“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