Again, Burke was not a poet (save in the glowing periods of his prose), but he had read widely in the poets, and had himself been possessed at one stage of his youth "with the _furor poeticus_." At this special juncture he had indeed little leisure for such matters.

He had lost his seat for Bristol in the preceding year, but had speedily found another at Malton--a pocket-borough of Lord Rockingham's,--and, at the moment of Crabbe's appeal, was again actively opposing the policy of the King and Lord North.

But he yet found time for an act of kindness that was to have no inconsiderable influence on English literature.

The result of the interview was that Crabbe's immediate necessities were relieved by a gift of money, and by the assurance that Burke would do all in his power to further Crabbe's literary aims.

What particular poems or fragments of poetry had been first sent to Burke is uncertain; but among those submitted to his judgment were specimens of the poems to be henceforth known as the _The Library_ and _The Village._ Crabbe afterwards learned that the lines which first convinced Burke that a new and genuine poet had arisen were the following from _The Village,_ in which the author told of his resolution to leave the home of his birth and try his fortune in the city of wits and scholars-- "As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand And wait for favouring winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from those shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, 'Ah! hapless they who still remain-- Who still remain to hear the ocean roar; Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, And begs a poor protection from the poor!" Burke might well have been impressed by such a passage.