness in his readiness to But I can't get you a good dinner, Trel-give 5,000l. direct to Wenna Rosewarne, yon; you'll have to take your chance, and in his disinclination to lend the same you know. I have got out of the ways of sum to her future husband, whose interthe club now; I don't know what they ests of course would be hers. can do." "Look here, Roscorla," he said. "Well, I'm not nasty partickler," Trel-" Honour bright, do you think you can yon said, which was true. "But what has brought you up to London ?" make anything out of this scheme; or is the place like one of those beastly old mines in which you throw good money after bad?". "Well, I'll tell you. It's rather an awkward business one way. I have got a share in some sugar and coffee planta- Roscorla answered, honestly enough tions in Jamaica · I think you know but with perhaps a trifle unnecessary that- and you are aware that the eman-emphasis, when he saw that the young cipation of the niggers simply cut the man was inclined to accept the hint throat of the estates there. The beggars that he believed the project to be a sound won't work; and lots of the plantations one; that his partners were putting fir have been going down and down, or more money into it than he would; that rather back and back into the original the merchants who were his agents in wilderness. Well, my partners here see no London knew the property and approved way out of it but one- to import labour, of the scheme; and that, if he could have the plantations thoroughly over-raise the money, he would himself go out, hauled and set in good working order. in a few months' time, to see the thing But that wants money. They have got properly started. money - I haven't; and so, to tell you the truth, I am at my wits' end as to how to raise a few thousands to join them in athe undertaking." This piece of intelligence rather startled Harry Trelyon. He instantly recalled the project which had brought himself to London, and asked himself whether he was prepared to give the sum of 5,000l. to Wenna Rosewarne merely that it should be transferred by her to her husband, who would forthwith embark in speculation with it. Well, he was not prepared to do that off-hand. They went into the club, which was near the corner of St. James's Street, and Mr. Roscorla ordered a quiet little dinner, the menu of which was constructed with a neatness and skill altogether thrown away on his guest. In due time Master Harry sat down at the small table, and accepted with much indifference the delicacies which his companion had prepared for him. But all the same he enjoyed his He did not press the matter further than that for the present; and so their talk drifted away into other channels, until it found its way back to Eglosilyan, to the Rosewarnes, and to Wenna. That is to say, Mr. Roscorla spoke of Wenna; Trelyon was generally silent on that one point. "You must not imagine," Roscorla said, with a smile, " that I took this step without much deliberation." "So did she, I suppose," Trelyon said, rather coldly. Well, yes. Doubtless. But I dare say many people will think it rather strange that I should marry an innkeeper's daughter they will think I have been struck with a sudden fit of idiotic romance." "Oh no, I don't think so," the lad said, with nothing visible in his face to tell whether he was guilty of a mere blunder or of intentional impertinence. "Many elderly gentlemen marry their house keepers, and in most cases wisely as far was far more vague and unsatisfactory. as I have seen." Driven into a corner, he would have ad"Oh! but that is another thing," mitted to you that Wenna Rosewarne Roscorla said, with his face flushing slightly, and inclined to be ill-tempered. "There is a great difference: I am not old enough to want a nurse yet. I have chosen Miss Rosewarne because she is possessed of certain qualities calculated to make her an agreeable companion for a man like myself. I have done it quite deliberately and with my eyes open. I am not blinded by the vanity that makes a boy insist on having a particular girl become his wife because she has a pretty face and he wants to show her to his friends." "And yet there is not much the matter with Wenna Rosewarne's face," said Trelyon, with the least suggestion of sar casm. "Oh! as for that," Roscorla said, "that does not concern a man who looks at life from my point of view. Certainly, there are plainer faces than Miss Rosewarne's. She has good eyes and teeth; and besides that she has a good figure, you know." was not very good-looking; but that would not have affected his fixed and private belief that he knew no woman who had so beautiful and tender a face. For somehow, when he thought of her, he seemed to see her, as he had often seen her, go by him on a summer morning on her way to church; and as the sweet small Puritan would turn to him, and say in her gentle way, "Good morning, Mr. Trelyon," he would feel vexed and ashamed that he had been found with a gun in his hand, and be inclined to heave it into the nearest ditch. Then she would go on her way, along between the green hedges, in the summer light; and the look of her face that remained in his memory was as the look of an angel, calm, and sweet, and never to be forgotten. From The Cornhill Magazine. CRABBE'S POETRY. Both these men, as they lay idling in this smoking-room, were now thinking of Wenna Rosewarne, and indolently and inadvertently forming some picture of her in their minds. Of the two, that of IT is nearly a century since George Mr. Roscorla was by far the more accu- Crabbe, then a young man of five and rate. He could have described every twenty, put three pounds in his pocket lineament of her face and every article of and started from his native town of Aldher dress, as she appeared to him on bid- borough with a box of clothes and a case ding him good-bye the day before on the of surgical instruments to make his forLaunceston highway. The dress was a tune in London. Few men have attemptsoft light-brown, touched here and there ed that adventure with less promising with deep and rich cherry colour. Her prospects. Any sensible adviser would face was turned sideways to him, and have told him to prefer starvation in his looking up; the lips partly open with a native village to starvation in the back friendly smile, and showing beautiful lanes of London. The adviser would, teeth; the earnest dark eyes filed with a perhaps, have been vexed, but would not kindly regard; the eyebrows high, so have been confuted by Crabbe's good that they gave a timid and wondering fortune. We should still recommend a look to the face; the forehead low and youth not to jump into a river, though, sweet, with some loose brown hair about of a thousand who try the experiment one it that the wind stirred. He knew every may happen to be rescued by a benevofeature of that face and every varying lent millionnaire, and be put in the road look of the eyes, whether they were to fortune. The chances against Crabbe pleased and grateful, or sad and distant, were enormous. Literature, considered or overbrimming with a humorous and as a trade, is a good deal better at the malicious fun. He knew the shape of present day than it was towards the end her hands, the graceful poise of her waist and neck, the very way she put down her foot in walking. He was thoroughly well aware of the appearance which the girl he meant to marry presented to the unbiassed eyes of the world. of the last century, and yet any one who has an opportunity of comparing the failures to the successes, would be more apt to quote Chatterton than Crabbe as a precedent for youthful aspirants. Crabbe, indeed, might say for himself that literaHarry Trelyon's mental picture of her' ture was the only path open to him. His father was collector of salt duties at Ald- | See Inebriety! her wand she waves, borough, a position, as one may imagine, And lo! her pale, and lo! her purple siaves. of no very great emolument. He had, The interstices of the box of clothing however, given his son the chance of which went with him from Aldborough acquiring a smattering of " "scholarship," in the sense in which that word is used to London were doubtless crammed with by the less educated lower classes. To much waste paper scribbled over with the slender store of learning acquired in and with appeals to nymphs, muses, and these feeble echoes of Pope's Satires, a cheap country school, the lad managed to add such medical training as could be shepherds. Crabbe was one of those picked up during an apprenticeship in an men who are born a generation after their apothecary's shop. With this provision ble to the change of fashion in poetry as natural epoch, and was as little accessiof knowledge he tried to obtain practice in costume. When, therefore, he finally in his native town. He failed to get any resolved to hazard his own fate and patients of the paying variety. Crabbe Mira's was clumsy and absent-minded to the the results of his Londen upon end of his life. He had, moreover, a adventure, the literary goods at his distaste for botany, and the shrewd inhab-posal were already somewhat musty in itants of Aldborough, with that perverse reached London, marks the very nadir of character. The year 1780, in which he tendency to draw inferences which is characteristic of people who cannot rea-abeth to our own there has never been English poetry. From the days of Elizson, argued that as he picked up his samples in the ditches he ought to sell the medicines presumably compounded from them for nothing. In one way or other, poor Crabbe had sunk to the verge of distress. Of course, under these cir had become fairly tired of the jingle of so absolutely barren a period. People Pope's imitators, and the new era had recently dead, serve to illustrate the connot dawned. Goldsmith and Gray, both cumstances, he had fallen in love and dition in which the most exquisite polish engaged himself at the age of eighteen to and refinement of language has been dea young lady, apparently as poor as him-veloped until there is a danger of steself. Of course, too, he called Miss Elmy "Mira," and addressed her in verses which occasionally appeared in the poet's corner of a certain Wheble's Magazine. "My Mira," said the young surgeon in a style which must have been rather antiquated even in Aldborough My Mira, shepherds, is as fair As sylvan nymphs who haunt the vale; As sylphs who dwell in purest air, As fays who skim the dusky dale. 66 rility. The "Elegy" and the Deserted Village" are inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets has become dangerously delicate. The further without destroying all spontacritical faculty could not be stimulated neous impulse. The reaction to a more masculine and passionate school was imminent; and if the excellent Crabbe could have put into his box a few of Burns's lyrics, or even a copy of Cowper's "Task," one might have augured better for his prospects. But what chance was Moreover, he won a prize for a poem on there for a man who could still be conHope, and composed an Allegorical tentedly invoking the muse and stringing Fable" and a piece called "The Atheist together mechanic echoes of Po e's Reclaimed;" and, in short, added plenti- couplets? How could he expect to fully to the vast rubbish-heap of old-charm the jaded faculties of a generation world verses, now decayed beyond the which was already beginning to heave industry of the most persevering of and stir with a longing for some fresh Dryasdusts. Nay, he even succeeded by excitement? For a year the fate which some mysterious means in getting one of has overtaken so many rash literary adhis poems published separately. It was venturers seemed to be approaching called "Inebriety," and was an imitation steadily. One temporary gleam of good of Pope. Here is a couplet by way of fortune cheered him for a time. He persample: suaded an enterprising publisher to bring out a poem called "The Candidate, which had some faint success, though ridiculed by the reviewers. Unluckily the publisher became bankrupt and Crabbe was thrown upon his resources Champagne the courtier drinks the spleen to chase, The colonel Burgundy and Port his Grace. From the satirical the poet diverges into the mock heroic : the poor three pounds and box of great, He added a letter saying that as Lord North had not answered him, Lord Shelburne would probably be glad to supply the needs of a starving apothecary turned pcet. Another copy of verses was enclosed, pointing out that Shelburne's reputed liberality would be repaid in the usual coin: surgical instruments aforesaid. How to be approaching; or, at least, the he managed to hold out for a year is a only alternative was the abandonment mystery. It was lucky for him, as he of his ambition, and acceptance, if he intimates, that he had never heard of the could get it, of the post of druggist's fate of Chatterton, who had poisoned assistant. He had but one resource left; himself just ten years before. A Journal and that not of the most promising kind. which he wrote for Mira is published in Crabbe, amongst his other old-fashioned his Life, and gives an account of his feel- notions, had a strong belief in the tradiings during three months of his cruel tional patron. Johnson might have given probation. He applies for a situation as him some hints upon the subject; but amanuensis offered in an advertisement, luckily, as it turned out, he pursued what and comforts himself on failing with the Chesterfield's correspondent would have reflection that the advertiser was prob- thought the most hopeless of all courses. ably a sharper. He writes piteous letters He wrote to Lord North, who was at that to publishers and gets, of course, the moment occupied in contemplating the stereotyped reply with which the most final results of the ingenious policy by amiable of publishers must damp the which America was lost to England, and ardour of aspiring genius. The disap- probably consigned Crabbe's letter to the pointment is not much softened by the waste-paper basket. Then he tried the publisher's statement that "he does not effect of a copy of verses, beginning mean by this to insinuate any want of merit in the poem, but rather a want of Ah! Shelburne, blest with all that's good or attention in the public." Bit by bit his T adorn a rich or save a sinking State. surgical instruments go to the pawnbroker. When one publisher sends his polite refusal poor Crabbe has only sixpence farthing in the world, which, by the purchase of a pint of porter, is reduced to fourpence halfpenny. The exchequer fills again by the disappearance of his wardrobe and his watch; but ebbs under a new temptation. He buys some odd volumes of Dryden for three-andsixpence, and on coming home tears his only coat, which he manages to patch tolerably with a borrowed needle and thread, pretending, with a pathetic shift, that they are required to stitch together manuscripts instead of broadcloth. And so for a year the wolf creeps nearer to the Nobody can blame North and Shelburne door, whilst Crabbe gallantly keeps up for not acting the part of good Samariappearances and spirits. And yet he tans. He, at least, may throw the first tries to preserve a show of good spirits stone who has always taken the trouble in the Journal to Mira, and continues to to sift the grain from the chaff amidst all labour at his versemaking. Perhaps, the begging letters which he has received, indeed, it may be regarded as a bad and who has never lamented that his symptom that he is reduced to distract- benevolence outran his discretion. But ing his mind by making an analysis of a there was one man in England at the dull sermon. "There is nothing partic-time who had the rare union of qualities ular in it," he admits, but at least it is necessary for Crabbe's purpose. Burke better, he thinks, to listen to a bad ser- is a name never to be mentioned without mon than to the blasphemous rant of reverence; not only because Burke was deistical societies. Indeed, Crabbe's incomparably the greatest of all English spirit was totally unlike the desperate political writers, and a standing refutation pride of Chatterton. He was of the pa- of the theory which couples rhetorical tient enduring tribe, and comforts him- excellence with intellectual emptiness, self by religious meditations, which are, but also because he was a man whose perhaps, rather commonplace in expres- glowing hatred of all injustice and symsion, but when read by the light of the pathy for all suffering never evaporated distresses he was enduring, show a brave in empty words. His fine literary percepand unembittered spirit, not to be easily tion enabled him to detect the genuine respected too highly. Starvation seemed excellence which underlay the superficial Then shall my grateful strains his ear rejoice, |