Canning.]

[Footnote 4: Readers of Lockhart's Biography will remember that in one
of Scott's latest letters to his son-in-law, before he left England for
Naples, he quoted and applied to himself this stanza of _Sir Eustace
Grey_. The incident is the more pathetic that Scott, as he wrote the
words, was quite aware that his own mind was failing.]




CHAPTER VI


THE PARISH REGISTER

(1805-1809)

"When in October, 1805, Mr. Crabbe resumed the charge of his own parish
of Muston, he found some changes to vex him, and not the less because he
had too much reason to suspect that his long absence from his incumbency
had been, partly at least, the cause of them. His cure had been served
by respectable and diligent clergymen, but they had been often changed,
and some of them had never resided within the parish; and he felt that
the binding influence of a settled and permanent minister had not been
withdrawn for twelve years with impunity. A Wesleyan missionary had
formed a thriving establishment in Muston, and the congregations at the
parish church were no longer such as they had been of old. This much
annoyed my father; and the warmth with which he began to preach against
dissent only irritated himself and others, without bringing back