In the same preface, Crabbe further expresses similar obligations to his friend, Richard Turner of Yarmouth.

The result of this double criticism is the more discernible when we compare _The Parish Register_ with, its successor, _The Borough_, in the composition of which Crabbe admits, in the preface to that poem, that he had trusted more entirely to his own judgment.
In _The Parish Register_, Crabbe returns to the theme which he had treated twenty years before in _The Village,_ but on a larger and more elaborate scale.

The scheme is simple and not ineffective.

A village clergyman is the narrator, and with his registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials open before him, looks through the various entries for the year just completed.

As name after name recalls interesting particulars of character and incident in their history, he relates them as if to an imaginary friend at his side.