For the present he remained three years at the small and very retired village of Muston, about five miles from Grantham.

"The house in which Crabbe lived at Muston," writes Mr.Hutton,[2] "is now pulled down.

It is replaced by one built higher up a slight hill, in a position intended, says scandal, to prevent any view of Belvoir.

Crabbe with all his ironies had no such resentful feelings; indeed more modern successors of his have opened what he would have called a 'vista,' and the castle again crowns the distance as you look southward from the pretty garden." Crabbe's first three years of residence at Muston were marked by few incidents.

Another son, Edmund, was horn in the autumn of 1790, and a few weeks later a series of visits were paid by Crabbe, his wife and elder boy, to their relations at Aldeburgh, Parham, and Beccles, from which latter town, according to Crabbe's son, they visited Lowestoft, and were so fortunate as to hear the aged John Wesley preach, on a memorable occasion when he quoted Anacreon:-- "Oft am I by women told, Poor Anacreon! thou grow'st old.