the world put him at many social disadvantages. It was probably the same
obvious difference in Crabbe from the common type of nobleman's chaplain
of that day which made Crabbe's position at Belvoir, as his son admits,
full of difficulties. It is quite possible and even natural that the
guests and visitors at the Castle did not always accept Crabbe's talents
as making up for a certain want of polish--or even perhaps for a want of
deference to their opinions in conversation. The "pampered menials"
moreover would probably resent having "to say Amen" to a
newly-discovered literary adventurer from the great metropolis.

In any case Crabbe's experience of a chaplain's life at Belvoir was
not, by his son's admission, a happy one. "The numberless allusions," he
writes, "to the nature of a literary dependent's existence in a great
lord's house, which occur in my father's writings, and especially in the
tale of _The Patron_, are, however, quite enough, to lead any one who
knew his character and feelings to the conclusion that notwithstanding
the kindness and condescension of the Duke and Duchess themselves--which
were, I believe, uniform, and of which he always spoke with
gratitude--the situation he filled at Belvoir was attended with many
painful circumstances, and productive in his mind of some of the acutest
sensations of wounded pride that have ever been traced by any pen." It
is not necessary to hold Crabbe himself entirely irresponsible for this
result. His son, with a frankness that marks the Biography throughout,
does not conceal that his father's temper, even in later life, was
intolerant of contradiction, and he probably expressed his opinions
before the guests at Belvoir with more vehemence than prudence. But if
the rebuffs he met with were long remembered, they taught him something
of value, and enlarged that stock of worldly wisdom so prominent in his
later writings. In the story of _The Patron_, the young student living
as the rich man's guest is advised by his father as to his behaviour