Part 1

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HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE MOST EMINENT BRITISH POETS.

VOL. II.

HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE MOST EMINENT BRITISH POETS.

BY

WILLIAM HOWITT.

The Illustrations Engraved by H. W. Hewet.

"An indissoluble sign of their existence has stamped itself on the abodes of all distinguished men, a sign which places all kindred spirits in communion with them."--_The Citizen of Prague._

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 1847.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

POETS. ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE

CRABBE _Belvoir Castle_ 5 HOGG 34 COLERIDGE _Coleridge Enlisting_ 81 MRS. HEMANS _Residence at Rhyllon_ 122 L. E. L. _Cape Coast Castle_ 145 SCOTT _Abbotsford_ 167 _Tomb_ , _Dryburgh Abbey_ 536 CAMPBELL _Gateway of Glasgow College_ 231 SOUTHEY _Residence at Keswick_ 255 _Birthplace at Bristol_ 284 BAILLIE 285 WORDSWORTH _Grasmere_ 295 MONTGOMERY _Fulneck Moravian Settlement_ 334 LANDOR _Residence near Fiesole_ 369 LEIGH HUNT _Birthplace at Southgate_ 396 ROGERS _House in St. James's Place_ 420 MOORE _Cottage at Sloperton_ 445 ELLIOTT _The "Ranter" Preaching_ 462 WILSON 501 PROCTER 508 TENNYSON _Birthplace at Somersby_ 513 _Antique Cross_ 532 CONCLUDING REMARKS 533

GEORGE CRABBE.

When a youth, with a voracious appetite for books, an old lady, who kindly supplied me with many, put one day into my hands Crabbe's Borough. It was my first acquaintance with him, and it occasioned me the most singular sensations imaginable. Intensely fond of poetry, I had read the great bulk of our older writers, and was enthusiastic in my admiration of the new ones who had appeared. The Pleasures of Hope, of Campbell, the West Indies and World before the Flood, of Montgomery, the first Metrical Romances of Scott, all had their due appreciation. The calm dignity of Wordsworth and the blaze of Byron had not yet fully appeared. Every thing, however, old or new, in poetry, had a certain elevation of subject and style which seemed absolutely necessary to give it the title of poetry. But here was a poem by a country parson; the description of a sea-port town, so full of real life, yet so homely and often prosaic, that its effect on me was confounding. Why, it is not poetry, and yet how clever! Why, there is certainly a resemblance to the style of Pope, yet what subjects, what characters, what ordinary phraseology! The country parson, certainly, is a great reader of Pope, but how unlike Pope's is the music of the rhythm--if music there be! What an opening for a poem in four-and-twenty Books!

"Describe the Borough--though our idle tribe May love description, can we so describe, That you shall fairly streets and buildings trace, And all that gives distinction to the place? This can not be; yet moved by your request, A part I paint--let fancy form the rest. Cities and towns, the various haunts of men, Require the pencil; they defy the pen. Could he, who sung so well the Grecian Fleet, So well have sung of Alley, Lane, or Street? Can measured lines these various buildings show, The Town-Hall Turning, or the Prospect Row? Can I the seats of wealth and want explore, And lengthen out my lays from door to door?"

No, good parson! how should you? I exclaimed to myself. You see the absurdity of your subject, and yet you rush into it. He who sung of the Greek Fleet certainly would never have thought of singing of Alley, Lane, or Street! What a difference from

"Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!"

Or--

"The man for wisdom's various arts renowned, Long exercised in woes, O Muse, resound!"

What a difference from--

"Arms and the man I sing, who forced by fate, And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate!"

Or from the grandeur of that exordium:--

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly Muse! that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth Rose out of chaos; or, if Sion-hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flowed Fast by the Oracle of God, I thence Invoke thine aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit! that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou knowest: Thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant; what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men."

With this glorious sound in my ears, like the opening hymn of an archangel--language in which more music and more dignity were united than in any composition of mere mortal man, and which heralded in the universe, God and man, perdition and salvation, creation and the great sum total of the human destinies,--what a fall was there to those astounding words--

"Describe the Borough!"

It was a shock to every thing of the ideal great and poetical in the young and sensitive mind, attuned to the harmonies of a thousand great lays of the by-gone times, that was never to be forgotten. Are we then come to this? I asked. Is this the scale of topic, and is this the tone to which we are reduced in this generation? Turning over the heads of the different Books did not much tend to remove this feeling. The Church, Sects, the Election, Law, Physic, Trades, Clubs and Social Meetings, Players, Almshouse and Trustees, Peter Grimes and Prisons! What, in heaven's name, were the whole nine Muses to do with such a set of themes! And then the actors! See a set of drunken sailors in their ale-house:--

"The Anchor, too, affords the seaman joys, In small smoked room, all clamor, crowds, and noise; Where a curved settle half surrounds the fire, Where fifty voices purl and punch require; They come for pleasure in their leisure hour, And they enjoy it to their utmost power; Standing they drink, they swearing smoke, while all Call, or make ready for a second call."

But, spite of all, a book was a book, and therefore it was read. At every page the same struggle went on in the mind between all the old notions of poetry, and the vivid pictures of actual life which it unfolded. When I had read it once, I told the lender that it was the strangest, cleverest, and most absorbing book I had ever read, but that it was no poem. It was only by a second and a third perusal that the first surprise subsided; the first shock gone by, the poem began to rise out of the novel composition. The deep and experienced knowledge of human life, the sound sense, the quiet satire, there was no overlooking from the first; and soon the warm sympathy with poverty and suffering, the boldness to display them as they existed, and to suffer no longer poetry to wrap her golden haze round human life, and to conceal all that ought to be known, because it must be known before it could be removed; the tender pathos, and the true feeling for nature, grew every hour on the mind. It was not long before George Crabbe became as firmly fixed in my bosom as a great and genuine poet, as Rembrandt, or Collins, or Edwin Landseer are as genuine painters.

Crabbe saw plainly what was become the great disease of our literature. It was a departure from actual life and nature.

"I've often marveled, when by night, by day, I've marked the manners moving in my way, And heard the language and beheld the lives Of lass and lover, goddesses and wives, That books which promise much of life to give Should show so little how we truly live. To me it seems, their females and their men Are but the creatures of the author's pen; Nay, creatures borrowed, and again conveyed From book to book, the shadows of a shade. Life, if they'd seek, would show them many a change; The ruin sudden and the misery strange; With more of grievous, base, and dreadful things, Than novelists relate, or poet sings. But they who ought to look the world around, Spy out a single spot in fairy ground, Where all in turns ideal forms behold, And plots are laid, and histories are told."

To these home-truths, succeeds that admirable satirical description of our novel literature, which introduces the sad story of Ellen Orford. My space is little, but I must give a specimen of the manner in which the Cervantes of England strips away the sublime fooleries of our literary knight-errantry.

"Time have I lent--I would their debt were less-- To flowing pages of sublime distress; And to the heroine's soul-distracting fears I early gave my sixpences and tears; Oft have I traveled in these tender tales, To _Darnley Cottages and Maple Vales_.

* * * * * *

I've watched a wintry night on castle walls, I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls; And when the weary world was sunk to rest, I've had such sights--as may not be expressed. "Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed, The peasants shun it, they are all afraid; For there was done a deed! could walls reveal Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel. Most horrid was it:--for, behold the floor Has stains of blood, and will be clean no more. Hark to the winds! which, through the wide saloon, And the long passage, send a dismal tune,-- Music that ghosts delight in; and now heed Yon beauteous nymph who must unmask the deed: See! with majestic sweep she swims alone Through rooms all dreary, guided by a groan. Though windows rattle, and though tapestries shake, And the feet falter every step they take, Mid moans and gibing sprites she silent goes, To find a something which shall soon expose The villainies and wiles of her determined foes: And having thus adventured, thus endured, Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured. "Much have I feared, but am no more afraid, When some chaste beauty, by some wretch betrayed, Is drawn away with such distracted speed That she anticipates a dreadful deed. Not so do I. Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around: Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel. With not a single note the purse supply, And when she begs let men and maids deny. Be windows those from which she dare not fall, And help so distant 'tis in vain to call; Still means of freedom will some power devise, And from the baffled ruffian snatch the prize."

From all this false sublime, Crabbe was the first to free us, and to lead us into the true sublime of genuine human life. How novel at that time, and yet how thrilling, was the incident of the sea-side visitors surprised out on the sands by the rise of the tide. Here was real sublimity of distress, real display of human passion. The lady, with her children in her hand, wandering from the tea-table which had been spread on the sands, sees the boatmen asleep, the boat adrift, and the tide advancing:--

"She gazed, she trembled, and though faint her call, It seemed like thunder to confound them all. Their sailor-guests, the boatman and his mate, Had drank and slept, regardless of their state; 'Awake!' they cried aloud! 'Alarm the shore! Shout all, or never shall we reach it more!' Alas! no shout the distant land can reach, No eye behold them from the foggy beach: Again they join in one loud, fearful cry, Then cease, and eager listen for reply; None came--the rising wind blew sadly by. They shout once more, and then they turn aside To see how quickly flowed the coming tide; Between each cry they find the waters steal On their strange prison, and new horrors feel. Foot after foot on the contracted ground The billows fall, and dreadful is the sound; Less and yet less the sinking isle became, And there was weeping, wailing, wrath, and blame."

It has been said that Crabbe's poetry is mere description, however accurate, and that he has not a spark of imagination. The charge arises from a false view of the man and his objects. He saw that the world was well supplied with what are poems of the creative faculty, that it was just as destitute of the poetry of truth and reality. He saw human life lie like waste land, as worthless of notice, while our poets and romancers

"In trim gardens took their pleasure."

He saw the vice, the ignorance, the misery, and he lifted the veil and cried--"Behold your fellow-men! Such are the multitude of your fellow-creatures, among whom you live and move. Do you want to weep over distress? Behold it there, huge, dismal, and excruciating! Do you wish for a sensation? Find it there! Follow the ruined gentleman from his gaming and his dissipation, to his squalid den and his death. Follow the grim savage, who murders his shrieking boy at sea. Follow the poor maiden to her ruin, and the parent weeping and withering under the curse of a depraved child. Go down into the abodes of ignorance, of swarming vice, of folly, and madness--and if you want a lesson, or a moral, there they are by thousands."

Crabbe knew that the true imaginative faculty had a great and comprehensive task, to dive into the depths of the human heart, to fathom the recesses and the springs of the mind, and to display all their movements under the various excitements of various passions, with the hand of a master. He has done this, and done it with unrivaled tact and vigor. Out of the scum and chaos of lowest life, he has evoked the true sublime. He has taught us that men are our proper objects of display, and that the multitude has claims on our sympathies that duty as well as taste demand obedience to. He was the first to dare these desperate and deserted walks of humanity, and prove to us that still it was humanity. At every step he revealed scenes of the truest pathos, of the profoundest interest, and gave instances of the most generous sacrifices, the most patient love, the most heroic duty, in the very abodes of unvisited wretchedness. He made us feel that these beings were men! There is no picture so touching in all the million volumes of romance, as that of the dying sailor and his sweetheart. What hero ever breathed a more beautiful devotion, or clothed it in more exquisite language, than this poor sailor youth, when believing himself dying at sea:--

"He called his friend, and prefaced with a sigh A lover's message--'Thomas, I must die. Would I could see my Sally, and could rest My throbbing temples on her faithful breast, And gazing go!--if not, this trifle take, And say till death I wore it for her sake: Yes, I must die--blow on, sweet breeze, blow on! Give me one look before my life be gone, Oh! give me that and let me not despair, One last fond look--and now repeat the prayer.'

* * * * *

She placed a decent stone his grave above, Neatly engraved--an offering of her love, For that she wrought, for that forsook her bed, Awake alike to duty and the dead."

It was by these genuine vindications of our entire humanity, that Crabbe, by casting the full blaze of the sunshine of truth and genius on the real condition of the laboring population of these kingdoms, laid the foundations of that great popular feeling which prevails at the present day. Patriots and patrons of the people are now plentiful enough, but in Crabbe's day the work had to be begun; the swinish multitude had yet to be visited in their sties; and the Circe of the modern sorceries of degradation, to feel the hand of a hero upon her, compelling her to restore the swine to their human form. George Crabbe was not merely a poet, but the poet who had the sagacity to see into the real state of things, and the heart to do his duty--the great marks of the true poet, who is necessarily a true and feeling man. To him popular education, popular freedom, popular advance into knowledge and power, owe a debt which futurity will gratefully acknowledge, but no time can cancel.

George Crabbe was born on the borders of that element which he so greatly loved, and which he has so powerfully described in the first chapter of the Borough. He has had the good-fortune to have in his son George a biographer such as every good man would desire. The life written by him is full of the veneration of the son, yet of the candor of the historian; and is at once one of the most graphic and charming of books.

From this volume we learn that the poet was born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, on the Christmas-eve of 1754. His birthplace was an old house in that range of buildings which the sea has now almost demolished. The chamber projected far over the ground-floor; and the windows were small, with diamond panes almost impervious to the light. A view of it by Stanfield forms the vignette to the biography.

The father as well as grandfather of Crabbe bore the name of George, as well as himself. The grandfather, a burgess of Aldborough, and collector of customs there, yet died poor. The father, originally educated for trade, had been in early life the keeper of a parochial school in the porch of the church at Orford. He afterward became schoolmaster and parish clerk at Norton, near Loddon, in Norfolk, and finally, returning to his native Aldborough, rose to the collection of the salt duties, as Salt-master. He was a stern, but able man, and with all his sternness not destitute of good qualities. The mother of Crabbe was an excellent and pious woman. Beside himself there were five other children, all of whom, except one girl, lived to mature years. His next brother, Robert, was a glazier, who retired from business at Southwold. John Crabbe, the third son, was a captain of a Liverpool slave-ship, who perished by an insurrection of the slaves. The fourth brother, William, also a seafaring man, was carried prisoner by the Spaniards into Mexico, and was once seen by an Aldborough sailor on the coast of Honduras, but never heard of again. This sailor brother, in his inquiries after all at home, had expressed much astonishment to find that _George_ was become a _clergyman_, when he left him a _doctor_; and on this incident Crabbe afterward founded the sailor's story in The Parting Hour. His only surviving sister married a Mr. Sparkes, a builder of Aldborough, and died in 1827. Such were Crabbe's family. The scenery among which he spent his boyhood has been frequently described in his poetry, especially in the opening letter of his Borough. It is here equally livingly given in his son's prose.

"Aldborough, or, as it is more correctly written, Alderburgh, was, in those days, a poor and wretched place, with nothing of the elegance and gayety which have since sprung up about it, in consequence of the resort of watering-parties. The town lies between a low hill or cliff, on which only the old church and a few better houses were then situated, and the beach of the German ocean. It consisted of two parallel and unpaved streets, running between mean and scrambling houses, the abodes of seafaring men, pilots, and fishers. The range of houses nearest to the sea had suffered so much from repeated invasions of the waves, that only a few scattered tenements appeared erect among the desolation. I have often heard my father describe a tremendous spring-tide of, I think, the 17th of January, 1779, when eleven houses here were at once demolished; and he saw the breakers dash over the roofs, and round the walls, and crush all to ruin. The beach consists of successive ridges--large rolled stones, then loose shingles, and, at the fall of the tide, a stripe of fine, hard sand. Vessels of all sorts, from the large, heavy troll-boat, to the yawl and pram, drawn up along the shore--fishermen preparing their tackle, or sorting their spoil--and, nearer, the gloomy, old town-hall, the only indication of municipal dignity, a few groups of mariners, chiefly pilots, taking their quick, short walks backward and forward, every eye watchful of the signal from the offing--such was the squalid scene which first opened on the author of The Village!

"Nor was the landscape in the vicinity of a more engaging aspect: open commons and sterile farms, the soil, poor and sandy, the herbage, bare and rushy, the trees, 'few and far between,' and withered and stunted by the bleak breezes of the sea. The opening picture of The Village was copied, in every touch, from the scene of the poet's nativity and boyish days:--

'Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf that warms the neighboring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye; There thistles spread their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infants threaten war.'

"The broad river, called the Ald, approaches the sea close to Aldborough, within a few hundred yards, and then turning abruptly, continues to run for about ten miles parallel to the beach, from which a dreary stripe of marsh and waste alone divides it, until it at length finds its embouchure at Orford. The scenery of this river has been celebrated as lovely and delightful, in a poem called Slaughden Vale, written by Mr. James Bird, a friend of my father's; and old Camden talks of 'the beautiful vale of Slaughden.' I confess, however, that though I have ever found an indescribable charm in the very weeds of the place, I never could perceive its claims to beauty. Such as it is, it has furnished Mr. Crabbe with many of his happiest and most graphical descriptions; and the same may be said of the whole line of coast from Orford to Dunwich, every feature of which has, somewhere or other, been reproduced in his writings. The quay of Slaughden, in particular, has been painted with all the minuteness of a Dutch landscape:--