SOURCE: Edwards, Gavin. “Scott and Crabbe: A Meeting at the Border.” Essays in Criticism 22, no. 1 (February 1998): 123-40.

In the following essay, Edwards analyzes the relationship between Crabbe and Sir Walter Scott, including their meetings, their impressions of each other, how they influenced each other, and how they dealt differently with similar themes.

Walter Scott (1771-1832) and George Crabbe (1754-1832) met twice, first in London at John Murray's in Albemarle Street, in 1817, then in August 1822 when Crabbe was Scott's guest in Edinburgh. But although a guest, Crabbe did not see much of his host, who was busy stage-managing the state-visit of George IV.¹ Scott and Crabbe, Lockhart tells us, had “but one quiet walk together, and it was to the ruin of St. Anthony's Chapel and Muschat's Cairn, which the deep impression made on Crabbe by The Heart of Midlothian [1818] had given him an earnest wish to see” (4:57). It...