produced more, and on one occasion he records eighty lines as the fruit
of a day's labour. During the year 1818 he was still at work, and in
September of that year he writes to Mary Leadbeater that his verses "are
not yet entirely ready, but do not want much that he can give them." He
was evidently correcting and perfecting to the best of his ability, and
(as I believe) profiting by the intellectual stimulus of his visit to
London, as well as by the higher standards of versification that he had
met with, even in writers inferior to himself. The six weeks in London
had given him advantages he had never enjoyed before. In his early days
under Burke's roof he had learned much from Burke himself, and from
Johnson and Fox, but he was then only a promising beginner. Now,
thirty-five years later, he met Rogers, Wordsworth, Campbell, Moore, as
social equals, and having, like them, won a public for himself. When his
next volumes appeared, the workmanship proved, as of old, unequal, but
here and there Crabbe showed a musical ear, and an individuality of
touch of a different order from anything he had achieved before. Mr.
Courthope and other critics hold that there are passages in Crabbe's
earliest poems, such as _The Village_, which have a metrical charm he
never afterwards attained. But I strongly suspect that in such passages
Crabbe had owed much to the revising hand of Burke, Johnson, and Fox.

In the spring of 1819 Crabbe was again in town, visiting at Holland
House, and dining at the Thatched House with the "Literary Society," of
which he had been elected a member, and which to-day still dines and
prospers. He was then preparing for the publication of his new Tales,
from the famous house in Albemarle Street. Two years before, in 1817, on
the strength doubtless of Rogers's strong recommendation, Murray had
made a very liberal offer for the new poems, and the copyright of all
Crabbe's previous works. For these, together, Murray had offered three
thousand pounds. Strangely enough, Rogers was at first dissatisfied with