below
  The dark warm flood ran silently and slow;
  There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide,
  There hang his head, and view the lazy tide
  In its hot slimy channel slowly glide;
  Where the small eels, that left the deeper way
  For the warm shore, within the shallows play;
  Where gaping muscles, left upon the mud,
  Slope their slow passage to the fall’n flood: 
  Here dull and hopeless he’d lie down and trace
  How side-long crabs had crawled their crooked race;
  Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry
  Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye;
  What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come,
  And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,
  Gave from the salt ditch-side the bellowing boom: 
  He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce
  And loved to stop beside the opening sluice;
  Where the small stream, confined in narrow bound,
  Ran with a dull, unvaried, saddening sound;
  Where all, presented to the eye or ear,
  Oppressed the soul with misery, grief, and fear.”

This is an exact fac-simile of some of the most unlovely parts of the creation.  Indeed the whole of Mr. Crabbe’s Borough, from which the above passage is taken, is done so to the life, that it seems almost like some sea-monster, crawled out of the neighbouring slime, and harbouring a breed of strange vermin, with a strong local scent of tar and bulge-water.  Mr. Crabbe’s Tales are more readable than his Poems; but in proportion as the interest increases, they become more oppressive.  They turn, one and all, upon the same sort of teazing, helpless, mechanical, unimaginative distress;—­and though it is not easy to lay them down, you never wish to take them up again.  Still in this way, they are highly finished, striking, and original portraits, worked out with an eye to nature, and an intimate knowledge of the small and intricate folds of the human heart.  Some of the best are the Confidant, the story of Silly Shore, the Young Poet, the Painter.  The episode of Phoebe Dawson in the Village, is one of the most tender and pensive; and the character of the methodist parson who persecutes the sailor’s widow with his godly, selfish love, is one of the most profound.  In a word, if Mr. Crabbe’s writings do not add greatly to the store of entertaining and delightful fiction, yet they will remain “as a thorn in the side of poetry,” perhaps for a century to come!

[Footnote A: 

  “Like angels’ visits, short and far between.”—.
  Blair’s Grave.]

[Footnote B:  Is not this word, which occurs in the last line but one, (as well as before) an instance of that repetition, which we so often meet with in the most correct and elegant writers?]

* * * * *

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.