"To show the world what long experience gains, requires not courage, though it calls for pains; but at life's outset to inform mankind is a bold effort of a valiant mind"
About this Quote
Crabbe is taking a swing at youthful certainty, not because he romanticizes age, but because he understands how authority actually gets manufactured. “Long experience” can be displayed with “pains” rather than “courage”: time does the persuading for you. If you’ve lived long enough, the world grants you a kind of automatic credibility. Your evidence is your survival, your scars, your résumé of endurance. The labor is in shaping it into something communicable.
The real barb is in the second clause. “At life’s outset to inform mankind” is framed as “bold” and “valiant” because it reverses the usual hierarchy: the young speaker has to fight for legitimacy without the protective costume of years. Crabbe’s subtext is less “respect your elders” than “notice the rigged stage.” When you’re old, the world presumes you’re wise; when you’re young, the world assumes you’re ignorant until you prove otherwise. So early moral or intellectual instruction isn’t merely risky because you might be wrong; it’s risky because you’re committing a social offense, claiming the right to speak before you’ve been authorized to.
Context matters: Crabbe wrote in an era that prized decorum, rank, and earned station, when a poet or cleric without pedigree was keenly aware of gatekeepers. The couplet’s neat balance (pains vs courage; experience vs outset) mimics the very social order it critiques: symmetry on the surface, friction underneath. It’s a defense of the audacious beginner and a quiet indictment of a culture that confuses time served with truth.
The real barb is in the second clause. “At life’s outset to inform mankind” is framed as “bold” and “valiant” because it reverses the usual hierarchy: the young speaker has to fight for legitimacy without the protective costume of years. Crabbe’s subtext is less “respect your elders” than “notice the rigged stage.” When you’re old, the world presumes you’re wise; when you’re young, the world assumes you’re ignorant until you prove otherwise. So early moral or intellectual instruction isn’t merely risky because you might be wrong; it’s risky because you’re committing a social offense, claiming the right to speak before you’ve been authorized to.
Context matters: Crabbe wrote in an era that prized decorum, rank, and earned station, when a poet or cleric without pedigree was keenly aware of gatekeepers. The couplet’s neat balance (pains vs courage; experience vs outset) mimics the very social order it critiques: symmetry on the surface, friction underneath. It’s a defense of the audacious beginner and a quiet indictment of a culture that confuses time served with truth.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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