“If I have in this Letter praised the good-humour of a man confessedly too inattentive to business, and if in the one on Amusements, I have written somewhat sarcastically of ’the brick-floored parlour which the butcher lets,’ be credit given to me that in the one case I had no intention to apologise for idleness, nor any design in the other to treat with contempt the resources of the poor.  The good-humour is considered as the consolation of disappointment, and the room is so mentioned because the lodger is vain.  Most of my readers will perceive this; but I shall be sorry if by any I am supposed to make pleas for the vices of men, or treat their wants and infirmities with derision or with disdain.”

After this, Crabbe himself might have admitted that the descent is not very far to the parodist’s delightful apology for the change from “one hautboy” to “one fiddle” in the description of the band.  The subsequent explanation, how the poet had purposely intertwined the various handkerchiefs which rescued Pat Jennings’s hat from the pit, lest the real owner should be detected, and the reason for it, is a not less exquisite piece of fooling:—­“For, in the statistical view of life and manners which I occasionally present, my clerical profession has taught me how extremely improper it would be by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness, however trivial, to any individual, however foolish or wicked.”  It might perhaps be inferred from such effusions as are here parodied that Crabbe was lacking in a sense of humour.  This would certainly be too sweeping an inference, for in many of his sketches of human character he gives unmistakable proof to the contrary.  But the talent in question—­often so recklessly awarded or denied to us by our fellow-creatures—­is very variable in the spheres of its operation.  The sense of humour is in its essence, as we have often been told, largely a sense of proportion, and in this sense Crabbe was certainly deficient.  The want of it accounts for much more in his writings than for his prose notes and prefaces.  It explains much of the diffuseness and formlessness of his poetry, and his inability to grasp the great truth how much the half may be greater than the whole.

In spite, however, of these defects, and of the inequalities of the workmanship, The Borough was from the first a success.  The poem appeared in February 1810, and went through six editions in the next six years.  It does not indeed present an alluring picture of life in the provinces.  It even reminds us of a saying of Tennyson’s, that if God made the country, and man made the city, then it was the devil who made the country-town.  To travel through the borough from end to end is to pass through much ignoble scenery, human and other, and under a cloudy heaven, with only rare gleams of sunshine, and patches of blue sky.  These, when they occur, are proportionally welcome.  They include some exquisite descriptions of nature, though with Crabbe it will be noticed that it is always the nature close about his feet, the hedge-row, the meadow, the cottage-garden:  as his son has noted, his outlook never extends to the landscape beyond.