Yet the fact remains, as FitzGerald quotes from Sir Leslie Stephen, that "with all its short-and long-comings, Crabbe's better work leaves its mark on the reader's mind and memory as only the work of genius can," and almost all English poets and critics of mark, during his time and after it, have agreed in recognising the same fact.

We know what was thought of him by Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson.

Critics differing as widely in other matters as Macaulay, John Henry Newman, Mr.Swinburne, and Dr.Gore, have found in Crabbe an insight into the springs of character, and a tragic power of dealing with them, of a rare kind.

No doubt Crabbe demands something of his readers.

He asks from them a corresponding interest in human nature.