We have already heard of the workhouse hospital and the “potent quack” who attended to the sick. Let us now listen to Crabbe’s description of the young clergyman who ministered to the afflicted of his village:
“A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday task
As much as God or man can fairly ask;
The rest he gives to loves and labours light,
To fields the morning, and to feasts the night.
A sportsman keen, he shouts through half the day,
And, skilled at whist, devotes the night to play.”
But I must reluctantly forbear to quote more from “The Village,” and ask you to turn your attention to two passages in “The Borough,” which show what sort of men lived in Crabbe’s native town, and also indicate the power our author has in depicting two very different characters.
I will take Peter Grimes, the fisherman, first. Grimes was one of those human monsters who delight in cruelty; and the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, to its shame, furnished victims for its exercise in workhouse apprentices. The guardians of the overflowing workhouses of London were accustomed to get rid of their superfluous numbers by binding children as apprentices to masters, who practically became the owners of the little victims they were paid to teach.