of payment approached, and I ventured to represent my case to Lord Rochford.  I begged to be credited for this sum till I received it of my subscribers, which I believe will be within one month:  but to this letter I had no reply, and I have probably offended by my importunity.  Having used every honest means in vain, I yesterday confessed my inability, and obtained with much entreaty and as the greatest favour a week’s forbearance, when I am positively told that I must, pay the money or prepare for a prison.

“You will guess the purpose of so long an introduction.  I appeal to you, sir, as a good and, let me add, a great man.  I have no other pretensions to your favour than that I am an unhappy one.  It is not easy to support the thoughts of confinement; and I am coward enough to dread such an end to my suspense.  Can you, sir, in any degree aid me with propriety?  Will you ask any demonstrations of my veracity?  I have imposed upon myself, but I have been guilty of no other imposition Let me, if possible, interest your compassion.  I know those of rank and fortune are teased with frequent petitions, and are compelled to refuse the requests even of those whom they know to be in distress; it is, therefore, with a distant hope I ventured to solicit such favour:  but you will forgive me, sir, if you do not think proper to relieve.  It is impossible that sentiments like yours can proceed from any but a humane and generous heart.

  “I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the
  happiness to obtain credit with you, I must submit to my fate. 
  My existence is a pain to myself, and every one near and dear
  to me are distressed in my distresses.  My connections, once
  the source of happiness, now embitter the reverse of my
  fortune, and I have only to hope a speedy end to a life so
  unpromisingly begun:  in which (though it ought not to be
  boasted of) I can reap some consolation from looking to the end
  of it.  I am, sir, with, the greatest respect, your obedient
  and most humble servant,
                                        GEORGE CRABBE.”

The letter is undated, but, as we shall see, must have been written in February or March of 1781.  Crabbe delivered it with his own hands at Burke’s house in Charles Street, St. James’s, and (as he long after told Walter Scott) paced up and down Westminster Bridge all night in an agony of suspense.

This suspense was not of long duration Crabbe made his threatened call, and anxiety was speedily at an end.  He had sent with his letter specimens of his verse still in manuscript.  Whether Burke had had time to do more than glance at them—­for they had been in his hands but a few hours—­is uncertain.  But it may well have been that the tone as well as the substance of Crabbe’s letter struck the great statesman as something apart from the usual strain of the literary pretender.  During Burke’s first years in London, when he himself