In his early days under Burke's roof he had learned much from Burke himself, and from Johnson and Fox, but he was then only a promising beginner.

Now, thirty-five years later, he met Rogers, Wordsworth, Campbell, Moore, as social equals, and having, like them, won a public for himself.

When his next volumes appeared, the workmanship proved, as of old, unequal, but here and there Crabbe showed a musical ear, and an individuality of touch of a different order from anything he had achieved before.

Mr.
Courthope and other critics hold that there are passages in Crabbe's earliest poems, such as _The Village_, which have a metrical charm he never afterwards attained.

But I strongly suspect that in such passages Crabbe had owed much to the revising hand of Burke, Johnson, and Fox.
In the spring of 1819 Crabbe was again in town, visiting at Holland House, and dining at the Thatched House with the "Literary Society," of which he had been elected a member, and which to-day still dines and prospers.