The critics of the _Monthly Review_, far from being mollified by the poet's appeal, received the poem with the cruel but perfectly just remark that it had "that material defect, the want of a proper subject." An allegorical episode may be cited as a sample of the general style of this effusion.

The poet relates how the Genius of Poetry (like, but how unlike, her who was seen by Burns in vision) appeared to him with counsel how best to hit the taste of the town:-- "Be not too eager in the arduous chase; Who pants for triumph seldom wins the race: Venture not all, but wisely hoard thy worth, And let thy labours one by one go forth Some happier scrap capricious wits may find On a fair day, and be profusely kind; Which, buried in the rubbish of a throng, Had pleased as little as a new-year's song, Or lover's verse, that cloyed with nauseous sweet, Or birthday ode, that ran on ill-paired feet.
Merit not always--Fortune Feeds the bard, And as the whim inclines bestows reward None without wit, nor with it numbers gain; To please is hard, but none shall please in vain As a coy mistress is the humoured town, Loth every lover with success to crown; He who would win must every effort try, Sail in the mode, and to the fashion fly; Must gay or grave to every humour dress, And watch the lucky Moment of Success; That caught, no more his eager hopes are crost; But vain are Wit and Love, when that is lost" Crabbe's son and biographer remarks with justice that the time of his father's arrival in London was "not unfavourable for a new Candidate in Poetry.

The giants, Swift and Pope, had passed away, leaving each in his department examples never to be excelled; but the style of each had been so long imitated by inferior persons that the world was not unlikely to welcome some one who should strike into a newer path.

The strong and powerful satirist Churchill, the classic Gray, and the inimitable Goldsmith had also departed; and more recently still, Chatterton had paid the bitter penalty of his imprudence under circumstances which must surely have rather disposed the patrons of talent to watch the next opportunity that might offer itself of encouraging genius 'by poverty depressed.' The stupendous Johnson, unrivalled in general literature, had from an early period withdrawn himself from poetry.

Cowper, destined to fill so large a space in the public eye somewhat later, had not as yet appeared as an author; and as for Burns, he was still unknown beyond the obscure circle of his fellow-villagers." All this is quite true, but it was not for such facile cleverness as _The Candidate_ that the lovers of poetry were impatient.