"Habit with him was all the test of truth:
'It must be right: I've done it from my youth,'
Questions he answered in as brief a way:
'It must be wrong--it was of yesterday.'"

Feeble good-nature, and selfish unwillingness to disturb any existing
habits or conventions, make up his character:

"In him his flock found nothing to condemn;
Him sectaries liked--he never troubled them:
No trifles failed his yielding mind to please,
And all his passions sunk in early ease;
Nor one so old has left this world of sin,
More like the being that he entered in."

An excellent companion sketch to that of the dilettante vicar is
provided in that of the poor curate--the scholar, gentleman, and devout
Christian, struggling against abject poverty to support his large
family. The picture drawn by Crabbe has a separate and interesting
origin. A year before the appearance of _The Borough_, one of the
managers of the Literary Fund, an institution then of some twenty years'
standing, and as yet without its charter, applied to Crabbe for a copy
of verses that might be appropriate for recitation at the annual dinner
of the Society, held at the Freemasons' Tavern. It was the custom of the
society to admit such literary diversions as part of the entertainment.
The notorious William Thomas Fitzgerald had been for many years the
regular contributor of the poem, and his efforts on the occasion are
remembered, if only through the opening couplet of Byron's _English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, where Fitzgerald is gibbeted as the