William Crowe (poet) - Works

Works

Lewesdon Hill is Crowe's poem on a hill in the western part of Dorset, 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 Jonathan Shipley, 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. Crowe's other works 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 Glorious 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’; anonymous by Thomas Caldecott and Crowe, 1819, with later editions in 1820 and 1832. The two authors contemplated a new edition of Shakespeare. Caldecott was Crowe's schoolfellow at Winchester and lifelong friend.
• ‘A Treatise on English Versification,’ 1827, dedicated to Caldecott.
• ‘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 there 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 were praised by Rogers and Moore. His sonnet to Petrarch is included in the collections of English sonnets by Robert Fletcher Housman and Alexander Dyce.

Crowe contributed articles to Rees's Cyclopaedia, but the topics are not known. Probably poetry.