And so diffused, may find its way to me? 
  Yes!  I may see my decent table yet
  Cheered with the meal that adds not to my debt;
  May talk of those to whom so much we owe,
  And guess their names whom yet we may not know;
  Blest, we shall say, are those who thus can give,
  And next, who thus upon the bounty live;
  Then shall I close with thanks my humble meal,
  And feel so well—­Oh!  God! how shall I feel!”

Crabbe is known to most readers to-day by the delightful parody of his style in the Rejected Addresses, which appeared in the autumn of 1812, and it was certainly on The Borough that James Smith based his imitation.  We all remember the incident of Pat Jennings’s adventure in the gallery of the theatre.  The manner of the narrative is borrowed from Crabbe’s lighter and more colloquial style.  Every little foible of the poet, when in this vein, is copied with great skill.  The superfluity of information, as in the case of—­

  “John Richard William Alexander Dwyer,”

whose only place in the narrative is that he preceded Pat Jennings’s father in the situation as

  “Footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire”;

or again in the detail that,

  “Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
  Up as a corn-cutter—­a safe employ”

(a perfect Crabbian couplet), is imitated throughout, Crabbe’s habit of frequent verbal antithesis, and even of something like punning, is exactly caught in such a couplet as: 

  “Big-worded bullies who by quarrels live—­
  Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give.”

Much of the parody, no doubt, exhibits the fanciful humour of the brothers Smith, rather than of Crabbe, as is the case with many parodies.  Of course there are couplets here and there in Crabbe’s narratives which justify the burlesque.  We have: 

  “What is the truth?  Old Jacob married thrice;
  He dealt in coals, and avarice was his vice,”

or the lines which the parodists themselves quote in their justification,

  “Something had happened wrong about a Bill
  Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill,
  So to amend it I was told to go,
  And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.”

But lines such as these in fact occur only at long intervals.  Crabbe’s couplets are more often pedestrian rather than grotesque.

The poet himself, as the witty brothers relate with some pride, was by no means displeased or offended by the liberty taken.  When they met in later years at William Spencer’s, Crabbe hurried to meet James Smith with outstretched hand, “Ah! my old enemy, how do you do?” Again, writing to a friend who had expressed some indignation at the parody, Crabbe complained only of the preface.  “There is a little ill-nature—­and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved ill-nature—­in their prefatory address; but in their versification they have done me admirably.”  Here Crabbe shows a slight lack of self-knowledge.  For when to the Letter on Trades the following extenuating postscript is found necessary, there would seem to be hardly any room for the parodist: