FitzGerald in the poet, but for the fact that the temperament of the two men was somewhat the same, and that both dwelt naturally on the depressing sides of human life.  But there were other coincidences to create a strong tie between FitzGerald and the poet’s family.  When FitzGerald’s father went to live at Boulge Hall, near Woodbridge, in 1835, Crabbe’s son George had recently been presented to the vicarage of the adjoining parish of Bredfield (FitzGerald’s native village), which he continued to hold until his death in 1857.  During these two and twenty years, FitzGerald and George Crabbe remained on the closest terms of friendship, which was continued with George Crabbe’s son (a third George), who became ultimately rector of Merton in Norfolk.  It was at his house, it will be remembered, that FitzGerald died suddenly in the summer of 1883.  Through this long association with the family FitzGerald was gradually acquiring information concerning the poet, which even the son’s Biography had not supplied.  Readers of FitzGerald’s delightful Letters will remember that there is no name more constantly referred to than that of Crabbe.  Whether writing to Fanny Kemble, or Frederick Tennyson, or Lowell, he is constantly quoting him, and recommending him.  During the thirty years that followed Crabbe’s death his fame had been on the decline, and poets of different and greater gifts had taken his place.  FitzGerald had noted this fact with ever-increasing regret, and longed to revive the taste for a poet of whose merits he had himself no doubt.  He discerned moreover that even those who had read in their youth The Village and The Borough had been repelled by the length, and perhaps by the monotonous sadness, of the Tales of the Hall.  It was for this reason apparently (and not because he assigned a higher place to the later poetry than to the earlier) that he was led, after some years of misgiving, to prepare a volume of selections from this latest work of Crabbe’s which might have the effect of tempting the reader to master it as a whole.  Owing to the length and uniformity of Crabbe’s verse, what was ordinarily called an “anthology” was out of the question.  FitzGerald was restricted to a single method.  He found that readers were impatient of Crabbe’s longueurs.  It occurred to him that while making large omissions he might preserve the story in each case, by substituting brief prose abstracts of the portions omitted.  This process he applied to the Tales that pleased him most, leaving what he considered Crabbe’s best passages untouched.  As early as 1876 he refers to the selection as already made, and he printed it for private circulation in 1879.  Finally, in 1882, he added a preface of his own, and published it with Quaritch in Piccadilly.