Note 53 — HORACE AND JAMES SMITH
Reading edition
The Rev. George Crabbe. The writer's first interview with this poet, who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at William Spencer's villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish pond, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a jet d'eau like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of his satirist, exclaimed, with a good-humoured laugh: 'Ah! my old enemy, how do you do?' In the course of conversation, he expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London; adding, 'In my own village they think nothing of me.' The subject happening to be the inroads of Time upon Beauty, the writer quoted the following lines:—
'Six years had pass'd, and forty ere the six, When Time began to play his usual tricks: My locks, once comely in a virgin's sight, Locks of pure brown, now felt th' encroaching white; Gradual each day I liked my horses less, My dinner more—I learnt to play at chess.'
'That's very good!' cried the bard;—'whose is it?' 'Your own.' 'Indeed! hah! well, I had quite forgotten it.' Was this affectation, or was it not? In sooth, he seemed to push simplicity to puerility. This imitation contained in manuscript the following lines, after describing certain Sunday-newspaper critics who were supposed to be present at a new play, and who were rather heated in their politics:—
'Hard is his task who edits—thankless job! A Sunday journal for the factious mob: With bitter paragraph and caustic jest, He gives to turbulence the day of rest; Condemn'd, this week, rash rancour to instil, Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will: Alike undone or if he praise or rail (For this affects his safety, that his sale), He sinks at last, in luckless limbo set, If loud for libel, and if dumb for debt.'
They were, however, never printed; being, on reflection, considered too serious for the occasion.
It is not a little extraordinary that Crabbe, who could write with such vigour, should descend to such lines as the following:—
'Something had happen'd wrong about a bill Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill; So, to amend it, I was told to go And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.'
Surely 'Emanuel Jennings,' compared with the above, rises to sublimity.