A copy of the rare original is in the writer's possession, at the head of which the poet has inscribed his own maturer judgment of this youthful effort--"Pray let not this be seen ...

there is very little of it that I'm not heartily ashamed of." The little quarto pamphlet--"Ipswich, printed and sold by C.Punchard, Bookseller, in the Butter Market, 1775.
Price one shilling and sixpence"-- seems to have attracted no attention.
And yet a critic of experience would have recognised in it a force as well as a fluency remarkable in a young man of twenty-one, and pointing to quite other possibilities when the age of imitation should have passed away.
In 1775 Crabbe's term of apprenticeship to Mr.Page expired, and he returned to his home at Aldeburgh, hoping soon to repair to London and there continue his medical studies.

But he found the domestic situation much changed for the worse.

His mother (who, as we have seen, was several years older than her husband) was an invalid, and his father's habits and temper were not improving with time.

He was by nature imperious, and had always (it would seem) been liable to intemperance of another kind.