Note 4 — I. THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON.

I do not forget Crabbe—that sweet and gentle versifier. But the romantic element is wholly wanting in him. Very probably Sir Wilfrid Lawson would vehemently protest that Crabbe deserves to be reckoned among the greatest of the great. Was not his first poem entitled Inebriety? When a child I used to be told that Bloomfield’s Farmer’s Boy was equal to Spenser, but I concluded that Spenser must be very dull, and conceived a horror of the Faery Queen in consequence.