ng necessities of his
condition, and plucking every now and then, I have no doubt, the
hundredth specimen of some common weed. He stopped opposite a shallow,
muddy piece of water, as desolate and gloomy as his own mind, called the
Leech-pond, and 'it was while I gazed on it,' he said to my brother and
me, one happy morning, 'that I determined to go to London and venture
all'"

About thirty years later, Crabbe contributed to a magazine (_The New
Monthly_) some particulars of his early life, and referring to this
critical moment added that he had not then heard of "another youthful
adventurer," whose fate, had he known of it, might perhaps have deterred
him from facing like calamities. Chatterton had "perished in his pride"
nearly ten years before. As Crabbe thus recalled the scene of his own
resolve, it may have struck him as a touching coincidence that it was by
the Leech-pool on "the lonely moor"--though there was no
"Leech-gatherer" at hand to lend him fortitude--that he resolved to
encounter "Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty." He was,
indeed, little better equipped than Chatterton had been for the
enterprise. His father was unable to assist him financially, and was
disposed to reproach him for forsaking a profession, in the cause of
which the family had already made sacrifices. The Crabbes and all their
connections were poor, and George scarcely knew any one whom he might
appeal to for even a loan. At length Mr. Dudley North, of Little Glemham
Hall, near Parham, whose brother had stood for Aldeburgh, was
approached, and sent the sum asked for--five pounds. George Crabbe,
after paying his debts, set sail for London on board a sloop at
Slaughden Quay--"master of a box of clothes, a small case of surgical
instruments, and three pounds in money." This was in April 1780.

CHAPTER II

POVERTY IN LONDON

(1780-1781)

Crabbe had no acquaintances of his own in London, and the only
introduction he carried with him was to an old friend of Miss Elmy's, a
Mrs. Burcham, married to a linen-draper in Cornhill. In order to be near
these friendly persons he took lodgings, close to the Royal Exchange, in
the house of a hairdresser, a Mr. Vickery, at whose suggestion, no
doubt, he provided himself with "a fashionable tie-wig". Crabbe at once
began preparations for his literary campaign, by correcting such verse
as he had brought with him, completing "two dramas and a variety of
prose essays," and generally