hope of the conservatives. Edmund Burke, who early in his great career
had assailed the radicals in his ironic _Vindication of Natural Society_,
and who to the end of his life contended against them in the arena of
politics, on reading some of Crabbe's manuscripts, rescued this cultured
and ingenuous man from obscurity and distress; and Dr. Johnson presently
aided him in his literary labors. In _The Library_ Crabbe expressed the
reverence of a scholarly soul for the garnered wisdom of the past, and
satirized some of the popular writings of the day, including sentimental
fiction. He would not have denied the world those consolations which flow
from the literature that mirrors our hopes and dreams; but his honest
spirit revolted when such literature professed to be true to life.
His acquaintance with actual conditions in humble circles, and with
hardships, was as personal as Goldsmith's; but he was not the kind of
poet who soothes the miseries of mankind by ignoring them. In _The
Village_ he arose with all the vigor and intensity of insulted common
sense to refute the dreamers who offered a rose-colored picture of
country life as a genuine portrayal of truth and nature. So evident
was his mastery of his subject, his clearness of perception, and his
earnestness of feeling, that he attracted immediate attention; and he
might well have led a new advance under the ancient standards. But
silence fell upon Crabbe for many years; and this proved, to be the last
occasion in the poetical history of the century that a powerful voice was
raised in behalf of the old cause.

The poet who became the favorite of moderate sentimentalists, in what
were called "genteel" circles, was William Cowper. He presented little
or nothing that could affright the gentle emotions, and much that
pleasurably stimulated them. He enriched the poetry of the domestic
affections, and had a vein of sadness which occasionally, as in _To
Mary_, deepened into the most touching pathos. In _The Task_, a