Shelley had found their various admirers, and drawn Crabbe's old public
from him. It is the purpose of this little volume to inquire into the
reasons why he is still justly counted a classic, and whether he has
not, as Tennyson said of him, "a world of his own," still rich in
interest and in profit for the explorer.

* * * * *

Aldeburgh--or as it came to be more commonly spelled in modern times,
Aldborough--is to-day a pleasant and quiet watering-place on the coast
of Suffolk, only a few miles from Saxmundham, with which it is connected
by a branch line of the Great Eastern Railway. It began to be known for
its fine air and sea-bathing about the middle of the last century, and
to-day possesses other attractions for the yachtsman and the golfer. But
a hundred years earlier, when Crabbe was born, the town possessed none
of these advantages and means of access, to amend the poverty and rough
manners of its boating and fishing inhabitants. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries Aldeburgh had been a flourishing port with a
population able to provide notable aid in the hour of national danger.
Successive Royal Charters had accorded to the town markets, with other
important rights and privileges. It had returned two members to
Parliament since early in the days of Elizabeth, and indeed continued to
do so until the Reform Bill of 1831. But, in common with Dunwich, and
other once flourishing ports on the same coast, Aldeburgh had for its
most fatal enemy, the sea. The gradual encroachments of that
irresistible power had in the course of two centuries buried a large
portion of the ancient Borough beneath the waves. Two existing maps of
the town, one of about 1590, the other about 1790, show how extensive
this devastation had been. This cause, and others arising from it, the
gradual decay of the shipping and fishing industries, had left the town