too long to quote in full, and, as with Crabbe's method generally, not admitting of being fairly represented by extracts. Then there are sketches of character in quite a different vein, such as the vicar, evidently drawn from life. He is the good easy man, popular with the ladies for a kind of _fade_ complimentary style in which he excels; the man of "mild benevolence," strongly opposed to every thing new: "Habit with him was all the test of truth: 'It must be right: I've done it from my youth,' Questions he answered in as brief a way: 'It must be wrong--it was of yesterday.'" Feeble good-nature, and selfish unwillingness to disturb any existing habits or conventions, make up his character: "In him his flock found nothing to condemn; Him sectaries liked--he never troubled them: No trifles failed his yielding mind to please, And all his passions sunk in early ease; Nor one so old has left this world of sin, More like the being that he entered in." An excellent companion sketch to that of the dilettante vicar is provided in that of the poor curate--the scholar, gentleman, and devout Christian, struggling against abject poverty to support his large family. The picture drawn by Crabbe has a separate and interesting origin. A year before the appearance of _The Borough_, one of the managers of the Literary Fund, an institution then of some twenty years' standing, and as yet without its charter, applied to Crabbe for a copy of verses that might be appropriate for recitation at the annual dinner of the Society, held at the Freemasons' Tavern. It was the custom of the society to admit such literary diversions as part of the entertainment. The notorious William Thomas Fitzgerald had been for many years the regular contributor of the poem, and his efforts on the occasion are remembered, if only through the opening couplet of Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, where Fitzgerald is gibbeted as the _Codrus_ of Juvenal's satire: "Still must I hear? shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl His creaking couplets in a Tavern-Hall?" His poem for this year, 1809, is printed at length in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for April--and also Crabbe's, recited at the same dinner. Crabbe seems to have composed it for the occasion, but with the intention of ultimately weaving it into the poem on which he was then engaged. A paragraph prefixed to the lines also shows that Crabbe had a further object in view. "The Founder of this Society having intimated a hope that, on a plan which he has already communicated to his particular Friends, its Funds may be sufficiently ample to afford assistance and relief to learned officiating Clergymen in distress, though they may not have actually commenced Authors--the Author, in allusion to this hope, has introduced into a Poem which he is preparing for the Press the following character of a learned Divine in distress."