Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/79

Rh nothing. He was evidently a man of talent who had to take his part with the times, subject to history. To call him a poet was a mere convention. There seems to be not a single moment of poetry in his work, and assuredly if he had known the earlier signification of the word he would have been the last man to claim the incongruous title of poet. But it is impossible to state the question as it would have presented itself to Crabbe or to any other writer of his quality entering into the same inheritance of English.

It is true that Crabbe read and quoted Milton; so did all his contemporaries; and to us now it seems that poetry cannot have been forgotten by any age possessing Lycidas. Yet that age can scarcely be said to have in any true sense possessed Lycidas. There are other things, besides poetry, in Milton's poems. We do not entirely know, perhaps, but we can conjecture how a reader in Crabbe's late eighteenth century, looking in Milton for authority for all that he unluckily and vainly admired, would well find it. He would find the approval of Young's "Night Thoughts" did he search for it, as we who do not search for it may not readily understand. A step or so downwards, from