4 The Skull of the Poet Crabbe. 
about to narrate. Indeed, the only reference I can find to the poet, 
at all, in the Magazine, relates to his collection of fossils, and other 
memorials of him which were exhibited in the temporary Museum, 
in the County Hall, Trowbridge, in August, 1872, at the nineteenth 
Meeting of the Society (Wilts Arch. Mag., vol. xiii., p. 315). 
The Dean of Salisbury, the Very Rev. G. D. Boyle, however, 
chose Crabbe as the first subject for his pen in a series of articles 
on “ Wiltshire Worthies,” in the quarterly magazine known as 
Warminster Work, vol. iv., No. 1, pp. 1—8, for April, 1893, and 
he writes thus of the only poem of Crabbe’s which can be reckoned 
as a Wiltshire work :— 
“In the ‘Tales of the Hall’ there are passages of great beauty, that show 
how thoroughly and completely the poet had imbibed the true spirit of English 
scenery, and the true character of the working men of England.” 
The standard life of Crabbe is that by his son, the Rev. George 
Crabbe, prefixed to the collected edition of the poet’s works in eight 
volumes, published in 1834, and afterwards issued complete, in one 
volume, by Murray, in 1847, and subsequently ; and to that, those 
who wish to read the story of his strange and interesting career 
should turn. A handy little “Life” by T. E. Kebbel, in the 
“Great Writers’ series, was published in 1888, and this has a 
bibliography by J. P. Anderson, of the British Museum. 
Crabbe’s connection with Wiltshire began in 1814, in which 
year, on March 18th, he was instituted by the then Bishop of 
Salisbury, John Fisher, D.D., to the Rectory of St. James, 
Trowbridge, on the presentation of John Henry, fifth Duke of 
Rutland—who was the poet’s generous and unvarying patron— - 
the benefice being vacant by the cession of the Rev. Gilbert 
Beresford. His induction to the benefice, which was then a 
peculiar of the Bishop’s, did not take place until June 3rd, 1814, 
and he remained rector until his death on February 3rd, 1832, 
aged 77. 
Crabbe’s literary work—his last, after his coming to Trowbridge, 
consisted in his Zales of the Hall, written in the years 1817-18, 
and published in two vols. 8vo, in June, 1819. For this, and for 
