deny the doctrine of seducing spirits,' is
a little superfluous. The fact that a parish-clerk has taken to petty
pilfering can scarcely justify those heterodox conclusions. But when we
have smiled at Crabbe's philosophy, we begin to wonder at the force of
his sentiment. A blighted human soul is a pathetic object, however
paltry the temptation to which it has succumbed. Jachin has the dignity
of despair, though he is not quite a fallen archangel; and Crabbe's
favourite scenery harmonises with his agony.

In each lone place, dejected and dismayed,
Shrinking from view, his wasting form he laid,
Or to the restless sea and roaring wind
Gave the strong yearnings of a ruined mind;
On the broad beach, the silent summer day,
Stretched on some wreck, he wore his life away;
Or where the river mingles with the sea,
Or on the mud-bank by the elder tree,
Or by the bounding marsh-dyke, there was he.

Nor would he have been a more pitiable object if he had betrayed a
nation or sold his soul for a Garter instead of the pillage of a
subscription plate. Poor old Jachin's story may seem to be borrowed from
a commonplace tract; but the detected pilferer, though he has only lost
the respect of the parson, the overseer, and the beadle, touches us as
deeply as the Byronic hero who has fallen out with the whole system of
the world.

If we refuse to sympathise with the pang due to so petty a
catastrophe--though our sympathy should surely be proportioned to the
keenness of the suffering rather than the absolute height of the
fall--we may turn to tragedy of a deeper dye. Peter Grimes, as his name
indicates, was a ruffian from his infancy. He once knocked down his poor
old father, who warned him of the consequences of his brutality:--

On an inn-settle, in his maudlin grief,
This he revolved, and drank for his relief.

Adopting such a remedy, he sank from bad to worse, and gradually became
a thief, a smuggler, and a social outlaw. In those days, however, as is
proved by the history of Mrs. Brownrigg, parish authorities practised
the 'boarding-out system' after a reckless fashion. Peter was allowed to
take two or three apprentices in succession, whom he bullied, starved,
and maltreated, and who finally died under suspicious circumstances. The
last was found dead in Peter's fishing-boat after a rough voyage: and
though nothing could be proved, the Mayor told him that he should have
no more slaves t