540 



CRAB-APPLE 



CRACOW 



against Quakerism ; and he died at Bethnal Green, 

 llth September 1680. 



Crab-apple is a term applied somewhat vaguely 

 to any sour and uncultivated variety or species of 

 apple. Thus Pyrus spectabilis of shrubberies is 

 known as the Chinese Crab, P. prunifolia as the 

 Siberian Crab, P. coronaria as the American Crab, 

 and P. baccata of North Asia (including cerasifera) 

 as the Cherry Crab. More strictly, however, the 

 term is applied to the wild varieties of the true apple 

 (P. Mai, us, var. sylvestris). Of this, again, two 

 main varieties are distinguished, one smooth-leaved 

 and sour ( var. austera ), the other more or less 

 woolly -leaved and sweeter (var. mitis). The former 

 of these may therefore be considered as the crab- 

 apple proper. 



Crabbe, GEORGE, poet, was born on Christmas 

 Eve of 1754, at Aldeburgh, on the Suffolk sea- 

 board. His father, ' salt-master ' and warehouse- 

 keeper, was a clever, strong, violent man ; the 

 mother, a meek, religious woman ; and of three 

 brothers, one perished captain of a slaver, another 

 was lost sight of in Honduras. George, the eldest, 

 got some schooling at Bungay and Stowmarket, 

 then "from 1768 to 1774 was surgeon's apprentice 

 atWickham-Brook and at Woodbridge. In his first 

 place he had to help the ploughboy ; in his second 

 lie fell in love with Sarah Elmy ( ' Mira ' ), who 

 lived with her uncle, a wealthy yeoman, at the old 

 moated hall of Parham. A spell of drudgery in 

 his father's warehouse nine months in London, 

 picking up surgery cheaply some three years' 

 struggling practice at Aldeburgh at last in April 

 1780, with 3 in his pocket, he sailed again for 

 London, resolved to try his fortune in literature. 

 Eight years before he had written verses for 

 Whebles Magazine ; he had published Inebriety, a 

 Poem (Ipswich, 1775) ; and now his Candidate soon 

 found a publisher, unluckily a bankrupt one. A 

 season of penury, dire as Chatterton's, was borne 

 by Crabbe with pious bravery ; he had to pawn 

 clothes and instruments ; appeals to Lords Thurlow, 

 North, Shelburne, met no response ; and early in 

 1781 he saw himself threatened with arrest for 

 debt, when he made his case known to Burke. 

 Forty-one years later he told Lockhart at Edin- 

 burgh, how, having delivered the letter at Burke's 

 door, he paced Westminster Bridge all night long 

 until daybreak. Burke proved a generous patron ; 

 from the hour of their meeting Crabbe was a 

 'made man.' He stayed at Beaconsfield ; he met 

 Fox, Johnson, and Reynolds ; Thurlow gave him 

 a bank-note for 100 ; Dodsley brought out his 

 Library ; and the very next winter he was ordained 

 to the curacy of his native town. He resided 

 as domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at 

 Belvoir Castle (.1782-85) ; married Miss Elmy (1783) ; 

 held four livings in Dorset, Leicester, and Lincoln 

 shires, but spent thirteen happy years in Suffolk, 

 at Parham, Great Glemham, and Rendham (1792- 

 1805 ) ; returned to Muston, his Leicestershire 

 rectory ; and his wife having died there in 1813, 

 exchanged it the next year for Trowbridge in Wilt- 

 shire. His gentle, kindly life, in which botanising 

 had given place to fossil-hunting, was broken now 

 and again by visits to London and its best society ; 

 he witnessed the Bristol riots ( 1831 ), as fifty-one 

 years before he had witnessed those of Lord George 

 Gordon ; and on 3d February 1832 he died at 

 Trowbridge. 



Three novels, a treatise on botany, and poems 

 untold allperished in grand yearly ' incremations ; ' 

 but still, Crabbe published The Village (1783), The 

 Newspaper (1785), The Parish Register (1807), The 

 Borough (1810), Tales (1812), and Tales of the Hall 

 (1819), for which last and the earlier copyrights 

 Murray paid him 3000. Of these poems Words- 



worth wrote in 1832, ' They will last full as long as 

 anything expressed in verse since first they made 

 their appearance ; ' and Jane Austen said Crabbe 

 was the only man whom she would care to marry. 

 Byron, too, Scott, Jeffrey, Wilson, Lord Tennyson, 

 Swinburne, Cardinal Newman, ana, above all, 

 Edward Fitzgerald, must be reckoned among his few 

 votaries. ' Though nature's sternest painter, yet the 

 best,' Byron's verdict upon him, is truer than Horace 

 Smith's, ' a Pope in worsted stockings,' for this 

 refers but to the accident of metre the rhyming 

 heroics, which, thirty per diem, Crabbe ground out 

 anywhere. Their subject-matter, though, is all 

 Grabbers own. He is as much the poet of East 

 Anglia as Scott of the Borderland or Wordsworth 

 of the Lake Country. Its scenery and the life 

 of its fisher-folk and peasantry he described 

 with a realism greater than Zola's, if sometimes 

 almost as tedious. Zola ! nay, Crabbe has closer 

 kinship to Balzac ; and his strong, sombre pictures 

 of sin and suffering are ever and again lit up with 

 homely pathos and shrewd, Dutch-like humour. 

 ' The tragic power of Crabbe,' Mr Swinburne says, 

 ' is as much above the re t ich of Byron, as his singu- 

 larly vivid, though curiously limited, insight into 

 certain shades of character.' And in old John 

 Murray's words, ' Crabbe said uncommon things in 

 so common a way as to escape notice ; ' surely he 

 claims notice from such as rank thought higher 

 than expression. 



An admirable Life by his son, the Rev. George Crabbe 

 (1785-1857), for twenty-three years vicar of Bredfield, 

 Suffolk, is prefixed to Cralbe's Works (Svols. 1834). See 

 also Mr Leslie Stephen's 'Hours in a Library' (2d series, 

 1876) ; Mr Fitzgerald's Readings in 'Tales of the Hall' 

 ( 1882 ) ; the essay on Crabbe by Mr W. J. Courthope in 

 vol. iii. of Ward's English Poets (1884); and T. E. 

 Kebbel's Crabbe (1888). 



Crab-stones, or CRAB'S EYES. See CRAY- 

 FISH. 



Cracked Heels* From careless grooming, 

 washing horses' legs and imperfectly drying them, 

 permitting them to stand in accumulations of filth 

 or exposed to draughts, the skin becomes inflamed, 

 tender, itchy, thickened, and by-and-by cracked. 

 An ichorous and fetid discharge exudes, and lame- 

 ness often results. In animals with round gummy 

 legs it is sometimes constitutional ; underbred horses 

 with rough hairy fetlocks present the majority of 

 cases ; white heels, being more delicate, are especi- 

 ally affected ; whilst the hind limbs, exposed as 

 they are to filth and cold, suffer most frequently. 

 Cleanse carefully with tepid water ; wash with a 

 diluted solution of Goulard's Extract, or any other 

 mild astringent ; or dress occasionally with oxide 

 of zinc ointment. Give, besides, a half-dose of 

 physic, and a few mashes, afterwards carrots, 

 swedes, or such laxative food, and where the ail- 

 ment is persistent, use Diuretics (q.v. ). W T hen 

 the skin is dry and irritable, poultice and apply 

 glycerine before proceeding with astringents. In 

 cold weather, and especially when the horse is 

 heated, interdict washing the legs ; but allow them 

 to dry, and then brush off the dirt. 



Cracovienne (krakoviak], the national dance 

 of the Polish peasantry around Cracow. It has a 

 very marked rhythm in 3 time, and is often accom- 

 panied by singing. The Poles have a multitude of 

 little ditties of two lines each, adapted to this 

 music and dance. 



CraCOW (Pol. Krakov, Ger. Krakau\ a city 

 of the Austrian crown-land of Galicia, 259 miles 

 NE. of Vienna bv rail. It stands 672 feet above 

 sea-level, in a wide, hill-girt plain on the left bank 

 of the Vistula, which here becomes navigable, and 

 is spanned by a bridge ( 1850) leading to Podgorze. 

 The old walls have been converted into promenades, 



