of Crabbe's _longueurs_. It occurred to him that while making large
omissions he might preserve the story in each case, by substituting
brief prose abstracts of the portions omitted. This process he applied
to the Tales that pleased him most, leaving what he considered Crabbe's
best passages untouched. As early as 1876 he refers to the selection as
already made, and he printed it for private circulation in 1879.
Finally, in 1882, he added a preface of his own, and published it with
Quaritch in Piccadilly.

In his preface FitzGerald claims for Crabbe's latest work that the net
impression left by it upon the reader is less sombre and painful than
that left by his earlier poems. "It contains," he urges, "scarce
anything of that brutal or sordid villainy of which one has more than
enough in the poet's earlier work." Perhaps there is not so much of the
"brutal or sordid," but then in _The_ _Parish Register_ or _The
Borough_, the reader is in a way prepared for that ingredient, because
the personages are the lawless and neglected poor of a lonely seaport.
It is because, when he moves no longer among these, he yet finds vice
and misery quite as abundant in "a village with its tidy homestead, and
well-to-do tenants, within easy reach of a thriving country-town," that
a certain shock is given to the reader. He discovers that all the evil
passions intrude (like pale Death) into the comfortable villa as
impartially as into the hovels at Aldeburgh. But FitzGerald had found a
sufficient alleviation of the gloom in the framework of the Tales. The
growing affection of the two brothers, as they come to know and
understand each other better, is one of the consistently pleasant
passages in Crabbe's writings. The concluding words of FitzGerald's
preface, as the little volume is out of print and very scarce, I may be
allowed to quote:--