, but not characteristic of their author.
The first catalogues books as folio, quarto, octavo, and so forth, and
then cross-catalogues them as law, physic, divinity, and the rest, but
is otherwise written very much in the air. "The Newspaper" suited Crabbe
a little better, because he pretty obviously took a particular newspaper
and went through its contents--scandal, news, reviews, advertisements--in
his own special fashion: but still the subject did not appeal to him. In
"The Village," on the other hand, contemporaries and successors alike
have agreed to recognise Crabbe in his true vein. The two famous
passages which attracted the suffrages of judges so different as Scott
and Wordsworth, are still, after more than a hundred years, fresh,
distinct, and striking. Here they are once more:--

Theirs is yon House that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;--
There children dwell who know no parents' care;
Parents who know no children's love dwell there!
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
Dejected widows, with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than childhood fears;
The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they!
The moping idiot and the madman gay.

. . . . .

Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,
All pride and business, bustle and conceit;
With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go,
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye:
A potent quack, long versed in human ills,
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murderous hand a drowsy Bench protect,
And whose most tender mercy is neglect.
Paid by the parish for attendance here,
He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
In haste he seeks the bed where Misery lies,
Impatience marked in his averted eyes;
And some habitual queries hurried o'er,
Without reply he rushes on the door:
His drooping patient, long inured to pain,
And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain,
He ceases now the feeble help to crave
Of man; and silent, sinks into the grave.

The poet executed endless variations on this class of theme, but he
never quite s