Page:A Literary Pilgrim in England.djvu/257

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GEORGE CRABBE
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down the dislike of his amphibious fellow-townsmen. He was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle. His "Village" appeared in 1783, and succeeded. He married Miss Elmy, of Great Parham, and the couple settled ultimately at Stathern in Leicestershire, where he held a curacy. They had the woods of Belvoir to ramble in, and Crabbe could botanize and write verses. Five years later, in 1789, they moved, but only to Muston in Leicestershire, Crabbe having been presented to the living.

But the beauty oi the Lincolnshire border of Leicestershire was not as the beauty of Aldeburgh. One day Crabbe rode sixty miles to the coast in order to dip in the sea "that washed the beach of Aldeburgh"; and it is not surprising that, when his wife's father died, and it became possible to dwell in the house at Great Parham, they should elect to do so. In this neighbourhood he held the curacies of Sweffling and Great Glemham, and occupied, after four years at Parham, Great Glemham Hall, and finally a house at Rendham. All three houses were close to the River Aide, and but ten miles inland westward from Aldeburgh. At Rendham he wrote much of "The Parish Register" and began "The Borough." Then again he had to leave Suffolk. He held the living at Muston, and the Bishop compelled him to reside. Here he went on with "The Borough," and wrote "The Tales." But the borough was a magnified Aldeburgh, and at Aldeburgh, during a long visit, he finished it. In "The Tales," written in Leicestershire, and in "Tales of the Hall," written after his last move—which was to Trowbridge in 1814—Crabbe