The call will come—if not, ah, woe! for thee.’”
Crabbe had very little toleration for spiritual valetudinarians. He liked a good practical Christianity and was a little inclined to class the overscrupulous with the malades imaginaires. In “The Gentleman Farmer” we have a cleverly told story of a man of property, a professed atheist and an avowed enemy of priests and doctors. At last he fell ill; and his artful housekeeper, the meek Rebecca, produces a Scotch cousin, Dr. Mollet. He is so successful that Rebecca decides to allow the Rev. Mr. Whisp, a converted ostler, to advise her master. Mollet and Whisp between them point out that it is his duty to marry Rebecca. Then the three batten happily on their victim:
“Mollet his body orders, Whisp his soul,
And o’er his purse the lady takes control.”
Though Crabbe lived in the days of the French Revolution and Tom Paine, infidelity seems to have given him far less trouble than the enthusiasm of his parishioners. In “The Learned Boy” we have the tale of a precocious lad such as our poet detested, a mean little creature, neat and docile at school, to whom much could be taught because he could imitate without reflecting:
“He thought not much indeed—but what depends
On pains and care, was at his fingers’ ends.”
As it was impossible to make such a lad into a farmer like his honest father, he was sent to an office in town and picked up some up-to-date views of the Bible from a brother-clerk. On his return he thus explained his views to his grandmother, much to the dear old lady’s distress:
“I myself began
To feel disturbed and to my Bible ran;