1754-1832
[Sidenote: _Life of Crabbe_, by his son.]
“In the eye of memory I can still see him as he was at that period
of his life,--his fatherly countenance unmixed with any of the less
lovable expressions that in too many faces obscure that character; but
pre-eminently _fatherly_, conveying the ideas of kindness, intellect,
and purity; his manner grave, manly, and cheerful, in unison with his
high and open forehead; his very attitudes, whether as he sat absorbed
in the arrangement of his minerals, shells, and insects; or as he
laboured in his garden until his naturally pale complexion acquired
a tinge of fresh healthy red; or as, coming lightly towards us with
some unexpected present, his smile of indescribable benevolence spoke
exultation in the foretaste of our raptures.”--1789.
[Sidenote: _Life of Crabbe_, by his son.]
“... Mr. Lockhart ... recently favoured me with the following
letter.... ‘His noble forehead, his bright beaming eye, without
anything of old age about it--though he was then, I presume, above
seventy; his sweet, and, I would say, innocent smile, and the calm
mellow tones of his voice, are all reproduced the moment I open any
page of his poetry.’”--1822.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“In the appearance of Crabbe there was little of the poet, but even
less of the stern critic of mankind, who looked at nature askance, and
ever contemplated beauty animate or inanimate,--
‘The simple loves and simple joys,’
‘through a glass darkly.’ On the contrary, he seemed to my eyes the
representative of the class of rarely troubled, and seldom thinking,
English farmers. A clear gray eye, a ruddy complexion, as if he loved
exercise and wooed mountain breezes, were the leading characteristics
of his countenance. It is a picture of age, ‘frosty but kindly,’--that
of a tall and stalwart man gradually grown old, to whom age was rather
an ornament than a blemish. He was one of those instances of men, plain
perhaps in youth, and homely of countenance in manhood, who become
absolutely handsome when white hairs have become a crown of glory, and
indulgence in excesses or perilous passions has left no lines that
speak of remorse, or even of errors unatoned.”--1825-26.