it was Crabbe's _Borough_ to which he listened with unfailing delight
twenty years later, in the last sad hours of his decay.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: A cant term for smuggled spirits.]




CHAPTER VII


_THE BOROUGH_

(1809-1812)

The immediate success of _The Parish Register_ in 1807 encouraged Crabbe
to proceed at once with a far longer poem, which had been some years in
hand. _The Borough_ was begun at Rendham in Suffolk in 1801, continued
at Muston after the return thither in 1805, and finally completed during
a long visit to Aldeburgh in the autumn of 1809. That the Poem should
have been "in the making" during at least eight years is quite what
might be inferred from the finished work. It proved, on appearance, to
be of portentous length--at least ten thousand lines. Its versification
included every degree of finish of which Crabbe was capable, from his
very best to his very worst. Parts of it were evidently written when the
theme stirred and moved the writer: others, again, when he was merely
bent on reproducing scenes that lived in his singularly retentive
memory, with needless minuteness of detail, and in any kind of couplet