The remark applies equally to much of Crabbe's poetry. But at least, if
this incongruity is to exist, it is on the more hopeful side. The
characteristic of so much poetry of our own day is that the manner is
uncommon, and the commonness resides in the matter.

When Crabbe had completed his revisions to his own satisfaction and his
adviser's, Burke suggested the publication of _The Library_ and _The
Village_, and the former poem was laid before Mr. Dodsley, who only a
few months before had refused a poem from the same hand. But
circumstances were now changed, and Burke's recommendation and support
were all-sufficient. Dodsley was all politeness, and though he declined
to incur any risk--this was doubtless borne by Burke--he promised his
best endeavours to make the poem a success. _The Library_ was published,
anonymously, in June 1781. The _Monthly_ and the _Critical Reviews_
awarded it a certain amount of faint praise, but the success with the
general public seems only to have been slight.

When Burke selected this poem to lay before Dodsley, he had already read
portions of _The Village,_ and it seems strange that he should have
given _The Library_ precedence, for the other was in every respect the
more remarkable. But Burke, a conservative in this as in other matters,
probably thought that a new poet desiring to be heard would be wiser in
not at once quitting the old paths. The readers of poetry still had a
taste for didactic epigram varied by a certain amount of florid
rhetoric. And there was little beyond this in Crabbe's moralisings on
the respective functions of theology, history, poetry, and the rest, as
represented on the shelves of a library, and on the blessings of
literature to the heart when wearied with business and the cares of
life. Crabbe's verses on such topics are by no means ineffective. He had
caught perfectly the trick of the school so soon to pass away. He is as