And yet Crabbe, with a touch of real imaginative insight, represents him
in his final utterance as relapsing into a vague hope of some day being
restored to his old prosperity:

"Must you, my friends, no longer stay?
Thus quickly all my pleasures end;
But I'll remember, when I pray,
My kind physician and his friend:

And those sad hours you deign to spend
With me, I shall requite them all.
Sir Eustace for his friends shall send,
And thank their love at Greyling Hall."[4]



The kind physician and his friend then proceed to diagnose the patient's
condition--which they agree is that of "a frenzied child of grace," and
so the poem ends. To one of its last stanzas Crabbe attached an
apologetic note, one of the most remarkable ever penned. It exhibits the
struggle that at that period must have been proceeding in many a
thoughtful breast as to how the new wine of religion could be somehow
accommodated to the old bottles:--

"It has been suggested to me that this change from restlessness to
repose in the mind of Sir Eustace is wrought by a methodistic call; and
it is admitted to be such: a sober and rational conversion could not
have happened while the disorder of the brain continued; yet the verses
which follow, in a different measure," (Crabbe refers to the hymn) "are
not intended to make any religious persuasion appear ridiculous; they