Chapter LV: Letter XXII: The Poor of the Borough

PETER GRIMES.

----Was a sordid soul,
Such as does murder for a meed;
Who but for fear knows no control,
Because his conscience, sear'd and foul,
Feels not the import of the deed;
One whose brute feeling ne'er aspires
Beyond his own more brute desires.

_Scott, Marmion_ [Canto II.].

Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent, and every one did threat----

_Shakspeare. Richard III._ [Act V. Sc. 3, vv. 204-5].

The times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.

_Macbeth_ [Act III. Sc. 4. vv. 78-82].

The Father of Peter a Fisherman--Peter's early Conduct--His Grief for
the old Man--He takes an Apprentice--The Boy's Suffering and
Fate--A second Boy: how he died--Peter acquitted--A third
Apprentice--A Voyage by Sea: the Boy does not return--Evil Report
on Peter: he is tried and threatened--Lives alone--His Melancholy
and incipient Madness--Is observed and visited--He escapes and is
taken: is lodged in a Parish-house: Women attend and watch him--He
speaks in a Delirium: grows more collected--His Account of his
Feelings and visionary Terrors previous to his Death.