They were not fictitious and "lucrative" tears that he shed.

For his object was to portray an English rural village in its ideality--rural loveliness--enshrining rural innocence and joy--and to show how man's vices, invading it from the outside, might bring all to ruin.

Crabbe's purpose was different.

He aimed to awaken pity and sympathy for rural sins and sorrows with which he had himself been in closest touch, and which sprang from causes always in operation within the heart of the community itself, and not to be attributed to the insidious attacks from without.

Goldsmith, for example, drew an immortal picture of the village pastor, closely modelled upon Chaucer's "poor parson of a town," his piety, humility, and never failing goodness to his flock .-- "Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And even his failings leaned to virtue's side; But in his duty prompt at every call He watched and wept; he prayed and felt for all.
And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way." Crabbe remembered a different type of parish priest in his boyhood, and this is how he introduces him.