[Crabbe, (George) by Alfred Ainger]@TWC D-Link book
Crabbe, (George)

CHAPTER XI
13/33

The analytical method was clearly dominant in Crabbe always, and not merely when he wrote his poetry, and is itself the clue to much in his treatment of human nature.
Of Crabbe's simplicity and unworldliness in other matters Miss Baillie furnishes an amusing instance.

She writes:-- "While he was staying with Mrs.Hoare a few years since I sent him one day the present of a blackcock, and a message with it that Mr.Crabbe should look at the bird before it was delivered to the cook, or something to that purpose.

He looked at the bird as desired, and then went to Mrs.Hoare in some perplexity to ask whether he ought not to have it stuffed, instead of eating it.

She could not, in her own house, tell him that it was simply intended for the larder, and he was at the trouble and expense of having it stuffed, lest I should think proper respect had not been put upon my present." Altogether the picture presented in these last years of Crabbe's personality is that of a pious and benevolent old man, endearing himself to old and new friends, and with manners somewhat formal and overdone, representing perhaps what in his humbler Aldeburgh days he had imagined to be those of the upper circles, rather than what he had found them to be in his prosperous later days in London.
In the autumn of 1831 he was visiting his faithful and devoted friends, the Samuel Hoares, at their residence in Clifton.

The house was apparently in Princes Buildings, or in the Paragon, for the poet describes accurately the scene that meets the eye from the back-windows of those pleasant streets:-- "I have to thank my friends for one of the most beautiful as well as comfortable rooms you could desire.


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