“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, a tyrant, frowning walk’d before,
  Felt the poor purse, and sought the public door,
  She sadly following in submission went
  And saw the final shilling foully spent;
  Then to her father’s hut the pair withdrew,
  And bade to love and comfort long adieu! 
    Ah! fly temptation, youth, refrain! refrain! 
    I preach for ever; but I preach in vain!”