More than once in the Diary occur such entries as: "My thirty lines done; but not well, I fear." "Thirty lines to-day, but not yesterday--must work up." This anticipation of a method made famous later in the century by Anthony Trollope may account (as also in Trollope's case) for certain marked inequalities in the merit of the work thus turned out.

At odd times and in odd places were these verses sometimes composed.

On a certain Sunday morning in July 1817, after going to church at St.
James's, Piccadilly (or was it the Chapel Royal ?), Crabbe wandered eastward and found inspiration in the most unexpected quarter: "Write some lines in the solitude of Somerset House, not fifty yards from the Thames on one side, and the Strand on the other; but as quiet as the sands of Arabia.

I am not quite in good humour with this day; but, happily, I cannot say why." The last mysterious sentence is one of many scattered through, the Diary, which, aided by dashes and omission-marks by the editorial son, point to certain sentimentalisms in which Crabbe was still indulging, even in the vortex of fashionable gaieties.

We gather throughout that the ladies he met interested him quite as much, or even more, than the distinguished men of letters, and there are allusions besides to other charmers at a distance.