him. It is not for him, he remembers, to deal only
with the sweeter aspects, though he knows them to exist, of village
life. He must return to its sterner side:--

"Fair scenes of peace! ye might detain us long,
But vice and misery now demand the song;
And turn our view from dwellings simply neat,
To this infected Row we term our Street."

For even the village of trim gardens and cherished Bibles has its
"slums," and on these slums Crabbe proceeds to enlarge with almost
ferocious realism:--

"Here, in cabal, a disputatious crew
Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew;
Riots are nightly heard:--the curse, the cries
Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies,
While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand,
And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand;
Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin;
And girls, who heed not dress, are skill'd in gin."

It is obvious, I think, that Crabbe's representations of country life
here, as in _The Village_ and _The Borough_, are often eclectic, and
that for the sake of telling contrast, he was at times content to blend
scenes that he had witnessed under very opposite conditions.

The section entitled "Baptisms" deals accordingly with many sad
instances of "base-born" children, and the section on "Marriages" also
has its full share of kindred instances in which the union in Church has
only been brought about by pressure from the parish authorities. The
marriage of one such "compelled bridegroom" is related with a force and
minuteness of detail throughout which not a word is thrown away:--

"Next at our altar stood a luckless pair,
Brought by strong passions and a warrant there;
By long rent cloak, hung loosely, strove the bride
From every eye, what all perceived, to hide.
While the boy-bridegroom, shuffling in his pace,
Now hid awhile, and then exposed his face;
As shame alternately with anger strove
The brain, confused with muddy ale, to move,
In haste and stammering he perform'd his part,
And look'd the rage that rankled in his heart:
(So will each lover inly curse his fate,
Too soon made happy, and made wise too late:)
I saw his features take a savage gloom,
And deeply threaten for the days to come.
Low spake the lass, and lisp'd and minced the while,
Look'd on the lad, and faintly tried to smile;
With soften'd speech and humbled tone she strove
To stir the embers of departed love:
While he,