Like Wordsworth he had early known love and sorrow "in huts where poor men lie." Wordsworth's fame and influence have grown steadily since his death in 1850.

Crabbe's reputation was apparently at its height in 1819, for it was then, on occasion of his publishing his _Tales of the Hall_, that Mr.John Murray paid him three thousand pounds for the copyright of this work, and its predecessors.

But after that date Crabbe's popularity may be said to have continuously declined.

Other poets, with other and more purely poetical gifts, arose to claim men's attention.

Besides Wordsworth, as already pointed out, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley had found their various admirers, and drawn Crabbe's old public from him.