those years, as will be seen, he was a non-resident. For the
present he remained three years at the small and very retired village of
Muston, about five miles from Grantham. "The house in which Crabbe
lived at Muston," writes Mr. Hutton,[2] "is now pulled down. It is
replaced by one built higher up a slight hill, in a position intended,
says scandal, to prevent any view of Belvoir. Crabbe with all his
ironies had no such resentful feelings; indeed more modern successors of
his have opened what he would have called a 'vista,' and the castle
again crowns the distance as you look southward from the pretty garden."

Crabbe's first three years of residence at Muston were marked by few
incidents. Another son, Edmund, was horn in the autumn of 1790, and a
few weeks later a series of visits were paid by Crabbe, his wife and
elder boy, to their relations at Aldeburgh, Parham, and Beccles, from
which latter town, according to Crabbe's son, they visited Lowestoft,
and were so fortunate as to hear the aged John Wesley preach, on a
memorable occasion when he quoted Anacreon:--

"Oft am I by women told,
Poor Anacreon! thou grow'st old
. . . . .
. . . . .
But this I need not to be told,
'Tis time to _live_, if I grow old."

In 1792 Crabbe preached at the bishop's visitation at Grantham, and his
sermon was so much admired that he was invited to receive into his house
as pupils the sons of the Earl of Bute. This task, however, Crabbe
rightly declined, being diffident as to his scholarship.

In October of this year Crabbe was again working hard at his
botany--for like the Friar in _Romeo and Juliet_ his time was always
much divided between the counselling of young couples and the "culling
of simples"--when his household received the tidings of the death of
John Tovell of Parham, after a brief illness. It was momentous news to
Crabbe's family, for it involved "good gifts," and many "possibilities."
Crabbe was left executor, and as Mr. Tovell had died without children,
the estate fell to his two sisters, Mrs. Elmy and an elderly spinster
sister residing in Parham. As Mrs. Elmy's share of the estate would come
to her children, and as the unmarried sister died not long after,
leaving her portion in the same direction, Crabbe's anxiety for the
pecuniary future of his family was at an end. He visited Parham on
executor's business, and on his return found that he had made up his
mind "to place a curate at Muston, and to go and