For it is no loss good and wise to dwell on village life as it might be, than to reflect on what it has suffered from man's inhumanity to man.

What made Crabbe a now force in English poetry, was that in his verse Pity appears, after a long oblivion, as the true antidote to Sentimentalism.

The reader is not put off with pretty imaginings, but is led up to the object which the poet would show him, and made to feel its horror.

If Crabbe is our first great realist in verse, he uses his realism in the cause of a true humanity.

_Facit indignatio versum._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: I cannot deny myself the pleasure of here acknowledging my indebtedness to a French scholar, M.Huchon of the University of Nancy.
M.Huchon is himself engaged upon a study of the Life and Poetry of Crabbe, and in the course of a conversation with me in London, first called my attention to the volume containing this letter.