One of these is to the effect that he spoke "through his nose," which I take to have been the local explanation of a marked Suffolk accent which accompanied the poet through life.

Another, that he was peppery of temper, and that an exceedingly youthful couple having presented themselves for holy matrimony, Crabbe drove them with scorn from the altar, with the remark that he had come there to marry "men and women, and not lads and wenches!" Crabbe used to tell his children that the four years at Stathern were, on the whole, the happiest in his life.

He and his wife were in humble quarters, but they were their own masters, and they were quit of "the pampered menial" for ever.

"My mother and he," the son writes, "could now ramble together at their ease amidst the rich woods of Belvoir without any of the painful feelings which had before chequered his enjoyment of the place: at home a garden afforded him healthful exercise and unfailing amusement; and his situation as a curate prevented him from being drawn into any sort of unpleasant disputes with the villagers about him"-- an ambiguous statement which probably, however, means that the absent rector had to settle difficulties as to tithe, and other parochial grievances.

Crabbe now again brought his old medical attainments, such as they were, to the aid of his poor parishioners, "and had often great difficulty in confining his practice strictly within the limits of the poor, for the farmers would willingly have been attended _gratis_ also." His literary labours subsequent to _The Village_ seem to have been slight, with the exception of a brief memoir of Lord Robert Manners contributed to _The Annual Register_ in 1784, for the poem of _The Newspaper,_ published in 1785, was probably "old stock." It is unlikely that Crabbe, after the success of _The Village,_ should have willingly turned again to the old and unprofitable vein of didactic satire.