ABSTRACT
We have heard Mr. Crabbe called of the school of Pope and Dryden. Mr. Crabbe, to be sure, writes in rhymed heroic couplets, and so did they; Dryden was careless, and so is he; Pope had humour, and so has he. But has he that pregnancy of imagination, and that unselecting copiousness of resources, which always crowded the mind of Dryden with more matter than was wanting, more than could be reduced to proper sequency and order? Has he that boundless command of diction, and that facility of versifying, which enabled Dryden to clothe and adorn his ideas, however unfitted for poetry by their remoteness, in 'words that bum,' and numbers so musically full? Has he Dryden's metaphysical and argumentative tum of mind-his love for subtle and scholastic disputation? Surely not. Has he, then, the trimness and terseness and classical elegance of Pope-his diligence and selection-his compression and condensation and energy-his light and playful fancies-or the naivete and delicacy and cutting fineness of his satire? In all these qualities we think Mr. Crabbe assuredly wanting.
