On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge he was received with cordiality; but when it was seen that he had fallen in love with the squire's niece, it was only natural that "his presumption" should not at first meet the approval either of Mrs. Tovell or her husband. But the young people plighted troth to each other, and the engagement was recognized by the lady's family. It was years, however, before the wedding bells were set ringing. Crabbe's apprenticeship to Mr. Page finished, he tried ineffectually to raise the funds for a regular course of hospital instruction in London. Returning to Aldborough, he furnished a shop with a few bottles and a pound's worth of drugs, and set up as "an apothecary." Of course it was only amongst the poor of his native town that he obtained patients, the wealthier inhabitants of the borough distrusting the knowledge of a doctor who had not walked the hospitals. In the summer of 1778, however, he was appointed surgeon to the Warwickshire militia, then stationed at Aldborough, and in the following winter, on the Warwickshire militia being moved and replaced by the Norfolk militia, he was appointed surgeon to the latter regiment also. But these posts were only temporary, and conferred but little emolument on their holder. At length poverty drove the poet from his native town. The rest of his career is matter of notoriety. Every reader knows how the young man went to London and only escaped the death of Otway or Chatterton by the generous patronage of Burke, how through Burke's assistance he was ordained, became the Duke of Rutland's chaplain, obtained comfortable church preferment, and for a long span enjoyed an amount of domestic happiness that was as great and richly deserved as his literary reputation. Crabbe's marriage with Sarah Elmy eventually conferred on him and his children the possession of Parham Lodge, which estate, a few years since, passed from them into the hands of wealthy purchasers. The poet also succeeded to other wealth through the same connection, an old-maid sister of John Tovell leaving him a considerable sum of money. "I can screw Crabbe up and down like an old fiddle," this amiable lady was fond of saying; and during her life she proved that her boast was no empty one. But her will was a handsome apology for all her little tiffs. CHAPTER XXV. NUMBER ELEVEN--A HOSPITAL STORY.