'There was no fear,' he said, 'of his losing them, and he must show them to his son John.'" It was matter of common knowledge in the literary world of Crabbe's day that John Murray did not on this occasion make a very prudent bargain, and that in fact he lost heavily by his venture.

No doubt his offer was based upon the remarkable success of Crabbe's two preceding poems.

_The Borough_ had passed through six editions in the same number of years, and the _Tales_ reached a fifth edition within two years of publication.
But for changes in progress in the poetic taste of the time, Murray might safely have anticipated a continuance of Crabbe's popularity.

But seven years had elapsed since the appearance of the _Tales_, and in these seven years much had happened.

Byron had given to the world one by one the four cantos of _Childe Harold_, as well as other poems rich in splendid rhetoric and a lyric versatility far beyond Crabbe's reach.
Wordsworth's two volumes in 1815 contained by far the most important and representative of his poems, and these were slowly but surely winning him a public of his own, intellectual and thoughtful if not as yet numerous.