ALDBOROUGH.

THE BIRTH-PLACE OF THE POET CRABBE.

THE little town of Aldborough, claims title for admission among the Historic Sites of Suffolk, in being the birth-place of a man denominated by one of the most fervid poets,* this country ever produced, as;

"Nature's most rugged painter, but the best."

Beyond the accident of its being the spot where this son of the Muses first saw the light, no interest of an unusual character, appertains to the place or its locality. In the event just re. corded, however, and in its being the scene of Crabbe's early misfortunes-his struggles with his lot of penury and unkindness— hoping even against hope that kind fortune might yet smile upon his endeavours to live and render his lot more prosperous and happy; a number of facts are involved, which render it remarkable, even in a superior degree. To this place also did the poet return when the world had set its seal upon his fame, and he had found that bread after many days which he had cast upon the waters early in life. These circumstances give a charming nterest to this little watering place-an interest capable of enduring as long as genius and its too often attendant misfortunes, claim the sympathy of the world.

Many parts of Suffolk are sacred as the abiding places of Crabbe, and as having been described by his matchless, truthful * Byron.

pen. At Aldborough, as already noticed, he was born. At Stowmarket he went to school. Woodbridge, is the place where he concluded his apprenticeship to surgery. At Wickham Brook, he commenced the study of the art. In the old hall at Parham, he first saw the worthy object of his honest affections, and won her heart. At Glemham, he resided, after the troubles of his early years had been conquered, and the world had acknowledged him a poet. The town of Beccles was his favorite To Aldborough, he came in the prime of his years, and preached from the very pulpit beneath which stood the pew"Where the child nodded as the sermon grew."

resort.

And then he loved the soft flowing Alde. And the moors and wastes, the lonely headlands, the solitary coasts, and all the sights of the great sea which chafe these barren shores, have been visited and described by him, with a wonderful minuteness, and a surprising accuracy, not to be accomplished by other than a true painter in love with his objects. Indeed, Suffolk bears throughout her confines, the footsteps of Crabbe. He is peculiarly her poet, and though, as in other instances, he asked her for bread, and she gave him but a stone, yet that time is past, and she endeavours to repay her early slights, by a late, but heartful acknowledgement of his homely, but great genius.

Crabbe, was born in the year 1754-upon Christmas Eve, in a house at Aldborough, long since swallowed up by the encroachment of the waves of the sea. His father was Salt Master of the place, an excise appointment of mean value, as far as regards remuneration, his duties being to collect the tax levied upon the small amount of salt made in the town and neighbourhood. The conduct of the poet's sire to his son, does not appear to have been of the kindest description, and undoubtedly, whether more or less harsh, had the effect of repressing the not very energetic temperament of the poet's early youth even into timidity and extreme delicateness, extending their consequences far beyond his opening life.

In the days when Crabbe was an inhabitant of Aldborough, the "borough," as it then was, presented an appearance far

different to that which the "town" exhibits now. Aldborough is, in our own day, one of the few fashionable watering places of Suffolk. For some years it has been undergoing a pleasant metamorphosis, similar to the transition of a butterfly from the condition of a chrysalis. The hues which fashion has given the new form of being, are not flaunting, nor even gay, and the lapse of a little further time will, we trust, render permanent the fresh healthy colours with which it is invested. In the days of our poet but few summer visitors haunted the place, and no tasty cottages, or houses furnished with conveniences adapted to the wants of a health or pleasure-seeking community were to be found, either in, or near the spot. The town was gloomy and dull, and its inhabitants poor and unpolished. Two streets, lying beneath a cliff or rather steep hill, constituted the entire residences of the inhabitants, and the houses of which these streets were composed being built of all shapes and forms—timeworn-some of them undermined by the waves-all painted with the hues of age and tempest, and toppling with burdens of decay, or the faults of structure, made up a scene which lovers of the antique and picturesque so much admire. The dwellers in these habitations were makers of salt-fishermen-seamenshopkeepers-and a hardy race of pilots, ever upon the look out in the offing for the approach of vessels needing conveyance into port. A more true or natural description of the inhabitants of Aldborough, could not have been given, than that which the poet has himself afforded us in his poem of the Borough-a description, which having been drawn from a woful observation of the true characteristics of the individuals themselves, was unfortunately, in his time, but too real.

The comparatively desolate situation of Crabbe-desolate indeed as regards the companionship of a fellow-spirit, seems to have led the poet strongly to the contemplation of those objects which spread around him. His mornings were spent in lonely rambles by the sea-shore, or over the inland neighbourhood. Upon the sands he had particular halting-places, from which he could obtain a favorite view of " the ever sounding and mysterious main"

that here, in times of storm, rolls its tremendous billows with

gigantic energy and fierceness.

themselves the angry sea

The scenes which presented

"Various and vast, sublime in all its forms,

When lulled by zephyrs, or where roused by storms."

The low beach :

"A sandy space

The ebbing tide has left upon its place;

Just where the hot and stony beach above,

Light twinkling streams in bright confusion move."

The neighbouring common :

"Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Sends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears,

Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears."

These objects were all noticed by the observant boy, and treasured up in his remembrance, to be brought out in after life, clothed in poetry capable of carrying him towards an eminent and enduring fame.

To those acquainted with the coast of Suffolk-its wide heaths and commons-slimy pools-destitute of wood as it is-the descriptions of such scenes scattered through the works of Crabbe, will be allowed as adhering remarkably close to nature. Along the dreary line of shore from Felixtow to Dunwich, or even further northward than the scite of the "Ruined City," lies nothing to interest the lover of the fair and fruitful portions of Nature. At the point where the silver Deben disembogues itself into the sea at Bawdsey, a little more fruitfulness than ordinary fringes its banks, but beyond is as arid and sterile as the more northern portions of England. No woods-as in the West, fringe the water's edge with beauty-no green meadows vie in the brightness of their hues with the waters of the main—all seems dull, homeless, barren, and dreary. Upon a mind rendered gloomy by unkind treatment-and ill at ease with the condition in which he was placed-it is no wonder that we find Crabbe flying to the consolation of verse-making-and finding in the manufacture of poetry, that comfort which other things denied him. The time, however, arrived, when his destiny in life should be fixed, and

after considerable discussion in the family, Crabbe was placed with a surgeon at Wickham-Brook, near Bury St. Edmund's, to be initiated in the science of bone-setting. It is doubtful, however, whether his greatest amount of study here, was in the mystery of healing, or the science of agriculture, for he appears to have been as often a student in the turnip field as the surgery. The attainment of any proficiency in his profession was therefore rendered impossible, and when about 14 years of age, he was removed from the situation, and transferred to the care and preceptorship of Mr. Page, of Woodbridge, a surgeon, in order to get up lost time, where the poet concluded his apprenticeship. Here, through the attentions of a friend, who, upon a visiting time took him to the neighbouring village of Parham, he first saw the being he was afterwards to win and make his wife-Miss Sarah Elmy.

Time flew lightly over the head of the poet while at Woodbridge, and he divided his days entirely between love and poetry. Surgery was but little thought of. He finished a piece called by the uninviting title of " Inebriety," printed and sold by C. Punchard, Butter Market, Ipswich, 1775, price one shilling and sixpence. Punchard was rather an unfortunate name to introduce into the world a treatise upon the effects of drunk. enness, and whether it be that the title of the poem, or the strange cognomen of the publisher scared the public from purchasing, is not now known, but it is certain that "Inebriety" gained but few golden favours for the pocket of the youthful bard.

The gleams of sunlight, his residence at Woodbridge, and visits to Parham, had thrown upon the life of Crabbe, were at length doomed to pass away, and a fearful gloom to succeed. Having completed his apprenticeship, he returned to Aldborough, hoping that his parents or his friends would be enabled to provide the means of rendering him perfect in the practice of his profession elsewhere. In this desire, however, he was grievously disappointed. No help could be rendered him. The affairs of his father were found far from prosperous, and Crabbe, with a