Meantime Crabbe was perpetually writing, and as constantly destroying what he wrote.  His small flock at Great and Little Glemham employed part of his time; the education of his two sons, who were now withdrawn from school, occupied some more; and a wife in failing health was certainly not neglected.  But the busy husband and father found time to teach himself something of French and Italian, and read aloud to his family of an evening as many books of travel and of fiction as his friends would keep him supplied with.  He was preparing at the same time a treatise on botany, which was never to see the light; and during “one or two of his winters in Suffolk,” his son relates, “he gave most of his evening hours to the writing of novels, and he brought not less than three such works to a conclusion.  The first was entitled ‘The Widow Grey,’ but I recollect nothing of it except that the principal character was a benevolent humorist, a Dr. Allison.  The next was called ’Reginald Glanshaw, or the Man who commanded Success,’ a portrait of an assuming, over-bearing, ambitious mind, rendered interesting by some generous virtues, and gradually wearing down into idiotism.  I cannot help thinking that this Glanshaw was drawn with very extraordinary power; but the story was not well managed in the details I forget the title of his third novel; but I clearly remember that it opened with a description of a wretched room, similar to some that are presented in his poetry, and that on my mother’s telling him frankly that she thought the effect very inferior to that of the corresponding pieces in verse, he paused in his reading, and after some reflection, said, ‘Your remark is just.’”

Mrs. Crabbe’s remark was probably very just.  Although her husband had many qualifications for writing prose fiction—­insight into and appreciation of character, combined with much tragic force and a real gift for description—­there is reason to think that he would have been stilted and artificial in dialogue, and altogether wanting in lightness of hand.  Crabbe acquiesced in his wife’s decision, and the novels were cremated without a murmur.  A somewhat similar fate attended a set of Tales in Verse which, in the year 1799, Crabbe was about to offer to Mr. Hatchard, the publisher, when he wisely took the opinion of his rector at Sweffling, then resident at Yarmouth, the Rev. Richard Turner[3].  This gentleman, whose opinion Crabbe greatly valued, advised revision, and Crabbe accepted the verdict as the reverse of encouraging.  The Tales were never published, and Crabbe again deferred his reappearance in print for a period of eight years.  Meantime he applied himself to the leisurely composition of the Parish Register, which extended, together with that of some shorter poems, over the period just named.