And Crabbe was now to have opened to him new sources of interest in the neighbourhood.

His growing reputation soon made him a welcome guest in many houses to which his mere position as vicar of Trowbridge might not have admitted him.

Trowbridge was only a score or so of miles from Bath, and there were many noblemen's and gentlemen's seats in the country round.

In this same county of Wilts, and not very far away, at his vicarage of Bremhill, was William Lisle Bowles, the graceful poet whose sonnets five-and-twenty years before had first roused to poetic utterance the young Coleridge and Charles Lamb when at Christ's Hospital.

Through Bowles, Crabbe was introduced to the noble family at Bowood, where the third Marquis of Lansdowne delighted to welcome those distinguished in literature and the arts.