Then came the tales of Winters, Summers, Springs
At Bath and Brighton--they were pretty things!
No ghosts or spectres there were heard or seen,
But all was love and flight to Gretna-green.
Perhaps your greater learning may despise
What others like--and there your wisdom lies."
To this attractive catalogue the preceptor husband, no doubt,
listened with the expression of Crabbe's _Old Bachelor_:
"that kind of cool, contemptuous smile
Of witty persons overcharged with bile,"
but she at least succeeds in interrupting his flow of information
for the time being. He retires routed. Crabbe's close
acquaintance with "the flowery pages of sublime distress," with
"vengeful monks who play unpriestly tricks," with banditti
"who, in forest wide
Or cavern vast, indignant virgins hide,"
was, as he confesses, a relic of those unregenerate days, when
"To the heroine's soul-distracting fears
I early gave my sixpences and tears."[108]
He could have groped his way through a Gothic castle without the
aid of a talkative housekeeper:
"I've watched a wintry night on castle-walls,
I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls,
And when the weary world was sunk to rest
I've had such sights--as may not be expressed.
Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed,
The peasants shun it--they are all afraid;
For there was done a deed--could walls reveal
Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel!
"Most horrid was it--for, behold, the floor
Has stain of blood--and will be clean no more.
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