Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, mentioned in the letter just cited, saw much of Crabbe during his visits to Hampstead.  A letter from Joanna to the younger George speaks, as do all his friends, of his growing kindliness and courtesy, but notes how often, in the matter of judging his fellow-creatures, his head and his heart were in antagonism.  While at times Joanna was surprised and provoked by the charitable allowances the old parson made for the unworthy, at other times she noted also that she would hear him, when acts of others were the subject of praise, suggesting, “in a low voice as to himself,” the possible mixture of less generous motives.  The analytical method was clearly dominant in Crabbe always, and not merely when he wrote his poetry, and is itself the clue to much in his treatment of human nature.

Of Crabbe’s simplicity and unworldliness in other matters Miss Baillie furnishes an amusing instance.  She writes:—­

“While he was staying with Mrs. Hoare a few years since I sent him one day the present of a blackcock, and a message with it that Mr. Crabbe should look at the bird before it was delivered to the cook, or something to that purpose.  He looked at the bird as desired, and then went to Mrs. Hoare in some perplexity to ask whether he ought not to have it stuffed, instead of eating it.  She could not, in her own house, tell him that it was simply intended for the larder, and he was at the trouble and expense of having it stuffed, lest I should think proper respect had not been put upon my present.”

Altogether the picture presented in these last years of Crabbe’s personality is that of a pious and benevolent old man, endearing himself to old and new friends, and with manners somewhat formal and overdone, representing perhaps what in his humbler Aldeburgh days he had imagined to be those of the upper circles, rather than what he had found them to be in his prosperous later days in London.

In the autumn of 1831 he was visiting his faithful and devoted friends, the Samuel Hoares, at their residence in Clifton.  The house was apparently in Princes Buildings, or in the Paragon, for the poet describes accurately the scene that meets the eye from the back-windows of those pleasant streets:—­

“I have to thank my friends for one of the most beautiful as well as comfortable rooms you could desire.  I look from my window upon the Avon and its wooded and rocky bounds—­the trees yet green.  A vessel is sailing down, and here comes a steamer (Irish, I suppose).  I have in view the end of the Cliff to the right, and on my left a wide and varied prospect over Bristol, as far as the eye can reach, and at present the novelty makes it very interesting.  Clifton was always a favourite place with me.  I have more strength and more spirits since my arrival at this place, and do not despair of giving a good account of my excursion on my return.”

It is noteworthy that Crabbe, who as a young man witnessed the Lord George Gordon Riots of 1780, should, fifty years later, have been in Bristol during the disgraceful Reform Bill Rising of 1831, which, through the cowardice or connivance of the government of the day, went on unchecked to work such disastrous results to life and property.  On October the 26th he writes to his son:—­