There was indeed a frown, a trick of state
In Jachin: formal was his air and gait:
But if he seemed more solemn and less kind
Than some light man to light affairs confined,
Still 'twas allow'd that he should so behave
As in high seat, and be severely grave."
The arch-tempter tries in vain to seduce him from the right path. "The
house where swings the tempting sign," the smiles of damsels, have no
power over him. He "shuns a flowing bowl and rosy lip," but he is not
invulnerable after all. Want and avarice take possession of his soul. He
begins to take by stealth the money collected in church, putting bran in
his pockets so that the coin shall not jingle. He offends with terror,
repeats his offence, grows familiar with crime, and is at last detected
by a "stern stout churl, an angry overseer." Disgrace, ruin, death soon
follow; shunned and despised by all, he "turns to the wall and silently
expired." A woeful story truly, the results of spiritual pride and greed
of gain! It is to be hoped that few clerks resembled poor lost Jachin.
A companion picture to the disgraced clerk is that of "the noble peasant
Isaac Ashford[40]," who won from Crabbe's pen a gracious panegyric. He
says of him:
"Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestioned, and his soul serene.
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