At an earlier time, when literature was for
the fashionable few, his subjects would have been beneath interest; but
the times had changed; education had been more diffused, and readers were
multiplied. Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_ had struck a new chord, upon
which Crabbe continued to play. Of his treatment of these subjects it must
be said, that while he holds a powerful pen, and portrays truth vividly,
he had an eye only for the sadder conditions of life, and gives pain
rather than excites sympathy in the reader. Our meaning will be best
illustrated by a comparison of _The Village_ of Crabbe with _The Deserted
Village_ of Goldsmith, and the pleasure with which we pass from the
squalid scenes of the former to the gentler sorrows and sympathies of the
latter.
THOMAS CAMPBELL.--More identified with his age than any other poet, and
yet forming a link between the old and the new, was Campbell. Classical
and correct in versification, and smothering nature with sonorous prosody,
he still had the poetic fire, and an excellent power of poetic criticism.
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