The looks of pity in the Trav’ller’s face: 
  Within, the Father, who from fences nigh
  Had brought the fuel for the fire’s supply,
  Watch’d now the feeble blaze, and stood dejected by. 
  On ragged rug, just borrowed from the bed,
  And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed,
  In dirty patchwork negligently dress’d,
  Reclined the Wife, an infant at her breast;
  In her wild face some touch of grace remain’d,
  Of vigour palsied and of beauty stain’d;
  Her bloodshot eyes on her unheeding mate
  Were wrathful turn’d, and seem’d her wants to state,
  Cursing his tardy aid—­her Mother there
  With gipsy-state engross’d the only chair;
  Solemn and dull her look; with such she stands,
  And reads the milk-maid’s fortune in her hands,
  Tracing the lines of life; assumed through years,
  Each feature now the steady falsehood wears. 
  With hard and savage eye she views the food,
  And grudging pinches their intruding brood;
  Last in the group, the worn-out Grandsire sits
  Neglected, lost, and living but by fits: 
  Useless, despised, his worthless labours done,
  And half protected by the vicious Son,
  Who half supports him; he with heavy glance
  Views the young ruffians who around him dance;
  And, by the sadness in his face, appears
  To trace the progress of their future years: 
  Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit,
  Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat! 
  What shame and grief, what punishment and pain,
  Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain—­
  Ere they like him approach their latter end,
  Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend!

  But this Orlando felt not; ‘Rogues,’ said he,
  ’Doubtless they are, but merry rogues they be;
  They wander round the land, and be it true
  They break the laws—­then let the laws pursue
  The wanton idlers; for the life they live,
  Acquit I cannot, but I can forgive.’ 
  This said, a portion from his purse was thrown,
  And every heart seem’d happy like his own.”

The Patron, one of the most carefully elaborated of the Tales, is on an old and familiar theme.  The scorn that “patient merit of the unworthy takes”; the misery of the courtier doomed “in suing long to bide";—­the ills that assail the scholar’s life,

  “Toil, envy, want, the Patron and the jail,”

are standing subjects for the moralist and the satirist.  In Crabbe’s poem we have the story of a young man, the son of a “Borough-burgess,” who, showing some real promise as a poet, and having been able to render the local Squire some service by his verses at election time, is invited in return to pay a visit of some weeks at the Squire’s country-seat.  The Squire has vaguely undertaken to find some congenial post for the young scholar, whose ideas and ambitions are much in advance of those entertained for him in