Crabbe

Crabbe, George (1754-1832), an English poet who has been described as the poet of East Anglia, since his poems are vivid exponents of East Anglian life and manners. Born at Aldborough in Suffolk, he was apprenticed to an apothecary with a view to becoming a doctor. He soon showed poetical tastes, and, having gained a prize for a poem on Hope, he gave up the idea of medicine, and came to London to starve upon literature. At the moment when he was in the greatest straits he applied to Burke, who took hien in hand, and introduced him to Reynolds, Johnson, and Fox, and to the publisher Dodsley. He visited Burke at Beaconsfield, and it was there that he composed The Village, which with The Library he published after making the acquaintance of Burke. In 1781 he was ordained, and after being for a short time curate of Aldborough, he was appointed, through Burke's influence, domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland, and rector of Frome St. Quintin, Dorset, and soon after obtained such preferment as made him a considerable pluralist. He married the love of his youth, and in 1813 he was presented to the rectory of Trowbridge, Wilts, where he spent the remaining years of his life. The Newspaper (1785) was followed by a long cessation from publication, but in 1809 he published The Parish Register, in 1810 The Borough, and in 1812 Tales in Verse, his last work appearing in 1819, Tales of the Hall. He produced very little prose, a natural history of the Vale of Belvoir, written for Nicholl's History of Leicestershire, being, perhaps, the best known of his prose writings. As a poet he is distinguished by originality, and a stern realism which presents the naked truth not always in the most pleasing form. He is a morbid anatomist of nature, and is often-times tediously minute, while his style is sometimes harsh, and his taste frequently defective.