never seen by the poet's son. And yet at the date when it closed, Crabbe
was nearer to at least the semblance of a success than he had yet
approached. He had at length found a publisher willing to print, and
apparently at his own risk, "_The Candidate_--a Poetical Epistle to the
Authors of the _Monthly Review,"_ that journal being the chief organ of
literary criticism at the time. The idea of this attempt to propitiate
the critics in advance, with a view to other poetic efforts in the
future, was not felicitous. The publisher, "H. Payne, opposite
Marlborough House, Pall Mall," had pledged himself that the author
should receive some share of the profits, however small; but even if he
had not become bankrupt immediately after its publication, it is
unlikely that Crabbe would have profited by a single penny. It was
indeed a very ill-advised attempt, even as regards the reviewers
addressed. The very tone adopted, that of deprecation of criticism,
would be in their view a proof of weakness, and as such they accepted
it. Nor had the poem any better chance with the general reader. Its
rhetoric and versification were only one more of the interminable echoes
of the manner of Pope. It had no organic unity. The wearisome note of
plea for indulgence had to be relieved at intervals by such irrelevant
episodes as compliments to the absent "Mira," and to Wolfe, who
"conquered as he fell"--twenty years or so before. The critics of the
_Monthly Review_, far from being mollified by the poet's appeal,
received the poem with the cruel but perfectly just remark that it had
"that material defect, the want of a proper subject."

An allegorical episode may be cited as a sample of the general style of
this effusion. The poet relates how the Genius of Poetry (like, but how
unlike, her who was seen by Burns in vision) appeared to him with
counsel how best to hit the taste of the town:--