Goldsmith’s—­that of describing things clearly and strikingly; but there is a wide difference between the colouring of the two poets.  Goldsmith threw a sunshine over all his pictures, like that of one of our water-colour artists when he paints for ladies—­a light and a beauty not to be found in Nature, though not more brilliant or beautiful than what Nature really affords; Crabbe’s have a gloom which is also not in Nature—­not the shade of a heavy day, of mist, or of clouds, but the dark and overcharged shadows of one who paints by lamplight—­whose very lights have a gloominess.  In part this is explained by his history.”

Southey’s letter was written in September 1808, before either The Borough or the Tales was published, which may account for the inadequacy of his criticism on Crabbe’s poetry.  But the above passage throws light upon a period in Crabbe’s history to which his son naturally does little more than refer in general and guarded terms.  In a subsequent passage of the letter already quoted, we are reminded that as early as the year 1803 Mrs. Crabbe’s mental derangement was familiarly known to her friends.

But now, when his latest book was at last in print, and attracting general attention, the end of Crabbe’s long watching was not far off.  In the summer of 1813 Mrs. Crabbe had rallied so far as to express a wish to see London again, and the father and mother and two sons spent nearly three months in rooms in a hotel.  Crabbe was able to visit Dudley North, and other of his old friends, and to enter to some extent into the gaieties of the town, but also, as always, taking advantage of the return to London to visit and help the poor and distressed, not unmindful of his own want and misery in the great city thirty years before.  The family returned to Muston in September, and towards the close of the month Mrs. Crabbe was released from her long disease.  On the north wall of the chancel of Muston Church, close to the altar, is a plain marble slab recording that not far away lie the remains of “Sarah, wife of the Rev. George Crabbe, late Rector of this Parish.”

Within two days of the wife’s death Crabbe fell ill of a serious malady, worn out as he was with long anxiety and grief.  He was for a few days in danger of his life, and so well aware of his condition that he desired that his wife’s grave “might not be closed till it was seen whether he should recover.”  He rallied, however, and returned to the duties of his parish, and to a life of still deeper loneliness.  But his old friends at Belvoir Castle once more came to his deliverance.  Within a short time the Duke offered him the living of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, a small manufacturing town, on the line (as we should describe it today) between Bath and Salisbury.  The value of the preferment was not as great as that of the joint livings of Muston and Allington, so that poor Crabbe was once more doomed to be a pluralist, and to accept, also at the Duke’s hands, the vicarage of Croxton Kerrial, near Belvoir Castle, where, however, he never resided.