“Careless was he of surplice, hood and band, And kindly took them as they came to hand.” He was succeeded by the young man from Cambridge, assailed in his youth by a “clamorous sect,” who preached “conviction” so violently that “Our best sleepers started as they slept.” But says old Dibble: “Down he sank upon his wretched bed And gloomy crotchets filled his wandering head.” And it is on this point that Crabbe is so illuminating as to the spirit of his age. His difficulties as a clergyman were due rather to the fanaticism than to the indifference of his flock. In “Sir Eustace Grey,” a very powerful description of a madman who finds religious peace at last, the poet concludes,-- “But, Ah! though time could yield relief And soften woes it cannot cure; Would we not suffer pain and grief To have our reason sound and sure? Then let us keep our bosoms pure Our fancies’ favourite flights suppress; Prepare the body to endure, And bend the mind to meet distress, And then His Guardian care implore, Whom demons dread and men adore.” As the doctor recommends a moderate and temperate life as the best preventive of disease, and distrusts strong remedies and universal panaceas, so Crabbe (true to the best medical tradition) regards the pastoral work of healing the soul. Tolerant in most respects, he is severe on what the eighteenth century styled “enthusiasm,” and on sentimentalism in religion generally. Thus, in “The Borough” we have in the letter on religious sects a description of the contempt the Calvinistic Methodists had for Church teaching: “Hark to the Churchman; day by day he cries: Children of men, be virtuous, be wise, Seek patience, justice, temp’rance, meekness, truth, In age be courteous, be sedate in youth,--So they advise, and when such things be read, How can we wonder that their flocks are dead?” This “cauld morality,” as Scott makes Mr. Trumbull call it in “Redgauntlet,” is contrasted with a really rousing sermon: “Further and further spread the conquering word As loud he cried--‘the Battle of the Lord.’ Ev’n those apart who were the sound denied, Fell down instinctive, and in spirit died. Nor stayed he yet--his eye, his frown, his speech, His very gesture, had a power to teach; With outstretch’d arms, strong voice, and piercing call He won the field and made the Dagons fall; And thus in triumph took his glorious way, Through scenes of horror, terror, and dismay.” Crabbe often found his work hindered by a sort of fatalistic quietism which gave no hope to the “unconverted,” even when they sought the aid of the minister of religion. In “Abel Keene” we have the story of a merchant’s clerk who abandoned his faith, and then in days of poverty came for help: