to him for that purpose.”  But these very opportunities perhaps only served to show George Crabbe how poorly he was equipped for his calling as surgeon, and after a period not specified means were found for sending him to London, where he lodged with a family from Aldeburgh who were in business in Whitechapel.  How and where he then obtained instruction or practice in his calling does not appear, though there is a gruesome story, recorded by his son, how a baby-subject for dissection was one day found in his cupboard by his landlady, who was hardly to be persuaded that it was not a lately lost infant of her own.  In any case, within a year Crabbe’s scanty means were exhausted, and he was once more in Aldeburgh, and assistant to an apothecary of the name of Maskill.  This gentleman seems to have found Aldeburgh hopeless, for in a few months he left the town, and Crabbe set up for himself as his successor.  But he was still poorly qualified for his profession, his skill in surgery being notably deficient.  He attracted only the poorest class of patients—­the fees ware small and uncertain and his prospects of an early marriage, or even of earning his living as a single man, seemed as far off as ever.  Moreover, he was again cut off from congenial companionship, with only such relief as was afforded by the occasional presence in the town of various Militia regiments, the officers of which gave him some of their patronage and society.

He had still happily the assurance of the faithful devotion of Miss Elmy.  Her father had been a tanner in the Suffolk town of Beccles, where her mother still resided, and where Miss Elmy paid her occasional visits.  The long journey from Aldeburgh to Beccles was often taken by Crabbe, and the changing features of the scenery traversed were reproduced, his son tells us, many years afterwards in the beautiful tale of The Lover’s Journey.  The tie between Crabbe and Miss Elmy was further strengthened by a dangerous fever from which Crabbe suffered in 1778-79, while Miss Elmy was a guest under his parents’ roof.  This was succeeded by an illness of Miss Elmy, when Crabbe was in constant attendance at Parham Hall.  His intimacy with the Tovells was moreover to be strengthened by a sad event in that family, the death of their only child, an engaging girl of fourteen.  The social position of the Tovells, and in greater degree their fortune, was superior to that of the Crabbes, and the engagement of their niece to one whose prospects were so little brilliant had never been quite to their taste.  But henceforth this feeling was to disappear.  This crowning sorrow in the family wrought more cordial feelings.  Crabbe was one of those who had known and been kind to their child, and such were now,

  “Peculiar people—­death had made them dear.”

And henceforth the engagement between the lovers was frankly accepted.  But though the course of this true love was to run more and more smooth, the question of Crabbe’s future means of living seemed as hopeless of solution as ever.