But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace
The poor laborious natives of the place.
Then shall I dare these real ills to hide
In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?”
In this spirit he describes the barren coast of East Suffolk, not then the haunt of the holiday-maker and the golfer, but the battleground of the smuggler and the preventive men, the home of—
“A bold and artful, surly, savage race,
Who only skilled to take the finny tribe,
The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe;
Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high,