Crabbe was by sixteen years Wordsworth's senior, and owed nothing to his inspiration.

In the form, and at times in the technique of his verse, his controlling master was Pope.

For its subjects he was as clearly indebted to Goldsmith and Gray.

But for _The Deserted Village_ of the one, and _The Elegy_ of the other, it is conceivable that Crabbe, though he might have survived as one of the "mob of gentlemen" who imitated Pope "with ease," would never have learned where his true strength lay, and thus have lived as one of the first and profoundest students of _The Annals of the Poor_.

For _The Village_, one of the earliest and not least valuable of his poems, was written (in part, at least) as early as 1781, while Wordsworth was yet a child, and before Cowper had published a volume.