le.

George Crabbe and his bride settled down in their apartments at Belvoir
Castle, but difficulties soon arose. Crabbe was without definite
clerical occupation, unless he read prayers to the few servants left in
charge; and was simply waiting for whatever might turn up in the way of
preferment from the Manners family, or from the Lord Chancellor. The
young couple soon found the position intolerable, and after less than
eighteen months Crabbe wisely accepted a vacant curacy in the
neighbourhood, that of Stathern in Leicestershire, to the humble
parsonage of which parish Crabbe and his wife removed in 1785. A child
had been born to them at Belvoir, who survived its birth only a few
hours. During the following four years at Stathern were born three
other children--the two sons, George and John, in 1785 and 1787, and a
daughter in 1789, who died in infancy.

Stathern is a village about four miles from Belvoir Castle, and the
drive or walk from one to the other lies through the far-spreading woods
and gardens surrounding the ducal mansion. Crabbe entered these woods
almost at his very door, and found there ample opportunity for his
botanical studies, which were still his hobby. As usual his post was
that of _locum tenens_, the rector, Dr. Thomas Parke, then residing at
his other living at Stamford. My friend, the Rev. J.W. Taylor, the
present rector of Stathern, who entered on his duties in 1866, tells me
of one or two of the village traditions concerning Crabbe. One of these
is to the effect that he spoke "through his nose," which I take to have
been the local explanation of a marked Suffolk accent which accompanied
the poet through life. Another, that he was peppery of temper, and that
an exceedingly youthful couple having presented themselves for holy
matrimony, Crabbe drove them with scorn from the altar, with the remark
that he had come there to marry "men and women, and not lads and
wenches!"

Crabbe used to tell his children that the four years at Stathern were,
on the whole, the happiest in his life. He and his wife were in humble
quarters, but they were their own masters, and they were quit of "the
pampered menial" for ever. "My mother and he," the son writes, "could
now ramble together at their ease amidst the rich woods of Belvoir
without any of the painful feelings which had before chequered his
enjoyment of the place: at home a garden afforded him healthful
exercise and unfailing amusement; and his situatio