to do more than glance at them--for they had been in his hands but a few
hours--is uncertain. But it may well have been that the tone as well as
the substance of Crabbe's letter struck the great statesman as something
apart from the usual strain of the literary pretender. During Burke's
first years in London, when he himself lived by literature and saw much
of the lives and ways of poets and pamphleteers, he must have gained
some experience that served him later in good stead. There was a flavour
of truthfulness in Crabbe's story that could hardly be delusive, and a
strain of modesty blended with courage that would at once appeal to
Burke's generous nature. Again, Burke was not a poet (save in the
glowing periods of his prose), but he had read widely in the poets, and
had himself been possessed at one stage of his youth "with the _furor
poeticus_." At this special juncture he had indeed little leisure for
such matters. He had lost his seat for Bristol in the preceding year,
but had speedily found another at Malton--a pocket-borough of Lord
Rockingham's,--and, at the moment of Crabbe's appeal, was again actively
opposing the policy of the King and Lord North. But he yet found time
for an act of kindness that was to have no inconsiderable influence on
English literature. The result of the interview was that Crabbe's
immediate necessities were relieved by a gift of money, and by the
assurance that Burke would do all in his power to further Crabbe's
literary aims. What particular poems or fragments of poetry had been
first sent to Burke is uncertain; but among those submitted to his
judgment were specimens of the poems to be henceforth known as the _The
Library_ and _The Village._ Crabbe afterwards learned that the lines
which first convinced Burke that a new and genuine poet had arisen were
the following from _The Village,_ in which the author told of his
resolution to leave the home of his birth and try his fortune in the
city of wits and scholars--