The apology for Crabbe's lengthiness might almost be extended to the singular inequalities of his verse. FitzGerald joins all other critics in regretting his carelessness, and indeed the charge can hardly be called harsh. A poet who habitually insists on producing thirty lines a day, whether or no the muse is willing, can hardly escape temptations to carelessness. Crabbe's friends and other contemporaries noted it, and expressed surprise at the absence in Crabbe of the artistic conscience. Wordsworth spoke to him on the subject, and ventured to express regret that he did not take more pains with the workmanship of his verse, and reports that Crabbe's only answer was "it does not matter." Samuel Rogers had related to Wordsworth a similar experience. "Mr. Rogers once told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his later works so much less correctly than in his earlier. 'Yes,' replied he, 'but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.'" This is of course very sad, and, as has already been urged, Crabbe's earlier works had the advantage of much criticism, and even correction from his friends. But however this may be, it may fairly be urged that in a "downright" painter of human life, with that passion for realism which Crabbe was one of the first to bring back into our literature, mere "polish" would have hindered, not helped, the effects he was bent on producing. It is difficult in polishing the heroic couplet not to produce the impression of seeking epigrammatic point. In Crabbe's strenuous and merciless analyses of human character his power would have been often weakened, had attention been diverted from the whole to the parts, and from the matter to the manner. The "finish" of Gray, Goldsmith, and Rogers suited exquisitely with their pensive musings on Human Life. It was otherwise with the stern presentment of such stories of human sin and misery as _Edward Shore_ or _Delay has Danger._ CHAPTER XI LAST YEARS AT TROWBRIDGE (1819-1832) The last thirteen years of Crabbe's life were spent at Trowbridge, varied by occasional absences among hiss friends at Bath, and in the neighbourhood, and by annual visits of greater length to the family of Samuel Hoare at Hampstead. Meantime his son John was resident with him at Trowbridge, and the parish and parishioners were not neglected. From Mrs. Hoare's house on Hampstead Heath it was not difficult to visit his literary friends in London; and Wordsworth, Southey, and others, occasionally stayed with the family. But as early as 1820, Crabbe became subject to frequent severe attacks of neuralgia (then called _tic douloureux_), and this malady, together with the gradual approach of old age, made him less and less able to face the fatigue of London hospitalities.