to whom Crabbe had appealed, without success, in his less fortunate
days. On that occasion Thurlow had simply replied, in regard to the
poems which Crabbe had enclosed, "that his avocations did not leave him
leisure to read verses." To this Crabbe had been so unwise as to reply
that it was one of a Lord Chancellor's functions to relieve merit in
distress. But the good-natured Chancellor had not resented the
impertinence, and now hearing afresh from Burke of his old petitioner,
invited Crabbe to breakfast, and made him a generous apology. "The first
poem you sent me, Sir," he said, "I ought to have noticed,--and I
heartily forgive the second." At parting, Thurlow pressed a sealed
packet containing a hundred pounds into Crabbe's hand, and assured him
of further help when Crabbe should have taken Holy Orders.

For already, as the result of Burke's unceasing interest in his new
friend, Crabbe's future calling had been decided. In the course of
conversations at Beaconsfield Burke had discovered that his tastes and
gifts pointed much more clearly towards divinity than to medicine. His
special training for the office of a clergyman was of course deficient.
He probably had no Greek, but he had mastered enough of Latin to read
and quote the Latin poets. Moreover, his chief passion from early youth
had been for botany, and the treatises on that subject were, in Crabbe's
day, written in the language adopted in all scientific works. "It is
most fortunate," said Burke, "that your father exerted himself to send
you to that second school; without a little Latin we should have made
nothing of you: now, I think we shall succeed." Moreover Crabbe had been
a wide and discursive reader. "Mr. Crabbe," Burke told Reynolds,
"appears to know something of every thing." As to his more serious
qualifications for the profession, his natural piety, as shown in the
diaries kept in his days of trial, was beyond doubt. He was well read in
the Scriptures, and the example of a religious and much-tried mother had