At this point the diary ends, or in any case the concluding portion was never seen by the poet’s son.  And yet at the date when it closed, Crabbe was nearer to at least the semblance of a success than he had yet approached.  He had at length found a publisher willing to print, and apparently at his own risk, “The Candidate—­a Poetical Epistle to the Authors of the Monthly Review," that journal being the chief organ of literary criticism at the time.  The idea of this attempt to propitiate the critics in advance, with a view to other poetic efforts in the future, was not felicitous.  The publisher, “H.  Payne, opposite Marlborough House, Pall Mall,” had pledged himself that the author should receive some share of the profits, however small; but even if he had not become bankrupt immediately after its publication, it is unlikely that Crabbe would have profited by a single penny.  It was indeed a very ill-advised attempt, even as regards the reviewers addressed.  The very tone adopted, that of deprecation of criticism, would be in their view a proof of weakness, and as such they accepted it.  Nor had the poem any better chance with the general reader.  Its rhetoric and versification were only one more of the interminable echoes of the manner of Pope.  It had no organic unity.  The wearisome 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”