Say, that no merits in his favour plead, But miseries only, and his abject need; "Nor bring me grov'ling thanks, nor high-flown praise;

"I would his spirits, not his fancy raise:
"Give him no hope that I shall ever more
“A man so vile to my esteem restore;
"But warn him rather, that, in time of rest,
"His crimes be all remember'd and confess'd:
"I know not all that form the sinner's debt,
"But there is one that he must not forget."

The mind of Susan prompted her with speed
To act her part in every courteous deed:
All that was kind she was prepared to say,
And keep the lecture for a future day;
When he had all life's comforts by his side,
Pity might sleep, and good advice be tried.

This done, the mistress felt disposed to look,
As self-approving, on a pious book:

Yet, to her native bias still inclined,
She felt her act too merciful and kind;
But when, long musing on the chilling scene
So lately past-the frost and sleet so keen-
The man's whole misery in a single view—
Yes! she could think some pity was his due.

Thus fix'd, she heard not her attendant glide With soft slow step-till, standing by her side, The trembling servant gasp'd for breath, and shed Relieving tears, then utter'd-" He is dead!"

"Dead!" said the startled Lady. "Yes, he fell "Close at the door where he was wont to dwell; "There his sole friend, the Ass, was standing by, "Half dead himself, to see his Master die."

66

Expired he then, good Heaven! for want of
food?"

"No! crusts and water in a corner stood ;-
"To have this plenty, and to wait so long,
"And to be right too late, is doubly wrong:
"Then, every day to see him totter by,
"And to forbear-Oh! what a heart had I!"

"Blame me not, child; I tremble at the news.” ""Tis my own heart," said Susan, "I accuse: "To have this money in my purse—to know "What grief was his, and what to grief we owe; "To see him often, always to conceive

"How he must pine and languish, groan and grieve, "And every day in ease and peace to dine, "And rest in comfort!—what a heart is mine!" (1)

(1) [Resentment' is one of the pieces in which Mr. Crabbe has exercised his extraordinary powers of giving pain,—though not gratuitously in this instance, -nor without inculcating a strong lesson of forgiveness and compassion. A middle-aged merchant marries a lady of good fortune, and persuades her to make it all over to him when he is on the eve of bankruptcy. He is reduced to utter beggary; and his wife, bitterly and deeply resenting the wrong he had done her, renounces all connection with him, and endures her own reverses with magnanimity. At last a distant relation leaves her his fortune; and she returns to the enjoyment of moderate wealth, and the exercise of charity to all but her miserable husband. Broken by age and disease, he now begs the waste sand from the stonecutters, and sells it on an ass through the streets :

-And from each trifling gift
Made shift to live-and wretched was the shift.'

The unrelenting wife descries him creeping through the wet at this miserable employment; but still withholds all relief, in spite of the touching entreaties of her compassionate handmaid, whose nature is as kind and yielding, as that of her mistress is hard and inflexible. Of all the pictures of mendicant poverty that have ever been brought forward in prose or verse, in charity sermons or popular harangues, — we know of none half so moving or complete, so powerful, and so true, as is contained in sundry passages of this tale. — JEFFREY.]