In the third book, _Boys at School_, George relates some of his recollections, which include the story of a school-fellow, who having some liking for art but not much talent, finds his ambitions defeated, and dies of chagrin in consequence.

This was in fact the true story of a brother of Crabbe's wife, Mr.James Elmy.

Later, again, in the work the rector of the parish is described, and the portrait drawn is obviously that of Crabbe himself, as he appeared to his Dissenting parishioners at Muston: "'A moral teacher!' some, contemptuous, cried; He smiled, but nothing of the fact denied, Nor, save by his fair life, to charge so strong replied.
Still, though he bade them not on aught rely That was their own, but all their worth deny, They called his pure advice his cold morality.
* * * * * He either did not, or he would not see, That if he meant a favourite priest to be, He must not show, but learn of them, the way To truth--he must not dictate, but obey; They wish'd him not to bring them further light, But to convince them that they now were right And to assert that justice will condemn All who presumed to disagree with them: In this he fail'd, and his the greater blame, For he persisted, void of fear or shame." There is a touch of bitterness in these lines that is unmistakably that of a personal grievance, even if the poet's son had not confirmed the inference in a foot-note.
Book IV.

is devoted to the _Adventures of Richard_, which begin with his residence with his mother near a small sea-port (evidently Aldeburgh); and here we once more read of the boy, George Crabbe, watching and remembering every aspect of the storms, and making friends with the wives and children of the sailors and the smugglers: "I loved to walk where none had walk'd before, About the rocks that ran along the shore; Or far beyond the sight of men to stray, And take my pleasure when I lost my way; For then 'twas mine to trace the hilly heath, And all the mossy moor that lies beneath: Here had I favourite stations, where I stood And heard the murmurs of the ocean-flood, With not a sound beside except when flew Aloft the lapwing, or the grey curlew, Who with wild notes my fancied power defied, And mock'd the dreams of solitary pride." And as Crabbe evidently resorts gladly to personal experiences to make out the material for his work, the same also holds with regard to the incidental Tales.

Crabbe refers in his Preface to two of these as not of his own invention, and his son, in the Notes, admits the same of others.
One, as we have seen, happened in the Elmy family; another was sent him by a friend in Wiltshire, to which county the story belonged; while the last in the series, and perhaps the most painful of all, _Smugglers, and Poachers_ was told to Crabbe by Sir Samuel Romilly, whom he had met at Hampstead, only a few weeks before Romilly's own tragic death.