risome note of
plea for indulgence had to be relieved at intervals by such irrelevant
episodes as compliments to the absent "Mira," and to Wolfe, who
"conquered as he fell"--twenty years or so before. The critics of the
_Monthly Review_, far from being mollified by the poet's appeal,
received the poem with the cruel but perfectly just remark that it had
"that material defect, the want of a proper subject."

An allegorical episode may be cited as a sample of the general style of
this effusion. The poet relates how the Genius of Poetry (like, but how
unlike, her who was seen by Burns in vision) appeared to him with
counsel how best to hit the taste of the town:--

"Be not too eager in the arduous chase;
Who pants for triumph seldom wins the race:
Venture not all, but wisely hoard thy worth,
And let thy labours one by one go forth
Some happier scrap capricious wits may find
On a fair day, and be profusely kind;
Which, buried in the rubbish of a throng,
Had pleased as little as a new-year's song,
Or lover's verse, that cloyed with nauseous sweet,
Or birthday ode, that ran on ill-paired feet.
Merit not always--Fortune Feeds the bard,
And as the whim inclines bestows reward
None without wit, nor with it numbers gain;
To please is hard, but none shall please in vain
As a coy mistress is the humoured town,
Loth every lover with success to crown;
He who would win must every effort try,
Sail in the mode, and to the fashion fly;
Must gay or grave to every humour dress,
And watch the lucky Moment of Success;
That caught, no more his eager hopes are crost;
But vain are Wit and Love, when that is lost"

Crabbe's son and biographer remarks with justice that the time of his
father's arrival in London was "not unfavourable for a new Candidate in
Poetry. The giants, Swift and Pope, had passed away, leaving each in his
department examples never to be excelled; but the style of each had been
so long imitated by inferior persons that the world was not unlikely to
welcome some one who should strike into a newer path. The strong and
powerful satirist Churchill, the classic Gray, and the inimitable
Goldsmith had also departed; and more recently still, Chatterton had
paid the bitter penalty of his imprudence under circumstances which must
surely have rather disposed the patrons of talent to watch the next
opportunity that might offer itself of encouraging genius 'by poverty
depressed.' The s