nothing. He was evidently a man of talent
who had to take his part with the times, subject
to history. To call him a poet was a mere con-
vention. There seems to be not a single mo-
ment of poetry in his work, and assuredly if he
had known the earlier signification of the word
he would have been the last man to claim the
incongruous title of poet. But it is impossible
to state the question as it would have presented
itself to Crabbe or to any other writer of his
quality entering into the same inheritance of
English.

It is true that Crabbe read and quoted Milton;
so did all his contemporaries; and to us now it
seems that poetry cannot have been forgotten
by any age possessing Lycidas. Yet that age
can scarcely be said to have in any true sense
possessed Lycidas. There are other things, be-
sides poetry, in Milton's poems. We do not
entirely know, perhaps, but we can conjecture
how a reader in Crabbe's late eighteenth cen-
tury, looking in Milton for authority for all
that he unluckily and vainly admired, would
well find it. He would find the approval of
Young's "Night Thoughts" did he search for
it, as we who do not search for it may not read-
ily understand. A step or so downwards, from

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