When they met in later years at William Spencer's, Crabbe hurried to meet James Smith with outstretched hand, "Ah! my old enemy, how do you do ?" Again, writing to a friend who had expressed some indignation at the parody, Crabbe complained only of the preface.

"There is a little ill-nature--and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved ill-nature--in their prefatory address; but in their versification they have done me admirably." Here Crabbe shows a slight lack of self-knowledge.

For when to the Letter on _Trades_ the following extenuating postscript is found necessary, there would seem to be hardly any room for the parodist: "If I have in this Letter praised the good-humour of a man confessedly too inattentive to business, and if in the one on _Amusements_, I have written somewhat sarcastically of 'the brick-floored parlour which the butcher lets,' be credit given to me that in the one case I had no intention to apologise for idleness, nor any design in the other to treat with contempt the resources of the poor.

The good-humour is considered as the consolation of disappointment, and the room is so mentioned because the lodger is vain.

Most of my readers will perceive this; but I shall be sorry if by any I am supposed to make pleas for the vices of men, or treat their wants and infirmities with derision or with disdain." After this, Crabbe himself might have admitted that the descent is not very far to the parodist's delightful apology for the change from "one hautboy" to "one fiddle" in the description of the band.