The reviews were unanimous in approval, headed by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh_, and within two days of the appearance of this article, according to Crabbe's son, the whole of the first edition was sold off.
At this date, there was room for Crabbe as a poet, and there was still more room for him as an innovator in the art of fiction.

Macaulay, in his essay on Addison, has pointed out how the Roger de Coverley papers gave the public of his day the first taste of a new and exquisite pleasure.

At the time "when Fielding was birds-nesting, and Smollett was unborn," he was laying the foundations of the English novel of real life.

After nearly a hundred years, Crabbe was conferring a similar benefit.

The novel had in the interim risen to its full height, and then sunk.