22 Prosscr Hall Fvyc 



French Alexandrine, but even more by the very nature of the 

 case. It combined the national line with rhyme ; it was the only 

 form of rhyme capable of anything like general application ; and 

 especially it suited the kind of subject and effect acceptable to 

 the new poetry. Two lines of ample extent, set off one against 

 the other and yet forming a distinct system in themselves, com- 

 pact, regular, and symmetrical, capable of antithesis or parallel- 

 ism — what better Vehicle could be imagined for the conveyance 

 of that glorified common sense on which the age prided itself? 

 Nor are its possibilities exhausted by the expression of clear ideas. 

 To do it better justice it is necessary only to think of Professor 

 Santayana's comparison of a Greek colonnade ■} to recall Thack- 

 eray's admiration for the close of the Diiiiciad — lines, he declares. 

 in which Pope "shows himself the equal of all poets of all times" ;- 

 and to remember that Tennyson had at least one passage of 

 Crabbe by heart : 



"Early he rose and looked with many a sigh 

 On the red light that filled the eastern sky; 

 Oft had he stood before alert and gay, 

 To hail the glories of the new-born day : 

 But now dejected, languid, listless, low. 

 He saw the wind upon the water blow. 

 And the cold stream curl'd onward as the gale 

 From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale ; 

 On the right side the youth a wood survey'd. 

 With all its dark intensity of shade ; 

 Where the rough wind alone was heard to move. 

 In this, the pause of nature and of love. 

 When now the young are reared, and wlien the old, 

 Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold — 

 Far to the left he saw the haunts of men. 

 Half-hid in mist, that hung upon the fen; 

 Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, 

 Took their short flights and gathered on the lea; 

 And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done. 

 And slowly blackened in the sickly sun."^ 



^Santayana. Sense of Beauty, p. 108. 

 "Thackeray. Eitglisli Humourists. 

 'Crabbe. Talcs of the Hall. Book .xiiL 



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