something in his father's manners and bearing that at the outset invited
Burke's confidence and made intimacy at once possible, although Crabbe's
previous associates had been so different from the educated gentry of
London. In telling of his now-found poet a few days afterwards to Sir
Joshua Reynolds, Burke said that he had "the mind and feelings of a
gentleman." And he acted boldly on this assurance by at once placing
Crabbe on the footing of a friend, and admitting him to his family
circle. "He was invited to Beaconsfield," Crabbe wrote in his short
autobiographical sketch, "the seat of his protector, and was there
placed in a convenient apartment, supplied with books for his
information and amusement, and made a member of a family whom it was
honour as well as pleasure to become in any degree associated with." The
time thus spent was profitable to Crabbe in other ways than by enlarging
his knowledge and ideas, and laying the foundation of many valued
friendships. He devoted himself in earnest to complete his unfinished
poems and revise others under Burke's judicious criticism. The poem he
first published, _The Library_, he himself tells us, was written partly
in his presence and submitted as a whole to his judgment. Crabbe
elsewhere indicates clearly what were the weak points of his art, and
what tendencies Burke found it most necessary he should counteract.
Writing his reminiscences in the third person years later, he naively
admitted that "Mr. Crabbe had sometimes the satisfaction of hearing,
when the verses were bad, that the thoughts deserved better; and that if
he had the common faults of inexperienced writers, he had frequently the
merit of thinking for himself." The first clause of this sentence might
be applied to Crabbe's poetry to the very end of his days. Of his later
and far maturer poems, when he had ceased to polish, it is too true that
the thoughts are often better than their treatment. His latest
publisher, John Murray, used to say that in conversation Crabbe often
"said uncommon things in so common a way" that they passed unnoticed.