well, and should have credit for it. To take one more example from his poems, how excellently he uses it in this passage!—
"Where is that virtue which the generous boy
Felt, and resolved that nothing should destroy;
He who with noble indignation glowed
When vice had triumph; who his tear bestowed
On injured merit? He who would possess
Power, but to aid the children of distress!
Who has such joy in generous actions shown,
And so sincere they might be called his own;
Knight, hero, patriot, martyr! on whose tongue
And potent arm a nation's welfare hung,—
Where now this virtue's fervor, spirit, zeal?
Who felt so warmly, has he ceased to feel?
Or are these feelings varied? Has the knight,
Virtue's own champion, now refused to fight?
Is the deliverer turned th' oppressor now?
Has the reformer dropt the dangerous vow?
Or has the patriot's bosom lost its heat,
And forced him, shivering, to a snug retreat?
Is such the grievous lapse of human pride!
Is such the victory of the worth untried!"
Scott felt an attraction in such poetic form which we have perhaps ceased to feel; and Fox, had he lived to read it, would equally have acknowledged its power.
But Wordsworth said Crabbe was unpoetical; he condemned him for "his unpoetical mode of considering human nature and society; "and, after all, the world has agreed with Wordsworth, and disagreed with Scott
