Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 157 



The most valuable part of the book is probably the extended list of 

 wills and deeds connected with the family and its property, of each of 

 which a short account is given. Those for Wiltshire concern properties 

 atCorsham,Hartham,and Hatt, Notton, Lacock, Littlecottin Hilmarton, 

 Hatton's Lodge in Braydon, Light's Farm or Ford's in the Well in 

 Yatton Keynell, Melksham Canonhold Manor, Great Chalfield and Holt, 

 Whitley Farm, Beanacre and Shaw in Melksham. Lists are also given 

 with some identification and account of each person mentioned, of 

 Wiltshire families connected with the Neales, as the Arnolds of Corsham, 

 Smiths of Shaw, Selfes of Beanacre, Norris of Nonsuch, Webbs of 

 Melksham and Monkton Farley, Seymours and Ducketts of Calne and 

 Hartham. The book is a useful place of reference, therefore, for great 

 numbers of Wiltshire names, and it is furnished with an excellent index, 

 in which apparently every name mentioned in the body of the work is 

 given. 



George Crabbe and his Times — 1754 — 1832. A 

 Critical and Biographical Study,by Rene Huchou, 

 . . . Translated from the French by Frederick 

 Clarke, M.A. London, John Murray. 1907. 



Cloth, 9in. X 5fin., pp. xvi. + 561. Price 15s. net. Two portraits, 

 from the picture by Thomas Phillips, R.A., and from the sketch by 

 Sir F. L. Chantrey, R.A. 



There have been many biographies of Crabbe, the first — that published 

 by his eldest son in 1834 — followed by " Lives" in Russian and German 

 in 1857 and 1875 respectively, by the Life in the " Great Writers " 

 Series, by T. E. Kebbel in 1888, by another in German in 1899, and by 

 Canon Ainger's volume in the "English Men of Letters " Series, pub- 

 lished so lately as 1903. It seems, however, that for the final and 

 authoritative work on the poet's life and writings, for no one in the future 

 is likely to feel called upon to amend M. Huchon's work, we are indebted 

 not to an Englisman at all, but to a Frenchman, the " Lecturer on English 

 Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Nancy." The 

 scope of the book is thus described by the author in his preface : — "The 

 author of this work has endeavoured firstly to rewrite with the help of 

 all the original documents still accessible the Biography of Crabbe pub- 

 lished in 1834 by his eldest son, and secondly to analyse and to criticise 

 in detail the talent of the Poet." The contents of the work are divided 

 into the following sections : — Youth and Early Poems ; The Chaplain 

 and Poet of Country Life ; The Clergyman and his Parish Register ; 

 Crabbe's Realism ; Cfabbe as Writer of Tales and Moralist ; a Conclusion 

 summing up his Character and the scope and limitations of his writings. 



The author has spared no pains to find out everything that there is to 

 to be found out about the poet, no detail is too small to be neglected, no 

 source of information too unimportant to be consulted, and what is more, 

 to be referred to, chapter and verse, in the footnotes. His homes at 

 Aldborough and at Trowbridge are carefully described, and the collections 



