religious influence, moreover, which he would naturally have wished to
exercise in his new sphere would obviously suffer in consequence. The
result was that in accordance with the assurances given him by Thurlow
at their last meeting, Crabbe again laid his difficulties before the
Chancellor. Thurlow quite reasonably replied that he could not form any
opinion as to Crabbe's present situation--"still less upon the
agreeableness of it"; and hinted that a somewhat longer period of
probation was advisable before he selected Crabbe for preferment in the
Church.

Other relief was however at hand, and once more through the watchful
care of Burke. Crabbe received a letter from his faithful friend to the
effect that he had mentioned his case to the Duke of Rutland, and that
the Duke had offered him the post of domestic chaplain at Belvoir
Castle, when he might be free from his engagements at Aldeburgh. That
Burke should have ventured on this step is significant, both as regards
the Duke and Duchess, and Crabbe. Crabbe's son remarks with truth that
an appointment of the kind was unusual, "such situations in the mansions
of that rank being commonly filled either by relations of the family
itself, or by college acquaintances, or dependents recommended by
political service and local attachment." Now Burke would certainly not
have recommended Crabbe for the post if he had found in his _protégé_
any such defects of breeding or social tact as would have made his
society distasteful to the Duke and Duchess. Burke, as we have seen,
described him on their first acquaintance as having "the mind and
feelings of a gentleman." Thurlow, it is true, after one of Crabbe's
earlier interviews, had declared with an oath (_more suo_) that he was
"as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." But Thurlow was not merely
jesting. He knew that Fielding's immortal clergyman had also the "mind
and feelings of a gentleman," although his simplicity and ignorance of