you to that second school; without a little Latin we should have made nothing of you:  now, I think we shall succeed.”  Moreover Crabbe had been a wide and discursive reader.  “Mr. Crabbe,” Burke told Reynolds, “appears to know something of every thing.”  As to his more serious qualifications for the profession, his natural piety, as shown in the diaries kept in his days of trial, was beyond doubt.  He was well read in the Scriptures, and the example of a religious and much-tried mother had not been without its influence.  There had been some dissipations of his earlier manhood, as his son admits, to repent of and to put away; but the growth of his character in all that was excellent was unimpeachable, and Burke was amply justified in recommending Crabbe as a candidate for orders to the Bishop of Norwich.  He was ordained on the 21st of December 1781 to the curacy of his native town.

On arriving in Aldeburgh Crabbe once more set up housekeeping with a sister, as he had done in his less prosperous days as parish doctor.  Sad changes had occurred in his old home during the two years of his absence.  His mother had passed away after her many years of patient suffering, and his father’s temper and habits were not the better for losing the wholesome restraints of her presence.  But his attitude to his clergyman son was at once changed.  He was proud of his reputation and his new-formed friends, and of the proofs he had given that the money spent on his education had not been thrown away.  But, apart from the family pride in him, and that of Miss Elmy and other friends at Parham, Crabbe’s reception by his former friends and neighbours in Aldeburgh was not of the kind he might have hoped to receive.  He had left the place less than three years before, a half-trained and unappreciated practitioner in physic, to seek his fortune among strangers in London, with the forlornest hopes of success.  Jealousy of his elevated position and improved fortunes set in with much severity.  On the other hand, it was more than many could tolerate that the hedge-apothecary of old should be empowered to hold forth in a pulpit.  Crabbe himself in later life admitted to his children that his treatment at the hands of his fellow-townsmen was markedly unkind.  Even though he was happy in the improved relations with his own family, and in the renewed opportunities of frequent intercourse with Miss Elmy and the Tovells, Crabbe’s position during the few months at Aldeburgh was far from agreeable.  The religious influence, moreover, which he would naturally have wished to exercise in his new sphere would obviously suffer in consequence.  The result was that in accordance with the assurances given him by Thurlow at their last meeting, Crabbe again laid his difficulties before the Chancellor.  Thurlow quite reasonably replied that he could not form any opinion as to Crabbe’s present situation—­“still less upon the agreeableness of it”; and hinted that a somewhat longer period of probation was advisable before he selected Crabbe for preferment in the Church.