This man defeats the intentions of the founder by admitting to the almshouses persons of the shadiest antecedents, on the ground that they at least had been conspicuous in their day: "Not men in trade by various loss brought down, But those whose glory once amazed the town; Who their last guinea in their pleasure spent, Yet never fell so low as to repent: To these his pity he could largely deal, Wealth they had known, and therefore want could feel." From this unfit class of pensioner Crabbe selects three for his minute analysis of character.

They are, as usual, of a very sordid type.

The first, a man named "Blaney," had his prototype in a half-pay major known to Crabbe in his Aldeburgh days, and even the tolerant Jeffrey held that the character was rather too shameless for poetical treatment.

The next inmate in order, a woman also drawn from the living model, and disguised under the title of _Clelia_, is a study of character and career, drawn with consummate skill.

Certain abortive attempts of Crabbe to write prose fiction have been already mentioned.