"I'm alone now; and since my removing into a busy town
among the multitude, the loneliness is but more apparent and
more melancholy. But this is only at certain times; and then
I have, though at considerable distances, six female friends,
unknown to each other, but all dear, very dear, to me. With
them I do not much associate; not as deserting, and much less
disliking, the male part of society, but as being unfit for it;
not hardy nor grave, not knowing enough, nor sufficiently
acquainted with the everyday concerns of men. But my
beloved creatures have minds with which I can better assimilate.
Think of you, I must; and of me, I must entreat that
you would not be unmindful."

Nothing, however, was destined to come of these various flirtations or
_tendresses_. The new duties at Trowbridge, with their multiplying calls
upon his attention and sympathies, must soon have filled his time and
attention when at work in his market town, with its flourishing woollen
manufactures. And Crabbe was now to have opened to him new sources of
interest in the neighbourhood. His growing reputation soon made him a
welcome guest in many houses to which his mere position as vicar of
Trowbridge might not have admitted him. Trowbridge was only a score or
so of miles from Bath, and there were many noblemen's and gentlemen's
seats in the country round. In this same county of Wilts, and not very
far away, at his vicarage of Bremhill, was William Lisle Bowles, the
graceful poet whose sonnets five-and-twenty years before had first
roused to poetic utterance the young Coleridge and Charles Lamb when at
Christ's Hospital. Through Bowles, Crabbe was introduced to the noble
family at Bowood, where the third Marquis of Lansdowne delighted to
welcome those distinguished in literature and the arts. Within these
splendid walls Crabbe first made the acquaintance of Rogers, which soon