NOTES TO LETTER XVIII.

Note 1, page 284, line 24.

With glossy leaf and tawny bloom below.

This scenery is, I must acknowledge, in a certain degree like that heretofore described in the Village; but that also was a maritime country:-if the objects be similar, the pictures must (in their principal features) be alike, or be bad pictures. I have varied them as much as I could, consistently with my I wish to be accurate.

Note 2, page 284, line 26.

Form the contracted Flora of the town.

The reader unacquainted with the language of botany is informed, that the Flora of a place means the vegetable species it contains, and is the title of a book which describes them.

VOL. II.

U

THE BOROUGH.

LETTER XIX.

THE POOR OF THE BOROUGH.

THE PARISH-CLERK.

Nam dives qui fieri vult,

Et citò vult fieri; sed quæ reverentia legum,

Quis metus, aut pudor est unquam properantis avari?

Juvenal. Sat. 14.

Nocte brevem si fortè indulsit cura soporem,
Et toto versata thoro jam membra quiescunt,
Continuò templum et violati Numinis aras,
Et quod præcipuis mentem sudoribus urget,
Te videt in somnis; tua sacra et major imago
Humanâ turbat pavidum, cogitque fateri.

Juvenal. Sat. 13.

The Parish-Clerk began his Duties with the late Vicar, a grave and austere Man; one fully orthodox; a Detecter and Opposer of the Wiles of Satan-His Opinion of his own Fortitude―The more frail offended by these Professions-His good Advice gives further Provocation-They invent Stratagems to overcome his Virtue-His Triumph -He is yet not invulnerable: is assaulted by Fear of Want, and Avarice-He gradually yields to the Seduction-He reasons with himself and is persuaded-He offends, but with Terror; repeats his Offence; grows familiar with Crime; is detected-His Sufferings and Death.

THE BOROUGH.

LETTER XIX.

THE PARISH-CLERK.

WITH Our late vicar, and his age the same,

His clerk, hight Jachin, to his office came;

The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender

frame:

But Jachin was the gravest man on ground,

And heard his master's jokes with look profound;

For worldly wealth this man of letters sigh'd,

And had a sprinkling of the spirit's pride:

But he was sober, chaste, devout, and just,
One whom his neighbours could believe and trust:
Of none suspected, neither man nor maid
By him were wrong'd, or were of him afraid.

There was indeed a frown, a trick of state
In Jachin;-formal was his air and gait;
But if he seem'd more solemn and less kind
Than some light men to light affairs confined,