The rapid and continuous transition from scene to scene, and period to period, is the same in both.

Foreign kings and other potentates reappear, as with De Quincey, in ghostly and repellent forms:-- "I know not how, but I am brought Into a large and Gothic hall, Seated with those I never sought-- Kings, Caliphs, Kaisers--silent all; Pale as the dead; enrobed and tall, Majestic, frozen, solemn, still; They make my fears, my wits appal, And with both scorn and terror fill." This, again, may be compared, or rather contrasted, with Coleridge's _Pains of Sleep_, and it can hardly be doubted that the two poems had a common origin.
The year 1805 was the last of Crabbe's sojourn in Suffolk, and it was made memorable in the annals of literature by the appearance of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_.

Crabbe first met with it in a bookseller's shop in Ipswich, read it nearly through while standing at the counter, and pronounced that a new and great poet had appeared.
This was Crabbe's first introduction to one who was before long to prove himself one of his warmest admirers and friends.

It was one of Crabbe's virtues that he was quick to recognise the worth of his poetical contemporaries.

He had been repelled, with many others, by the weak side of the _Lyrical Ballads_, but he lived to revere Wordsworth's genius.
His admiration for Burns was unstinted.