Crabbe, though he adhered, with a wise knowledge of his own powers, to the heroic couplet, is really a chief founder of the rural novel--the _Silas Marner_ and the _Adam Bede_ of fifty years later.

Of course (for no man is original) he had developed his methods out of that of his predecessors.

Pope was his earliest master in his art.

And what Pope had done in his telling couplets for the man and woman of fashion--the Chloes and Narcissas of his day--Crabbe hoped that he might do for the poor and squalid inhabitants of the Suffolk seaport.

Then, too, Thomson's "lovely young Lavinia," and Goldsmith's village-parson and poor widow gathering her cresses from the brook, had been before him and contributed their share of influence.