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.