death, before the sister heard the news, the brother’s ghost appeared in a dream, or vision, to the sister, and warned her in solemn tones against ever marrying a second time.  The spirit does not appear to have given any reasons, but his manner was so impressive and so unmistakable that the lady had thus far regarded it as an injunction never to be disobeyed.  On hearing this remarkable story, the young man, George, argues impatiently against the trustworthiness of dreams, and is hardly silenced by the widow showing him on her wrist the mark still remaining where the spirit had seized and pressed her hand.  In fine, the impassioned suitor prevails over these superstitious terrors, as he reckons them, of the lady—­and they become man and wife.

The reader is here placed in a condition of great perplexity, and his curiosity becomes breathless.  The sequel is melancholy indeed.  After a few months’ union, the young man, whose plausible eloquence had so moved the widow, tires of his wife, ill-treats her, and breaks her heart.  The Psychical Society is avenged, and the ghost’s word was worth at least “a thousand pounds.”  It is difficult for us to take such a story seriously, but it must have interested Crabbe deeply, for he has expended upon it much of his finest power of analysis, and his most careful writing.  As we have seen, the subject of dreams had always had a fascination for him, of a kind not unconnected perhaps with the opium-habit.  The story, however it was to be treated, was unpromising; but as the denouement was what it proved to be, the astonishing thing is that Crabbe should not have felt the dramatic impropriety of putting into the young man’s mouth passages of an impressive, and almost Shakespearian, beauty such as are rare indeed in his poetry.  The following lines are not indeed placed within inverted commas, but the pronoun “I” is retained, and they are apparently intended for something passing in the young suitor’s mind: 

  “O! tell me not of years,—­can she be old? 
  Those eyes, those lips, can man unmoved behold? 
  Has time that bosom chill’d? are cheeks so rosy cold? 
  No, she is young, or I her love t’engage
  Will grow discreet, and that will seem like age: 
  But speak it not; Death’s equalising age
  Levels not surer than Love’s stronger charm,
  That bids all inequalities be gone,
  That laughs at rank, that mocks comparison. 
  There is not young or old, if Love decrees;
  He levels orders, he confounds degrees: 
  There is not fair, or dark, or short, or tall,
  Or grave, or sprightly—­Love reduces all;
  He makes unite the pensive and the gay,
  Gives something here, takes something there away;
  From each abundant good a portion takes,
  And for each want a compensation makes;
  Then tell me not of years—­Love, power divine,
  Takes, as he wills, from hers, and gives to mine.”

In those fine lines it is no doubt Crabbe himself that speaks, and not the young lover, who was to turn out in the sequel an unparalleled “cad.”  But then, what becomes of dramatic consistency, and the imperative claims of art?