"Be not too eager in the arduous chase;
Who pants for triumph seldom wins the race:
Venture not all, but wisely hoard thy worth,
And let thy labours one by one go forth
Some happier scrap capricious wits may find
On a fair day, and be profusely kind;
Which, buried in the rubbish of a throng,
Had pleased as little as a new-year's song,
Or lover's verse, that cloyed with nauseous sweet,
Or birthday ode, that ran on ill-paired feet.
Merit not always--Fortune Feeds the bard,
And as the whim inclines bestows reward
None without wit, nor with it numbers gain;
To please is hard, but none shall please in vain
As a coy mistress is the humoured town,
Loth every lover with success to crown;
He who would win must every effort try,
Sail in the mode, and to the fashion fly;
Must gay or grave to every humour dress,
And watch the lucky Moment of Success;
That caught, no more his eager hopes are crost;
But vain are Wit and Love, when that is lost"

Crabbe's son and biographer remarks with justice that the time of his
father's arrival in London was "not unfavourable for a new Candidate in
Poetry. The giants, Swift and Pope, had passed away, leaving each in his
department examples never to be excelled; but the style of each had been
so long imitated by inferior persons that the world was not unlikely to
welcome some one who should strike into a newer path. The strong and
powerful satirist Churchill, the classic Gray, and the inimitable