He intimates that he had already made the experiment, but without success.

His peculiar gifts did not fit him for it.

As he wrote the words, he doubtless had in mind the many prose romances that he had written, and then consigned to the flames.

The short story, or rather the exhibition of a single character developed through a few incidents, he felt to be the method that fitted his talent best.
Crabbe then proceeds to deal with the question, evidently implied by the _Quarterly_ reviewer, how far many passages in _The Borough_, when concerned with low life, were really poetry at all.

Crabbe pleads in reply the example of other English poets, whose claim to the title had never been disputed.