istracting fears
I early gave my sixpences and tears."[108]

He could have groped his way through a Gothic castle without the
aid of a talkative housekeeper:

"I've watched a wintry night on castle-walls,
I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls,
And when the weary world was sunk to rest
I've had such sights--as may not be expressed.
Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed,
The peasants shun it--they are all afraid;
For there was done a deed--could walls reveal
Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel!

"Most horrid was it--for, behold, the floor
Has stain of blood--and will be clean no more.
Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
And the long passage send a dismal tune,
Music that ghosts delight in--and now heed
Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed.
See! with majestic sweep she swims alone
Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan,
Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake
And the feet falter every step they take.
Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes
To find a something which will soon expose
The villainies and wiles of her determined foes,
And having thus adventured, thus endured,
Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured."[109]

Crabbe's Ellen Orford in _The Borough_ (1810) is drawn from life,
and in grim and bitter irony is intended as a contrast to these
timorous and triumphant creatures

"borrowed and again conveyed,
From book to book, the shadows of a shade."

Ellen's adventures are sordid and gloomy, without a hint of the
picturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the
"air-drawn" fancies that torture the sensitive Angelinas of
Gothic fiction:

"But not like them has she been laid
In ruined castle sore dismayed,
Where naughty man and ghostly sprite
Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
Stalked round the room, put out the light
And shook the curtains round the bed.
No cruel uncle kept her land,
No tyrant father forced her hand;
She had no vixen virgin aunt
Without whose aid she could not eat
And yet who poisoned all her meat
With gibe and sneer and taunt."

Though Crabbe showed scant sympathy with the delicate
sensibilities of girls who hung enraptured over the high-pitched
heroics and miraculous escapes of Clementina and her kindred, he
found pleasure in a robuster school of romance--the adventures of
mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-