pictures of country life--were to come later still. Crabbe, though he
adhered, with a wise knowledge of his own powers, to the heroic couplet,
is really a chief founder of the rural novel--the _Silas Marner_ and the
_Adam Bede_ of fifty years later. Of course (for no man is original) he
had developed his methods out of that of his predecessors. Pope was his
earliest master in his art. And what Pope had done in his telling
couplets for the man and woman of fashion--the Chloes and Narcissas of
his day--Crabbe hoped that he might do for the poor and squalid
inhabitants of the Suffolk seaport. Then, too, Thomson's "lovely young
Lavinia," and Goldsmith's village-parson and poor widow gathering her
cresses from the brook, had been before him and contributed their share
of influence. But Crabbe's achievement was practically a new thing. The
success of _The Parish Register_ was largely that of a new adventure in
the world of fiction. Whatever defects the critic of pure poetry might
discover in its workmanship, the poem was read for its stories--for a
truth of realism that could not be doubted, and for a pity that could
not be unshared.

In 1809 Crabbe forwarded a copy of his poems (now reduced by the
publisher to the form of two small volumes, and in their fourth edition)
to Walter Scott, who acknowledged them and Crabbe's accompanying letter
in a friendly reply, to which reference has already been made. After
mentioning how for more than twenty years he had desired the pleasure of
a personal introduction to Crabbe, and how, as a lad of eighteen, he had
met with selections from _The Village_ and _The Library_ in _The Annual
Register_, he continues:--

"You may therefore guess my sincere delight when I saw
your poems at a late period assume the rank in the public
consideration which they so well deserve. It was a triumph