duates of the university. His command of the Latin language was readily acknowledged by his contemporaries, and his Latin sermons at St. Mary's or his orations at commemoration, graced as they were by a fine rich voice, enjoyed great popularity. He was interested in architecture, and occasionally read a course of lectures on that subject in New College hall. The merits of his lectures at the Royal Institution on poetry are extolled by Dr. Dibdin. When he visited Horne Tooke at Wimbledon, a considerable portion of his time was spent in the garden, and horticulture was the theme on which he dilated. Owing to the skill in valuing timber, which he had acquired from the farmers with whom he had been associated for so many years, he was always selected by the fellows at New College as their woodman. His peculiarities marked him out as a fit subject for caricature, and his portrait as ‘a celebrated public orator’ was drawn by Dighton January 1808 in full-length academicals and with a college cap in his hand. After a short illness he died at Queen Square, Bath, in which city he had been recommended for the previous two years to pass the winter months, 9 Feb. 1829, aged 83. Crowe and Samuel Rogers were intimate friends, and when the latter poet was travelling in Italy he made two authors, Milton and Crowe, his constant study for versification. ‘How little,’ said Rogers on another occasion, ‘is Crowe known, even to persons who are fond of poetry! Yet his “Lewesdon Hill” is full of noble passages.’ That hill is situated in the western part of Dorsetshire, on the edge of the parish of Broadwindsor, of which Tom Fuller was rector, and near Crowe's benefice of Stoke Abbas. The poet is depicted as climbing the hill-top on a May morning and describing the prospect, with its associations, which his eye surveys. The first edition, issued anonymously and dedicated to Shipley, the whig bishop of St. Asaph, was published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1788. A second impression, with its authorship avowed, was demanded in the same year, and later editions, in a much enlarged form, and with several other poems, were published in 1804 and 1827. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Bowles, like Rogers, have recognised its value as an admirable description in harmonious blank verse of local scenery, and Tom Moore confessed that some of its passages were ‘of the highest order.’ Crowe's other works attracted less attention. They were:
- ‘A Sermon before the University of Oxford at St. Mary's, 5 Nov. 1781.’
- ‘On the late Attempt on her Majesty's Person, a sermon before the University of Oxford at St. Mary's, 1786.’
- ‘Oratio ex Instituto … Dom. Crew.’ 1788. From the preface it appears that the oration was printed in refutation of certain slanders as to its character which had been circulated. It contained his views on the revolution of 1688.
- ‘Oratio Crewiana,’ 1800. On poetry and the poetry professorship at Oxford.
- ‘Hamlet and As you like it, a specimen of a new edition of Shakespeare’ [anon. by Thomas Caldecott and Crowe], 1819, with later editions in 1820 and 1832. The two friends contemplated a new edition of Shakespeare, and this volume was published as a sample of their labours, but it had no successor.
- ‘A Treatise on English Versification,’ 1827, dedicated to Thomas Caldecott [q. v.], his schoolfellow at Winchester and friend of seventy years' standing.
- ‘Poems of William Collins, with notes, and Dr. Johnson's Life, corrected and enlarged,’ Bath, 1828.
Crowe's son died in battle in 1815, and in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 1st ser. vii. 6, 144 (1853), is a Latin monody by his father on his loss. His verses intended to have been spoken at the theatre at Oxford on the installation of the Duke of Portland as chancellor have been highly lauded by Rogers and Moore. The latter poet speaks also of Crowe's sweet ballad ‘To thy cliffs, rocky Seaton, adieu!’ His sonnet to Petrarch is included in the collections of English sonnets by Housman and Dyce.
[Gent. Mag. 1829, pt. i. 642–3; Cox's Recollections of Oxford, 2nd edit. 229–32; Mayo's Bibliotheca Dorsetiensis, p. 120; Hutchins's Dorset (1864), ii. 150–1; Stephens's Horne Tooke, ii. 332; Dyce's Table-talk of Samuel Rogers, pp. 225–9; Dibdin's Literary Life, i. 245–6; Tom Moore's Memoirs, ii. 177–202, 300, v. 60, 112, 277–8, viii. 234, 245; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vi. 42–3 (1858).]
CROWFOOT, JOHN RUSTAT (1817–1875), Hebrew and Syriac scholar, son of William Henchman Crowfoot, a medical man in large practice, was born at Beccles, Suffolk, on 21 Feb. 1817. He was educated at Eton, where he obtained a foundation scholarship. He matriculated at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1833, and graduated B.A. as twelfth wrangler in 1839. The following year he was elected fellow of his college, of which, and also of King's College, he was appointed divinity lecturer. He took his degree of M.A. in 1842, and B.D. in 1849. In 1848 he contested the regius professorship of Hebrew unsuccessfully with Dr. Mill, and printed his probation exercise on Jer. xxxiii. 15, 16. He did curate's work at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, 1851–3, and in 1854 accepted the living of Southwold, Suffolk, which he held till 1860, when he became vicar of Wangford-cum-Reydon in the same county. Here he died on 18 March
