ABSTRACT
There is considerable evidence to support the view that Burns acquired a reasonable working knowledge of some of Locke's ideas. His presentation of his views would have been accessible to the competent reader that Burns was, and such a reader would have been attracted to the style in which the philosopher wrote and the relative simplicity of the manner in which he presented his arguments. William Hazlitt's The Spirit of the Age was first published in 1825, six years after Crabbe's last major work, the Tales of the Hall, saw the light. This chapter expand on Hazlitt's perception, and traces the ways in which Malthus' grand pan-global narrative shaped Crabbe's more locally intimate tales. What begins to emerge from Malthus' Essay is an advocacy of the practice of spatial economy that, as we saw previously in connection with the couplet, is also a central concern for Crabbe.
