Wri' 
 
 
 ^0f 
 

 
 
 ^co. /<r^ ^
 
 BY WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1. IRISH SONGS AND POEMS. Second Edition 
 
 with froutispiece of the 'tt'aterfall of Asaroe - - 6 
 
 2. LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD, ^vitb portrait of 
 
 the Author 3 6 
 
 3. FLOWER PIECES: DAY AND NIGHT 
 
 SOKGS : Ballajjs. With two designs by D. G. 
 Rossetti - « GO 
 
 4. LIFE AND PHANTASY, with frontispiece by Sir 
 
 J. E. iliUais, R.A, and design by Arthur Hughes - 6 
 
 5. THOUGHTandWORD.andASHBYMANOR 
 
 (A Play). With portrait of the Author (IKUS), and 
 four theatrical scenes drawn by Mrs. Allingham - 6 
 
 6. BLACKBERRIES 6 
 
 London 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 And New York : 15 East I6tu Stueet 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 VARIETIES IN PROSE 
 
 Vol.- I
 
 WIIJ.IAM ALU \r, HAM 
 From a dnrwi'/^i;- by //is ll'i/f, 1875
 
 VARIETIES IN PROSE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 
 Volume I 
 
 RAMBLES 
 
 BY 
 
 PATRlCiUS WALKER 
 
 Part I 
 
 London 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 And New York : 15 East i6th Street 
 
 1893 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 f jq LIBRARY 
 
 ,,^^ , UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNU 
 
 HO Oh SANTA BARBARA 
 
 /}6-^ ]/3 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 TT is by my Husband's wish that I publish this col- 
 -*- lected edition of his prose writings. 
 
 Many of the ' Eambles ' and some of the Essays have 
 previously appeared, in whole or in part, at different times. 
 All of them were arranged and prepared for publication 
 by my Husband shortly before his death, and they now go 
 forth exactly as he left them. 
 
 My warmest thanks are due to our old friend, Mrs. 
 Alexander Carlyle, for her valuable help in reading the 
 proof sheets, and seeing these volumes through the press. 
 
 Helen Allingham.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGK 
 
 I In the New Forest i 
 
 II At Winchester ....... ^^ 
 
 III At Farnham ........ 45 
 
 IV ^loor Park and Jonathan Swil't .... 69 
 
 .V Exeter and Elsewhere 104 
 
 VI Dean Prior 123 
 
 VII Bideford and Clovelly 138 
 
 VIII Lp the \ ale of Blackmore .... 149 
 
 IX At Salisljury and Bemerton 166 
 
 X At Canterbury . 192 
 
 XI At Liverpool 225
 
 RAMBLES BY PATRICIUS WALKER. 
 
 EAMBLE THE FIEST. 
 
 IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 (1872.) 
 
 Fox-hunting — William the Conqueror — Brockenhurst Church — Swine- 
 herds — Mark Ash — Gilpin's Forest Scene)"}/ — Oaks — Queen's bower — 
 Insect Life — Birds and Squirrels — Gypsies — Foresters — The Local 
 Dialect — Rev. William Gilpin — Three notable Trees — Boldre Church- 
 yard — Lyndhurst — Forest Frontiers — Christchurch — Flowers, Plants, 
 and Animals. 
 
 A MEET of foxhounds in the New Forest on a fine 
 open winter morning is a pretty enough sight, even 
 to one who is no sportsman. 
 
 On some lawn or rising ground, encircled by far-spreading 
 russet or leafless woods, you see the mounted groups of 
 red-coated gentlemen, with a sprinkling of ladies, graceful 
 in flowing dark skirts ; lively boys on their ponies, and 
 pretty little long-haired girls ; black, brown and gray-coated 
 riders too, lawyer or doctor, tradesman or farmer ; whoso- 
 ever, in short, chooses to come on the outside of a horse to 
 share in this aristo-democratic amusement. 
 
 The little old whipper-in (we have no huntsman), with 
 ruddy face and lively eyes, sitting his big horse as though he 
 lived there, and in fact the most and best of his life is in the 
 saddle, calls now and again or cracks his whip at the hounds 
 
 1
 
 2 IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 if restless ; but usually they are standing about, or stretched 
 on the sward, or nosing and questing quietly round within 
 a small area. 
 
 The master bides somewhat aloof, the cares of sove- 
 reignty visible on his brow ; now and again dofting his hat 
 to a fair equestrian, or exchanging a grave w^ord with some 
 personage of importance. Carriages drive up on the road, 
 and gentlemen go over to greet their friends. Other spec- 
 tators there are, but not many ; by no means like the 
 enthusiastic crowd of miscellaneous pedestrians that come 
 out to see the hounds in Ireland, and often follow them, too, 
 for the best part of the day : here are only a few foresters 
 and boys, smock-frocked, apathetic, and perhaps half a 
 dozen young w^omen and children from the nearest cottages. 
 
 Now we move to the cover ; in go the hounds, ' feather- 
 ing ' (waving their feathery tails) among the gorse and 
 rusty bracken. ' Ho, Eallywood ! — Ho, Trojan ! ' — a hound 
 gives tongue—' challenges.' — ' There goes Diamond — hark 
 to Diamond ! ' Forty canine voices make the wood resound : 
 Eeynard darts across one of the Forest rides — ' Tally-ho-o ! ' 
 — he bursts into the open, the whole pack at his heels, and 
 away we go. But 'tis not mine to attempt the description 
 of ' a run ; ' it has been done a thousand times, and done 
 well. The New Forest is a good place for ' seeing the 
 hounds work,' as they stream together over the open moor- 
 lands, or come to a check in some gorse-brake or plantation. 
 The riding is the easiest possible, no jumping of any sort 
 unless you like ; much of the ground is open moor (you have 
 very seldom to go over crop), and through the woods run 
 numerous grassy avenues, called ' rides,' where you may 
 gallop as on a lawn. Two things a stranger has to guard 
 against — getting into a swamp, and losing his way : let him 
 turn and twist about a little, and then find himself all alone 
 among the trees and underwood, at some point where three 
 or more forest ways diverge, and it may prove no easy
 
 HUNTING. 3 
 
 matter to choose aright. As to the swamps, if you are so 
 ambitious as to keep well forward without knowing the 
 ground, you may be galloping along comfortably this moment, 
 and the next floundering in a treacherous muddy, abyss, 
 firm to the inexperienced eye. You plunge from your saddle ; 
 alas for the shining white breeches ! but all is a trifle if you 
 can safely land your struggling and frightened horse, without 
 recourse to spades and ropes. These swamps, clogging and 
 chilling the legs of the hounds with wet mud, are the cause, 
 as some think, of that lameness to which the Forest hounds 
 are peculiarly liable. Others attribute it to the prickles of 
 the abundant dwarf furze {Ulex nanus). The winter in this 
 region is commonly so mild and open, that the sport often 
 goes on when frozen-up elsewhere, so it is naturally a 
 favourite habitat of hunting men. 
 
 A French lady detested war, ' because it spoiled conversa- 
 tion ' — people could talk of nothing else. If you are fond of 
 hunting-talk after dinner, you can enjoy plenty of it in society 
 here ; and there might be worse — it smacks of open air and 
 living nature ; but to a stranger, who is not an enthusiastic 
 sportsman, a little of it suffices. He knows nothing of such 
 a gentleman's bay mare, or of Captain So-and-so's ' brother 
 to Eattler ; ' the copses, gorses, farms, roads, spinneys, hills, 
 bottoms, brooks, enclosures, &c., are mere names, not in his 
 mind's geography. 
 
 The Conqueror and his sons wei'e mighty hunters — not of 
 fox and hare ; but the oft-told tale of the destruction of 
 many villages, churches, and houses in making this New 
 Forest, is like so nmch other ' History.' 
 
 The poor chalk-gravel soil of the district (Middle Eocene 
 of the geologists), could never have supported many inhabi- 
 tants. Ytene (' Furzy ' — ' the Furze-land ' ?) was clearly 
 a wild, moory, woody district in William's day, with a 
 small scattered population. He made it a Royal Forest, 
 
 1 — 2
 
 4 7.V THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 and increased the severity of the old forest laws of the 
 Danish and Saxon kings. The inhabitants naturally dis- 
 liked the afforestment, and stories of the new king's 
 inhumanity were told and retold, gaining in bulk and 
 definition as the facts retired into the past, till the First 
 "William became in monkish chronicles (subsequent, not 
 contemporary : there is nothing of it in the Saxon Chronicle) 
 a royal Dragon of Wantley, to whom houses and churches 
 were geese and turkeys. He destroyed ' twenty-two ' — 
 ' thirty-six ' — ' fifty -two parish churches,' and when his two 
 sons in succession lost their lives in this wicked New 
 Forest, it was clearly by vengeance of Heaven. 
 
 Of the buildings named in the Norman Great Eoll, which 
 the Saxons called ' Doom-Book ' (Judgment-Book — Eate- 
 Book), and sometimes, to express their fears, ' Doomsday 
 Book' (a title absurdly kept up, and officialised), two kinds 
 are commonly found to this day, whether the same walls or 
 not, in the places indicated — churches and mills. 
 
 Here at Brockenhurst (is it ' Badger- wood,' or 'Brook- 
 wood,' or 'Broken-wood'?) is one of the Doom-Book 
 churches. Looking southward from the railway platform 
 you may see its weathercock just clearing the tree-tops of 
 a wooded hill, and five minutes' walk will bring you to the 
 circular graveyard surrounded by shady roads, with its 
 
 elephantine oak -bole, 
 
 A cave 
 Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray, 
 
 and the stately pillared yew-trees, iron-red, whose dark 
 boughs almost brush the spire. Both these trees, very 
 likely, were here when the Norman commissioners wrote in 
 their list, ' x\luric tenet in Broceste unam hidam . . . Ibi 
 ecclesia. Silva de 20 porcis. Tempore Eegis Edwardi 
 valebat 40 solidos, et post et modo 4 libras.'^ Their 
 spelling of the names of places, by the bye, gives little 
 ' Domesday Book, Hampshire, Ordnance Survey Office.
 
 FiELICS OF THE PAST. 5 
 
 guidance ; they knew the views of Eex Willelmus to be 
 practical, not antiquarian : yet the antiquarian facts now 
 are of the greater interest. The southern portal, with 
 some other parts of the church, also its font, appear to be 
 of the original Saxon building, some 800 years old or more. 
 
 Build not, good squire, worthy parishioners, a new 
 church, high or low ! repair the old with loving care and 
 reverent anxiety : there is a charm , there is a value in- 
 expressibly precious in ancientness and continuity of 
 remembrance. The world is poorer and smaller by the 
 loss of an old thing visibly connecting us, poor fleeting 
 mortals, with the sacred bygone years ; leaving a door open, 
 as it were, into the Land of the Past. Build us not in, 
 beseech you, on that side, enjail not our imagination (which 
 is no foolish or trivial part of us) with new Lymington 
 bricks, or even from the fresh cut quarries of Portland or 
 Caen. Is every town and village in England to be made 
 like a Melbourne, a Farragutville, a Cubittopolis ? It is 
 deeper than a question of taste, this of blotting out traces of 
 the great Past from our visible world, destroying them for 
 ever, with all their softened beauty, and mystery, and 
 tender sadness. 
 
 The worst thing to do with a venerable relic is to erase 
 it from the earth. The next worst thing (often almost as 
 bad as the first) is to ' restore ' it. Sometimes we are 
 told that though a new edifice is necessary (a statement 
 more readily made than proved) the old building is not to 
 be pulled down. But who ever saw a forsaken edifice of 
 the humbler sort that did not quickly fall into neglect? 
 Besides, the mystic charm of an ancient thing in use is en- 
 hanced a thousandfold. What interest have antiquities in 
 the glass cases of museums, compai'ed with those that meet 
 you in daily life, in streets or rural landscapes ? Keep, Old 
 England, thy old churches (albeit old forms of worship have 
 changed, and will change), and old manor-houses too, and
 
 6 IN THE KEIF FOREST. 
 
 town-halls, and ivied walls, and shady wdnding roads ; these 
 things, believe it, tend to novirish all that is wholesome and 
 beautiful in conservatism, and to foster a love of the 
 country of our ancestors, which is also our own, and will, 
 we hope, be our children's. 
 
 From the churchyard, through a veil of boughs, you look 
 down the slope of Brockenhurst Park, and away to a wide 
 semicirque of woods, sweeping round the northern horizon 
 from east to west. Within the forty miles' circuit of the 
 Forest is many an open heath, many a thick wood of oak 
 and beech, many a green avenue and shadowy glade. Main 
 roads, smooth as in a park, run through it to Southampton, 
 to Lymington, to Christchurch, to Sarum — for this ancient 
 name holds its place on the milestones and fingerposts. In 
 most parts you may turn off where you will into heath or 
 hurst, without fence or other hindi'ance. There are many 
 new plantations of oaks, with alternate fir-trees to nurse 
 them ; but through these also, lifting the gate-latch, you 
 may pass unchallenged. This wild liberty is the great 
 charm of the region. No longer under fierce forest-law are 
 you liable to be seized for wandering in the King's Forest, 
 perhaps to undergo ordeal of fire to prove your innocence of 
 poaching, perhaps to lose your eyes on the charge of slaying 
 venison or wild boar. You may wander for hours and meet 
 no one but a chance woodman or earth-stopper, or a swine- 
 herd in acorn-time ; or, more rarely still, a truffle-seeker 
 with his little dogs. 
 
 The foresters have an old privilege of turning their swine 
 into the Forest for six weeks in autumn. One man under- 
 takes the care of a herd of several hundred hogs. Having 
 fixed on a sleeping-place, at first he feeds them a few times 
 and teaches them to attend his horn. Signor Gryll, though 
 shy and reserved, is not stupid, and knows what is good for 
 him. On the second or third evening, when the horn
 
 THE SWINEHERD. 7 
 
 sounds through long glades and tangled underwood, gilded 
 perhaps with last sunlight, the hogs come trotting into the 
 rendezvous by twos and threes, by dozens and scores, and 
 soon lie stretched heads and tails, acorn-glutted, under 
 dim forest boughs, only a grunt heard now and again, not 
 unlike the human snore ; while, in little wigwam close by, 
 snores humanly their temporary lord and master, his magic 
 horn by his side. Such a group as this, by sunset or moon- 
 light, may the autumnal forest-wanderer, musing haply of 
 dryads and hamadryads, of fairies and wood-sprites, chance 
 upon beneath a spreading oak, — hogs not elves, yet 
 picturesque after their own fashion. 
 
 The oaks of the New Forest (chiefly Quercns robnr), slow- 
 growing on a gravelly soil, are not lofty nor thick-leaved ; 
 they are gnarly and close-grained, with boughs much twisted 
 and writhen. But here and there rises a kingly tree, like 
 that of Knightwood, a huge straight lofty bole, with mighty 
 spreading branches, each a tree in bulk. Some three miles 
 or so from Lyndhurst, near the road to Christchurch, stands 
 this Knightwood Oak, strong and vigorous, and may stand 
 for many a century to come. 
 
 Hot was the summer day, and shoulder deep the eagle- 
 fern that clothed hill and hollow, and muffled up all paths, 
 when my friend (a magician he, who better than west or 
 south wind can make an oak-tree talk in melody) — my friend 
 and I pushed through from Knightwood to Mark Ash, the 
 greatest beechen shade in the Foresf. Huge and weird are 
 its brindled beech-trees Underneath, dim at noonday, our 
 feet rustled in the withered relics of a former summer : we 
 paused, and the lonely wood was silent. The mighty 
 growths stood well apart, each trunk rising into many 
 great stems that lifted high overhead their canopy of inter- 
 woven green. Amid this company of vast and ancient 
 trees, arrived at through a labyrinth of tangled woodland, 
 we seemed to be at the core of some boundless primaeval
 
 8 IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 forest. The sunlight striking through its lofty branches on 
 the floor of brown fallen leaves could not enliven it. There 
 was something ominous and awful in the place. One half- 
 expected at every turn to encounter some unexampled sight. 
 Those hogs, if they strayed hither, would seem to be of the 
 crew of Comus, or his mother Circe. Here, as we reclined 
 under the shade of melancholy boughs, my companion took 
 out a well-worn little pocket-volume, and (himself a famous 
 poet) read aloud from ' As You Like It.' We agreed that 
 Oliver's lioness and serpent are very strange beasts and 
 that Shakespeare's Arden is a forest in dreamland. No ser- 
 pents here ; but as we waded throiigh the tall bracken 
 spreading like a sea round Mark Ash, my Companion stopped 
 suddenly and said, in deep, tragic tones, ' I believe this place 
 is quite full of vipers ! ' and as we went on, he expatiated in 
 vivid language on the various dreadful consequences that 
 might ensue from a bite. We were only bitten by gnats and 
 forest-flies ; and with all my walking in wild places, I don't 
 think I have seen more than half a dozen vipers in my life. 
 A country doctor in a district full of copses commons and 
 woods, told me he had had only two cases of viper bite in 
 sixteen years, neither of them serious. 
 
 The name ' Mark Ash,' like Bound Oak (Boundary Oak), 
 indicates some special tree once used for a mark. We saw 
 no ash in this beech wood, and ash-trees in the forest are 
 very few. 
 
 Mr. Gilpin, in his ' Forest Scenery,' is hard upon the 
 beech — calls it an ' unpleasing ' tree, ' an object of disap- 
 probation.' To the worthy vicar of Boldre belongs the 
 merit of having loved and sought after landscape beauty at 
 a time when few had any eyes for it ; but he always criti- 
 cised nature with reference to his own little drawings in 
 brown ink, and to what could be agreeably expressed by 
 such means. A quality called Picturesqueness, defined ac- 
 cording to certain limitations of his own, was what he
 
 GILPIN'S 'FOREST SCENERY.' 9 
 
 looked for and found or missed in every visible object or 
 scene. - The horse-chestnut is ' a heavy disagreeable tree,' 
 — ' the whole tree together in flower is a glaring object, 
 totally inharmonious and unpicturesque.' He is severe on 
 the willows — ' the weeping willow is the only one of its 
 tribe that is beautiful.' The cedar is interesting, the more so 
 on account of ' the respectable mention which is everywhere 
 made of it in Scripture ; ' but the hawthorn ' has little 
 claim to picturesque beauty,' nay, it is ' sometimes offen- 
 sive ; ' while the poor bramble (whose sweeping curves 
 tufted with leaf-sprouts, appear to some eyes the perfection 
 of elegance) is denounced as ' the most insignificant of all 
 vegetable reptiles.' But all this is natural enough in one 
 who looked up to Horace Walpole and Eeverend Mr. Mason 
 as his arbiters of taste ; it is on a level with the former's 
 gothic architecture, and the latter's poetry, which the writer 
 of it so honestly believed to be immortal. Yet it is giving 
 a false impression of Gilpin to put foremost his absurdities. 
 His little books on scenery maj^ still be looked into wdth 
 interest, for his love of nature was genuine ; he expresses 
 himself in pure and accurate language of its kind, and the 
 brown sketches are often clever and pleasing. Henry 
 Thoreau, of Massachusetts, whose notes upon nature in 
 his own region are so fresh and vivid, took nmch interest in 
 old Mr. Gilpin's writings and sketches. 
 
 In i)icturesqiicncss Gilpin ranks the oak highest, and here, 
 no doubt, most will agree with him. That is to say, the 
 oak in maturity and in old age ; as a stripling, like many 
 things that advance slowly to their perfection, it is ungainly. 
 Not far from the stalwart Knightwood Oak, stand his 
 famous elder brethren, named 'The Twelve Apostles,' 
 reckoned to be the oldest trees in the Forest. Their 
 situation is not impressive ; they grow scattered about a 
 space of flat open ground, cultivated as a farm. Their 
 heads are gone ; they are shattered stumps, though still
 
 10 ly THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 alive ; forlorn and decayed giants. The new crop of winter 
 wheat springs green around one, whose gnarly roots clutch 
 the soil as with monstrous claws ; the farmer's cows scratch 
 their sides against the rhinoceros bark of another ; this one 
 is a hollow tower ; that a pillar of ivy. The handsomest 
 oak in the New Forest (they say) is one near its western 
 boundary, at Moyle's Court. 
 
 That which as yet holds first place in my regard stands in 
 the beautiful wood with a beautiful name — ' Queen's Bower' 
 — stretching downward one great arm across the clear brook 
 (a rare and precious thing in the Forest), that plays over 
 gravel, and ' winds about and in and out ' among alder and 
 hazel. This oak, though not hollow, is evidently very aged. 
 Its short bole, massive as the pillar of some rock temple, is 
 tinted with delicate gray lichens and embroidered with 
 creeping lines of ivy. Tufts of polypody flourish in the 
 ample space whence the heavy branches diverge all at once 
 — an enviable reclining place, but not so easy to mount to as 
 you may think it. Profane not the lichened and ivied bark 
 by such an attempt, but lie down on the sward, under these 
 wide-stretching twisted boughs, with the brook at your feet, 
 and watch, if day and season allow, the trembling sunlights 
 and cool translucent shadows, the dancing parties of whirli- 
 gig-beetles [Gyrinus natator), the troops of 'water-mea- 
 surers ' [Hydrometra) jerking themselves on the glassy 
 surface, the little fish coming and vanishing, the jewelly 
 dragon-flies, some azure-bodied, some green, darting up and 
 down the streamlet's course — veritable flying dragons to the 
 insects which they seize and devour. One will sometimes 
 even pounce on a passing butterfly, carry it to some twig, 
 tear off its wings and gobble up its body in a minute. These 
 fair ferocious creatures, blue or emerald, borne on wings of 
 violet gauze or silver netted with black, the French (is it 
 partly satiric or moral ?) name demoiselles ; and our own 
 poets have sometimes called them ' damsel flies.'
 
 INSECTS. 11 
 
 The abundance of insect life in the Forest in summer-time, 
 interesting as it is, proves now and again inconvenient : 
 clouds of gnats in the air, armies of ants and ticks in the 
 grass, corsair wasps and hornets, gadflies as big as humble- 
 bees, crawling 'forest-flies' to set your horse wild — of 
 these there are enough and to spare. The special ' forest- 
 fly ' {Hippohosca) is of a dirty reddish colour, about as big 
 as a middle-sized house-fly, very abundant, hard to hit, and 
 harder to kill. They are said to prefer white and gray 
 horses, and they swarm on them by hundreds. They bite, 
 but that is not the worst ; they crawl — equally, it is said, 
 forward, backward, or sideways — and tickle as they crawl. 
 Olive oil defeats them when and where it can be applied. 
 A strange horse coming to Lyndhurst races will probably 
 have some of his running taken out of him by the fret caused 
 by these troublesome natives. Horses bred in the Forest 
 don't seem to mind them ; and you will see many a herd of 
 forest ponies, many a grave mare and frisking foal on the 
 wood-lawns, feeding and moving about as comfortably, to all 
 appearance, as if they had never heard of a Hippohosca or 
 (Estrus equi. The horse-gadfly lays her eggs on the horse's 
 hairs, ivithin reach of his tongue ; he licks off the sticky stuff 
 and swallows it ; out come the grubs, and fasten and feed 
 on the coat of his stomach till they are an inch long, and of 
 an age to drop off and be carried abroad ; falling on the 
 ground, they burrow awhile, then rise into the air as gad- 
 flies, continue their species, and die. The sheep gadfly 
 punctures the sheep's nostril and lays her eggs there. The 
 worms creep up into the cavities of the skull, and feed, 
 descending in due time for a short open-air life. While 
 these creatures ai'e crawling up or down its nostrils, the 
 sheep jumps about and sneezes violently. The cow-gadfly 
 is the big bee-like one ; it lays its eggs under the skin, 
 making a puncture which sends the cow galloping with tail 
 up. While a cow is thus disturbed by the pricking of her
 
 12 IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 hide, it is remarkable that a number of large grubs feeding 
 on the inside surface of a horse's stomach don't appear to do 
 him the least harm or annoyance in the ordinary course. 
 When they go astray, in their fleshy pasturage, fasten in 
 a wrong place, then they do harm, and may give their host 
 the ' bots.' Possibly the human entozoa are countless, and 
 only do harm in exceptional cases — when they go astray. 
 Is not the multiplicity and variety of animal life as astound- 
 ing to think of as the starry universe overhead ? And is not 
 man's mind incomparably greater and more wonderful than 
 all the phenomena of which it takes cognisance ? 
 
 Here, on a summer's day, under the Oak of Queen's 
 Bower, its cool brook running by, the sunshine tempered 
 with curtains of foliage, is the place of all others to fleet the 
 time as in the golden age. There are no ants or ticks in 
 this close sward ; the merry wild bees hum past on their 
 errands ; from afar comes the soft voice of the cuckoo. And 
 now let us rise and wander through the close beeches of 
 Liney Hill and the graceful glades and lawns of Whitley 
 Wood. Perhaps that sluggish hawk, the honey-buzzard, 
 may be seen slowly skimming round ; he rifles the nest of 
 the wild bee in some hollow bole or high fork, not eating 
 the honey but the bee-grubs. The human forester, when he 
 can find it, takes the honey for his share. Here are fir- 
 trees ; at a dropping cone I look up and see the squirrel 
 that has thus betrayed himself climbing from branch to 
 branch, and keeping as well as he can on the further side of 
 his tree, but the bushy tail (his helm in leaping) is not 
 easily hid. When unalarmed he ascends his tree in spirals, 
 by an easily inclined plane ; if pressed, he jumps rapidly 
 from tree to tree, uttering a creaking little cry of fright. 
 That loosish bundle of sticks in the larch-top is one of the 
 nests or ' cages.' The Forest-boy often wears a squirrel- 
 skin cap, with the tail set as feather ; and about Christmas- 
 time these rough young sylvans go squirrel-hunting with
 
 GYPSIES. 13 
 
 ' squoyles,' short sticks knobbed with lead, and knock 
 down scores of the bright-eyed Httle red creatures. Verily, 
 man is the fiercest of animals ; he spares nothing. The 
 gypsies bake the squirrel whole in a ball of clay among their 
 wood embers, and do the hedgehog same fashion, a way of 
 cooking common to wild no-housekeepers in various parts of 
 the world, and said to give a better result (keeping in the 
 juices and flavour) than more elaborate processes. The 
 fallow-deer of the Forest were killed off, save a few stragglers, 
 some twelve years ago, with loss of picturesqueness and old- 
 world associations, but to the advantage of the young oaks, 
 and of the hollies, too, which now grow tall and strong and 
 enrich the woods in winter. 
 
 There are yet some Gypsies, or ' Egyptians,' as old Acts 
 of Parliament call them, in the Forest ; for the most part, of 
 the tribes calling themselves ' Lee ' and ' Stanley.' When 
 I say ' in the Forest,' I mean traversing and flitting about 
 the district, and camping therein oftener than elsewhere. 
 You may suddenly light, even in the depth of winter, on 
 their squalid encampment on some sheltered piece of sward, 
 or among the gorse and underwood on the fringe of a 
 common ; low, savage tents, mere cross-sticks and patch- 
 work ; with a population no less uncouth — weird old women, 
 naked children, young women, boys and men, brown-faced, 
 black-eyed, black-haired, dirty ; not fierce but wild-looking, 
 like untamed animals as they are ; their attire, however old, 
 brightened with some gaudy-coloured kerchief. With the 
 tents is probably found a covered cart like a Cheap Jack's, 
 three or four asses and a rough pony or two tethered close 
 by ; while a wood fire, with a large pot slung over it, sends 
 up its blue fume. 
 
 At first glance, these people much resemble those dark- 
 complexioned natives of the West and South of Ireland, 
 who are said to be in part of Spanish breed ; more closely 
 viewed, they have often a strikingly Hindoo appearance,
 
 14 7.V THE NEJV FOREST. 
 
 carried safe across the four centuries or so since they started 
 westward from upper India, urged perhaps by famine or 
 war, and became a wandering tribe. It seems hkely tiiat 
 towards the confines of Asia and Europe they spht into at 
 least tw^o streams of vagabondage, tlie northern one creeping 
 into South Russia, Bohemia, and so westward ; the southern 
 stream making its way to Egypt and on into Spain. In 
 Bohemia and Egypt they first came particularly under the 
 notice of Westerns, — were probably numerous there ; 
 hence the terms ' Bohemian ' and ' Egyptian ' or ' Gypsy,' 
 applied to them in ignorance of their real history. A 
 learned indefatigable Teuton, Dr. Pott, has packed into 
 his thick volume. Die Zigeuncr in Europa und Asien 
 (Halle, 1844), a huge mass of information about these folk 
 and their speech, a wonderful little people, keeping their 
 oriental race and manners so long distinct among the sur- 
 rounding European millions, and using, how^ever largely 
 coiTupted, a real language of their own. 
 
 The gypsies who chiefly frequent the New Forest, pro- 
 bably but a few scores in count, possibly a couple of 
 hundred, seem to be steadily diminishing in number. In 
 their struggle for life the new element of rural police bears 
 hard on them ; they must ' move on,' and are, nominally, 
 only allowed to stay one night in a spot ; but this rule is 
 often evaded. Tired of moving on (involuntarily), many 
 English gypsies have moved off, of late years, to America 
 and Australia. The ' Stanleys ' and ' Lees ' of the Forest 
 keep mainly to the traditional businesses of making baskets, 
 brooms, clothes-pegs ; some go round mending rush-bottom 
 chairs, some play the fiddle in taverns. The men are to be 
 seen at fairs with donkeys and forest ponies for sale, while 
 the women and lads do the honours of ' Aunt Sally,' or 
 some other popular game. The local magistrates and rural 
 policemen give no unkindly report of the gypsy people ; 
 consider them in no way dangerous, and moderately honest.
 
 GYPSIES. 15 
 
 They are seldom ' pulled up,' and then but for minor 
 offences, and when they are fined the money is always 
 forthcoming. A g}"psy is seldom without ready money, and 
 they help one another freely in case of need ; nor are their 
 old or sick ever thrown upon parish relief. They keep no 
 pigs and have no forest privileges ; they steal wood, but are 
 not suspected much of poaching ; now and again, however, 
 a clever greyhound is seen in their company. Their Jiorse- 
 stealing notoriety has faded away. Within the last twenty 
 years, I am told, many of the New Forest gj^sies have 
 become much less peculiar and exclusive in their habits ; 
 their men and women marry non-gypsy mates, and half- 
 gypsies are growing commoner than the true breed. People 
 unmistakably of the dark strain are to be seen at work in 
 the harvest gangs ; and now and again, not often, you find 
 one of them a sailor in a yacht or merchant ship. But 
 there are still some who pride themselves on keeping un- 
 mixed their ancient blood ; and a few years ago, I am 
 informed, a gypsy girl of remarkable beauty, one of the 
 Stanleys, refused, on that ground, to marry a well-to-do 
 farmer of the parish of Fawley. It is extremely hard to 
 get any trustworthy account of their more intimate life — 
 for they never apply to the law, and seldom quarrel seriously. 
 What is their education ? Does one now and again rise in 
 social rank? Is there any lady, for example, in our day 
 (I have heard rumour of such things), in whose cheek, as in 
 the little Duchess's in that wonderful poem, ' the tinge ' 
 might be recognised? 
 
 In addition to other good authorities I have consulted an 
 experienced rural postman of the Forest, who is also a 
 gamekeeper ; he still, he says, comes pi'etty often on a 
 gypsy camp ; they sometimes, though rarely, get letters ; 
 he thinks that very few of them can read or write. lie 
 believes they have no religion. The old and young go 
 begging ; some of the old women tell fortunes. What
 
 16 IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 puzzles him most is what they do with their dead ; he 
 never saw or heard of a gypsy's funeral. He has often met 
 five or six of them in a public-house talking to each other 
 in their own lingo, and sometimes quarrelling in their drink ; 
 but they very seldom get taken up. The regular gypsies 
 never sleep in a house winter or summer. 
 
 As to creed, marrying, etc., my own impression is that 
 they have certain traditional tenets, unknown to the 
 exoteric world, and most likely not very important in any 
 sense ; while as to outward observances they take the 
 easiest way that serves, according to time and place, and 
 glide along like a snake through a coppice, with eyes 
 constant to the practical objects of getting what they want, 
 and of shunning danger. Here they always profess to 
 belong to the Church of England, and sometwies use its 
 forms of baptism, marriage, and burial, but I think never 
 attend service. The author of ' Westward Ho ' told me 
 that a Curate of his at Eversley, who had a theory that 
 gypsies are descendants of one of the Lost Tribes, announced 
 one day with much delight that he had persuaded some 
 gypsies to let him baptize a new baby of theirs, and they 
 requested to have it named ' Eizvah,' obviously Hebrew, 
 or of Hebraic origin. The Eector a day or two after, paid 
 the camp a visit, complimented the mother on having her 
 child christened, and remarked on the curious name. ' Well, 
 your good Eeverence, you see 'twas born yonder up at the 
 
 Eizvore (Eeservoir), so we just thought ' Be sure the 
 
 Eector enjoyed giving this information to his philological 
 Curate. 
 
 Oi:ie Sunday evening in late autumn, I was roving, lonely 
 and moody enough, under a gray sky and thinning yellow 
 leaves, and found myself about sundown in Whitley W^ood. 
 Turning a clump of hollies, I came suddenly on two gypsy 
 tents. There was an old woman, over seventy she said, 
 with cunning mahogany face, and hair still black ; her son, 
 
 J
 
 A TALK WITH GYPSIES. 17 
 
 a good-looking man of five-and-thirty ; his wife, who was 
 nursing her tentJi child ; and the other nine children, all 
 living and well, were swarming about, or not far away. 
 There were also an elder married pair, who, I found, had 
 no children. The father of the ten, Tom by name, happened 
 to be an old acquaintance of mine. I had found him, some 
 years before, lying ill and all but speechless with quinsy, 
 and had done him some service. It had struck me then 
 how miserable the case of a sick gypsy ; but further reflection 
 suggested that probably, in most cases of illness a ragged 
 tent would be better than Guy's or Bartholomew's, and 
 no treatment than too much. Great hospitals are good 
 means of training doctors, rather than of curing patients. 
 Still, Tom in his quinsy seemed in need of medical aid, and 
 I had sent him some. 
 
 The older married woman had a closed book in her hand. 
 ' It's a Bible, your good honour ; parson in north parts o' 
 the Forest giv' it us t'other day ; and we was a-readin' till 
 the daylight failed.' They had begun at the beginning, 
 and had found some things that puzzled them, and which 
 they were discussing when I came up. ' Who was Cain's 
 wife, your honour ? ' I could not tell them. ' And who 
 was Cain afraid of when he asked to have a mark put on 
 him lest people should kill him? The world was empty.' 
 Answer : ' We are to suppose that Cain had a long life 
 before him, and people quickly increased in numbers.' 
 Elder gj'psy man (tentatively) : ' Your honour, I was in a 
 shop in Southampton last week, and I heard a gentleman 
 say, ' The Bible's a bad book,' says he. P. Walker : ' It 
 was not a wise thing to say.' Younger gypsy woman 
 (trimming sail) : ' Maybe he'll find his mistake out when 
 his last hour comes.' And so we talked awhile — a conver- 
 sation in itself extremely unimportant, but it was curious 
 to find these vagrants, too, amusing themselves with a 
 discussion of Biblical difQculties. My good offices to Tom's 
 
 2
 
 18 m THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 quinsy were remembered, and made a new gift on my part 
 inevitable ; so, shutting it into the baby's hand, and 
 receiving a number of blessings in return, I took my 
 departure through the dark alleys of the wood. 
 
 In any case, you must not hold converse with a gypsy 
 without having a coin ready as tag to the interview. It 
 would be entirely against good manners to omit it. In 
 their mixture of independence of bearing and freedom in 
 conversation, with readiness to accept a gift, they are very 
 like Irish folk, who in this, as in so many characteristics, 
 are curiously unlike their Saxon co-mates. 
 
 This Irish readiness to accept a gift, is not mean or 
 greedy. You, with whom they have entered into friendly 
 human intercourse, have evidently much more money than 
 they ; and it is but natural, and for the pleasure of both 
 parties, that there should be some overflow from the plenum 
 to the vacuum. They accept it freely and avowedly as a 
 gift, and with a well-implied understanding that in the case 
 of contact with an emptier than themselves, they are in 
 turn ready to play donor. And so they are. If you give 
 nothing, no insult follows ; at most, if expectation rose high, 
 there may be some cunning little touch of satire. If they 
 have done you some actual service, they are by no means 
 anxious to be paid for it, in the hard shape of an equivalent. 
 They wish the transaction to be gift for gift, and are usually 
 quite willing that you should be the obliged party if you 
 prefer it. This is entirely a distinct feeling from the 
 universal English love of a fee, ' a tip,' which so disagree- 
 ably astonishes American visitors to the old country. The 
 Saxon by no means looks for a pure gift in any case. That, 
 to his habit of mind, would mean beggary. But he thinks 
 ' nothing for nothing ' an obviously just principle. ' If I 
 do anything for you, what will you jDay me ? ' — and if you 
 withhold the pay, he growls and threatens. 
 
 Indisputable and priceless are the sturdy qualities of the
 
 LOCAL DIALECT. 19 
 
 Saxon ; those of the Kelt are tenderer and finer. To this 
 day exists an astonishing incompatibihty between them, 
 who have hved together so long, and a deep-seated difficulty 
 of mutual understanding. People easily znisconceive and 
 dislike the very virtues of those who are of temperament 
 and habits unlike their own. 
 
 The Gypsies, for their part, try to pick up a penny or a 
 shilling howsoever they can without much risk, and to 
 secure such creature comforts as their shifting and shifty 
 manner of life allow^s. Though now, perhaps, slowly 
 merging into the general mass of the population, they still 
 may be counted a strange little tribe in our midst, wath a 
 very curious wild flavour. Among the most usual places in 
 this district for gypsy encampments are Norley Wood, and 
 Shirley Holmes, near Lymington ; The Nodes, near Hythe ; 
 Bartley Eegis, in Ealing parish; Crow's Nest Bottom, near 
 Bramshaw ; Minstead - manor - bounds on the west side ; 
 Marbro' Deep, near Holmsley. Several large parties were 
 seen encamped, during the icy weather of a recent cold 
 January. 
 
 The Foresters of the humbler class are on familiar terms 
 with the ' G}TDS,' or ' Gypos,' but can tell you little about 
 them, having (like perhaps most poor people) but little obser- 
 vation or curiosity outside the circle of their immediate 
 interests, still less reflection or speculation ; and when they 
 do receive impressions, lacking words to convey them. 
 
 The Foresters are not distinguished for mental gifts or for 
 excellence of manners ; and indeed the same might be said 
 of the inhabitants of some of the adjacent towns, who now 
 and again recall to the stranger's mind that alliterative 
 epithet which is sometimes applied to Hampshire people. 
 Would it be fanciful, or a too hasty induction from limited 
 experience, to set down the Wilts and Dorset folk as gentler 
 and more kindly ? Though it is a good while since Cerdic 
 landed on its coast, Hants (the fair Isle of Wight included) 
 
 2—2
 
 20 IN TEE NEW FOREST. 
 
 is still very Saxon in manners and temperament ; and the 
 word Saxon has in these respects carried one consistent 
 reputation from the earliest times ; till that absm'd modern 
 phrase, ' the Anglo-Saxon race,' came into fashion and 
 glory in newspapers and stump-oratory. The Angles and 
 the Saxons were much of a muchness ; and what of 
 the Scandinavians, and the Normans, and the Britons 
 themselves ? 
 
 The dialect of the Forest and its vicinity is ungainly in 
 sound, harsh and drawling, with no tone in it, and spoken 
 mainly with the teeth shut: — ' Hev'ee zeen t' fox, Jurge? 
 they'se lost he, I bet ! ' — ' Na-a-a ! I zeed 'en goo into vuzz 
 at t' earner o' thic 'ood.' — 'Big 'un?' — ' Ya-a-as ! ' — 
 'Where hist gwine now then?' — 'Whoam.' — 'Thee's 
 betterr come with I.' The ' r ' has not a burr, but a thin, 
 slurring sound. They have a good many woi'ds not usual in 
 book English, and some of them expressive ; for example — 
 ' flisky,' small, like small rain; ' louster,' noise, confusion; 
 ' slummakin,' slouchy, careless, untidy ; ' wiwery,' giddy, 
 as when the head swims ; * mokins ' are coarse gaiters ; 
 ' humwater ' is a cordial with mint in it. They call the 
 bog-myrtle or sweet-gale the 'gold-withy,' and the white- 
 beam 'hoar-withy.' The word 'idle' always means light- 
 minded, careless, flippant, which is traceable to the Anglo- 
 Saxon meaning. 
 
 When Mr. Gilpin (of the ' Forest Scenery,' etc.) came to 
 this locality in 1777, as vicar of Boldre parish, including a 
 large slice of the southern part of the Forest, he found the 
 people rude and semi-savage, a wild flock, poachers, 
 smugglers, despisers of laws and morals ; and during his 
 stay among them of twenty-seven years he faithfully sought 
 to improve them, not without effect. William Gilpin, a 
 lineal descendant of Bernard Gilpin, called ' The Apostle of 
 the North,' was born in 1724, at Scaleby Castle, near
 
 WILLIAM GILPiyf. 21 
 
 Carlisle, the house of his grandfather, 'a counsellor of note,' ' 
 whose eldest son, being a bad manager, ran into debt, and 
 was at last obliged to sell the family place. The second 
 son, John Bernard, entered the army, and when a captain 
 of foot got command of a company of Invalids at Carlisle, 
 where he settled. He had married at* the age of twenty, 
 his wife being eighteen, and they ' lived together in conjugal 
 felicity fifty years,' says the tombstone at Carlisle. Their 
 son William entered Queen's College, Oxford, January, 1740 
 (N.S.) ; B.A., 1744; ordained 1746, and made curate of 
 Irthington ; M.A., 1748. In 1752, age twenty-nine, he 
 became principal assistant at the school of the Eev. Daniel 
 Sanxay, Cheam, Surrey, who in a year retired in Gilpin's 
 favour. He now married. His own account, dated thirty 
 years later, is simple and pleasing : — 
 
 'When my uncle was in possession of Scaleby Castle, before his affairs 
 went wrong, he took a little niece, a fatherless child, to bring up. He 
 had no children of his own, and his wife and he considered her as such, 
 nor were any father or mother fonder of any of their own children than 
 they were of her. She used often to be at Carlisle to play with her 
 cousins, and her cousins were as often at Scaleby to play with her. She 
 was a pretty little girl; and everybody said she was a very good little 
 girl. In short, one of her cousins, though only a schoolboy, took a parti- 
 cular fancy to her. He soon after made his father and mother his confi- 
 dants ; and they were far from discouraging him. They probably thought 
 (as I do now) that early attachments, though not favourable to ambition 
 and worldly schemes, are far from being unfavourable to virtue ; and my 
 father, good man (which alone would endear his memory to me), painted 
 her picture and sent it me to Oxford; though the poor girl herself was 
 then ignorant of the occasion. In process of time, however, the plot 
 began to open. The two cousins became acquainted with each other's 
 sentiments ; and though (as neither of them had anything to depend on 
 but themselves) it was several years before the drama was concluded by 
 a marriage, j'et at length this step was thought prudent by all theii* 
 friends ; and they have now (17'J1) lived together about thirty years, 
 without having been almost as many days separated. No marriage could 
 be more happy. All their schemes succeetled ; and they are now, in 
 
 ' From letter of Rev. "\V. G., quoted by Rev. Richard Warner in 
 LUcrary Itccullcctiuns, London, 18;J0, vol. i., j). 31(), cto.
 
 22 IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 tlicir old age, in affluent circumstances, and have six fine pri'andchildren 
 to bear their name after them. They have often said to each other, they 
 never knew wliat could be called an affliction : and only have to hope 
 that God will be pleased to work with them by felicity, as He often does 
 with others by calamity.' ' 
 
 In his school ho seems to have been a sort of minor 
 Arnold ; took great pains with the morals and religion of 
 his pupils, had a constitutional code, and in certain cases 
 tried a culprit by a jury of his fellows, ' bound by honour.' 
 ' I never knew,' he says, ' an improper verdict given.' 
 Two daughters wei'e born to him, who died yomig, and two 
 sons, of whom the elder went to America, married and grew 
 rich, settling at Philadelphia. The second son, another 
 William, went into the Church, and succeeded his father as 
 master of Cheam School in 1777. The father, fifty-four 
 years old by this time, had kept the school for twenty-five 
 years, and now retired with about 10,000Z. saved. His 
 many excellent qualities, both as man and teacher, made 
 many of his old pupils friends of his for life, and one of 
 these, William Mitford, Esq., now presented him to the 
 vicarage of Boldre. He had thus, altogether, an income 
 of perhaps 7001. a year. In this large parish, fifteen to 
 eighteen miles in circuit, Mr. Gilpin went about actively, 
 visiting the poor cottagers and helping them as well as he 
 knew how. As a preacher, he had an impressive earnest- 
 ness and simplicity ; and it is related that he once com- 
 pelled a certain rich married farmer to give up a mistress 
 whom he kept, to the general scandal, and, moreover, to 
 appear in church led in by the two churchwardens, and to 
 repeat after the curate a paper of confession and contrition, 
 after which the vicar preached a grave, appropriate sermon. 
 Mr. Gilpin was large built and rather corpulent, with a 
 good voice and dignified presence, fit for a head master, fit 
 for a vicar. His face, somewhat fat, with a roundish bald 
 ' Same authority.
 
 GILPIN'S DEAJriNGS. 23 
 
 head (I have seen his hkeness in crayons, hanging in Wal- 
 hampton Park, a house which he often frequented), chiefly 
 expresses a grave and cheerful benevolence, spiced with 
 some hint of mental alacrity. 
 
 Before coming to Boldre he had published a book, ' Lives 
 of the Reformers,' including an account of his ancestor 
 Bernard. After being released from the school, he indulged 
 his love of scenery ajid sketching by making frequent tours, 
 generally, or perhaps always, accompanied by his wife, in 
 some of the most beautiful parts of England and Scotland, 
 a very uncommon kind of amusement in those days ; and 
 produced in succession the following publications, which 
 soon gave him a considerable reputation, and are still sought 
 after and valued : ' On Picturesque Beauty ' [Scottish High- 
 lands] ; Ditto [English Lake District]; 'Forest Scenery;' 
 ' Essays on Picturesque Beauty ; ' ' Picturesque Travels and 
 the Art of Sketching Landscape ; ' ' On Prints ; ' ' The 
 Wye ; ' ' Picturesque Remarks on the "West of England ; ' 
 all embellished with aquatinta engravings after the author's 
 drawings. He also published * Sermons ; ' ' An Exposition 
 of the New Testament ; ' ' Moral Contrasts ; ' ' Amusements 
 of Clergymen ; ' ' Life of John Trueman and Richard Atkins, 
 for the use of Servants' Halls, Farmhouses, and Cottages ; ' 
 and an ' Account of William Baker,' one of his humble 
 parishioners. He was very careful and deliberate in the 
 production of most of his books, keeping them in MS. 
 beyond the Horatian period, and meanwhile submitting 
 them to private critics, and often retouching. 
 
 His life at home was simple, pure, and economical ; he 
 seldom dined out. ' I never was fond,' he says,^ ' of eat- 
 ing and drinking ; but, from habit, I have now taken a 
 thorough dislike to them both, and never dine pleasantly 
 but on my own bit of mutton, and a draught of small beer 
 after it (for I never drink wine), and so the job is over.' 
 'Letter of his, quoted by Warner, i. 359.
 
 24 IX THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 His delight was to stroll after breakfast into the gi'ove 
 behind his vicarage, note-book in hand ; to improve his 
 little grounds and garden ; to visit in turn his parishioners, 
 rich and poor, especially the latter (not forgetting their 
 bodily wants) ; to address kind words of greeting, inquiry, 
 admonition, or encouragement to every one he met in his 
 walks ; to come home to his bit of mutton, his dear good 
 wife and family, and his pen and ink drawings in the even- 
 ing. His style of art was not the exact and realistic, but 
 the bold and generalising — verging often on what Mr. 
 Euskin calls the Blottesque ; his illustrations of the High- 
 land and other scenery only possessed — and according to 
 his convictions were right, inasmuch as they only possessed 
 — a kind of broad and sweeping resemblance to real scenes ; 
 and his very numerous later drawings were nearly all 
 fancy sketches, exemplifying the true rules of ' picturesque 
 beauty,' as he conceived them. These sketches — made 
 with a reed pen and a brownish ' iron-water ' ink, and 
 afterwards ' toned ' with a yellow wash — he used to give 
 away freely to his friends, until it came into his mind that 
 he might in this way make some money for the benefit of 
 his poorer parishioners. He had ah-eady, out of the profits 
 of his books, built and opened a school at Boldre for the 
 children of day labourers — twenty boys to be taught read- 
 ing, writing, and ciphering; twenty girls, reading, sewing, 
 and spinning. To this school he wished to leave a per- 
 manent endowment, and also an aid to the school at 
 Brockenhurst, and sold for these ends a collection of his 
 drawings, received 1,2001. for them, and placed it in the 
 Three per Cents. The sum being still insufficient to carry 
 out all his intentions, he went to work again with his reed- 
 pen, at the age of seventy-eight, and in two years produced 
 a large number of drawings. These, ' the last effort of my 
 eyes,' were sold by auction at Christie's, and produced no 
 less than 1,625^. The schools were endowed accordingly,
 
 'THE GREEN SCHOOL: 25 
 
 and the Boldre children, in addition to being taught free of 
 all charge, receive yearly — the boys a jacket, pair of 
 breeches, and a green vest ; the girls a green frock and black 
 petticoat. The school-house, shadowed by a pair of tall 
 lindens, stands on the road-side, between the church and 
 the vicarage, and the school, locally called ' The Green 
 School,' is still alive, but not flourishing. The true causes 
 of this unhealthy condition are not easy to get at, but cer- 
 tainly the lamp which old Mr. Gilpin left trimmed, with a 
 careful provision for keeping it alight, now burns but lan- 
 guidly.^ Malx-e his will as he may, the possibility of a 
 man's extending his power, according to any formal plan, 
 into future generations, is always very problematic. 
 
 There are three notable trees, now flourishing in Boldre 
 parish, which are connected with this good old vicar's 
 memory. You may see them in the course of a moderate 
 walk. About a mile from Lymington, well sheltered among 
 soft woody slopes, stands the comfortable vicarage of gray 
 and red bricks, with trim flowery lawn guarded by Scotch 
 firs, and slanting little meadow, beyond which rises the 
 grovy hill in whose wood-walks Mr. Gilpin used to stray. 
 Near the south-west corner of the house stands conspicuous 
 an unusually fine Occidental Plane-tree, tall, shapely, 
 healthy, wiiich the vicar used to admire more than seventy 
 years ago, and has celebrated in the ' Forest Scenery.' 
 This Plane was the vicar's favourite home-tree. 
 
 In his walks, he was fond of visiting a Yew, some two 
 miles distant, — 
 
 ' A tree,' he says, '-of peculiar beauty. ... It stands 
 not far from the banks of Lymington Eiver, on the left bank 
 as you look towards the sea, between Koydon Farm and 
 Boldre Church. It occupies a small knoll, surrounded with 
 other trees, some of which are yews, but of inferior beauty. 
 A little stream washes the base of the knoll, and winding 
 'Measures are now (December, 1872) being taken to revive it.
 
 26 IN THE NEW FOB EST. 
 
 round, forms it into a peninsula. If any one should have 
 curiosity to visit it from this description, and by the help of 
 these landmarks, I doubt not but he may find it at any time 
 within the space of these two or three centuries in great 
 perfection, if it suffer no external injury.'' 
 
 There it stands at this day ; now, in winter-time, sombrely 
 conspicuous as you approach it among the naked gray 
 boughs of the oak-coppice. 
 
 The third tree connected with Mr. Gilpin's memory is a 
 Maple. ' One of the largest maples I have seen,' he wrote, 
 'stands in the churchyard of Boldre, in the New Forest.'- 
 This churchyard is beautifully situated on a hill about half- 
 way between Brockenhurst and Lymington, and so thickly 
 surrounded by large elms that the square embattled church 
 tower is not visible in the summer landscape, and scarcely 
 in the winter. But from the churchyard you have glimpses 
 through leafy screens, or thinner network of bough and twig, 
 of the wide stretching woodland in which it stands. The 
 church, the oldest part (they say) Saxon, another part thir- 
 teenth century, patchwork as it now is, retains on the whole 
 a quaint and pleasant rusticity, A year ago it still owned 
 an ancient window, but that has now been gutted ! — filled 
 up with clean handsome new stone (och hone!), and the 
 gayest of bright London glass (alas!). There is something 
 that deserves philosophical investigation in the attitude of 
 John Bull's mind to his national relics of antiquity. He 
 holds hard to the customary and familiar, and is thus in- 
 clined—not aesthetically or sentimentally, but in a cat-like 
 manner as it were — to keep old things as they are ; but he 
 has also a passion for trimness and tidiness, a practicality of 
 mind that is vexed by any appearance (however beautiful 
 or in itself harmless) which is at all connected with notions 
 of disrejpair, neglect, poverty ; and against this love of com- 
 
 ' FtDT.sf Sri'ncry, vol. i., p. 9."), 
 '■'Ibid. vol. i., p. 57.
 
 BOLDRE CHURCH. 27 
 
 fortable trimness, no matter how ugly, the feehng of cat-hke 
 conservatism counts for nothing ahnost, if they come into 
 competition — is daffed aside (if any one appeals to it) as a 
 whim and folly. It cannot be too often repeated, until it is 
 generally felt and acknowledged, that all the significant 
 public relics and traces of the past, great and little, are 
 sacred things, not ours to destroy (whether by demolition or 
 ' restoration '), but ours to preserve for those who now walk 
 the earth, and for those who are to come after us. Absolute, 
 inevitable necessity can alone justify our laying one violating 
 finger upon any such connecting link in the life of a nation 
 and of mankind. But to return to our churchyard Maple. 
 Maples in England are seldom more than bushes ; this is a 
 good-sized tree, about six or seven feet round, and some- 
 thing like a dwarfish old oak. Under its branches is the 
 plain square-cornered tomb of William Gilpin and his wife, 
 with this inscription : — 
 
 ' In a quiet mansion beneath this stone, secure from the afflictions, and 
 still more dangerous enjoyments of life, lye the remains of William 
 GILPIX, sometime vicar of this parish, together with the remains of 
 ]\IARGARET, his wife. After living above fifty years in happy union, they 
 hope to be raised in God's good time, through the atonement of a blessed 
 Redeemer for their repented transgressions, to a state of joyful immor- 
 tality ; there it will be a new joy to meet several of their good neighbours 
 who lye scattered in these sacred precincts around them. He died A]n-il 
 5th, 1S04, at the age of SO. She died April 14th, 1807, at the age of 82.' 
 
 His last illness was very short, and his healthy, virtuous, 
 and happy life closed in peace. It is wholesome and 
 pleasant to reflect on such lives, of which there are always 
 a great many in the world, most of them undistinguished by 
 anything publicly memorable. Mr. Gilpin, in one of his 
 lettei'S, speaking of a visit which he received from his son 
 from America, says : * His chief employment while he was 
 here, was transcribing a family record, which I drew up 
 some time ago, of my great grandfather, my grandfather, 
 and father, who were all very valuable men ; and I en-
 
 28 m THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 couraged him in it for the sake of WilHam, Bernard and 
 Edwin, whom it may hereafter have a tendency to excite to 
 honourable deeds. Indeed I have often thought such httle 
 records might be very useful in families, whether the 
 subjects of them were good or bad. A lighthouse may serve 
 equally the purpose of leading you into a haven, or deterring 
 you from a rock. I have the pleasure, however, to reflect 
 that my three ancestors (beyond whom I can obtain no 
 family anecdotes) were all beacons of the former kind.' 
 
 One can fancy Mr. Gilpin going benevolently about (his 
 mind and note-book at the same time busied a good deal 
 with his next work on ' Picturesque Beauty ') , now stopping 
 a farmer or a schoolehild with friendly smile and word, now 
 carrying good advice and coin of the realm into some poor 
 cottage, distributing orders for coals and blankets in the 
 winter, consoling the sick, admonishing the lawless, etc., etc. 
 — lie also (no way disgracing his ancestors) a ' valuable ' 
 man and most kindly. Yet, with all his benevolent and 
 pious activity, it may perhaps be doubted whether our good 
 friend had much real insight into human character, or much 
 real intercourse of mind (rare between those of different 
 grades) with his humbler parishioners. There is not seldom 
 found an amiable blindness in such men as he — amiable, 
 perhaps, yet not commendable ; for that course which is 
 sure of applause as ' practical benevolence ' may often (from 
 defect of clear perceptions, and consequent sound conclu- 
 sions) do injustice, and on the whole be harmful to society. 
 
 Some twenty paces westward from the vicar's tomb (I 
 have paid it many a visit) stands a headstone with the 
 following inscription — the vicar's composition : ' Here rests 
 from his Labour William Bakeb, whose Industry and 
 Frugality, whose Honesty and Piety, were long an Example 
 to this Parish. He was born in 1710, and died in 1791.' 
 This is tlie Baker of whom Mr. Gilpin also published an 
 ' account,' for the wider dissemination of that old peasant's
 
 OLD WILLIAM BAKER. 29 
 
 good example ; but Mr. Warner, the admiring friend and 
 sometime curate of Mr. Gilpin, conscientiously makes the 
 following mortifying disclosure ■? — 
 
 ' William Baker was an old rustic, resident in a \vild part of the pari^h 
 of Boldre. In one of his walks Mr. Gilpin had liyhted ix{)on his cottage. 
 On entering it he found its inhabitant, an aged, but stout and athletic 
 man, eating his humble dinner. All within was neat and clean, and 
 something indicative of strong sense and a cheerful mind appeared in the 
 countenance of the old peasant. In conversation he proved himself well 
 versed in the Bible ; full of maxims of pruilence and economy ; and 
 apparently of the most open, blunt, and independent character. Highly 
 interested by his visit, Mr. Gilpin frequently repeated it ; and from the 
 conversations which passed during this intercourse, he drew up that 
 beautiful account which he published in the work above-mentioned. The 
 misapprehension of Baker's real character was not done away till some 
 time after the death of the old man ; and, consi lering it as exemplary at 
 the time of his decease, Mr. Gilpin wrote a short epitaph, and had it 
 en/raven on Baker's tombstone, as a salutary monition to the parishioners 
 of Boldre [sly, stolid rustics with thoughts of their own!], who were in 
 the same humble class of life with the deceased. At length, however, he 
 was undeceived ; and had the sorrow rather than the mortification to 
 find that Baker had been, through life, a worthless and flagitious 
 character ; that age, instead of curing, had only altered the nature of 
 his vices ; and that by all, except the pastor, he had ever been known 
 and despised as a consummate rogue, an oppressive extortioner, and a 
 base hypocrite.' 
 
 That headstone must have weighed more or less on 
 Mr. Gilpin's mind after the discovery. Could he — ought he 
 to have added a postscript ? Bequiescas, if thou canst, old 
 William Baker ! thy pastor did not, I suspect, mean to 
 include thee in that friendly hope on his tombstone of 
 meeting ' several ' of his good neighbours who lie near him. 
 Living and dead thou hast cheated the good vicar ; and by 
 means of this graven testimony dost perennially cheat the 
 churchyard moralizer. I have no doubt that Mr. Warner is 
 substantially accurate in the matter, but I should like to 
 hear some more particulars of this cunning old William. 
 
 In Boldre Church is preached every 18th of March, ' the 
 ^Literary Uccollcctionit, vol i., p. 343.
 
 30 ly THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 Y/ild-beast Sermon,' founded many years ago to commemo- 
 rate ' for ever ' the escape of a Mr. Worsley from the jaws 
 of a lion in Africa. In Boldre Church Eobert Southey 
 married for his second wife Miss CaroHne Bowles, of 
 Lymington — a literary marriage. He was then a worn-out 
 man. Over-industry in literary labour is apt to tell dismally 
 both on the man and on his work. Hoav much too much 
 Southey read and wrote ! How sure he was of literary 
 immortality ! How faded already are his name and influ- 
 ence ! Yet one is grateful to him for ' Kehama ' and 
 ' Thalaba,' not as poetry but as wild stories — 
 
 Sail on, sail on, said Thalaba, 
 Sail on, in the name of Allah ! 
 
 This church stands near the middle point of the southern 
 boundary of the Forest. Northward for fifteen miles or so, 
 stretch the old woods, the moorlands, the new plantations, 
 with a few farms and domains interspersed — some 70,000 
 acres in all, producing to the Crown a profit of about 
 lO.OOOZ. a year. It is a free and pleisant space to ramble 
 in, although (to be accurate) the New Forest is without any 
 very remaikable beauties. There are no romantic hills or 
 glens, only two or three brooks, and those not of the best, 
 no ponds, no rocks (a great want). 
 
 Near the north-eastern corner of the district lies Komsey, 
 with its massive Norman church and adjacent park of 
 Broadlands, where Lord Palmerston was lately master ; 
 near the south-eastern corner is the old-new town of South- 
 ampton (water-gate to Egypt and India), its suburban 
 houses visible from some points, in front of the chalk downs 
 that overlook Winchester. Beaulieu Heath stretches south, 
 to ruined Beaulieu Abbey, of John's and Henry III.'s 
 time, its prior's house now the Duke of Buccleuch's. Else- 
 where, looking northward, one may see the slender far-off 
 signal of Sarum, a stone flower, graceful, to use Emerson's 
 image, as the great-mullein stalk — the highest spire in
 
 LYNDEURST. 31 
 
 England. Eingwood is on the western boundary, and the 
 beautiful pastoral vale of the river Avon running down to 
 Christchurch and its venerable priory church. I was in that 
 church one evening, near Christmas-time, and stood listening 
 in its huge dusky nave while the singers practised their 
 anthem in the dim-lit organ-loft. Beside me glimmered a 
 white marble cenotaph, like a Pietd, a woman bending over 
 a dead youth. There was not light to read the inscription, 
 but I knew it well enough, and that it commemorated a 
 certain poet drowned in the Bay of Spezia : the inscription 
 partly in his own words — 
 
 He has outsoar'd the shadow of our niyht. 
 Envy and calumny, and hate anil p.tin ; 
 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight. 
 Can touch him not and torture not again. 
 
 The house of his son, the Baronet, is not far off; and in 
 Bournemouth chui-chyard is the grave of Sir Percy's grand- 
 father, William Godwin, whose dust came hither from St. 
 Pancras churchyard by strange adventure, and now lies 
 quiet amid a crowd of more orthodox tombstones. 
 
 Lyndhurst is the Capital of the Forest, and whoever shall 
 chance to be invited to one of those country houses that 
 pleasantly dot the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst, most 
 urbanely rural of villages, let him count it good luck. 
 
 Over and above the delights of a cultivated and friendly 
 society, there is plenty to interest the sportsman, the natu- 
 ralist, or the general rambler and inquisitive person. In 
 ' Eufus's Hall,' at the Queen's House (built in the reign of 
 James or Charles), he may attend a forest court, and hear 
 the trial of some poacher or woodstealer, no longer liable to 
 lose life or eyes ; and may, perhaps, learn a new meaning to 
 him of the word mote, namely, stump or stool of a felled 
 tree. An easy walk will carry him to the beecheu shade of 
 Mark Ash, or the mossy lawns and winding paths of 
 Whitley Wood, or to the vale which tradition points out as
 
 32 7.Y THE NEW FOREST. 
 
 the scene of the Eed King's death. From certam parts of 
 the higher ground he may look southward over seven or 
 eight successive ridges of woodland to the wavy soft blue 
 hills of the Isle of Wight. He may gather in their seasons 
 many a fern and flower — sundew, and great trefoil, and deep 
 blue gentian, on the marsh; 'tutsan,' a St. John's wort, on 
 open ground, whose berries, the people say, are coloured 
 w^ith Danes' blood; the lung- wort or 'snake-flower,' rose- 
 blossomed wild-balm, and among the bracken of Knight wood 
 the tall gladiolus ; may hear the tap of the woodpecker, the 
 rustle of the harmless snake, perhaps the warning hiss of 
 the viper ; the fern-owl at dusk ' whirring in the copse ; ' the 
 hoo ! hoo ! of the brown owls somewhere amid the branchy 
 wilderness ; and (suppose it spring) the songs of the rival 
 nightingales with their deep trills, their tio-tio-tio-tix, and 
 their ' one low piping sound more sweet than all.' He may 
 visit the heronry on Vinney Eidge, and watch the wide- 
 winged parents floating round the tree-tops as they feed 
 their young with eels carried from the mudflats of the 
 Solent ; may with good luck see the honey-buzzard, the 
 crossbill, the kingfisher, in their haunts, and Epops him- 
 self, once King of the Birds. Or, some long summer after- 
 noon, and far into the weird twilight — the moon perchance 
 beginning to rise — he may pursue through many a glade and 
 vista the shadowy vision of a beauty imagined but never 
 wholly realised on earth. 
 
 Beautiful, beautiful Queen of the Forest, 
 How art thou hidden so wondrous deep ? 
 
 Bird never sung there, fay never morriced, 
 All the trees are asleep. 
 
 Kow her flitting fading gleam 
 
 Haunts the woodlands wide and lonely ; 
 
 Now a half-remember'd dream. 
 For his comrade only. 
 
 He shall stray the livelong day 
 
 Through the forest, far away.
 
 EAMBLE THE SECOND. 
 
 AT WINCHESTER. 
 
 St. Giles's Hill— College— Cathedral— Destruction of Old Things— St. 
 Swithiu — Keats — Rev. Thomas Warton — Culture. 
 
 FKOM St. Giles's Hill one looks down on the famous old 
 city. Its Cathedral among lofty trees, Wykeham's 
 College with the lads at cricket, the water-meadows leading 
 to St. Cross, ■ the swelling green downs with one grove, a 
 ' peculiar coronet,' on St. Catherine's Hill, show fair in the 
 May sunlight. Methinks a flagstaff would stand well at one 
 angle of the low cathedral tower. Brisk and clear runs the 
 shallow river below, by small gray and red houses and their 
 gardens, mill-sluices, the quaint little flint-built church 
 of St. Peter's Chesil, and a vine-clad remnant of the city 
 wall. 
 
 I pass under the college archway and courts gray with 
 time, green with new foliage, and see, with a natural sigh, 
 the fine lads strolling careless in cap and gown. But, surely, 
 regrets for the past, if natural, are vain — if vain, not to be 
 dwelt on ; if dwelt on, foolish. Are these boys all happy, 
 too ? Many a ' fag ' (the fagging is severe, and often cruel) 
 is loiiging for manhood and freedom. Even in play hours 
 he must submit to the will and caprice of an oldster. ' Good 
 for him on the whole — prepares him for the battle of life.' 
 Perhaps so ; but perhaps (along with ' cram,' chapel, and 
 other things) it prepares him to viakc life a battle — a 
 scene of fierce unscrupulous rivalry, instead of peaceful 
 
 33 3
 
 34 AT WINCHESTER. 
 
 effort and mutual help. Life brings its combats, its battles, 
 to be well fought out when each crisis comes ; but it ought 
 not to he a battle. The laws of war are not the laws of life. 
 
 The book-shop outside the gate is full of college boys; at 
 the next-door pastry-cook's the younger ones swarm like 
 bees. Up those steps, the dining-hall still sets its tables 
 with the old-world square wooden trencher, but also now- 
 a-days with knife and fork ; and tea flows mom and even, 
 where beer in their father's time was the only lawful liquor. 
 A famous novelist of our day (who deals much in cathe- 
 drals) said to me, ' We had no tea or coffee ' — he was a 
 Wykhamist — ' but beer, as much as you liked — beer at 
 breakfast, beer at dinner, beer at supper, beer under your 
 bed.' Beer sounds barbarous for boys ; but clean home- 
 brewed is a different thing from the tavern-keeper's mixtures. 
 Our novelist is a burly man, and so was Cobbett, who 
 detested ' slops.' 
 
 Some of the big lads are at cricket, and with a will. 
 Terribly swaft the athletic bowler swings in his heavy ball 
 overhand ; his well-gi'eaved opponent sends it whizzing off 
 the bat. The sport is now made a serious business. It 
 takes money to rig out a cricketer (amusements, like most 
 other things, tend in England to become more and more 
 costly) ; he goes forth like Trojan or Achaian warrior, 
 emulates ' professionals ' in his style of play, and in public 
 matches calls in their aid — these professional gentlemen, 
 by the bye, being much akin to horse-jockeys and pugilists. 
 To-day in our railway carriage was a gentleman summoned 
 by telegraph to his son at this school ; a cricket-ball had 
 broken the boy's nose, and his father meant to take him to 
 a London doctor by the evening train. To many, perhaps 
 to most of our boys cricket and boat-racing are the serious 
 parts of school life. 
 
 Full-clothed in freshest verdure tremble the lofty lindens 
 of the Close ; firm as a rock stands the gray fortress-like
 
 CHURCH-ARCHITECTURE. 35 
 
 Cathedral, its oldest stonework undecayed as though built 
 yesterday. A side-wicket admits to the vast interior, with 
 massy pillars, and roof high-embowed over the cofhns of old 
 kings : solemn and monumental the weighty transept arches 
 and plain thick pillars of Norman work. Noble, too, are 
 these clustered columns of the nave ; yet I wish, on the 
 whole, that Bishop William and others had withheld their 
 hands from 'pcrpcnclicularity. The nave windows are to me 
 of ugly form, the tracery of the great west window stands 
 an offence, which its fine glass hardly condones. And this 
 glass is but a patchwork. Upon Cheriton Down, one March 
 day, of 1644, the Roundheads smote the Cavaliers, and, 
 leaving many brave men dead and dying on the hill, came 
 grimly down into Winchester, and smashed the Cathedral 
 windows and monuments. The gathered bits of glass, 
 disjecta mejnbra of saints, kings, queens, bishops, warriors, 
 a fragment of a motto, a corner of a device, broken as they 
 are, make splendid this tall, greenish-bluish west window. 
 
 The outside of a great old cathedral, seen from different 
 points of view, with various relations of parts and various 
 groupings with surrounding objects and the landscape, I 
 always find both impressive and entertaining, the interior 
 nearly always disappointing. English cathedrals particu- 
 larly, differing as they do in details, are much alike in the 
 general interior effect, and that effect is monotonous. In 
 magnificence of space, one's imagination is never fulfilled ; 
 and in that other kind of impressiveness which we desire of 
 a great building, mystery, they are usually wanting. The 
 baldness of the empty nave, after the first glance, is chilling 
 and disheartening ; the choir, on the other hand, has a 
 petty and parochial look. Often the finest thing is some 
 oblique glimpse across the angle of a transept. Considering 
 the money, time, earnestness, and architectural skill em- 
 ployed in raising so many huge perennial structures, one 
 wishes there had been more variety of plan, more invention. 
 
 3—2
 
 36 AT WINCHESTER. 
 
 I picture to myself, for one example (in the architecture of 
 dreams), a church of long low arcades, converging to a great 
 central space of loftiness almost immeasurable to the eye. 
 In architecture, methinks, the deliglit of smallness in 
 porches, pillars, doors, windows, stairs, arches, etc., is not 
 enough considered. I found at Venice (and Mr. Euskin, I 
 remember, approved the observation), in the Doge's Palace, 
 in St. Mark's itself, and throughout the city, the delight 
 of smallness often emphasised. 
 
 But whatever we may desire, it were unreasonable to 
 look for much originality in the plan of this or that building 
 among many, all the produce of one spirit, that of Papal 
 Christianity, which of all the virtues cultivated conformity, 
 submission, imitation, as the most necessary, or rather as 
 the groundwork of the rest, and which in every plan (archi- 
 tectural or other) started with certain data— inevitable fixed 
 points. One should rather wonder, perhaps, to find in Papal 
 architecture, so much variety. The art of painting has 
 fared much worse ; witness those leagues of Madonnas, 
 Holy Families, and great and little saints, that weary our 
 soul in the galleries. 
 
 Passing strange are these great Papal temples, so alien 
 to modern thought, so unfit for Protestant worship, 
 maintained under such singular conditions — beautiful 
 anachronisms, venerably incongruous with the life around 
 them, standing whole and massive, with gray tower and 
 shapely pinnacle, among the landscapes of England. 
 
 The western porches of the Cathedral have been done-2q), 
 and look as pretty as a wedding-cake ; the college chapel 
 has been done-up ; old St. Cross is partly done-up — well 
 or ill I say not, but done-up they ai-e ; and whoever likes 
 clean white stone-work, like a door-step on Sunday mor- 
 ning, and fresh paint, and the brightest coloured glass that 
 an eminent London firm can manufacture, and no trace left 
 that can be obliterated of Time's finger, in tint or line,
 
 OLD BUILDINGS. 37 
 
 must be pleased with what he finds going on in nearly every 
 old place in England. 
 
 Yet what boots grieving ? The use and significance of a 
 structure gone, how should the thing escape ruin of one 
 kind or another ? The piety and humanity that founded 
 St. Cross — church, almshouses, dole of food to the way- 
 farer — sad ghosts of these haunt their ancient cloister. The 
 realities have fled away, to find (we will hope so) new and 
 fitter mansions. Here is no visible ruin as yet, for this 
 endowment remains a legal and arithmetical fact, with some 
 significance to the thirteen old men, much to the wealthy 
 nobleman, their 'master.' Of antique faith and bounty, 
 many costly relics crowd this land — structures made for 
 perpetual homes of living worship and beneficence, and 
 secondarily as hints to men unborn to remember now and 
 again their brother's name, the founder, with a little prayer 
 breathed to heaven ; but now more like tombs of old good 
 intentions and pious plans, fallen into neglect and well-nigh 
 forgetfulness, along with the men in whose minds they were 
 once warm and potent. Nor even as tombs (under costly 
 guardianship) can they escape disfigurement — preserve the 
 venerableness and beauty of aspect so precious in many 
 ways, and so touching. 
 
 When everything old has been thoroughly destroyed or 
 'restored' (that is, defaced), what a pretty world it will be! 
 
 There are few old-looking towns left now in England ; 
 some years hence there will be fewer, or none ; though some 
 old houses, perhaps even a few old back streets may linger. 
 The busy builder and contractor, with his bricken Smug 
 Street, and stuccoed Victoria Terrace, his elegant modern 
 residences in the outskirts, and splendid business frontages 
 in the High Street, is taking good care of this, in co-opera- 
 tion with the pullers-down and doers-up (corporate and 
 individual) of every old public edifice. Villages retain and 
 will retain more of the crust of antiquity, where the modern
 
 38 AT WINCHESTER. 
 
 spirit does not think it worth while to set up its plate-glass 
 and stucco, where gain and display, both in their ugliest 
 forms, do not rule everything. 
 
 Yet even the villages can't always escape, nor the village 
 churches. I know two village churches in Hampshire near 
 one another, each of which has lately been disfigured by the 
 substitution of an ugly modern window for a beautiful 
 ancient one. These new windows, filled with gaudiest glass, 
 are both put up in memory of one deceased lady, whose 
 wealthy husband, in consultation of course with the legal 
 guardians of those edifices, could discover no better manner 
 of displaying at once the strength of his grief and of his 
 purse, than by the destruction of two delightful bits of archi- 
 tectural skill, tenderly tinted by the slow hand of time, 
 hallowed by the associations of centuries, linking the living 
 to their fathers and predecessors ; and the setting up in per- 
 manence of two pieces of vulgar and pretentious ugliness. 
 Supposing these latter windows perfection in their kind, it 
 were monstrous to substitute them for the antique. I could 
 not find that anybody, of any class, was pleased or satisfied 
 with the alteration. Vanity and purse-pride, ignorance and 
 bad taste, met by apathetic complaisance in those who might 
 have known better, and egged on, doubtless, by the mercan- 
 tile cunning of the tradesman who profited by the affair — 
 these were the motives, and here is the result. I speak of 
 this, and sharply, with some hope of inducing those who 
 have influence and right judgment, not to forego, in similar 
 cases, their duty to themselves and their neighbours ; and 
 to the world, present and future. ^ 
 
 By an archway, where the little church of St. Lawrence 
 lurks behind the houses, we pass into the High Street of the 
 White City (taking the old British name to have been Caer 
 
 ' Some years after this was published arose the Society for the 
 Preservation of Ancient Buildings, owing its birth and continued 
 existence mainly to the energy of Mr. William Morris.
 
 ST. SWITHIN. 39 
 
 Givent), and see its Gothic market-cross in a corner, beside 
 the shop of a serious bookseller who is always to be found in 
 ecclesiastical precincts. 
 
 St. Swithin, the weather-famous, besides his share of 
 patronage in the Cathedral, has a little parish-church of his 
 own, built by King John over the postern of St. Michael. 
 Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, dying circa 865, his body (as 
 the story goes) was buried at his own request, out of humility 
 perhaps, not in the Cathedral as usual with bishops, but in 
 the churchyard, where the drops of rain might wet his grave ; 
 afterwards, when he was canonised, the monks resolved to 
 move his bones into the Cathedral, and the 15th of July was 
 fixed upon for the ceremony ; but on that day, and for forty 
 days in succession, it rained so violently that the plan was 
 given up as displeasing to the saint, and they built, instead, 
 a chapel at his grave, where many miracles were wrought. 
 Such the tradition, with its postscript that, ever since, the 
 weather on St. Swithin's Day, be it wet or dry, will hold for 
 thirty-nine days following. 
 
 Many people, by the bye, forget certain effects of the 
 great change in the English calendar made in 1752 by cut- 
 ting out eleven whole days, in acceptance of the ' New 
 Style,' introduced by authority of Pope Gregory XIII. in 
 1582, and adopted by all Catholic nations ; but, though it 
 had not merely the Pope but the sun on its side, resisted till 
 1752 by Protestant England, as it still is by Eussia. That 
 day of the year which we now call 26th July is that which 
 belonged to St. Swithin by the old way of reckoning, and to 
 which reference must be made if we go about to inquire, is 
 there any meteorological foundation for this adage ? So also 
 that point in the earth's annual voyage which about a 
 century ago was called Christmas Day in England, is now 
 called the 5th of January. Instead of being but four days 
 from the shortest day, the festival was fifteen, falling thus at 
 a time of year when the weather is on an average colder ;
 
 40 AT WINCHESTER. 
 
 ' As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens.' "We keep 
 the traditions of a snowy Christmas, which is the seldomer 
 realised because we have changed our almanac. Mayday, 
 again, Milton's and Herrick's Mayday, is towards the middle 
 of the month, not at its beginning. How needful it is to be 
 on one's guard against wobds — continually tending to slip 
 away from facts and assume power and authority as in their 
 oivn right. 
 
 The Irish (a people of most conservative temper in many 
 things) still have a high respect for certain holy days as 
 reckoned by the Old Style — ' Old Christmas,' etc. An 
 Irish peasant hardly ever dates by months and days in his 
 talk, but by ' set times,' saying. So long before or after 
 Christmas, Candlemas, Patrick's Day, Corpus Christi, 
 Lammas, Michaelmas, ' Holiday ' (All Hallows) and so on ; 
 and he keeps reckoning of some, if not all, by the Old Style 
 as well as, perforce, the New. 
 
 Looking down from this old West Gate a-top of the High 
 Street, 'tis pleasant to see at the street's end a green hill 
 rising bold and steep. Many a cheerful country walk 
 stretches out from this ancient city ; through the meadows, 
 with clear streams full of gliding fish and waving weeds, 
 across little bridges, by willows and mills; over breezy 
 chalk-downs, wide-viewing, with farms and hamlets in their 
 vales ; by shady I'oads and field-paths through the corn and 
 clover. Here wandered once on a time, solitary and some- 
 what sad, a certain young poet — now for ever young. In 
 these fields, one Sunday, among the corn-stacks and orchards, 
 he felt and sung the rich sadness of autumn. ' How beau- 
 tiful the season is now,' he wrote to his friend Eeynolds, 
 22nd September, 1819; 'How fine the air — a temperate 
 sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather, 
 — Dian skies. I never liked stubble-fields so much as now — 
 ay, better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow a
 
 POETS. 41 
 
 stubble-field looks warm in the same way that some pictures 
 look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's 
 walk that I composed upon it.' 
 
 Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfiilness I . . . , 
 
 Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 
 
 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, 
 While barrM clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
 
 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. 
 Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
 
 Among the river sallows, borne aloft 
 
 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 
 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne ; 
 
 Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 
 
 The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft. 
 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 
 
 Young Keats's gaze that Sunday evening was upon the 
 Winchester stubble-fields like a spiritual setting-sun, and 
 left them lying enchanted in its fadeless light. 
 
 Thou couldst not on this earth, dear Poet, reach the 
 autumn, nor the summer of thy life ; yet enough remains of 
 thine ethereal musings to enrich the world and deserve our 
 eternal love. One day, perhaps, I shall touch thy very 
 hand, no more fevered with sickness and care. 
 
 How delightful are Keats's letters, carelessly scribbled 
 off, simple, kindly, picturesque, with views of life and litera- 
 ture at once broad and subtle. No politics or gossip of the 
 day, ' echoes of the clubs,' personal trivialities— merely the 
 intimate chat of a poet, thinking of nature, humanity, and 
 poetry. After all, it is permissible to believe, the poet draws 
 the best lot from Fortune's urn. Whom could he envy? 
 Not alone is his delight in life the keenest, but his insight 
 the most veracious. Yet, ah me ! how thin-skinned he is — 
 how open to suffering — how sure to suffer, in a world such 
 as this ? Is it partly the world's fault, for being such a 
 world? Was Keats, pensive amid the sheaves, a happier 
 man than Hodge, who reaped them, and quaffed his ale-cup
 
 42 AT IVINCHESTER. 
 
 at the harvest-home? 'Happier' — what is happiness? 
 Would any man deUberately give up a grain of his intellect 
 or sensibility to win a lower kind of happiness than he was 
 born capable of ? — escape suffering by stupidity ? Here, truly, 
 is a catechism of questions, and food for meditation, kn in- 
 teresting personality, John Keats : more of a poet than any- 
 one else we can think of : manly, tender, eternally young. 
 His fine spirit is with his lovers on Hampstead Heath, and 
 at the inn at foot of Box Hill, and in Devonshire Lanes, and 
 by the seaside at Shanklin, and in these Hampshire corn- 
 fields. His verse is an enchanted cup, yet beware lest it clog 
 and give headaches, and shun imitators who offer you word- 
 jugglery without feeling or thought as the quintessence 
 of poetry. This waxwork poetry will not die, for it never 
 was alive, but will come surely and speedily to the lumber- 
 room and dust-hole. 
 
 In these Wintonian fields roved another son of the Muses, 
 whose ' shade ' (as he himself might have expressed it) 
 would no doubt disdain association with that of the author of 
 Endijmion ; I mean the Eev. Thomas Warton, Fellow of 
 Trinity College, Oxford, Professor of Poetry, and Poet 
 Laureate, which famous and prosperous man of letters came 
 often on a visit to his brother, the Eev. Dr. Joseph, master 
 of Winchester School, himself a bard of note. 
 
 Where shall the muse, that on the sacred shell, 
 
 Of men in arms and arts renown'd, 
 The solemn strain delights to swell ; 
 Oh, where shall Clio choose a race 
 Whom Fame with every laurel, every grace, 
 
 Like those of Albion's envied isle has crown'd ? 
 
 Hush, Eeverend Shade ! — yet for thy diligent annotation, 
 Tom, of Spenser and of Milton, pass not unkindly remem- 
 bered. Strange, that along with intense study of these 
 masters thou couldst pursue thine own scrannel pipings 
 undismayed.
 
 CULTURE. 43 
 
 Probably it is rather fame than merit, in every depart- 
 ment, that attracts nine in ten of even the cognoscenti. 
 
 But how comes an estabhshed fame ? — from the consistent 
 and accumulative judgment of a few in each generation, in 
 whom the divine light of intelligence burns clearest. There- 
 fore the cultivated (who know what has been said) generally 
 take, on the whole, sound views of past work ; while as to 
 contemporary doings they are at sea, they also, and sailing 
 every way with the various winds of criticism. 
 
 One hears a good deal nowadays, in England, of 'culture ' 
 and ' Philistinism,' — a generation or two after the Germans 
 have tired of the subject. That culture is a good thing 
 hardly admits of contradiction, any more than that food and 
 sleep are good things. What our literary friends, A, B, and 
 C, mean exactly by the word is rather obscure. It is very 
 certain, at any rate, that English University Education and 
 culture are not, and never have been, interchangeable terms. 
 The Cultured Philistine (if that phrase may be coined) hath 
 ever been the favoured son of Alma Mater. Had John 
 Keats gone to Oxford, is it likely that he would have risen 
 to college honours, wealth, and power, like Thomas Warton ? 
 Methinks the Cultured Philistine is the very Goliath of his 
 people. Who is not daily afflicted by the tongue and pen 
 of the over-educated man, so fluent and well-worded, so 
 vague and unreal, so haughty and so hollow ? He bullies 
 us, and, usually, we knock under for a time. But the roll 
 of literary heroes is not made up of names such as his. 
 Perhaps the time is coming when England (whether under 
 the term of ' culture ' or some other term) will recognise a 
 a set of new ideas on education — a faith clear and high, and 
 in application as broad as English citizenship. The atmo- 
 sphere of our generation is electrical with new thoughts, 
 and neither Oxford nor Canterbury, Westminster, Win- 
 chester, Manchester, nor Little Pedlington, can escape 
 the subtle and potent influence. Meanwhile in criticism
 
 44 AT WINCHESTER. 
 
 reigns something like chaos come again, modified by wirc- 
 pulhng. 
 
 Upper Winchester, near the station, is becoming 
 thoroughly villafied, as cockney-suburban in appearance 
 as Haverstock Hill. But the entrance to a town from 
 the railway-station is almost always ugly. How plea- 
 santly Winchester must have greeted the coach-traveller, 
 whirling up the green valley, seeing the great Cathedral 
 grow larger through its elms, then turning a corner of the 
 Close, a corner of the High Street, into the court-yard of 
 the ' George.'
 
 EAMBLE THE THIED. 
 
 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 High Street — Bishop's Palace — 'The Jolly Farmer' — Sketch of William 
 Cobbett's Life and Writings — His Grave — Crooksbury Hill. 
 
 WHEN you are in the long, flat, well-to-do and 
 modernish High Street of Farnham (Fex'n-ham ? ) 
 you see only the High Street, and there is not much to see 
 there ; emerging at either end you are among hopgrounds — 
 myriads of brown poles in spring, multitudinous bowerage 
 in summer ; and the hops here grow the highest and make 
 the most delicate beer, so the Farnham folk say, of any 
 hops in England. 
 
 Farnham High Street, running east and west along a 
 hollow^ is built on either side of a main road : and this 
 never gives the proper toicn effect, for the road is thus the 
 chief thing, the street subordinate. The smallest town, or 
 even hamlet, wears a certain civic importance when it looks 
 like a goal or finish in itself, mistress of all the roads that 
 approach it, and older than they ; not an accident or 
 afterthought, but an ancient centre and biding-place of 
 humanity, a heart or at least ganglion in the general cir- 
 culation. A tovni with gates is most complete ; but such 
 towns now (to fall into rhyme) are obsolete. Farnham is 
 but a road with houses. 
 
 At back of the north side of this High Street, hop-fields 
 slope upwards to a crowd of great trees stretching along the 
 summit of the hill. Those are the Bishop of Winchester's 
 
 45
 
 46 AT FARM HAM. 
 
 elms ; his palace-tower rises proudly amidst the circling 
 ruins and the moat (now a hawthorn dell) of the old castle 
 of Henry the Third's time ; those are the Bishop's fallow- 
 deer that troop in scores down the richly -shadowed park ; 
 and from his flower and fruit garden, made artfully atop 
 the ancient keep, the bishop can comfortably overlook no 
 small piece of his diocese in a bird's-eye view. To the left, 
 over the w^ooded vale of Moor Park (Sir W. Temple's 
 and Swift's), rises Cobbett's Crooksbury Hill, like a lion 
 couchant, heading northwards, shagged with dark fir-trees : 
 at our feet are the town and tall square church-tower of 
 Farnham. 
 
 Down the hill, under those huge episcopal trees, across 
 the High Street and bridge over the little river Wey, slow 
 winding thi'ough poplars and w^illow-fringed meads, and so 
 to a high bank bearing a grove on its shoulder, we come to 
 where the road bends upwards left to the railway station. 
 Facing the bridge stands a public-house, a little back from 
 the road, built close at foot of the steep bank, and partly 
 in a quarry scooped in its sandy front. 
 
 William Cobbett was born in this house in 1762. It 
 was then the residence of his father, a small farmer, and 
 does not seem to have been much altered in appearance. 
 It is a decent-looking brown-roofed house, wdth two small 
 windows on each side of the open door, and five on the 
 second floor ; the sign of ' The Jolly Farmer ' set on a pole 
 in front, and the thick grove shading it on each flank and 
 rising high above the chimneys. 
 
 In my own home in a distant part of the kingdom, 
 Cobbett's name chanced to mix with some of the earliest 
 circumstances of my childhood. My father, who was then 
 a kind of Tory, had in his younger days been a Kadical 
 reformer, and subscriber to the Political Register, of which 
 paper a long row of volumes bound in red stood on a shelf 
 in his bedroom. Always curious about books, I did not fail
 
 COBBETTS GRANDMOTHER. 47 
 
 to turn these over, and to ask the meaning of the Gridiron 
 picture, and who Cobbett was, though I could not make 
 much of what I was told, or enjoy, until long afterwards, 
 the variety, vigour, and amusing unreasonableness of that 
 famous agitator. 
 
 Cobbett has left, dispersed through a hundred volumes or 
 more, many pleasing touches of autobiography, which are 
 now the best parts of his writing, and which might easily 
 enough be combined into a distinct picture. 
 
 'With respect to my ancestors [he says], I shall go no further Ijack 
 than my grandfather, and for this plain reason — that I never heard talk 
 of any prior to him. He was a day-labourer ; and I have heard my 
 father say that he worked for one farmer from the day of his marriage to 
 that of his death, upwards of forty years. He died before I was boi n : 
 but I have often slept beneath the same roof that sheltered him, and 
 where his widow dwelt for many years after his death. It was a little 
 thatched cottage;, with a garden before the door. It had but two windows; 
 a damson-tree shaded one, and a clump of filberts the other. Here I and 
 my brothers went every Christmas and Whitsuntide to spend a week or 
 two, and torment the poor old woman with our noise and dilapidations. 
 She used to give us milk and bread for breakfast, an apple-pudding for 
 dinner, and a piece of bread and cheese for our supper. Her fire was 
 made of turf cut from the neighbouring heath ; and her evening light 
 was a rush dipped in grease.' 
 
 George Cobbett, this old cottager's son, who out of earn- 
 ing twopence a day as ploughboy had been able to attend 
 evening school, was ' learned for a man in his rank of life,' 
 understood land-surveying and had a reputation among his 
 country neighbours for experience and understanding. ' He 
 was honest, industrious, and frugal,' and ' happy in a wife 
 of his own rank, liked, beloved, and respected.' He became 
 tenant of a farm, on which he and his sons laboured vigor- 
 ously : — 
 
 ' My father used to boast that he had four boys, the eldest of wlioni 
 was but fifteen years old, who did as much work as any three men in the 
 parish of Farnham. . . . I do not remember the time [says Willi:ini. 
 the third ('.') of these boys] when I did not earn my own living. My first 
 occupation was driving the small birds from the turnip-sccdand the rooks
 
 48 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 from the pease. Whcu I first trudged afield, with my wooden bottle and 
 my satchel swung over my shoulders, I was hardly able to climb the gates 
 and stiles ; and at the close of the day, to reach home was a task of infi- 
 nite difficulty. My next employment was weeding wheat, and leading a 
 single horse at harrowing barley. Hoeing pease followed ; and hence I 
 arrived at the honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving the team, 
 and holding the plough.' 
 
 William's love of gardening, which remained with him 
 through life, showed itself early. When six years old — 
 
 ' I climbed up the side of a steep sand-rock [doubtless one behind the 
 house], and there scooped me out a plot of four feet square to make me a 
 garden, and the soil for which I carried up in the bosom of my little blue 
 smock-frock.' 
 
 One sees clearly the sturdy, ruddy, whitish-haired little 
 rustic, with twinkling gray eyes, in his blue smock aiid hob- 
 nailed shoes, hoeing pease, scaring the rooks, rolling down a 
 sand-bank with his brothers, now and again running away 
 from his work to follow the hounds, with the certainty of 
 losing his dinner, and the probability of being ' basted ' 
 on his return ; and on winter evenings learning from his 
 father the arts of reading and writing. 
 
 'I have some faint recollection of going to school to an old woman, 
 who, I believe, did not succeed in learning me my letters. . . . [Cob- 
 bett sticks to the old form — learning me my letters.] As to politics, we 
 were like the rest of the country people in England ; that is to say, we 
 neither knew nor thought anything about the matter. The shouts of 
 victory or the murmurs of a defeat would now and then break in upon 
 our tranquility for a moment ; but I do not ever remember having seen 
 a newspaper in my father's house.' 
 
 The American war, however, gradually took hold of the 
 attention even of country-folk. George Cobbett was a par- 
 tisan of the Americans, and had many a dispute on the 
 subject, over a pot of good ale, with a shrewd old Scotch- 
 man, the gardener of a nobleman in the neighbourhood. 
 TliQ boys, who were sometimes listeners to these discussions, 
 always thought their father right — ' There was but one wise 
 man in the world, and that one was our father,'
 
 COBBETTS BOYHOOD. 49 
 
 Let us now into the ' Jolly Farmer,' and drink a glass of 
 the famous Farnham ale. It would seem that Cobbett's 
 father not only farmed, but also kept a public-house here, 
 but of this I am not quite sure. William, who is never 
 tired of bragging of his father as a working farmer, is silent, 
 so far as I know, as to the selling of ale. 
 
 Alas ! they give us Windsor qIq — have no Farnham. Why 
 at so many places, even some that are widely noted for 
 brewing, do they give you beer of some other town ? In- 
 tervention between producer and consumer (which Cobbett 
 used to rail against, and which is vastly increased in our 
 day) is at work in this matter too ; supporting, at the cost 
 of the community, a far too numerous class of mere trans- 
 mitters. One can hardly buy a fish now-a-days, on the 
 seashore, or a pound of butter from a country dairy. Before 
 the article is allowed to reach your hands, several people, in 
 addition to the producer, are determined to squeeze a profit 
 out of it. 
 
 ' Yes,' the man said, ' Cobbett was born in this house, 
 in the room above the parlour.' The front part of the 
 house remains nearly unaltered, but another set of rooms 
 has been added at the back. The parlour, a low room with 
 a beam across the ceiling, has an engraving of William 
 Cobbett, Esq., M.P., over the fireplace. A corporal of the 
 Military Train, from Aldershot camp, who was drinking 
 beer, knew something of Cobbett's history, and was clear as 
 to the number of his regiment (54:th), which I had forgotten. 
 
 Dihgent a boy as William Cobbett was, and dutiful to his 
 parents, he was always determined to see something of the 
 world outside of his parish. He ran away from home 
 three times — to Kew, to Portsmouth, to London. The first 
 escapade he described, fifty years after, in an address to 
 Eeformers, when he was candidate for the City of Coventry 
 in 1820 :— 
 
 • At eleven years of age my employment was clipping of box-edgings 
 
 4
 
 50 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 and weeding beds of flowers in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester, 
 at the castle of Farnhani, my native town. I had always been fond of 
 beautiful gardens; and a gardener, who had just come ft"om the king's 
 gardens at Kew, gave such a description of them as made me instantly 
 resolve to w'ork in these gardens.' 
 
 Next morning, accordingly, the boy walked off, and 
 towards the evening of a day in June reached Eichuiond 
 with threepence in his pocket, 
 
 ' I was trudging through Eichmoud, in my blue smock-frock and my 
 red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes fell 
 upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was 
 wi'itten, " Tale of a Tub — price threepence." The title was so odd that 
 my curiosity was excited.' 
 
 Instead of supper, he bought the little book, and carried 
 it off to the shady side of a haystack : — 
 
 ' It was something so new to my mind, that though I could not at all 
 understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description ; and it pro- 
 duced w^hat I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read 
 on till it was dark without any thought about supper or bed. When I 
 could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket and tumbled 
 down by the side of the stack ; where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens 
 awakened me in the morning ; when off I started to Kew, reading my 
 little book. The singularity of my dress, the simplicity of my manners, 
 my confident and lively air, and doubtless his own compassion besides, 
 induced the gardener, who was a Scotsman, I remember, to give me 
 victuals, find me lodging, and set me to work.' 
 
 One day — 
 
 ' The present king [George IV., then a boy of about the same age as 
 little Cobbett] and two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my 
 dress, while I was sweeping the gi'ass-plot around the foot of the 
 pagoda.' 
 
 This queer little book, ' The Tale of a Tub,' was mainly 
 composed within a couple of miles of Farnhani, some eighty 
 years before little William walked to Kew. 
 
 At the age of 30, Cobbett went on board the Pegasus 
 man-of-war, at Spithead, and offered himself for the navy, 
 but Captain Berkeley thought fit to refuse his request.
 
 SERGEANT-MAJOR COBBETT. 51 
 
 Next year, one May-clay, the young man, dressed in his 
 hohday clothes, was on his way to Guildford fair. He was 
 at foot of a hill, and the London stage-coach came down 
 towards him at a merry rate. 
 
 ' The notion of going to London never entered my mind till this very 
 moment, yet the step was completely determined on before the coach 
 came to the spot where I stood. Up I got, and was in London about 
 nine o'clock in the evening.' 
 
 He had but half a crown left. One of the passengers, 
 who knew the lad's father, after vainly trying to persuade 
 young Cobbett to return to Farnham, procured him employ- 
 ment in a lawyer's office at Gray's Inn — a detestable 
 dungeon, in which he worked at 'quill-driving' for about 
 eight months. 
 
 Walking one Sunday in St. James's Park, he saw an 
 advertisement, ' To Spirited Young Men,' went down to 
 Chatham, enlisted, remained a year in garrison, giving his 
 leisure time to reading, and was then shipped off to Nova 
 Scotia to join his regiment, where, being intelligent, well 
 conducted, and indefatigably hard-working, he rose with 
 unusual speed to the rank of sergeant-major. 
 
 In person, he was tall, burly, ruddy, with obstinate 
 mouth and jaw, and shrewd, small gray eyes ; on the whole, 
 with a true, downright, positive, good-humoured John Bull 
 aspect. 
 
 When he first saw his w^ife, she was only thirteen years 
 old. Her father was a sergeant-major in the artillery, and 
 William Cobbett was sergeant-major (perhaps the youngest 
 in the army) of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts 
 near the city of St. John, New Brunswick. 
 
 ' I sat in the same room with her for about an hour, in company witli 
 others, and I made up my mind that she was the very girl for me. That 
 I thought her beautiful is certain, for that, I had always said, should be 
 an indispensable qualification ; but I saw In her what I deemed marks of 
 that sobriety of conduct of which I have said so much, and which has 
 been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of winter, 
 
 4—2
 
 52 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 and, of course, the snow several feet deep on the ground, and the weather 
 piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had done my morning's writing 
 [he rose at four o'clock], to go out at break of day to take a walk on a 
 hill, at the foot of which oi;r barracks lay. In about three mornings 
 after I had first seen her, I had, by an invitation to breakfast with me, 
 got up two young men to join me in my walk ; and our road lay by the 
 house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on 
 the snow scrubbing out a washing-tub. " That's the girl for me," said I, 
 when we had got out of her hearing.' 
 
 They were engaged ; but, after a time, the artillery went 
 to England, and she along with them. 
 
 Cobbett had saved 150Z., and this he sent to his ' little 
 brunette ' before she sailed, desiring her not to spare the 
 money, but buy herself good clothes and live without hard 
 work. It was four long years after this when Cobbett' s 
 regiment returned to England, and 
 
 ' I found,' he says, ' my little girl a servant of all work 
 (and hard work it was) at five pounds a year, in the house 
 of a Captain Brissac ; and, without hardly saying a word 
 about the matter, she put into my hands the whole of my 
 hundred and fifty pounds unbroken.' Cobbett on his part 
 had been equally faithful ; though with an episode — of 
 friendship on his side, and a beginning of love on the other 
 — between him and a farmer's beautiful daughter in New 
 Brunswick, which would have been dangerous to a man 
 of weaker will and principle. He tells this story delightfully 
 in the ' Advice to Young Men.' 
 
 The sergeant-major, now thirty years old, obtained his 
 discharge (this was in 1792) and immediately accused four 
 officers of his regiment of embezzlement and keeping false 
 accounts. A court-martial was granted, but on the day of 
 ti'ial no accuser appeared. Cobbett had gone to France 
 with his new-married wife. Thence, after six months, they 
 sailed to America. His heat of temper, I should guess, 
 along with a real conviction of being in the right, made him 
 put in the accusation ; and his shrewdness showed him,
 
 COBBETT AS JOURNALIST. 53 
 
 afterwards, the difficulty of sustaining it ; and so, being but 
 a retired sergeant-major without advisers or backers, or 
 any confidence in the powers that were, he thought the best 
 plan was to remove himself. In 1794, Cobbett, then in 
 Philadelphia, began authorship by writing certain pamphlets 
 under the signature of Peter Porcupine. These were 
 violently anti-democratic, opposed to all the views then 
 popular in France and America, and made a great noise. 
 Then, as all through his career, he delighted in opposing 
 and attacking ; and the title of one of these pamphlets, ' A 
 Kick for a Bite' (by no means 'A Kiss for a Blow'), 
 truly indicates his manner of carrying on a controversy. 
 Cobbett afterwards opened a bookseller's shop in Second 
 Street. He was recommended not to expose anything in 
 his window that might provoke the populace. 
 
 ' I saw the danger ; but also saw that I must, at once, 
 set all danger at defiance, or live in everlasting subjection 
 to the prejudices and caprice of the democratical mob.' 
 
 When he took down his shutters, the window of the new 
 shop was seen to be filled with portraits of royal and aristo- 
 cratic personages, George III. in a prominent position and 
 ' every picture that I thought likely to excite rage in the 
 enemies of Great Britain.' The bold bookseller was at- 
 tacked in newspapers and pamphlets, and by threatening 
 letters, but his shop and person remained without scathe. 
 
 At this time, the first of many suits for libel was brought 
 against Cobbett by the Spanish minister for an attack upon 
 himself and his royal master in Porcupine s Gazette ; this 
 was followed by an action on the part of one Dr. Eush, who 
 treated yellow fever by bleeding, and whom Porcupine 
 called ' Sangrado ' and 'quack' — probably with truth. 
 But in this case Cobbett was fined 5,000 dollars and costs, 
 and ' sold up ' by the sheriff. 
 
 Soon after, he returned to England, already noted as a 
 journalist, and set up in London a daily paper, TJie Porcu-
 
 54 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 pine. This soon came to a stop ; and then began in 1802 
 the famous Political Begister, which appeared, first fort- 
 nightly, then weekly, and continued, almost without a break, 
 during more than thirty years. 
 
 At first, Cobbett was a warm anti-Napoleouist, partisan 
 of Pitt, and defender of aristocratic institutions. At the 
 Peace of Amiens he refused to light up his windows in Pall 
 Mall (where his shop was), and had them smashed by the 
 mob. Six persons were convicted for taking share in this 
 outrage ; the jury recommended them to mercy, and the 
 prisoners' counsel asked Mr. Cobbett if he would join in the 
 recommendation. ' Certainly not, sir,' was the reply, ' I 
 came here to ask for justice, and not for mercy.' 
 
 In the early volumes of the ' Kegister ' some of the most 
 amusing things are Cobbett's violent attacks on Sheridan, 
 and also his denunciations of the study of Greek and Latin 
 as ' worse than useless,' his ire having been roused 
 by the frequent employment of the phrase uti possidetis in 
 some of the parliamentary debates. Cobbett had his own 
 notions of ' culture ; ' he never regretted the early narrow- 
 ness of his education as a farmer's boy, but vaunted it to be 
 the very best in the world. Without this kind of education, 
 or something very much like it, — 
 
 ' I should have been at this day ' (he says in ' Eural 
 Rides ') ' as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of 
 those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester 
 and Westminster schools, or from any of those dens of 
 dunces called colleges and universities.' 
 
 Here, after Warton and Keats, we have a distinct third 
 variety of the writing man. As to poetry and philosophy 
 and art, Cobbett sincerely despised them. His ignorance 
 of all that is highest in literature was immense, and he was 
 immensely proud of it. If he could be supposed to have 
 noticed Keats's existence, which is unlikely, one may imagine 
 the profundity of his contempt for it. Keats could have
 
 THE POLITICAL REGISTER. 55 
 
 imagined the contempt and understood it, with Cobbett 
 himself and all his works and ideas into the bargain, in one 
 lazy twinkle of his eye. The broad-shouldered beetle- 
 browed, shrewd, indefatigable, self- esteeming, pugnacious, 
 obstinate man, unlearned and unimaginative, crammed 
 with prejudices and personal likings and dislikings, looked 
 upon his own practical common sense as the final standard 
 of everything in heaven and earth. He was in a good 
 many ways like Walter Savage Landor, minus the culture. 
 
 When he set up the ' Eegister,' Cobbett was about forty 
 years old, and he soon became a political power in the 
 kingdom, and a thorn, or a whole bush of thorns, in the 
 side of the ministry — of every ministry in turn. He was 
 never quiet for a day, always fighting twenty people at a 
 time, and knocking them down in succession with his 
 cudgel, like Master Punch. In 1803 he came under two 
 fines of 500Z. each for libels on members of the Irish 
 Government. Having begun as a partisan of Pitt, he 
 changed round (it was said under the effect of a personal 
 slight), attacked Pitt violently, and his funding system; 
 backed Sir Francis Burdett, and became recognised as one 
 of the leading ' Kadicals.' In 1810, for an article on the 
 flogging of two militiamen at Ely, he was prosecuted by the 
 Crown, fined 1,000/., and sent to prison for two years. The 
 * Eegister ' for July 14th is dated from ' Newgate ; ' and 
 the sturdy man is as full of courage and fight as ever. 
 
 'This work' (he sfiys), 'of which I now be^in the Ekjhteenth Yolutiit\ 
 has had nothing to support it but its own merits. Not a pound, not even 
 a pound in paper money, was ever expended in advertising it. It came 
 up like a grain of mustard, and hke a grain of mustard-seed it has spread 
 over the whole civilized world. And why has it spread more than other 
 publications of the same kind ? There have not been wanting imitations 
 of it. There have been some dozens of them, I believe : same size, same 
 form, same type, same heads of matter, same title — all but the word ex- 
 pressing my name. How many efforts have been made to tempt the 
 public away from me, while not one attempt has been made hy me to 
 prevent it 1 Yet all have failed, Tlie changeling has been discovered
 
 56 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 and the wretched adventurers have then endeavoured to wi-eak their 
 vengeance on me. They have sworn that I write badly ; that I publish 
 nothing but trash ; that I am both fool and knave. But still the readers 
 hang on to me. One would think, as Falstaff says, that I had given 
 them love powder. No ; but I have given them as great a rarity, and 
 something full as attractive — namely, truth in clear language' 
 
 After his two years in prison, Cobbett emerged again, 
 pugnacious and undaunted, thougli now fifty years old. He 
 had a strong frame, perfect health, and a cheerful tempera- 
 ment. He rose early, took plenty of exercise, was very 
 moderate in diet, eschewing wine and spirits, tea and coffee, 
 and also vegetables (which he called 'garden stuff'), and 
 eating as little meat and bread as he could prevail on his 
 teeth to be satisfied with ; his drink beer, milk, and water. 
 He was very fond of farming, which he understood well, and 
 also of field sports, especially hunting. During the middle 
 part of his life he occupied for some time a farm at Botley, 
 in Hampshire. 
 
 In his family life he was one of the most fortunate of men, 
 
 ' I have seven children ' (he wrote), ' the greater part of whom are fast 
 approaching the state of young men and young women. I never struck 
 one of them in anger in my life ; and I recollect only one single instance 
 in which I have ever spoken to one of them in a really angry tone and 
 manner. And when I had so done, it appeared as if my heart was gone 
 out of my body. It was but once, and I hope it will never be again. . . . 
 In my whole life I never spent one evening away from my own home, and 
 without some part, at least, of my family, if I was not at a distance from 
 that home.' 
 
 His wife he never tired of praising. Some one lately told 
 me, P. Walker, a little anecdote, belonging doubtless to the 
 Botley time. A gentleman, who told the thing to my 
 informant, was travelling to London inside the Southampton 
 coach. There were four passengers, one a lady. Cobbett, 
 whose name was in everybody's mouth, became the topic of 
 conversation, and was severely handled by the three gentle- 
 men, probably Tories. ' I hear,' says one, ' that he is a 
 tyrant at home, and beats his wife.' On which the lady,
 
 DOMESTIC HAPPINESS. 57 
 
 hitherto silent in her corner, said : ' Pardon me, sir, a 
 kinder husband and father never breathed ; and I ought to 
 know, for I'm his wife.' 
 
 How far (if at all) can the domestic life of any public man 
 be usefully considered in connection with his public life, as 
 throwing light on the latter? The domestic life seems to 
 belong to the department of biography, as distinguishable 
 from history. The fact of a man being in the common 
 meaning, a good husband, father, friend, or not good, seems 
 in many cases to throw no light at all upon his character as 
 a politician, a soldier, an author. To sum up the total of 
 a man, tracing the connection between his public and private 
 life, is a task which, if at all fit to be attempted, it would 
 be vain to attempt without an extremely unusual command 
 of all the facts. The rule that public men, as such, are to 
 be judged by their public work seems, broadly, the sound 
 one. But here is matter for an essay. Cobbett, in his poli- 
 tical writings, continually praised his own domestic virtues. 
 "Whether or no this added much weight to his arguments on 
 paper currency and rotten boroughs, it certainly made his 
 writings more vivacious and readable. 
 
 In 1816, Napoleon being finally settled, the British public 
 began to talk loudly of Parliamentary Eeforni ; ' Hampden 
 Clubs' were established in every part of the kingdom, 
 muttering of ' universal suffrage ' and ' annual parlia- 
 ments.' 'Cobbett's Eegister' had hitherto been a stamped 
 paper, price a shilling and a halfpenny ; he now published 
 it unstamped and at the price of twopence. The circulation 
 became enormous, and so in proportion did Cobbett's 
 fame and influence. He had the largest audience of any 
 living writer, and by unfailing warmth and vigour of 
 style, and reckless personality, in abuse of his opponents, 
 kept his public always attentive and amused. Next year 
 the Government, alarmed by the state of the country.
 
 58 AT FABXHAM. 
 
 passed ' Six Acts ' of a repressive character, and suspended 
 the right of habeas corpus. Cobbett, not wishing to be 
 clapped in gaol without trial, suddenly moved off to America, 
 where he remained till November, 1819. He resided most 
 of the time in Long Island, and he also travelled to acquire 
 a knowledge of transatlantic farming. In the meantime he 
 kept on sending over his ' Register ' for publication in 
 England. When the repeal of the obnoxious law enabled 
 him to return, he published ' A Year's Residence in 
 America.' 
 
 He arrived at Liverpool in November, 1819. When the 
 custom-house officers examined his luggage, they opened a 
 certain box, and to their surprise found that it contained 
 human bones. 'These, gentlemen,' said Cobbett, 'are the 
 mortal remains of the immortal Thomas Paine ! ' This 
 business of Paine's bones (in the earlier numbers of the 
 ' Register ' he was ' that miscreant Paine ') was a truly 
 comical attempt on the part of an unimaginative elderly 
 man to produce a dramatic effect in real life. It was an 
 attempt in the French style, and it utterly failed in England. 
 Cobbett made a kind of progress through the provincial 
 towns up to London, where he was banqueted by his reform 
 friends at the Crown and Anchor tavern. As to Paine's 
 bones, he kept on speaking and writing about them for a 
 time as a treasure of immense value. He proposed a public 
 funeral, with ' twenty waggon - loads of flowers ' to strew 
 the way. A splendid monument was to be erected. Locks 
 of the deceased patriot's hair were to be soldered into gold 
 rings in Cobbett's own presence, and sold at a guinea each 
 beyond the value of the ring. But the public only laughed, 
 and some reported that Mr. Cobbett had been taken in by 
 the Yankees, and had brought away the bones of an old 
 nigger instead of those of his hero. Cobbett gave up talking 
 of his anatomical treasure, and what became of it nobody 
 knew.
 
 COBBETTS OPINIONS. 59 
 
 Cobbett at this time, and probably more or less all 
 through his career, was embarrassed in his money matters. 
 Insolvency was one cause of his flight to America, and he 
 seems at that time to have repudiated his debts on the 
 ground of his having been unjustly trealed by ' society as a 
 whole.' He was then made a bankrupt. He had not long 
 returned, before, in a new action for libel, he was cast in 
 1,000/. damages. But neither debt nor obloquy, nor any of 
 the numerous difficulties of his life, had any perceptible 
 effect on the spirits and industry of this indomitable man. 
 He seems to have borrowed money largely, and raised it by 
 hook or by crook in ways utterly mysterious to ordinary 
 men, who fear their butcher and baker. He blazed away in 
 his 'Eegister' weekly (at this time violently attacking his 
 former ally, Burdett), and in the beginning of the year 1820 
 he offered himself as a candidate for the borough of Coven- 
 try, but was defeated. In Queen Caroline's case he took 
 the queen's side with his usual vehemence. In 1822, his 
 'Eegister' for August 17th is addressed to Joseph Swan 
 a prisoner in Chester jail for some political offence), 
 and begins — 
 
 ' Castlereagh has cut his own throat, and is dead. Let 
 the sound reach you in the depth of your dungeon, and let it 
 convey consolation to your suffering soul.' 
 
 Canning, ' Property Eobinson,' and ' Pai'son Malthus,' 
 were, among other public characters, objects of constant 
 abuse in ' Cobbett's Eegister ' at this time. He was inces- 
 sant in vituperation of the borough - mongers and ' tax- 
 eaters ; ' they were the 'basest of mankind,' 'vermin,' 
 and even 'devils.' He was against standing armies, paper 
 money, and national debt ; modern shopkeeping and loco- 
 motion, modern London (' the Wen ') and other over- 
 peopled centres ; he abhorred Jews, Methodists, Quakers, 
 Bishops, and Malthusians. His opinions usually stood on a 
 I'ational foundation, but were built up into ill-balanced and
 
 60 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 grotesque edifices, lopsided and uninhabitable. Take a 
 specimen of his manner : — 
 
 'There is an "Emigration Committee" sitting to devise the means of 
 getting rid, not of the idlers, not of the pensioners, not of the dead- 
 weight, not of the parsons (to " relieve " vrhom we have seen the poor 
 labourers taxed to the tune of a million and a half of money), not of the 
 soldiers : but to devise means of getting rid oi tliese icorliing people, who 
 are grudged even the miserable morsel that they get ! There is in the 
 men calling themselves " English country gentlemen " something superla- 
 tively base. They are, I sincerely believe, the most cruel, the most 
 unfeeling, the most brutally insolent ; but I know, I can prove, I can 
 safely take my oath, that they are the most base of all the creatures that 
 God ever suffered to disgrace the human shape. The base wretches know 
 well that the taxes amount to more than sl-rty miUlung a year, and that 
 the poor-rates amount to about seven millions ; yet, while the cowardly 
 reptiles never utter a word against the taxes, they are incessantly railing 
 against the poor-rates, though it is (and they know it) the taxes that 
 make the paupers.' 
 
 The best thing in Cobbett (for which one must love him, 
 amidst all his faults) is his hearty compassion and kindness 
 for the working classes and the poor, and his unwearied 
 efforts to improve their condition. His ' Cottage Economy ' 
 is an excellent book, containing, among many other useful 
 things, an explanation of how to prepare and use English 
 wheaten straw for the manufacture of hats, bonnets, etc., 
 which has helped many a poor cottager in the struggle for a 
 living. One of his periodical publications is called ' The 
 Poor Man's Friend,' and this phi'ase ought to be inscribed 
 on his monument. Nothing made him more indignant than 
 to see a rich tract of country, here tilled like a garden, there 
 grazed by herds of fat oxen, the downs covered with sheep, 
 the valleys yellow with corn, and to find on this teeming 
 soil the labourers, and the labourers' wives and children, 
 living from year's end to year's end on the barest subsist- 
 ence, with no prospect towards the close of their hard life 
 but the workhouse. It was Cobbett's fixed belief that all 
 the country parts of England, including the villages and
 
 COBBETT AS A SPEAKER. 61 
 
 small towns, were far more populous some centuries ago, 
 that is, in the times called ' medieval,' than they are to- 
 day ; and as one evidence of this he points to the vast num- 
 bers of cathedrals and churches, built in those good old 
 times, which still exist all over the land. The English 
 • Eeformation ' was one of Cobbett's numerous objects of 
 attack, and he wrote a ' History ' of it, in which, as usual, 
 his statements (seldom without a vein of strong sense and 
 originality) were vitiated by ignorance and violence. 
 
 In 1829-30, Cobbett, now approaching his seventieth year, 
 but as hale and vigorous as ever, went through a great part 
 of England, chiefly on horseback, and gave political lectures 
 in many towns and villages. His main topics were the 
 villany of existing methods of taxation, and of the funding 
 principle, and the effect of these on the farming interest; 
 also the ' accursed ' rotten boroughs, and the necessity of 
 Parliamentary Eeform. He was an easy and fluent speaker, 
 self-possessed, shrewd and humorous, and spiced his 
 discourses with plenty of amusing egotism and personal 
 allusions to the men of the day. 
 
 ' Though I never attempt,' he says, ' to put forth that 
 sort of stuff which the " intense " people on the other side of 
 St. George's Channel call "eloquence," I bring out strings 
 of very interesting facts ; I use pretty powerful arguments, 
 and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that 
 they seldom fail to produce a lasting impression.' 
 
 At last ' Eeform ' was actually carried ; a reform which 
 most of the peers, and all the bishops but one, thought 
 almost equivalent to the downfall of the English Constitution 
 — a reform which noio is so antiquated, superseded and sur- 
 passed. And in the first Eeform parliament, in 1832, 
 William Cobbett, seventy years old, took his seat for 
 Oldham. After this he made a political tour in Ireland, 
 and was well received. In Parliament he was regular in 
 attendance, and spoke not unfrequently, for the most part
 
 62 AT FARXHAM. 
 
 on agricultural questions, and with good sense and modera- 
 tion. But his rat-like instinct of using his teeth on some- 
 thing or somebody, brought him again into trouble. 
 Differing from Peel on the currency question, Cobbett took 
 the violent and absurd step of moving for an address to the 
 King, praying him to dismiss Sir Eobert Peel from the 
 Privy Council. Only three members voted in favour of 
 Cobbett's motion, and his influence in the House was 
 ruined. 
 
 In these years Cobbett rented a place called Normandy 
 Farm, about a couple of miles from his native town of 
 Farnham. When he could get away from ' the Wen,' he 
 lived with his wife and children in this plain farm-house 
 among his barns and fields, in daily sight of the scenes of 
 his infancy, and engaged in those rural occupations which 
 he delighted in, as much as in his alternate business of 
 fierce political controversy. 
 
 In the middle of May, 1835, Cobbett, though suffering 
 from sore throat, attended the House and spoke, almost 
 inaudibly, in favour of a motion for the repeal of the malt- 
 tax ; he grew worse, but again came to the House on the 
 25th, and spoke and voted on a motion on agricultural 
 distress. Next morning (Tuesday) he went down to his 
 farm, and felt better at first, but relapsed. 
 
 ' On Sunday,' whites his son in the ' Eegister ' of June 
 20th, ' he revived again, and on IMonday gave us hope that 
 he would yet be well. He talked feebly, but in the most 
 collected and sprightly manner, upon politics and farming ; 
 wished for " four day's rain " for the Cobbett corn and root 
 crops ; and on Wednesday he could remain no longer shut 
 up from fields, but desired to be carried round the farm, 
 which being done, he criticised the work that had been 
 going on in his absence, and detected some little deviation 
 from his orders, with all the quickness which was so remark- 
 able in him. On Wednesday night he grew more and more
 
 DEATH OF COBDETT. 63 
 
 feeble, and was evidently sinking ; but he continued to 
 answer with perfect clearness every question that was put 
 to him. In the last half -hour his eyes became dim ; and 
 at ten minutes after one p.m. he leaned back, closed them 
 as if to sleep, and died without a gasp. He was seventy- 
 three years old.' 
 
 A portrait of the sturdy man's personal appearance in his 
 later days, drawn by William Hazlitt, is lifelike : — 
 
 ' Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The 
 only time I ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant 
 man, easy of access, affable, clear-headed, simple and mild 
 in his manner, deliberate and unruffled in his speech, though 
 some of his expressions were not very qualified. His figure 
 is tall and portly. He has a good sensible face, rather full, 
 with little grey eyes, a hard square forehead, a ruddy com- 
 plexion, with hair grey or powdered ; and had on a scarlet 
 broadcloth waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging 
 down, as was the custom for gentlemen farmers in the last 
 century, or as we see it in the pictures of members of 
 parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did not 
 think less favourably of him for seeing him.' 
 
 The ' Bush,' extending from the High Street towards 
 the river meadows, is a fine old-fashioned inn, with modern 
 comforts added. I was rather afraid of the waiter at 
 first ; for his smart dress-coat, white necktie, handsomely 
 arranged head of hair, and elegant manners, made him fit 
 apparently to wait upon no one with less than 2,000/. a 
 year. But my dread wore off; he proved very civil, and 
 the bill moderate. When I looked from my bedroom 
 window in the morning, it was through a fringe of ivy 
 leaves, on the bloom of three great hawthorns, two pink, 
 one white, the latter with an upright but spirally-twisted 
 stem like a Lombardic pillar ; and a pretty garden of sward, 
 flowerbeds and slirubberies, where the landlord was lovingly 
 at work with his ho3.
 
 64 AT FARNHAM. 
 
 He told me something of Cobbett, whom he had often 
 seen. When Cobbett was a member of parhament, and 
 living at Normandy Farm (two or three miles from this 
 town), did he mix with the neighbom-ing gentry? Hardly 
 at all, the landlord thought — he w^ent about his own affairs 
 in his own way. He used to drive into Farnham in a 
 carriage that looked as if the fowls had been roosting on it, 
 and with a couple of farm-horses. Mr. Nicholls, formerly 
 postmaster, has some letters of Cobbett to him, which he 
 shows to the curious. Cobbett was dissatisfied with the 
 mode of delivery of his letters by the post-office, and in- 
 sisted upon an alteration with his usual vehemence ; but 
 finding that he was in the wrong, apologised to Mr. Nicholls, 
 and used afterwards to send him frequent presents of fruit 
 and vegetables from the farm. My landlord was at Cob- 
 bett's funeral, and saw Daniel O'Connell there. The funeral 
 took place on the 27th of June, 1835, between two and three 
 in the afternoon. The great Irish agitator did not follow 
 the coffin into the church, but stood in the churchyard the 
 while, amidst a circle of observers, to whom he put questions 
 about the land, hops, wages. 
 
 O'Connell and Cobbett were not unlike ; big, burly, blus- 
 tering, able, noisy fellows, who made themselves heard far 
 and wide. Each was fond of field sports ; fonder still of 
 the turbulent excitement of political contest. Each was 
 powerful in vituperation, great in giving nicknames, full of 
 ready coarse humour of a popular sort, merciless in an- 
 tagonism, unscrupulous in invective; and, moreover, they had 
 more than once or twice exercised these gifts against each 
 other. Each of the men in his family circle was respected 
 and beloved. In public life they were hke prizefighters. 
 Pugnacious and powerful, they found their arena in politics. 
 
 After my conversation with the landlord, I went over to 
 the church, a building of rubble-masonry, done-up of 
 course, with some remains of good early work in the
 
 COBBETTS GRAVE. 65 
 
 windows of the tower, which is high, square and massive. 
 Close to the north porch, enclosed with iron railings, is 
 Cobbett's tombstone, an ugly lump. The leading facts of 
 his life are given in a simply-worded inscription on one 
 side ; the other side bears record of his wife, Anne Cobbett, 
 born at Woolwich, 1775, died in London, 1848. So wretchedly 
 has the stonemason (or as he calls himself, ' Thos. Milner, 
 Sculptor, London, 1856 ') done his work, that the in- 
 scriptions are already almost illegible in parts. A head- 
 stone close by, within the railings, is inscribed with ' George 
 Cobbett, died 1762,' — this was the old grandfather, the 
 farm-labourer. While I was looking, an old farm-labourer 
 came through the churchyard and paused beside me, — ' Ay, 
 that's Cobbett's grave, is that. I was at his funeral, myself, 
 that I was : I saw O'Connell, he was an Irishman, he was : 
 he stood just here, he did : I saw him myself, I could swear 
 I did : ' a very stupid poor man, and not like George Cob- 
 bett, I fancy, though in the same rank of life. 
 
 William Cobbett, the whitish-haired, ruddy-faced little 
 grandson, in smock-frock, scaring birds, weeding, etc., who 
 became a stalwart young sergeant-major, a political writer, 
 farmer, good family man, indefatigable and world-famous 
 journalist and public speaker, member of the House of 
 Commons, v/as born in that brown-roofed, low house just 
 across the river ; and here, alongside the graves that he 
 often ran amongst in his childhood, his own bones are now 
 laid to rest. 
 
 Leaving the churchyard, I walked past the ' Jolly Far- 
 mer,' and eastward from the town, in the direction of 
 Crooksbury Hill, which I had seen from the Bishop's Park, 
 like a lion couchant, with dark fir-trees for mane ; and 
 recalled that passage in Cobbett (one of the many which 
 give us a tenderer feeling for his memory), where he describes 
 his visit to Farnham in 1800, after returning from America. 
 He was then thirty-eight years old. 
 
 5
 
 66 AT FAnXHAM. 
 
 ' When in about a month after my arrival in London T went to Farn- 
 liam, the place of my birth, what was my surprise ! everything was 
 become so pitifully small ! I had to cross in my post-chaise the long 
 and dreary heath of Bagshot. Then, at the end of it, to mount a hill 
 called Hungary Hill ; and from that hill I knew that I should look down 
 into the beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with 
 impatience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my childhood ; 
 f(n- I had learnt before the death of my father and mother. There is a 
 hill not far from the town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of 
 a flat in the form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I 
 used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. This hill 
 was a famous object in the neighbourhood. . . . "As high as Crooksbury 
 Hill" meant, with us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore fhe first 
 object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe my ej'es. 
 Litei'ally speaking, I for a moment thought the famous hill removed, and 
 a little heap put in its stead ; for I had seen in New Brunswick a single 
 rock, or hill of solid rock, ten times as big and four or five times as high ! 
 The post-boy, going down-hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a few 
 minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of which I could see the pro- 
 digious sandhill where I had begun my gardening works. What a 
 nothing ! But now came rushing into my mind, all at once, my pretty 
 little garden, my little blue smock frock, my little nailed shoes, my pretty 
 pigeons, that I used to feed out of my hands, the last kind words and 
 tears of my gentle and tender-hearted and affectionate mother 1 I has- 
 tened back into the room. If I had looked a moment longer, I should 
 have dropped.' 
 
 However we may estimate Cobbett, his life w^as certainly 
 a happij one. How different from that of Eobert Burns ! 
 Peasants, both of them, born and bred ; vigorous in body 
 and mind ; enjoying rural scenery ; sAvorn admirers of the 
 fair sex ; eloquent, humorous, vehement, eagerly sym- 
 pathetic with working people, especially the agriculturists ; 
 yet utterly unlike in their aims, in their careers, and, as we 
 must believe, in their inmost nature. The finest sensibility 
 to impressions, that is the quality of a poet. Sensibility to 
 pleasurable impressions, but also to painful, — w^hich are apt 
 to be most frequent in this work-a-day world ; and the 
 poetic nature feeling both in extreme is specially fain to 
 shun these and to seek those. Hence temptations; and, if 
 there be a flaw in the Kill (whether the will be faculty or
 
 THE SURREY PLOUGHBOY. 67 
 
 function) alas for the poet's chance of happiness ! I fear 
 the New Brunswick farmer's daughter would have fared 
 differently had her peace of mind been at Eobert's mercy. 
 The Surrey Ploughboy had constant good health and good 
 spirits, a strong will (which the other sadly lacked), plenty 
 of work and plenty of amusement, both such as he liked 
 best. He never had, and never missed, the thrilling 
 delights of his poor Ayrshire brother, wandering lonely by 
 Nithside, with murmured song, or crossing the moor to 
 ' Nannie, 0,' or feeling his heart swell on the field of 
 Bannockburn. But Cobbett believed in himself, and 
 produced visible effects on the world. He was thoroughly 
 fortunate in his family circle. ' Cares ! ' he exclaims 
 (' Advice to Young Men ') — ' what have I had worthy of 
 the name of cares ? ' He ended his career tranquilly at a 
 full age, vigorous to the last, and after having attained 
 the chief object of his ambition, a seat in a Reformed 
 Parliament. 
 
 As to his writings, their style is sturd}^ straightforward, 
 clear, emphatic, but often clumsy, and almost always 
 verbose. The violence, personality, and self-conceit some- 
 times pass all bounds. In spite of the perspicuity, vigour, 
 and raciness of his pages, the general effect upon the mind 
 is very unsatisfactory. Strength and narrowness combined 
 give one a peculiarly uncomfortable feeling, as of mental 
 incarceration. 
 
 Still his 'Rural Rides,' 'Cottage Economy,' 'Advice 
 to Young Men,' are, in the main, thoroughly wholesome 
 reading, manly and pure, with much sweetness ; often 
 reminding one of the smell of new-turned earth mingled 
 with that of spring flowers. Many of his leading opinions 
 — for example, those on Malthus, Public Credit, Taxation — 
 appear to me perfectly sound. A favourite conviction of 
 his was that ' England was at her zenith in the reign of 
 Edward the Third ; ' and it is rather curious to find so 
 
 5—2
 
 68 AT FAENHAM. 
 
 different a man from Cobbett as Mr. Euskin, telling us that 
 in many respects ' we have steadily declined ' since about 
 that time. ^ 
 
 Much work William Cobbett certainly did do, and with 
 great effect on the ' public opinion ' of England ; shoving 
 on England with his big shoulder through thick and thin, 
 more than perhaps any other one man, into what is called 
 Beform. He was a Eadical of the best type, in so far as 
 he insisted upon truth, industry, frugality, obedience, love 
 of goodness and simplicity, as the first things necessary, 
 without which all politics are moonshine ; and, on the 
 whole, he fairly canied his own doctrines into practice. 
 
 The sun shone on flowery hedgerows as I turned down a 
 byway leading to Moor Park, the Moor Park of Sir William 
 Temple and Jonathan Swift. 
 
 ' See Eagles Xcst, p. 230.
 
 EAMBLE THE FOUETH. 
 
 MOOR PARK AND JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 PASSING Cobbett's birthplace, the 'Jolly Farmer,' 
 and the Farnham railway station, I soon quitted 
 the main road for a by-road on the left. The hedgerow- 
 bank among other flowers showed an abundance of the 
 greater celandine, with its yellow four-petaled bloom and 
 beautifully cut green leaf. Neither this, nor Wordsworth's 
 friend, its lesser namesake (which is of the ranunculus 
 tribe — this of the poppy), nor any other of yellow wild- 
 flowers equals in richness of colour the common king-cup at 
 its best. It tells wonderfully in a field nosegay. Never 
 king of Thule quaffed his wine from so rich-hued a goblet. 
 
 This spring [1867], though strangely broken by three or 
 four patches of winter, has been profuse of wild flowers, at 
 least on the south coast of England, especially of primrose, 
 lesser celandine, stitchwort, red campion, king-cup, water 
 crowfoot. Blue-bells were less plentiful. The hawthorns, 
 which burst into sudden bloom, as the nightingales into 
 song, in the warm beginning of May, stopped short, as the 
 birds also were stricken dumb, in those three weeks of 
 unnatural cold which made ' hoary-headed frosts fall in the 
 fresh lap of the crimson rose,' and blighted many a walnut- 
 tree, mulberry, and myrtle in cottage-gardens, as well as 
 countless ridges of the ' famine-root ' abhorred by Cobbett, 
 for which he cursed the memory of Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 The later-leaved forest trees, oak and ash, are also many of 
 
 69
 
 70 MOOR PARK AND SJFIFT. 
 
 them scorched as by fire ; but not these two broad spread- 
 ing oaks that overshade the stee^D lane descending to Moor 
 Park, and under whose branches Jonathan Swift must so 
 often have passed, during the nine or ten years of which he 
 spent the best part at this place, between the ages of 
 twenty-two and thirty-one. From the name of it, and from 
 finding mention of its loneliness, I had always fancied Moor 
 Park to be a bleak solitary place. It is but two miles from 
 Farnham, and in a richly-wooded vale. The little Wey 
 winds through meadow-ground, steepish slopes rising on 
 either hand, forest-like with large oaks, horse-chestnuts, 
 beeches, lindens, mixed with the pillared shade of dusky 
 firs. Moor Park House is now an ugly stuccoed building, 
 the old walls, or part of them, still forming its core. The 
 garden slopes to the river ; the lane crosses the river by a 
 little bridge, then, turning sharp to the right, passes in 
 front of the white mansion and along the vale, a rural 
 grass-grown avenue (public, but unfrequented) — the tree- 
 shaded high bank on your left hand, the watery meadow- 
 fields with sallows and osiers on your right, and the pai'allel 
 shady slope beyond. A mile or so of this brings you to 
 another bridge, a mill, a main road winding up' the shoulder 
 of fir-clad Crooksbury Hill ; and just beyond this bridge, in 
 a shad}^ park, are the ruins of Waverley Abbey. Moor 
 Park House was lately a water-cure establishment, but is 
 now again a i^rivate residence. Up the steep bank close by, 
 fir-shaded, from which you can look down the chimneys, 
 Sir William Temple's amanuensis used to run violently of 
 a morning, in hopes of improving his health, and putting to 
 rout his sick headaches ; and perhaps did himself more 
 harm than good. In some solitary recess of these woods 
 the same moody youth used to sit reading by the hour, 
 trying to forget the last rebuke of his dignified patron, and 
 all the countless vexations which a proud, irritable temper 
 finds or contrives for itself.
 
 SJriFT'S GRANDFATHER. 71 
 
 The sunny shady hill-slope here of red-stemmed Scotch 
 pines, and the grass-grown lane and valley beneath it are 
 haunted for me by the figure of a tall, gaunt young man, 
 rapid and abrupt in gesture, of dusky complexion and some- 
 what grim look, who hits one in pissing with a glance from 
 prominent blue eyes, suspicious, penetrating ; hurries on 
 muttering, and strides into the thicket. An odd little 
 fatherless child at Dublin, brought up on the charity of 
 uncles ; a sarcastic, insubordinate student of T.C.D. ; a dis- 
 contented young man, penniless, of little promise, though 
 conscious of capacity, and not knowing which way to turn ; 
 for his mother's sake (she herself dependent on relations) 
 taken under the patronage and into the house of the dignified 
 ex-courtier and man of letters, to do the part of a humble 
 kind of secretary ; vague schemes in his head of attempting 
 literary work ; an uncertain hope of getting into some sort 
 of career by the help of his patron's influence ; already, at 
 twenty-two, suffering from frequent ill health ; already a 
 moody, despondent, irritable human being, — I could see 
 young Jonathan Swift, haunting these lonely avenues and 
 fir-tree slopes ; and when I got home after this ramble, I 
 tried to sift out and make clearer to myself such facts as 
 are presented (sometimes too vaguely, and mixed up with 
 evident inaccuracies and statements without authority) by 
 the various biographers.' 
 
 The S,ev. Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, near Eoss in 
 Herefordshire, took the king's side in the great Civil War, 
 and thereby suffered much loss. At his death he left 
 thirteen or fourteen children, but ill off. The eldest son, 
 
 'Two books have since appeared: 'Life,' by John Forster, vol. i, 
 11)67-1711 (London, Murray, 187")), left utitinished at the writer's death : 
 and 'Life,' by Henry Craik (London, Murray, 1882). They give some 
 additional details, but no now light on Swift's character. The latter 
 book is vei'y positive — and, iu the opinion of some, very positively 
 wrong — on a disputed point in the Dean's history of great iniportauce in 
 forming a judgment upon his character. Sec i'ui'thcr on.
 
 72 MOOR PARK AND SJFIFT. 
 
 Godwin Swift, was called to the bar, and received a legal 
 office in Ireland. His good fortune drew three more of his 
 brothers to that country, William, Jonathan and Adam. 
 Jonathan, an attorney, had the place of steward or under- 
 treasurer at the King's Inn, Dublin ; but some two years 
 after his appointment he died suddenly at an early age, 
 leaving his widow in destitution, with an infant daughter, 
 and the expectation of another child. This fatherless child, 
 a son, was born on the 30th of November, 1667, most p-o- 
 hahly in Hoey's Court, Dublin. This was the year after 
 that Annus Mirabilis of Naval War with the Dutch and 
 Great Fire of London ; on its heels came Titus Gates, Lord 
 William Eussell and Algernon Sydney, Alliance against the 
 Grand Monarque, Banishment of the Protestants from 
 France, and many other things. His nurse, a native of 
 Whitehaven, carried him, out of affection, to that place, 
 and kept him there during the first three years of his life, 
 after which little Jonathan was brought back to Ireland, 
 and at six years old sent to Kilkenny School, his Uncle 
 Godwin undertaking the charge of his support and educa- 
 tion. In his fifteenth year he entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
 where he continued some seven years, gaining little credit 
 either for conduct or study. The Student, poor and depen- 
 dent (and hating his dependence and what he deemed his 
 uncle's parsimony), was a mauvais sujct, irregular in attend- 
 ance, given to ' town-haunting,' contemptuous to those 
 above him, audacious in lampoon. He obtained his ' B.A.' 
 with difficulty, and, after this, in the course of two years, 
 incurred over seventy penalties, was publicly admonished, 
 and subsequently, being convicted of insolence to the junior 
 dean, had his degree suspended, and was forced to crave 
 pardon in public. In 1689, being then in his twenty-second 
 year, this unruly young man, a nuisance to the learned 
 authorities, and a heartburn to his own relations (uncle 
 Godwin was dead, but another uncle had carried the youth
 
 SJFIFTS CHILDHOOD AXD YOUTH. 73 
 
 on), left college without money, character, or definite pros- 
 pect of any kind. Sailing to England, likely in some little 
 coasting vessel, young Jonathan Swift sets off on foot to his 
 anxious poor mother, then residing at Leicester, a tall awk- 
 ward youth, with large observant blue eyes, and a drily 
 sarcastic tongue which he delights to exercise upon carriers, 
 tramps, tavern-keepers, and whomsoever the cheap wayfarer 
 falls in with, having, in fact, a taste for amusing himself 
 with low company. 
 
 Though an irregular student, the lad is, in his own way, 
 much addicted to books, and has read a large quantity. He 
 has also tried his hand at scribbling, and carries an old 
 pocket-book crammed with verse-jottings, not odes to the 
 moon or his mistress's eyebrow, but lampoons and epigrams, 
 personal and political — on the Queen's accouchement, the 
 Prince of Orange, the Dublin actresses, doctors, college 
 dons, etc., often coarse enough in phrase. He has noted 
 the political movements of the time ; is not only inclined to 
 divert himself with the manners of the lower class of people, 
 but to observe (if he had the chance) the ways of courts and 
 cabinets, and of those great folk who pull the strings of the 
 puppet-show. Towards intermediate mankind, the ' re- 
 spectable ' classes in general, all their thoughts and doings, 
 his attitude is one of habitual contempt, now and again 
 concentrated into anger. They are dunces and fools, their 
 manners dull, their actions base, their objects despicable. 
 In the year that young Swift took his B.A. degree at 
 Dublin 'by special grace' (1685), Charles's merriment 
 came suddenly to an end; and in the year of the lad's 
 leaving college, Irish and French were encamped before the 
 gates of Derry, the parliament in College Green upholding 
 King James as their lawful monarch, while William and 
 Mary ruled in England. 
 
 During Jonathan's stay with his mother at Leicester (it 
 could not have been more than a few months) he entertained
 
 74 MOOR rARK AXD SWIFT. 
 
 his leisure in a manner not at all unusual with him, by 
 making iip to a pretty girl of that place, by the name of 
 Miss Betty Jones, who was of the decent middle class, and 
 not without a share of education and refinement. Mean- 
 while, Mrs. Swift having made humble application on 
 behalf of her son to the great Sir AVilliam Temple, who had 
 some knowledge of her, and received a gracious reply, the 
 youth set off southward, and joined the household of Sir 
 William, now some time retired from active public life, and 
 resident on a small estate. Moor Park to wit, which he 
 had purchased near Farnham, in Surrey. The ex-ambas- 
 sador and diplomatist was at this time a handsome stately 
 man of sixty, with a courtesy that easily rose to haughtiness, 
 and a love of letters that was not without a flavour of 
 pedantry. He had transacted with success various high 
 negotiations in his time, especially between England and 
 the States of Holland, was twelve years ambassador at the 
 Hague, had been in favour with King Charles, and was now 
 in favour with King William. He was fortunate in his 
 birth, in his marriage, and in every step of his career, and 
 had gathered honours not only in statesmanship, but also 
 in the field of literature. He was fond of reputation, and 
 as fond of ease and comfort ; perhaps a little irritable ; cer- 
 tainly not a little vain of his diplomacy, his learning, his 
 gardening, his person, and of all belonging to him ; more- 
 over, a precise, methodical, and loftily respectable gentle- 
 man in every particular, no doubt worshipped by his 
 Dorothea, and looked on with more or less of awe by every 
 one near him. It has been said, and often repeated, that 
 Mrs. Swift was related to Lady Temple, but for this I find 
 no evidence. Sir Thomas Temple, Sir William's father, was 
 Master of the Eolls in Ireland, and there had known and 
 patronised the Swift family, many of whom were connected 
 with the law. William Temple had lived for a time with 
 his father in Ireland, and was returned to the Irish parlia-
 
 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 75 
 
 ment for the County Carlow in 1661 : here is foundation 
 enough for the acquaintance of the Swifts and Temples. 
 Tliomas Swift, a ' parson-cousin ' of Jonathan, was for a 
 time domestic chaplain to Sir William. 
 
 Jonathan Swift, we observe, never had a father to guide 
 him, never had an early home to look back to with sacred 
 recollections. From the age of six to fourteen he was at 
 Kilkenny school, and had i-ough treatment most likely. 
 When he spoke of his early years, which he seldom did, 
 it was not tenderly but bitterly : his uncle ' gave him the 
 education of a dog.' Dublin College was no Alma Mater; 
 he despised its men and broke its rules. But to the mother 
 who bore him he was ever reverential and affectionate, 
 visiting her regularly, it would seem, once a year, when he 
 w^alked to Leicester for the purpose. 
 
 And now here is Jonathan at Moor Park, in his twenty- 
 second year, clever, awkward, sensitive, proud, insubordi- 
 nate, with a strong Dublin brogue, unused to society, ready 
 enough to be moved to contempt or sarcasm by the formali- 
 ties of polite company, yet, at the same time, very willing 
 to study the manners and views of the great, whom he for 
 the first time has a chance of seeing close at hand, and 
 awe-struck, in spite of himself, by the high reputation and 
 dignified manners of Sir William. The rough Dublin 
 student finds himself in a totally new scene of life. But the 
 position is far from agreeable ; he seldom if ever dines at 
 Sir William's table, and shares his conversation on a distant 
 and dependent footing. He does his daily business as 
 copyist and amanuensis, listens and replies with forced 
 humility, glides moodily out of the house, avoiding alike the 
 servants and superiors of the family, and runs up and down 
 the steep slope behind it for exercise, or sits for hours read- 
 ing in a solitary place among the woods. He is lonely, 
 anxious, discontented, knows not what to turn to, or what 
 is to become of him ; loathes his perpetual and inevitable
 
 76 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 condition of dependence, and fancies an insult in every 
 word or look of those about him. One comfort he has, in a 
 dark-eyed pretty child of six or seven years old, daughter of 
 Mrs. Johnson, the housekeeper, a w^idow, and 'tis said a 
 distant cousin of the Temples. Young Swift spends many a 
 spare hour in teaching little Esther, and though he is ever 
 grave and almost hard in his manner even with her, there is 
 evidently a good feeling between teacher and pupil, and no 
 other portion of his time passes so agreeably. But this 
 little solace is not enough to prevent his discontent and 
 gloom growing thicker upon him, much increased by fre- 
 quent fits of ill-health. 
 
 ' A natural daughter of Temple's,' some call Esther, with- 
 out any evidence. That Sir William, aged sixty, should 
 bring a ' natural daughter ' of six years old, and her mother, 
 to the house with himself and his wife, to whom he was 
 always tenderly attached, is not the most likely thing in 
 the world. 
 
 Young Swift became so ill and restless at Moor Park, 
 that it was agreed he should return to Ireland for change of 
 air and scene. He went, but did not stay many months, 
 and came back (very likely on advice of friends and new 
 reflections in his own mind) to Moor Park towards Christ- 
 mas : this being in the year 1690 — the battle of the Boyne 
 lost and won, and King James finally fled to France. Jona- 
 than's life here went on much as before — his health no 
 better ; but by degrees the great man admitted him nearer 
 to his confidence. 
 
 About this time young Swift received, from a certain Eev. 
 John Kendall of Leicestershire (a relative of his) a letter 
 on the subject of Miss Betty Jones, about whose flirtation, 
 or whatever it was, with young Jonathan the scandal- 
 mongers of Leicester had been busying themselves. The 
 young gentleman at Moor Park replies to this in a curious 
 letter, civil enough towards his correspondent, but defiant
 
 AN EPISODE AT LEICESTER. 77 
 
 of the world in general, and in particular of ' the obloquy 
 of a parcel of very wretched fools, which I solemnly pro- 
 nounce the inhabitants of Leicester to be.' He says he 
 has behaved to ' twenty women ' in the same way as to 
 Miss Betty Jones, ' without any other design than that of 
 entertaining myself when I am very idle, or when some- 
 thing goes amiss in my affairs. This I always have done 
 as a man of the world, when I had no design for anything 
 grave in it, and what I thought at worst a harmless imperti- 
 nence.' As to marriage, he is resolved not to think of it 
 till he settles his fortune in the world ; and even then, ' I 
 am so hard to please that I suppose I shall put it off to the 
 other world.' He is apt to talk with women, he says, 
 because there is something in him ' which must be 
 employed ; ' and during these seven weeks that he has 
 been lonely at Moor Park, since his return from Ireland, 
 he has, for the same reason, ' writ and burnt and writ 
 again, upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any 
 man in England.' A great person in Ireland ' used to tell 
 me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that would do 
 mischief if I would not give it employment. It is this 
 humour that makes me busy when I am in company, to 
 turn all that way ; and since it commonly ends in talk, 
 whether it be love or common conversation, it is all alike.' 
 
 Among his tentative scribblings in Sir William's library, 
 and during his rambles out of doors, young Swift has jotted 
 down many notes for an odd kind of satire on the church 
 controversies of which he hears so much talk, and the 
 respective tenets of the Church of England, Popery, and 
 Dissent. He himself is thinking of entering the Established 
 Church, not willingly, for he does not feel himself to be 
 well fitted for a clergyman, but because he cannot see any 
 other opening. 
 
 In 1692 he is adu:iitted to the degree of Master of Arts 
 at Oxford, afterwards visiting his mother at Leicester. At
 
 78 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 Oxford he says, ' I am ashamed to have been more obHged 
 in a few weeks to strangers than ever I was in seven years 
 to Dubhn College. ... I am not to take orders till the 
 king gives me a prebend : and Sir William Temple, though 
 he promises me the certainty of it, yet is less forward than 
 I could wish, because (I suppose) he believes I shall leave 
 him, and, upon some accounts, he thinks me a little neces- 
 sary to him.' ' 
 
 In fact. Swift was impatient to get away, and become in a 
 measure indejDendent ; while Sir William, for reasons of his 
 own, put oK from one time to another the carrying into 
 effect of his promises to advance the young man's interest, 
 and desired him to rest content at Moor Park for the 
 present ; and this state of tilings at last came to a rupture 
 between them, Swift going over to Ireland .in May, 1694, 
 with the resolution to be ordained there, and ' make 
 what endeavour I can for something in the Church.'- But 
 he found unexpected difficulties, and was reduced to address a 
 most submissive letter from Dublin to Sir William (October 6, 
 1694), requesting from ' his honour,' a certificate of good 
 behaviour, without which he could not gain admission to the 
 ministry. 
 
 ' The particulars expected of me are what relate to morals 
 and learning, and the reasons of quitting your honour's 
 family, that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill 
 actions. They are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, 
 though, in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any 
 further than for infirmities.' Sir William sent the certificate, 
 and Swift took ' deacon's orders,' took ' priest's orders ' a 
 couple of months after (January, 1695), and was appointed 
 (probably through Sir William's influence) to the small bene- 
 fice of Kilroot (Kil ruah, 'red church'), worth about a 
 100/. a year. He was now twenty-seven years old. This 
 
 'Letter to his iincle Willi.im. from Moor Park. Nov. 29, 1G'J2. 
 -Letter to his cousin Deaiie Swift. -June 'A. l(;i»4.
 
 ESTHER JOHXSOX. 79 
 
 Kilroot, a parish situated near Carrickfergus, in the county 
 Antrim, was a prebend in the diocese of Connor (allowance 
 for the support of a clergyman of the cathedral). The pre- 
 bend is now Kilroot and Temple-corran, and the diocese 
 Down, Connor, and Dromore. 
 
 The prebendary moped at Kilroot ; Sir ^Yilliam missed 
 him at Moor Park ; before many months were gone Swift 
 was again (1696) under the same roof with his patron, 
 and with Hessy Johnson. He resigned his benefice, and 
 continued to reside at Moor Park for the next three years, 
 that is till Sir Wilham's death, in 1699. ^ 
 
 Hessy Johnson, thirteen years and three months younger 
 than Jonathan Swift, v>'as fifteen years old when he returned 
 to Moor Park. She had been sickly from her childhood, 
 but now grew into perfect health, a beautiful dark-eyed, 
 black-haired girl. In the society of this delightful girl, whose 
 studies he directed, and who almost worshipped him ; and 
 on a footing of increased confidence with his patron, upon 
 whose influence he relied for some suitable promotion, when 
 an opportunity should arrive, Parson Swift must have spent 
 three comparatively comfortable years. We do not hear 
 him grumbling and growling. He writes a book of singular 
 ability, full of odd humour and satiric fancy, coloured 
 indeed with the general temper of his mind, but not so 
 imbued with vitriolic cynicism as most of his later writings. 
 This was the Tale of a Tub, published anonymously in 
 1704, along with the Battle of the Books, and never 
 acknowlec^ged by the author. The Talc of a Tub, won- 
 derfully clever as it is, has perhaps been ranked higher as a 
 literary work than it deserves. It has a gi'eat reputation ; 
 and some choice parts of it, like Lord Peter's declaring the 
 loaf to be a shoulder of mutton, are often quoted. But, 
 
 ' The gnssii)inj^ stories of the Ciuisc of lS\vift"s Icaviiij? Kilroot, his 
 manner of fjf'i'ifJT. his hamliiig over the living to a pocr clergyman, are 
 r):c merest i-ubbish.
 
 80 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 though not long, the book is seldom read through, and as a 
 whole is not very readable. It is amorphous. Scarcely 
 half of it is occupied with the fragmentary history of Peter, 
 Martin, and Jack; the other half consisting of intercalary 
 chapters in a strain of grave irony, chiefly on the petty 
 literary controversies of the day. A notable and character- 
 istic performance, it hardly shows a right to be classed 
 among the finished treasures of English literature, though 
 Dr. Johnson rated it far above all Swift's other writings, 
 including Gulliver. The abundant images and illustrations, 
 often ingenious and pithy, are at best the product of a 
 whimsical fancy, not of a humorous or witty imagination ; 
 they are clever but not truthful and delightful, not exhilar- 
 ating, nor satisfying. Tlie foul smell, too, which so often 
 exhales from Swift's pages, is perceived throughout. This 
 Tale, which occupied the author several years, was written, 
 he says, ' to expose the abuses and corruptions in learning 
 and religion ; ' but it did not come out of any serious 
 purpose, nor by the method of it could any useful result 
 have been possibly attained. The broad Eabelaisian jesting 
 on Peter and Jack threw no kind of light upon Catholicism 
 or Calvinism. Swift's own convictions, now and afterwards, 
 were of the negative kind. His notion of Eeligion was an 
 Established Pohcy, to be defended against innovators, and 
 he could have defended Popery with equal vigour. He 
 perhaps believed in nothing save Orderliness and Industry, 
 though earnestly f?isbelieving in many things, which is 
 more than some people do. He hated injustice and mis- 
 government. He despised the dullness and meanness of 
 mankind. 
 
 The Battle of the Books, written during the same 
 period as the Tale of a Tub, and published along with 
 it, has all the characteristics of Swift's style, quiet and 
 cultivated irony, happy description (as of the spider's web), 
 and a taste for rough vulgar abuse and coarse jesting
 
 'BATTLE OF THE BOOKS: 81 
 
 patches of which come in here and there. The Battle, 
 written to please Sir Wilham Temple, in the controversy on 
 Ancient aiid Modern Learning, between Temple and Boyle 
 on one side, and Bentley and Wotton on the other, is in- 
 trinsically worthless, and contains no atom of argument. 
 Bentley was a man of real learning, Sir William a dilettante, 
 Swift but Sir William's partisan. It is noticeable that 
 neither Temple nor Swift, in speaking of modern writers, 
 makes the least allusion to Shakespeare. He didn't count. 
 In this Battle of the Books is the phrase, lately revived, 
 sweetness and light, descriptive of the products of the 
 Bee's industry, honey and wax, as compared with the 
 Spider's * dirt and poison.' It is amusing, by the way, 
 recollecting the two essayists, to think of the contrast of 
 Swift's straight hitting, and the modern Litterateur's beau- 
 tiful sparring with no real fight in it. 
 
 It is plain that Swift, in these years at all events, had no 
 intention of making Hessy Johnson his wife ; perhaps be- 
 cause he had known her from childhood, and been ' always 
 wnth her in the house,' but to marry somebody he was 
 always intending, or rather half-intending. He longed for 
 a wife, — he feared matrimony ; he fell in love (after a 
 manner of his own) with this girl and that, — he looked round 
 and saw very few happy marriages, and many poor men 
 overweighted with large families. For a long while he 
 could not make up his mind to marry because his plans were 
 unsettled and his maintenance too small ; then he found that 
 he was too old and his habits too fixed. But almost from 
 his boyhood to the decline of life, Swift was engaged in 
 successive intimacies with virtuous and cultivated women. 
 Some of these friendships lasted through many years. 
 Several of the ladies had more or less hope of becoming his 
 wife ; but they were all disappointed. 
 
 It does not appear at what precise time Swift first met 
 Miss Jane Waryng, a young lady of the north of Ireland, 
 
 G
 
 82 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 sister of his ' chum,' or chamber-fellow at Trinity College, 
 Dublin ; he probably, while at Kilroot, renewed a former 
 acquaintance with her ; and in the year of his return to 
 Moor Park (1696), we have a letter of his addressed to her 
 under the fancy name of ' Varina,' speaking of their engage- 
 ment, and urging its speedy fulfilment. This letter, dated 
 April 29, w^hich would seem to have been written at Belfast, 
 or some other seaport town in that part, is the most arti- 
 ficial thing I know from Swift's hand. ' It is so, by 
 heaven ! the love of Varina is of more tragical consequence 
 than her cruelty, . . . a thousand graves lie open,' etc. He 
 continued his correspondence with Miss Waryng all through 
 his last residence at Moor Park, and there is no reason to 
 think that his daily intercourse with Esther Johnson had 
 any intentional colour of courtship on it. 
 
 In May 1699 (n.s.), somewhat unexpectedly it would 
 seem, tho' he was over seventy years old. Sir William 
 Temple died, leaving his secretary unprovided with any 
 permanent maintenance, but bequeathing him lOOL, and 
 the privilege of editing, for his own benefit. Sir William's 
 writings. Jane Swift, Jonathan's sister, writes thus to her 
 cousin Deane Swift at this time : ' My poor brother has 
 lost his best friend, Sir William Temple, who was so fond 
 of him whilst he lived, that he made him give up his living 
 in this country to stay with him at Moor Park, and pro- 
 mised to get him one in England. But death came in 
 between, and has left him unprovided both of friend and 
 living ! ' 
 
 So now the Eev. Mr. Swift, aged thirty-two, takes his 
 last leave of Moor Park. 
 
 Shall we follow him a little further ? 
 
 He comes to London ; publishes Temple's works (the Tale 
 of a Tub still quiet in his desk) ; memorials King William, 
 and applies whatever court-influence he has, with the 
 object of getting some church-living, but does not succeed.
 
 LETTERS TO 'VARINA: 83 
 
 At length he accepts the post of chaplain and private 
 secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, appointed one of the 
 Lords Justices of Ireland, and attends his lordship to 
 Dublin Castle. To Ireland he constantly gravitates, in 
 spite of himself. Swift and Lord Berkeley soon quarrelled ; 
 the secretaryship was given to a Mr. Bushe ; Swift lam- 
 pooned the earl and the secretary, though he kept on good 
 terms with the countess and the other ladies of the family, 
 and amused them wdth jeux d' esprit, such as the ' Petition 
 of Mrs. Francis Harris.' After a year or so (in 1700), 
 having been refused the deanery of Derry, he was given, to 
 get rid of him, a little bunch of livings, Agher, Laracor, and 
 Eathbiggan, in the diocese of Meath, in all worth about 
 200/. a year, and went to live at Laracor glebe house, two 
 miles from Trim and twenty from Dublin. Here he im- 
 proved the house, made a canal at the foot of the garden, 
 stocked it with pike, and planted willows on the edge. He 
 also put the church in repair, preached every Sunday, and 
 played the part of country vicar with at least an average 
 assiduity. Before quitting Dublin he wrote a letter to 
 Miss Jane Waryng, beginning, ' Madam, — I am extremely 
 concerned at the account you give of your health ; for my 
 uncle told me he found you in appearance better than you 
 had been in some years, and I was in hopes you had still 
 continued so. God forbid I should ever be the occasion of 
 creating more troubles to you, as you seem to intimate.' 
 ' You would know,' he says, ' what gave my temper that 
 sudden turn, as to alter the style of my letters since I last 
 came over.' Is it owing ' to the thoughts of a new mis- 
 tress ? ' 'I declare, upon the word of a Christian and a 
 gentleman, it is not ; neither had I ever thoughts of being 
 married to any other person but yourself.' He goes on to 
 speak most disdainfully of her mother and her family, 
 calling her home 'a sink,' asks whether she is healthy 
 enough to marry, can put up with solitude and a poor way 
 
 6—2
 
 84 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 of living, can promise to obey him in everything, show^ no 
 ill humours, etc., all in the harshest tone. ' I singled you 
 out from the rest of vromen : and I expect not to be used 
 like a common lover.' Not being a common lover, cer- 
 tainly! Exit poor Jane Waryng, no longer ' Varina.' That 
 Svt^ift at one time intended to marry her is certain, unless 
 the two letters are forgeries ; and does not this dispose of 
 several of the biographical theories ? 
 
 Now (1700) he is vicar of Laracor ; and odd to say. Miss 
 Johnson, late of Moor Park, Surrey, is coming over to live 
 at the town of Trim, within a walk of Laracor. Sir William 
 has left her a bit of leasehold land in the county Wicklow, 
 as well as a sum of money, and for that reason, in addition 
 to others, she may as well live in Ireland. She comes over 
 accordingly, with an elder companion, a Mrs. Dingley, who 
 has a small income of her own ; and the two ladies go into 
 lodgings in Trim. Esther Johnson is now twenty, a beau- 
 tiful and sensible young woman, inclining to plumpness of 
 person, with intelligent dark eyes, black eyebrows and 
 lashes, and black hair ; her countenance at once soft and 
 piquant ; the forehead broad for a woman's, and of a very 
 fine curve. Her manners are full of natural grace, with a 
 sort of gentle sprightliness ; her conversation always agree- 
 able ; she knows how to be silent and how to speak with 
 pleasant effect, though not possessing nor pretending to any 
 remarkable intellectual gifts. On Swift, her tutor, the 
 friend of her childhood and maidenhood, she looks with 
 constant reverence and admiration, under which lies hid a 
 tenderer feeling. She is very gentle and submissive, but no 
 coward : she can rebuke a troublesome fool, and even shoot, 
 or shoot at, a midnight burglar on occasion. She is hoping 
 (yet very doubtfully, I imagine) to be Swift's wife, although 
 as yet he has never said or hinted anything of marriage. 
 His manner to her, now dictatorial, now playful, anon both 
 at once, is part fatherly, part lover-like — so far as a caress-
 
 STELLA AT LARAOOR. 85 
 
 ing phrase or intonation, scarcely beyond. He calls her 
 by various pet names, ' Stella,' the most usual. But with 
 all their intimacy, he always reserves himself, and she is 
 ever somewhat in awe. Esther and her Mrs. Dingley being 
 settled in their lodgings in the little town of Trim, are con- 
 stantly visited by the vicar of Laracor, and pay him visits 
 in return ; and when Doctor Swift leaves home, the two 
 ladies come and live at the vicarage during his absence. 
 There is at first plenty of gossip in the neighbourhood on all 
 this, which the doctor much disregards, being at the same 
 time scrupulously careful in his demeanour to the ladies, 
 never seeing Hessy without Mrs. Dingley, and equally 
 attentive to both. It became fully understood by his ac- 
 quaintance that he was Esther Johnson's friend and 
 guardian, and no more ; and when the Eev. Dr. Tisdall 
 proposed for her hand. Swift, then in London, wrote to him 
 to say that he had no objection to the match. But Esther 
 had objections, and Tisdall sued in vain. 
 
 It seems to me most likely, on the wbole — indeed, all but 
 certain — that it never at any time was seriously in Swift's 
 mind to marry her. There is no proof that he ever thought of 
 it, much less that he did it, as is often stated. Swift wrote 
 to Tisdall : ' I think I have said to you before, that if my 
 fortunes and humour served me to think of that state, I 
 should certainly, among all persons on earth, make your 
 choice ; because I never saw that person whose conversation 
 I entirely valued but hers ; this was the most I ever gave 
 way to. And, secondly, I must assure you sincerely that 
 this regard of mine never once entered into my head to be 
 an impediment to you : . . . the objection of your 
 fortune being removed, I declare I have no other ; nor shall 
 any consideration of my own misfortune in losing so good a 
 friend and companion as her prevail on me, against her 
 interest and settlement in the world.' ' Swift's relation to 
 •April 2Uth, 17U4,
 
 86 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 Esther Johnson throughout seems to be in no respect 
 mysterious, but perfectly intelhgible and in accordance 
 with his character. He was her instructor, guardian, 
 intimate friend and companion — nothing more at any time. 
 
 Of Swift's life at Laracor, his oddities in church, his 
 whimsical clerk Eoger Cox, several well-known anecdotes 
 are in circulation, few if any of which are authentic. He 
 made a visit nearly every year to London, where he was 
 acquainted with the ' wits ' of the town, and intimate with 
 some of the best of them — Addison, Steele, Arbuthnot and 
 others, and also stood on familiar terms with several of the 
 leading Whig statesmen. ■ The Tale of a Ttcb, which first 
 appeared anonymously in 1704, and afterwards in several 
 successive editions, was much talked about, and attributed 
 to various writers of note. Swift's intimates knew whose 
 it was, but he never directly acknowledged it. Among the 
 knowing, it gave him rank among the first order of ' wits ; ' 
 but it also opened a breach for attack which his enemies 
 (of whom, as a satirist and partisan, he had many) did 
 not neglect to use. 
 
 Being deputed by the Irish bishops to move the ministry 
 and the queen to a remission of a sum deducted by the 
 crown, under the name of ' first fruits,' from the incomes 
 of the Irish clergy (at first a papal impost, for crusading 
 purposes). Swift was thus at liberty to sojourn in England 
 from the beginning of 1708 till the spring of next year. In 
 the interest of his Whig friends, Somers and Halifax (and 
 of himself) he turned political pamphleteer, watched the 
 changes of court weather, and waited confidently for 
 preferment. Marriage was less and less in his thoughts. 
 Conscious of his strength, proved in trials, personal and 
 literary, with the most famous men of the time ; never 
 amorous, though much attracted to the company of women 
 who suited his tastes ; the excitements of party conflict and 
 London society, along with the ambition of rising to a
 
 DEATH OF SJVIFT'S MOTHER. 87 
 
 position suitable to his talents, now occupied his mind 
 almost altogether. On Church questions Swift was always 
 'High,' so far as stoutly stickling for all the external posses- 
 sions and privileges of the established clergy. In this he 
 differed from his Whig friends ; and finding it impossible, 
 after more than a year's trial, to get from them what he 
 wanted, either for the Irish Church or for Dr. Swift, he 
 sheered off, and was ready to attach himself to Mr. Harley, 
 when that statesman led the Tories into office. 
 
 In the spring of 1710, Swift, then at Laracor, heard of 
 the death, at Leicester, of his ' dear mother,' aged seventy, 
 and recorded it in an account-book, with this addition : ' I 
 have now lost my barrier between me and death ; God grant 
 I may live to be as well prepared for it as I confidently 
 believe her to have been ! If the way to heaven be through 
 piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.' 
 
 Harley being on the point of coming into power, the 
 Vicar of Laracor again hastened over to London (September, 
 1710), on the Irish clergy's behalf and his own; and soon 
 set his pen busy, in pamphlet and squib, on the side of 
 Harley's party. His pohtical pamphlets (he often lamented 
 afterwards to have so spent his time) were highly able and 
 successful, and the ready, telling, and well-informed writer 
 became a person of some importance to ministers (though, 
 perhaps, not so high as he rated himself), and could play 
 the patron among his acquaintance, getting this and that 
 preferment or sinecure for people whom he knew or who were 
 recommended to him. For himself he got nothmg, being 
 too proud to make a direct request, and his expectations 
 and merits well known ; and his recompense during several 
 years consisted in the glory of being intimate and influential 
 with certain great ministers, and able to behave to them 
 with a kind of pseudo-equality of demeanour, — for after all 
 it was a little too conscious and self-asserting. Along with 
 these feelings, be it remembered, he had always a genuine
 
 88 MOOR PARK AND SJFIFT. 
 
 desire to be of use to persons of desei-t, especially when 
 there was friendship in the case. Swift's friendships were 
 sincere and lasting ; and though he took extraordinary pains 
 to cultivate his intimacy with Harley and St. John as 
 eminent statesmen, and boasted of it continually in his own 
 manner, there went with this a real attachment to them as 
 friends, which survived their loss of power. 
 
 This longest visit to London extended from September, 
 1710 to June, 1713, cctatis sua xliii-xlvi; and an un- 
 commonly particular and interesting account of it remains 
 in a series of private letters, partly in the form of a diary, 
 and commonly called his Journal to Stella. Hester for her 
 part must have been lonely and sad enough during this 
 long absence, during which her years were counted from 
 twenty-nine to thirty-three, and she felt herself passing out 
 of the fair land of youth. She and Mre. Dingley kept house 
 at Laracor vicarage, their amusement, besides walking and a 
 few books, being usually ovihre with Dr. Raymond, vicar of 
 Trim, and two or three other neighbours ; their chief 
 pleasure — Stella's at least — to receive and answer Dr. 
 Swift's letters from London. The brook at Laracor, edged 
 with willows, still creeps under its little bridge down to the 
 river Boyne, but the site of Swift's vicarage is now ' an 
 ill-tilled potato garden ' (or was some years ago) , a trace of 
 the pond just discernible, and of the house but one fragment 
 of a gable-wall remaining. 
 
 In reading these letters (Stella carefully preserved them ; 
 of Iter letters, not one, I think, has been found), a most 
 vivid and real picture of Swift in middle life, mental, bodily, 
 and circumstantial, seems to form itself in one's mind. 
 
 One intimacy which the Doctor now began does not make 
 any figure in his Journal, namely, in the house of Mrs. Van- 
 homrigh (pr: Vanumry) , a rich w^idow with two daughters. 
 Vanhomrigh was a Dutchman, a commissary in Ireland for 
 King William, and afterwards a commissioner of revenue
 
 INTIMACY WITH THE VANHOMRIGES. 89 
 
 there. His widow, an Englishwoman, came over to reside in 
 London after his death. The beginning of Swift's acquaint- 
 ance with this family is not indicated, but he probably knew 
 something of them in Ireland. 
 
 Mrs. Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter, Esther, is a charming 
 girl of nineteen, intelligent, accomplished, fond of reading, 
 and Doctor Swift, in his leisure moments, takes pleasure in 
 assisting and directing her studies. This grew by degrees 
 into a kind of semi-pedantic flirtation on his side, such as 
 suited his taste ; for he did not relish ladies' acquaintance 
 unless where he could more or less play the preceptor. 
 With his acquaintance of both sexes, indeed, it was neces- 
 sary to allow him a touch of domineering. Esther Van- 
 homrigh, for her part (' Vanessa,' he calls her, Hessy 
 Van), grew thoroughly, passionately, irrevocably in love 
 with the great Dean, who, w^hen he pleased, was the most 
 delightful company in the world, and even whose sarcasm 
 and imperiousness had, with women, a fondling tone. 
 
 Here let me ask, how can the following odd mistake, or 
 string of mistakes, have come to appear in edition after 
 edition of our good Leigh Hunt's book on The Town'} 
 Swift's introduction to the Vanhomrighs is described ; the 
 young lady ' fell in love with him ; ' but ' unluckily he was 
 married ; and most unluckily he did not say a word about 
 the matter. It is curious to observe in the letters which he 
 sent over to Stella (his wife), with what an affected indifler- 
 ence he speaks of the Vanhomrighs,' etc., etc. ' When he 
 left England, Miss Vanhomrigh, after the death of her 
 mother, followed him, and proposed that he should either 
 marry or refuse her. He would do neither. At length both 
 the ladies, the married and unmarried, discovered their 
 mutual secret — a discovery which is supposed ultimately to 
 have hastened the death of both. Miss Vanhomrigh's sur- 
 vival of it was short — not many weeks.' In this account, 
 for want of investigation, Leigh Hunt (one of the most
 
 90 MOOR PARK AND SJFIFT. 
 
 kind-intentioned of men) does Swift a grievous injustice. 
 The great modern humourist [Thackeray] who lectured on 
 Swift — with a certain strong bias of dishke (' I hate Swift ! ' 
 he said to me, in his lecture-room) — though he knew better 
 than to commit so great a blunder as the above, has made 
 several absolute assertions upon veiy insufficient authority ; 
 among the rest, that ' he married Hester Johnson,' and that 
 she was ' Temple's natural daughter.' 
 
 The lirst-fruits affair long ago settled — Swift remained in 
 London, expecting his own so often promised advancement. 
 ' Farewell, dearest beloved MD [Stella], and love poor, poor 
 Presto [himself], who has not had one happy day since he 
 left you, as hope saved. It is the last sally [attempt for 
 promotion, I understand] I will ever make ; but I hope it 
 will turn to some account. I have done more for these, and 
 I think they are more honest than the last [ministry] ; how- 
 ever, I will not be disappointed. I would make MD and 
 me easy; and I never desired more.' 'I will not be disap- 
 pointed,' for I sJiall not, is an Irishism. Sw^ift's turns of 
 phrase, as well as his jokes, are not unfrequently of Irish 
 fashion ; and it is on record that he spoke with a brogue, 
 to which indeed many of his rhymes testify. Mr. Thackeray 
 thinks that Swift had nothing whatever of the Irishman 
 but the accident of his birth ; but it is impossible to sup- 
 pose that in twenty of the most impressible years of his 
 life, which Swift spent in Ireland, he could have failed 
 to receive some stamp of Hibernicism, and in fact it is 
 visible enough. 
 
 Months went on ; the doctor visiting at the Vanhomrighs', 
 dining frequently with Harley and St. John (and drinking a 
 good deal of wine, as his habit was), and his friends expecting 
 every day to hear of his getting ' a lean bishopric or a fat 
 deanery,' as Lord Peterborough wrote to him about this 
 time. Swift replies, ' my ambition is to live in England, 
 and with a competency to support me in honour.' In the
 
 KO BISHOPRIC OBTAINABLE. 91 
 
 same letter he says, ' I must leave the town in a week, 
 because my money is gone, and I can borrow no more ; ' 
 and, in fact, with his income of only two to three hundred 
 pounds a year, he must often have been low in pocket. He 
 complains of the cost of hackney coaches, and w^hen it rains, 
 calls it ' hcelvepe7iny weather.' His writings have brought 
 him no money ; he disdained to trade with the publishers, 
 and, as we saw, indignantly refused bOl. offered him by 
 Harley on account of the Examiner. Altogether, he holds 
 up his head haughtily among the great folk. The ' wits ' 
 he for the most part looks down upon, tossing Steele (until 
 they quarrelled) a Tatler now and again ; with Arbuthnot 
 he is friendly, and with young Pope, and intermittently with 
 Addison. 
 
 Swift's right position w^ould have been that of a statesman 
 and administrator of great affairs, and he knew this very 
 well. Hustled unwillingly into an Irish vicarage, he forced 
 himself into notice by his personal and literary powers, and 
 expected sooner or later to become an English bishop and 
 lord of parliament ; and expected justly too. He desired 
 power and dignity. He was fitted to govern, and would 
 certainly have managed his diocese with equity and care, as 
 well as superior ability. 
 
 At last he quite loses patience with his great friends who 
 have made so many promises : 
 
 April 13, 1713. — ' This morning my friend Mr. Lewis 
 came to me and showed me an order for a warrant for three 
 deaneries ; but none of them to me. This was what I 
 always foresaw, and received the notice of it better, I believe, 
 than he expected.' 
 
 Swift said of himself, that he was •• too proud to be vain,' 
 but I believe he was vain, and rather haughty than proud — 
 for there is much difference in these. Besides the want of 
 means and authority, he felt mortified in the eyes of others 
 in missing promotion, at which he was well known to have
 
 92 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 been aiming for a long while. In simple fact there were 
 obvious reasons why it was difficult to get Jonathan Swift 
 made into a Church Dignitary : his satiric writing on theo- 
 logical questions, his demeanour, — he, nobody by birth or 
 office, yet haughty and sarcastic to all, with personal oddi- 
 ties and an Irish brogue, — reasons enough. And his being so 
 much in evidence near the court (where too he had bitter 
 enemies) probably made the difficulty greater. At court, of 
 ail places, you must be courtly, unless you be one of those 
 two or three men in a generation who are necessary factors 
 in the politics of the time. 
 
 ' At noon lord-treasurer, hearing I was at Mr. Lewis's 
 office, came to me and said many things too long to repeat. 
 I told him I had nothing to do but to go to Ireland imme- 
 diately ; for I could not with any reputation stay longer 
 here, unless I had something honourable immediately given 
 to me. ... I am less out of humour than you would 
 imagine, and if it were not for that impertinent people 
 will condole with me, as they used to wish me joy, I would 
 value it less. But I will avoid company, and muster up 
 my baggage, and send them next Monday by the carrier 
 to Chester, and come and see my willows, against the 
 expectation of all the world. — What care I ? Night, dearest 
 rogues, MD.' But he did care. Tho' he often tried hard 
 to convince himself that he would contentedly retire to 
 Laracor without more ado, and there live a peaceful life 
 with Stella and her companion. The choice was in his 
 hand, but ambition and vanity imposed silence on the 
 whispers of his better will. 
 
 April 18. — ' Lord-treasurer told me the queen was at 
 last resolved that Dr. Sterne should be Bishop of Dromore, 
 and I Dean of St. Patrick's. ... I do not know whether it 
 will yet be done ; some unlucky accident may yet come [he 
 being so accustomed to disappointment]. Neither can I 
 feel joy at passing my days in Ireland ; and I confess I
 
 DEAN OF ST. PATRICK'S. 93 
 
 thought the ministry would not let me go, but perhaps they 
 cannot help it. Night, MD.' 
 
 April 21. — ' I dined at an alehouse with Parnell and 
 Berkeley ; for I am not in humour to go among the ministers.' 
 
 April 23. — ' Pray write me a good-humoured letter im- 
 mediately, let it be ever so short. This affair was carried 
 with great difficulty, which vexes me. But they say here it 
 is much to my reputation that I have made a bishop, in 
 spite of all the world, to get the best deanery in Ireland, 
 [alas ! how the brag tries to seem real !] Night, dear MD.' 
 
 April 26. — ' Yesterday I dined with lord-treasurer and his 
 Saturday people, as usual ; and was so be-deaned ! ' 
 
 In June (1713) Swift is in Dublin, ' horribly melancholy, 
 while they were installing me,' and soon flies to Laracor 
 from the great, empty house, ' which they say is mine.' 
 
 In October, urged by his friend Lewis, he goes back to 
 London : he is promised 1,000Z. to pay oil' debts and 
 expenses on his deanery ; and still has hopes of a bishopric, 
 or at least of some sufficient dignity and income in 
 England. Harley and St. John, now Lords Oxford and 
 Bolingbroke, he strives hard to reconcile, but vainly : he 
 memorials for the small post of Historiographer to the Queen, 
 but it is refused him, and given to ' a worthless rogue that 
 nobody knows.' He goes down, sadly, to lodge with a 
 clergyman at Letcombe, in Berks. Oxford is dismissed, 
 Bolingbroke comes into full power, and is warmer than ever 
 in his promises to the Dean. A few days after this. Queen 
 Anne dies (July 31, 1714), George I. is proclaimed, all 
 arrangements go topsy-turvy, the Tories in dismay, the 
 "Whigs triumphant, and Swift returns to Ireland in August. 
 
 He is now forty-seven years old ; ' condemned to live in 
 Ireland ; ' his ambitious hopes at an end ; angry and 
 ashamed at having spent so much of his time in dangling at 
 court, yet missing the excitement of brilliant and various
 
 94 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 company ; his health gro^Ying worse ; his opinion of man- 
 kind sinking ever lower ; his economy tightening into parsi- 
 mony ; his satire deepening into grim rage, his domineering 
 spirit becoming harsher and more tyrannical. Esther John- 
 son, his dear gentle old pupil and intimate friend, now past 
 her youth, is in a lodging in Dublin, still with Mrs. Dingley ; 
 but his relations with her are no longer what they were. 
 The fair Miss Vanhomrigh, young and brilliant, with her 
 sister Mary, also resides in Ireland now (much, I imagine, 
 against his wishes) — sometimes in Dublin, sometimes in the 
 vicinity of Laracor, where she has inherited a small pro- 
 perty ; and to them the Dean writes often, and sometimes, 
 though not often or openly, visits at their house. 
 
 The letters of poor ' Vanessa ' (Hessy Van) are full of 
 ardent affection, and the most touching expostulations 
 against his hardness ; his are at once flattering and petting 
 and full of cold reproofs and gibes ; and as he used to 
 make a pretence of holding Mrs. Dingley in something of 
 the same regard as Stella, so in part he manoeuvres with the 
 two sisters, Hester and Mary. 
 
 Domestic happiness is not his, he has thrown it away ; 
 has now less than ever any thought of marriage. He 
 manages carefully his deanery affairs and his income ; drinks 
 his wine daily, probably with sedative rather than exhila- 
 rating effect ; and for amusement exchanges puns and gro- 
 tesque verses (not always of the cleanest) with Dr. Sheridan, a 
 queer, clever schoolmaster, — fated to have a grandson known 
 as Eichard Brinsley Sheridan. His friend Lord Oxford a 
 prisoner in the Tower, his friend Lord Bolingbroke an exile 
 in France, — he himself, the new dean, a suspected Jacobite, 
 is sometimes hooted by the Dublin populace, and publicly 
 insulted by men of rank. His archbishop and he are not 
 on good terms ; all the Irish bishops are jealous and sus- 
 picious of him, — and no love lost. S^^'ift said once, that the 
 Government always appointed excellent men to the Irish Sees,
 
 'GULLIVER'S TIIAVELS: 95 
 
 but that on their way across Hounslow Heath they were 
 sometimes stopped by highwaymen, who took their money, 
 clothes and papers, and came over to Ireland in their stead. 
 To the eye, Dean Swift of these years is a tall, portly 
 man, in clerical dress and hat, with commanding and austere 
 face, dusky complexion, prominent blue eyes full of scrutiny 
 and suspicion, or, not seldom, blazing with anger. He 
 never laughs, rarely smiles, yet lines of humour sometimes 
 flicker round the nostrils and mouth corners. Manners 
 abrupt, steps rapid, voice imperious. He has done much, 
 and attained much ; but neither his work nor his position 
 are satisfactory — to himself least of all. As a writer he can 
 only rank as an able party pamphleteer, and the author of 
 some humorous trifles. The Talc of a Tub it is his interest 
 to deny, not to claim. Had he died now, his fame 
 would have been little. But he will write the Drapier's 
 Letters (because he hates injustice and misgovernment), 
 and become thereby the most popular man of his day in 
 Ireland, and Gulliver's Travels, the work on which his 
 literary fame now really rests — a world-book — simple, strik- 
 ing, unforgettable, new to every new generation. And of 
 these ' Travels ' the two first parts, Lilliput and Brobdin- 
 grag are the cream ; no reader is too young or too old to 
 enjoy them. It is strange, by the bye, that the printer's 
 mistake of ' Brobdingnag ' (which Swift himself pointed out 
 in the ' Letter from Captain Gulliver,' prefixed to the edition 
 of 1727^) should be perpetuated to this day. Let this 
 
 ' 'Indeed I must confess that, as to the people of Lill/jjut, Bi-ohdin- 
 grag (for so the name should have been spelt, and not erroneously 
 Brobdingnag') and Lajnda, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so 
 presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related con- 
 cerning them.' — Letter from Captain (Tullivcr, etc. [Some of those not 
 very rare gentlemen who have a turn for contradiction and prefer some- 
 thing they are pleased to think subtlety to common sense, wrote to the 
 literary papers to argue that this correction was merely a new joke or mys- 
 tification of Swift's. If so, it was certainly the poorest joke he ever made.]
 
 96 MOOR PARK AND SWIFT. 
 
 unpronounceable and on the face of it blundering word 
 be universally dropped for the future, and the oft-mentioned 
 country of giants be known by its true name of Brob-din- 
 
 GRAG. 
 
 Swift's best verses, too, which are masterly in their kind 
 for clearness and concinnity — tho' wanting continuity of 
 flow and variety of cadence, were the product of his later 
 years. His verses, like the bulk of his writings, were occa- 
 sional. He was a man of the world and of society in its 
 artificial sense ; his subjects are those which naturally 
 interested him, shaped by a clear and practised intellect, 
 and coloured by the disdainful and satiric quality of his 
 thoughts. To beauty of every kind his senses were obtuse ; 
 he cared nothing at all for the picturesque in nature, 
 nothing for real Poetry, nothing for painting, sculpture or 
 architecture, and in music it seemed 
 
 ' Strange that such difference should be 
 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.' 
 
 Beyond his ' polite learning ' of the usual sort on Greek 
 and Eoman subjects, he seems to have cared little for 
 history or for general literature. During his many 
 years of sojourn in Ireland, the history, antiquities, language, 
 ethnology, natural history, of that country did not excite 
 in him the faintest spark of curiosity. 
 
 After allowing all his merit as a writer, it is certain that 
 Swift's fame is a more conspicuous edifice than could have 
 been built upon his literary performances alone, even though 
 they include that rare and happy kind of thing (whether 
 great or small), a 2vorld-book. His strong and peculiar 
 personal character, his distinction first in the social and 
 literary world of London, and then (much higher) in Irish 
 politics, the interest that belongs to Stella and Vanessa, his 
 position as a church dignitary, which lends so much zest to 
 his humour and to the odd stories and jests reported of him,
 
 TEE CONSERVATIVE DEAN. 97 
 
 the terrible eclipse of his brilliant intellect, his gloomy- 
 death, and the legacy to found a madhouse, — all these strike 
 the imagination and impress the memory of mankind. 
 Many have been his predecessors and successors in office, 
 but Jonathan Swift remains and will remain ^Ae Dean of 
 St. Patrick's. Yet his grand mistake in life was going 
 into the church — ' allowing himself to be driven into the 
 church for a maintenance.' ^ He heartily despised clerical 
 men and clerical matters, save as a part of business. When 
 once in, irrevocably, he looked upon it as his necessary 
 business to be a clergyman, and to maintain all the 
 established doctrines and rights and emoluments of his 
 church, as ' one (lie says) appointed by Providence for 
 defending a post assigned to me.'- He was not a pious, 
 not an amiable dean ; he was unhealthy, disappointed, 
 cynical, contemptuous, unhappy; yet also was he reason- 
 able, charitable, equitable ; still quaintly humorous amidst 
 his glooms ; after a fashion, kindly ; in a large measure, 
 honest and faithful. Not the least foggy, plausible, slippery, 
 but clear and somewhat hard in intellect. When obliged to 
 touch questions of theology, he handled them in a resolutely 
 conservative manner. He constantly argued that all private 
 men, and especially all clergymen, should submit to the ex- 
 isting legal forms of worship, and if they have doubts, to 
 'take care to conceal those doubts from others.'^ He 
 attacked, and would have suppressed, with equal vigour, 
 atheists, papists, and dissenters. On Trinity Sunday he 
 duly preached in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity ; on 
 the 30th of January he duly preached to the glory of ' that 
 excellent king and blessed martyr Charles I.,' and in denun- 
 ciation of the ' murderous Puritan Parliament,' and of such 
 as continued to hold ' those wicked opinions.''* He proved 
 
 'Anecdotes of the Family of Swift. Written Ijy Dr. Swift. Scott's 
 Memoirs. 
 
 * Thoughts on lldhjhn. ^ Ih'ul. ^ Sermon the Sixth. 
 
 7
 
 98 MOOR PABK AND SWIFT. 
 
 to his congregation how superior the meanest Christian is to 
 the loftiest and wisest Pagan philosopher in rules of life, 
 and in consolations and hopes ; quoting Socrates, x\ristotle, 
 and others. ' Solon lamenting the death of a son ; one 
 told him, " You lament in vain." " Therefore," said he, " I 
 lament, because it is in vain." This was a plain confession 
 how imperfect all his philosophy was,' etc. ' Diogenes 
 delivered it as his opinion, " that a poor old man was the 
 most miserable thing in life." ' And, alas ! Jonathan Swift, 
 when no longer in the pulpit, said so a thousand times. 
 
 Swift was a politician, was fitted to be an adviser and 
 still more, an administrator in affairs of public importance ; 
 shut out from these occupations, his activity domineered 
 and ruled in the petty bounds within which it was limited 
 in actual life, and overflowed through his pen in gibes upon 
 the folly, stupidity and baseness, and denunciations of the 
 injustice which he saw around him. He hated injustice, not 
 out of pity for the misused, but from a deep principle of his 
 nature, a kind of exact and exacting equitableness, love of 
 rule and order, which commonly took a form of severity, and 
 made him in the highest degree punctilious in money 
 matters and household economy. Whatever lay next him 
 he bent himself, with harsh effort if needed, to subdue 
 into discipline and regularity. 
 
 I must own my real opinion, that there is but poor 
 nourishment for the soul in any part of Swift's writings. 
 Clear, practical sense he gives us, and a wide knowledge of 
 men and affairs, put into form by a vigorous realistic fancy, 
 and coloured with ironic humour ; but there is nothing 
 cordial or encouraging, no reconciling insight, no deep 
 wisdom. This age of English literature in its w4iole result 
 I confess strikes me as poor and thin, however elegantly 
 simple and clear in its turns of expression. It is not 
 corrupt, like the preceding period. Addison has a kind of 
 polite religiosity of tone ; he associates good-breeding with
 
 COARSENESS OF SIFIFTS HUMOUR. 99 
 
 virtue ; Steele, though sometimes a rather prurient 
 morahst, draws some charming httle pictures of domestic 
 happiness ; Pope's didactics and sentimentals, in his verses, 
 letters, and everything, sound hollow, yet have a kind of 
 improved heathenish morality au fond. Swift is the 
 strongest, and the most objectionable ; his satire is sincere ; 
 it was his habitual view of life. It smites forcibly the vices, 
 failings and follies of mankind ; but too often it attacks 
 human nature itself. He does not merely say, See how 
 far you fall short of what you might be and ought to be ; 
 how different your practices from your pretences ; how you 
 lie, cheat, grovel, and brag, advance the wrong men, make 
 useless war, miseducate your children, misgovern your own 
 and the public affairs ; but he says also, See what a poor, 
 weak, wretched, filthy, selfish, sensual thing is Humanity ! 
 How absurd is all your fine talk about it ! What can you 
 make of it at best? Even your virtues are contemptible. He 
 draws the character of Gulliver with gentle and pleasing 
 touches at first, but in this book also, at the end, rushes 
 fiercely into a horrible coarseness. The human form divine 
 is by him represented as 'an ugly monster;'^ and this 
 picture of the external fact may be fairly taken as a test and 
 measure of his general truthfulness. As to the filthiness of 
 Swift's pen, the foul smell that one is liable to encounter at 
 any step in his writings, no reasonable excuse or even 
 palliation can be offered for it. It is a shameful fact, not 
 accounted for by the fashion of the time, for among his 
 famous contemporaries he is pre-eminently filthy (indeed 
 the epithet is not descriptive of any but him), and much 
 aggravated by his position as a public authority in religion 
 and morals. His humour took this turn from a contempt 
 and exasperation against mankind, along with a liking to 
 outface and ovei"bear ordinary conventions, and was sup- 
 plied with images by a fancy of depraved appetite. Like 
 
 ' ]'tri///ijc tit the I/fniijhnltnnix, v\n\\i. 1.
 
 100 MOOR PAIIK AND SWIFT. 
 
 every Writer, he remains accountable before the Highest 
 Tribunal for every word he has written. 
 
 The better part of Swift's nature comes forward in his 
 private letters. His indignation and contempt were con- 
 stant against mankind, and against classes and societies of 
 men ; but he could be attached and even affectionate to 
 individuals. In his correspondence with Bolingbroke, Pope, 
 Gay, and others, Swift's letters are always the best, and 
 (while his tone to everybody is that of an acknowledged 
 superior) they are full of sincere steadfast friendship, and 
 often show a manly tenderness. Their gloomy ground is inlaid 
 with freaks of quaint humour. His letters to great ladies are 
 admirable examples of spirited politeness, and prove how 
 well he could mingle wit and sense with courtly manners. 
 Besides his nearer intimacies, he was never without some 
 female friends in whose conversation or correspondence he 
 took evident pleasure, notwithstanding the contempt with 
 which he spoke of the sex in general. 
 
 As to Swift's relations to most people, it seems to me that 
 he was probably a very good-natured man to those who 
 were in want of any kind of help, at the same time that he 
 desired to appear rough and ungracious, partly out of whim, 
 partly to avoid being imposed on (which he hated), and 
 to escape thanks and sentimentalism. His words are full of 
 harshness, and apparent grudging ; but in fact he was life- 
 long busy serving others, in ways suitable to his mind and 
 temper. He says himself (in a letter to Pope) that he 
 detested that animal called vian, yet loved John, Peter, 
 Thomas, and this is true. His scava indignatio was against 
 the stupidity, injustice, and ingratitude of mankind. To 
 individuals he was constant and tender. Mr. Thackeray 
 asks, 'Would you have liked to be a friend of Swift's?' 
 I would, for one ; would have liked better, I think, to be 
 a friend of Swift's, than of any of his set — than of the 
 refined Addison, the jovial Steele, the brilliant St. John,
 
 A STEADFAST FRIEND. 101 
 
 the fastidious Pope — and would have felt safer with him, 
 in spite of the whims and harshness and domineering. 
 
 As I have said, he was a man of the world and of society 
 in its conventional sense ; but promptings of something finer 
 within him, along with his poor success in gaining worldly 
 advancement, made him ill content to be this. Church and 
 State were conditions of the game in which he found him- 
 self engaged. An ideal life was above his natural aims. 
 Eeligion, in a personal sense, did not affect him. Of a life 
 of independent principle he had glimpses, but ambition, 
 vanity, fear of poverty, and other personal motives drew him 
 aside into repeated false steps, disappointments, and con- 
 tinual discontent. 
 
 In early years, he 'had a scruple of entering the Church 
 merely for support ' — but he got over this scruple on finding 
 no hope of promotion in any other direction. The thought of 
 poverty and dependence made him miserable. He felt deeply 
 that ' the worst of poverty is that it makes a man ridicu- 
 lous.' For this reason, not for any love of accumulation, he 
 was frugal to parsimony ; and mainly for this reason, as I 
 think, he at lojst fa ate de mieux hastened 'into holy orders,' 
 through which door he might hope for many things, not 
 excluding political influence and office. But the satiric pen 
 which he could not keep quiet was an ill help to church 
 preferment, the worse for its trenchant originality, and he 
 saw when too late that had he held on for a time as free 
 lance, he might have reached a position in the political 
 world more in accordance with his ambition and his 
 powers. 
 
 His Will was strong, but he did not use it, as every man 
 is under penalties bound to do, in striving towards the objects 
 which in his best moments he knew to be the best. He 
 directed it to lower aims and missed them : hence, mainly, 
 his unhappiness. That a load of disappointment had much 
 to do in aggi-avating his brain trouble, who can doubt ? And
 
 102 MOOR PARK AXD SWIFT. 
 
 that every man's employment of his Will-power plays a large 
 part in the history of his life, — tho' often a secret part, 
 and never one fully known — I for one do always believe. In 
 hints of the use and misuse of Will, and the consequences, 
 lies the chief value of Biography. 
 
 Thirty years of life still remained to Jonathan Swift, sad, 
 sombre, deepening at last into black gloom and a state as of 
 living death. Of these I hope to write on some future occa- 
 sion, perhaps after a special visit to Dublin and Meatli, 
 
 Along the grass-grown avenue I walked away from Moor 
 Park, thinking of these things, and of little boy Cobbett of 
 Farnham, reading the Tale of a Tub behind the haystack 
 at Eichmond ; and thus came to Waverley ; where the old 
 dame who opened the gate pointed to an old-fashioned 
 pretty house, half-timbered, in a little garden by the mill- 
 dam, and said, ' That's Stella's cottage ; she was the 
 daughter of the gardener at Moor Park.' Thus valuable is 
 local tradition. A pond with swans ; a wealthy heavy- 
 porticoed mansion ; a clear, shallow little river, under lofty 
 banks of trees, half encompassing a wide meadow ; shattered 
 gray ruins, fern and i\w-clad, shaded with ash-tree and 
 thorn, here a triple lancet window, there a low-arched cr}^t : 
 this is Waverley, a Cistercian foundation of the 12th 
 century. Here, when Cobbett was a boy (he tells us), 
 flourished the finest frait-garden he ever saw in his life. It 
 has long since disappeared ; and it seems that one (I know 
 not which) of the successive owners of the park improved 
 away a great part of the abbey ruins. The name of Scott's 
 famous novel probably came into his head by means of the 
 annals of this abbey ; being both a pretty name and appro- 
 priate to his hero's character. The description of Waverley 
 Honour has no resemblance to the real Waverley. 
 
 I took the shady road up Crooksbury Hill, turned left, 
 along the moorland, which lies behind the vale of Moor
 
 JVAVERLEY ABBEY. 103 
 
 Park, and accounts for the name, and soon saw before me 
 the ridge of Aldershot, my thoughts again connecting Swift 
 and Cobbett, by the link of a standing army — a novelty in 
 Swift's day — and a thing obnoxious to them both, very 
 different as they were, both as men and politicians. 
 
 The step is but short from Swift, Temple, Marlborough, to 
 Cobbett, Wellington, Palmerston (another of the Temples), 
 whose grave is the newest in Westminster Abbey. Two or 
 three lives stretch over great changes in thought and history. 
 Many men and things very notable in their day are well-nigh 
 or wholly forgotten, even in so short a period of time. A 
 Book with genius in it has the best chance of survival. If 
 Sir William Temple could by possibility have guessed that 
 Moor Park — that his own name — would have a meaning in 
 men's ears after two centuries solely on account of his 
 rough Irish amanuensis !
 
 EAMBLE THE FIFTH. 
 
 EXETER AND ELSEWHEBE. 
 
 THE long narrow steep High Street of Exeter, with its 
 lofty old houses hung to-day with flags of every size 
 and colour, almost realises one's notion of a city of the 
 middle ages en fete. The ghost of a fourteenth -century 
 citizen would not perhaps see much change at first glance, 
 though by-and-by he must begin to peer with wonder at 
 the omnibuses and plate-glass shop-windows. The men's coats 
 and hats would look dull and queer (a ' wide-awake ' might 
 pass muster), but I don't know that the costumes of the 
 comely Devon damsels who brighten the street with their 
 white or blue skirts and tiny floral hats atop a mountain of 
 chestnut or brown or golden hair, would, supposing him a 
 ghost of some experience in his day, cause much astonish- 
 ment. "Women, in fact, were women in the fourteenth 
 century (whatever they may become in the twentieth), 
 fashions changed in his time as they change in ours, and 
 Master Ghost might probably recollect some phases of robe 
 and coiffure not much unlike that of the Cynthia of the 
 minute. 
 
 East and west, or nearly, runs the street for a mile and a 
 half, rising narrow and very steep from the river, ascending 
 more gradually past the projecting curved front (1593) of 
 the Guildhall, widening above and branching into the 
 country, bye-streets and narrow courts going off on either 
 hand ; and one of these latter, on the right going up, 
 bringing you briefly into the Cathedral Close, where through 
 
 104
 
 UGLIFYING THE JFOniD. 105 
 
 sparse elm trees of moderate size, peeps forth the antique 
 bulk of grey stone, west porch rough with worn sculptures 
 under the great west window, row of wide and close-set 
 northern windows alike in size, unlike each from each in its 
 rich 'geometric' tracery, and two square low massy 
 Norman towers, long ago pierced as transepts, standing 
 midway the edifice. The Close is mainly of non-ecclesiastic 
 appearance, ' dis- established '-looking, bordered with hotels, 
 a bank, and common dwelling-houses. But the worst is a 
 new church, a big church, incredibly ugly, built cheek by 
 jowl alongside that venerable west front. Words cannot 
 express the disgust inspired by this pretentious monstrosity, 
 its lumbering spire browbeating the solemn and ancient 
 beauty of the cathedral. And what can be the good of it ? 
 Here is a most beautiful church in perfect order, furnished 
 with all due appliances, already six times too big for any 
 possible congregation ; in which three or four separate 
 sermons might be preached simultaneously, if that could be 
 thought desirable ; and beside this, almost touching it, you 
 build up another church of the same worship, a costly and 
 pretentious building, odiously unsightly in itself, and most 
 damaging to its neighbour's beauty. 
 
 What avails it to protest against the great guild of 
 iiglifiers who are busily at work on the surface of this poor 
 old earth, destroying or disfiguring whatsoever beautiful 
 thing they come near, setting up their abominations every- 
 where, to tiie injury of present and future mankind? Little 
 I fear ; yet there is some small satisfaction in speaking one's 
 mind, and giving such people to know what certain others, 
 however few, think of their works — of any work helping to 
 permanently uglify the world. Such an evil may be some- 
 times absolutely unavoidable, like shaving a sick man's head 
 or cutting his leg off, but the necessity ought to be clear and 
 real, not, as so often, a pretended need generated in a com- 
 post of stupidity, weak desire of novelty, and some kind of
 
 106 EXETER AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 low self-interest. Once more suffer this to be repeated, 
 since men are continually forgetting it : the world is not 
 ours absolutely, or any part of it ; but only ours in trust. 
 We have ' a user,' as the lawyers say, and that without 
 prejudice to all others, born or to be born. Pray, how can 
 mortal do, in a common way, worse turn to mankind than 
 by permanently lessening the world's beauty, in landscape, 
 in architecture, in dress, in (what is sure to go with the rest) 
 manners, tastes, sympathies? An evil governor, or the 
 writer of a clever vile book, perhaps does worse, but that is 
 not in a common way. To those who would care nothing, 
 or rather prefer it, if the whole world were a model sewage- 
 farm (deodorised at best), with towns of new bricken streets 
 and stuccoed villas, churches and railway stations at 
 proper intervals, as per contract, I have nothing to say, save 
 to wish them Australia or Central America all to themselves, 
 to build and live in after their own hearts, export boundless 
 wool and preserved beef, and become richer, fatter, and 
 stupider year by year. 
 
 The interior of the Cathedral, chiefly thirteenth and four- 
 teenth-century work, is at once rich in effect and simple in 
 plan ; rows of clustered pillars supporting pointed arches, 
 rows of wide windows of varied tracery, long line of vaulted 
 roof, groined and bossed, all symmetrically beautiful, a 
 lovely coup d'oeil from the west door — but with one huge 
 blot, the lumbering bulk of the organ, like a gigantic chest 
 of drawers, heaved up on the screen midway. Why is this 
 organ unlike a peacock? Because it delights the ear and 
 tortures the eye. It ought to be transplanted to-morrow to 
 one of the transepts. On the stone screen is painted a row 
 of curious scripture-pieces, well preserved and harmonious 
 in colour, six from the Old Testament, and seven from the 
 New. The east window is bad perpendicular, but filled in 
 with ancient stained glass of fine subdued colour ; the west 
 window a geometric rose, but with petals of glaring modern
 
 DOOM BOOK. 107 
 
 glass. In the Lady-Chapel (' the ladies' chapel,' I heard 
 a visitor call it, so far is the famous word on its way to 
 popular oblivion) and side-chapels, are many tombs, some 
 of them lately painted and gilded in true upholsterer fashion. 
 The Chapter House, a stately vaulted room, contains a 
 library of old books, and there I saw and handled the 
 original ' Doom Book ' for Devon and Cornwall, its 
 parchment leaves and black and red writing quite fresh to 
 this day. Some clever fellow among the suffering Saxons 
 invented the sensational name of Domesday Book for these 
 reports, a phrase absurdly kept still in serious use ; for 
 ' Doom Book ' means neither more nor less than ' valua- 
 tion book,' — ' doom,' what is deemed — in this case what is 
 deemed the value of people's landed properties throughout 
 England. 
 
 Southwards from Exeter Cathedral to the river, straggles 
 a network of narrow slums, crossed by the wider South 
 Street ; and over these crowded alleys the steep lower part 
 of the High Street goes on arches, from which the downlook, 
 especially at night, is picturesque enough. Here and there 
 a quaint old house rewards the adventurous explorer ; and 
 the ' "White Hai't ' in South Street, with its courtyard and 
 galleries, is a charming bit of the Past, while its flowers 
 and bright bar give good promise of present comfort.^ 
 Beyond the Exe, an easy-flowing stream of some thirty 
 yards wide, is a suburb, not legally part of the city, and 
 above this rise the rich hills of grove and cornfield, by which 
 Exeter is well-nigh encompassed ; seawards only, along the 
 river's right shore, goes a stretch of flat pasture land, here 
 and there embanked from the tide. The good old city com- 
 bines the characters of an inland and a seaport place. From 
 most points of view the wide-sweeping circle of rich slopes 
 is unbroken, and the great trees stand tall and straight, or 
 mass their foliage ' in heavy peacefulness,' without any 
 ' Burnt down a few years after.
 
 108 EXETER AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 sign of conflict with sea-gales. Yet the salt tide is not far 
 off ; sailors and yachtsmen, cockles and fresh herrings, walk 
 familiarly through her streets ; by help of a short canal the 
 ocean-furrowing keels lie alongside her wharves ; and but a 
 little way down, the river opens widely to ebb and flood, and 
 all the incidents of sea-side life. 
 
 Near as it is, the breath of the sea is not much felt in 
 Exeter, unless perhaps when southerly or south-easterly 
 winds are blowing. The air in the close streets during 
 those sunshiny autumnal days felt very heavy and stagnant, 
 and was mingled morning and evening with a fog from the 
 river. The roads and lanes, too, as usual in Devon, are 
 thickly shut in with trees and hedgerows. Lover of anti- 
 quity, I must own that the new and comparatively broad 
 Queen Street, leading towards the railway station, is 
 doubtless a very good thing for the public health. 
 
 Between this and the High Street is a large mound or 
 small hill, crowned with a public w^alk under lofty elms, 
 called Northernhay {hedge, no doubt) and the red-sandstone 
 ruins of the ancient castle of Eougemont. These red stones 
 of Eed Hill were laid by the men of William Duke of Nor- 
 mandy and Conqueror of England, when Exeter had sullenly 
 surrendered, after a fierce and bloody siege of eighteen 
 days. You can enter the castle-yard through a postern, 
 climb to its battlement and overlook the city, and descend 
 to the High Street by the corner of a lofty gateway, now 
 wrapt in ivy> and shaded by a huge walnut-tree. 
 
 ' Richmond ! — when last I was at Exeter, 
 The mayor in coui-tesy showed me the castle, 
 And called it — Rongc-mont : at which name I started ; 
 Because a bard of Ireland told me once 
 I should not live long after I saw Richmond.' ' 
 
 In this castle-yard stands the County Assize Court, 
 guarded by a statue of Earl Fortescue, thick-haired (or 
 
 ' King lllchard III., iv. 2.
 
 STATUES. 109 
 
 wiggecl?), whiskered, aquiline, robed and gartered. He was 
 ' Lord Lieutenant of Devon,' died 1861, and is here praised 
 for a ' noble and generous character,' and ' unwearied dili- 
 gence in the discharge of public duty ; ' conveying but little 
 to a stranger's mind. 
 
 On the grass plot of Northernhay are two other modern 
 statues, sightly enough: Thomas Dyke Ackland (1861), a 
 handsome man standing cloaked, motto ' Prcesenti tibi 
 maturos largimnr honores : ' and John Dinham, old man in 
 chair, with large book open on his lap, the inscription speak- 
 ing of ' Piety, integrity, charity,' etc. I confess I never 
 heard of John Dinham before, and would fain have had 
 some particulars. A man's monument should carry on it 
 a biography, brief, accurate, and pregnant, addressed to all 
 comers. The motto here was a text from the Bible — ' The 
 book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou 
 shalt meditate thereon day and night, and then thou shalt 
 make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good 
 success.' What kind of prosperity and success did the 
 citizens of Exeter suppose to be meant in this sentence ? 
 Something very tangible, I suspect, of a kind which by no 
 means 'passeth all understanding.' A wealthy, diligent, 
 shrewd, respectable, and also benevolent man, is a good solid 
 figure of great worth in his place. I was satisfied, if not 
 exhilarated, to see this memorial, which I took to belong 
 to some such person, but somehow misliked its motto. 
 
 Each of these three statues, in white marble, stands on a 
 British pedestal of gray granite. The British pedestal, in 
 which a noble simplicity is no doubt aimed at, is bare and 
 rectangular, with meagre mouldings — a thing ill-proportioned 
 in every part, thoroughly uncomfortable and mean. A 
 harsh, spiky railing round the Ackland pedestal enhances 
 its ungainly appearance. Now there is no reason on earth 
 why sculptors, if they know how, should not put their 
 statues on pedestals of varied design, each, whether simple
 
 no EXETER AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 or rich, being decorative and delightful. Even a plain, four-, 
 cornered block of stone may be well or ill-proportioned in 
 relation to that which it supports, and to the general sur- 
 roundings. It is true the sculptor does not always design 
 the pedestal ; but he always ought to do so. 
 
 Besides Northernhay there is a Southernhay, with good 
 houses and shady trees, and also a Bonhay and a Shilhay 
 in the suburbs. 
 
 If you wish to see wiiat the country round Exeter is like, 
 go up the long narrow High Street, leaving the Castle- 
 mound on your left hand, and the Cathedral-close on your 
 right, and so along the wider street of St. Sid well (properly 
 Sativola, an obscure saint with an ugly church of Georgian 
 architecture), till the road forks. Take the left-hand road, 
 and again, at a turnpike, the left hand, and after a mile 
 uphill a slope is reached, looking northward across the 
 valley of the Exe, and a wide landscape of wonderful rich- 
 ness ; great hill-sides one behind another, loaded, when I 
 saw them, with yellow harvest, dark with luxuriant groves 
 and copses, the warm red ploughed fields here and there 
 adding to the ripeness of the picture ; in front a white 
 mansion (Sir Stafford Northcote's) in its woody park rising 
 from the river ; granges and farmhouses scattered or clus- 
 tered amid foliage ; the proud and wealthy vale stretching 
 far away, crowned by a range of hills almost mountainous ; 
 and, as we look, a running flag of white vapour shows where 
 the North Devon railway has found its winding course. 
 
 Eetracing our steps to Exeter, we see the elms of Nor- 
 thernhay, a solid, straight-topped, and conspicuous grove, 
 the two square towers of the Cathedral scarcely rising above 
 the surrounding roofs ; then down a steep hill and up a 
 moderate ascent, and here we stand again in the High 
 Street, bustling with human mortals and hung with brilliant 
 flags. 
 
 But why these flags ? Because the old city is in these
 
 BRITISH ASSOCIATIOX. Ill 
 
 days entertaining a distinguished guest, the British Associa- 
 tion for the Advancement of Science, and on corners and 
 doorposts you see mysterious printed placards, ' Section A,' 
 ' Section D,' and so on. Exeter is overflowing with learned 
 men and pretty girls, hearty wholesome-looking Devon 
 lasses, well grown, with complexions that seem nourished 
 on rosy apples and clotted cream, who can turn science 
 itself into a gala. The meeting was a lively one. Theology 
 in the shape of three clergymen pitted itself against Dar- 
 winism ; but the arguments are no longer interesting. The 
 fact is. Science is impregnable within its own limits, outside 
 of them powerless. 
 
 Does the Man of Science in investigating, elucidating and 
 formulating the phenomena of the material world necessarily 
 tamper with essential religion, with our sense of duty and 
 purity, and truth, our feelings of love, joy, and w^onder and 
 adoration, our passionate longing for the Spiritual Best 
 and Highest ? Just as much as a grammarian's inquiry into 
 the components of language ought to affect the influence of 
 Shakespeare's or of Goethe's mind on mine. When the Man 
 of Science as such meddles with religion or poetry or art, he 
 is most decidedly going iiltra crepidam. To reduce every 
 statement to a mathematic form would be the ideal perfec- 
 tion of Science. 
 
 So we leave this topic, and step on a sunshiny morning 
 into a railway carriage that speeds us along the right shore 
 of the Exe {Uisge, the Keltic for water ; Exeter, if in Ireland, 
 would be named something like Cahirisky, say ' Water- 
 fort,' — 'Water-city'), quickly broadening from river to 
 estuary, opening to sands, to merry sea-waves, and showing 
 Exmouth town on its headland opposite, with a little crowd 
 of masts below. The crags and pyramids of red sandstone, 
 the bathers sporting in the bright sea, the old village-green 
 of Dawlish and the new villas above it, are come and gone ; 
 so is the estuary of the Teign among grovy hills, with long
 
 112 EXETER AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 wooden bridge and vessels at anchor : and here is Torquay, 
 famous Torquay — lovely scenery, Italian climate, William 
 of Orange, Napoleon in the Bellerophon, etcetera, — trans- 
 formed from a name into a reality. 
 
 A friend of mine (the Magician), an unimpeachable 
 authority on such things, told me that, some thirty years 
 ago, Torquay was the most beautiful place in England. Its 
 wide-sweeping bay and richly wooded shores, crags 
 garlanded with foliage and flowers from wave-washed basis 
 to summit in the blue sky, rocky creeks that, while you sat 
 musing, filled silently with the crystal green of the rising 
 tide ; its old-fashioned cottages under shady rows of elms, 
 peaceful neighbouring farmhouses and inland meadows, old 
 field-paths and honeysuckle lanes, — these A. T. recalled with 
 a regretful delight in contrast with the Torquay of our own 
 day, the rows of brick and stucco, felled trees, rocks blasted 
 away, gaunt wide roads, cockney shops and churches, sun- 
 baked esplanades and piers, the once clear tide polluted with 
 torrents of feculence, so that bathing (as a medical man 
 there told me) can hardly be ventured on. 
 
 ' Vast improvements on the whole,' says and thinks the 
 practical man, whose name is Legion ; ' investment of 
 capital, — increase of business and employment — national 
 prosperity — greatest happiness even (if you like to bring that 
 in) of the greatest number.' Well, the world must change, 
 certainly, and in its changes some old and precious things 
 must go. We must lose something, but we gain a great 
 deal more, you say. How? in happiness? It seems to me, 
 I confess, though a very expensive, not a very happy genera- 
 tion, this of ours. I doubt if it really enjoys its stucco and 
 its gravelled esplanades. Are they necessary to its pleasure 
 or even to its comfort, or are they rather the vulgar inven- 
 tions of scheming builders, contractors and engineers, and 
 huckstering tradespeople, like the large shop-fronts and 
 staring placards of the period? Moreover, — change is
 
 MODERN BUILDERS. 113 
 
 inevitable, often reasonable : admitted. But the changes 
 that have overrun and disfigured many of the fairest spots 
 in England during the last twenty years, were they all 
 inevitable, allowable, and reasonable? merely the natural 
 result (whether pleasant or otherwise) of the course of 
 prevalent ideas and manners ? or, on the contrary, were 
 they in very many instances as much opposed to practical 
 common sense and common honesty as to the sense of beauty 
 and venerableness ? Is it not the notorious fact that most 
 of these new-built pleasure-towns are, in commercial phrase, 
 thoroughly rotten places, insolvent, staggering on from 
 season to season under a burden of debt incurred in making 
 roads and rails, piers, villas, terraces, crescents, which ivcre 
 not really wanted — in crowding into five years the proper 
 work of fifty ? Over and over again you find, on a little 
 inquiry, that a great part of the splendid new town — the 
 brilliant fashionable watering-place, is mortgaged to cunning 
 builders and lawyers lying perdue. The names on the 
 shops and lodging-houses seldom indicate a real owner- 
 ship. Small wonder if these unhappy creatures seize the 
 stranger with voracity, suck his blood without mercy. And 
 the showy houses are often ill built, soon begin to lose their 
 one virtue of a smug tidiness, and fall into premature decay 
 almost before they arrive at their teens. Three- fourths of 
 them were not wanted, are ' bad investments,' and likely 
 to grow worse ; meanwhile they disfigure the world, and 
 transmit, not improvements and conveniences, but eyesores 
 and obstacles to the coming generations, who will certainly 
 prefer to follow their own tastes, and be little grateful for 
 these tawdry piles of ill burnt brick and bad mortar. In 
 short, from the mere business point of view, these 'vast 
 improvements ' mostly rest on a basis of greed, gambling, 
 and unveracity : — 
 
 The earth hath bubbles as the water has, 
 Ami these are of them. 
 
 8
 
 114 EXETER AND ELSETFHERE. 
 
 Would they might vanish ' as breath into the wind ; ' but 
 unhappily they are ulcers, and will leave permanent scars on 
 the fair face of nature. 
 
 A steamer, coasting the bay, put me ashore at Babbi- 
 combe, where I plunged ecstatically into the translucent 
 water of a sea-cove walled with lofty rocks, and swimming 
 round a corner faced the beautiful sunny shadowy coast 
 sweeping off towards Lyme Eegis, red crags, crested with 
 green slopes and woods, every steep rock and crevice hung 
 with foliage and broidered with creeping verdure ; the little 
 strand of Babbicombe, half-mooned-shaped and white as 
 the moon, receiving kiss after kiss from the purple sea ; and 
 over all a pure blue sky. 
 
 One great blot there was, one eyesore, a conspicuous 
 headland hacked and torn away by quarrymen ; and at 
 Anstey's Cove, across the hill, I found another headland 
 undergoing the same treatment by the same wealthy lord- 
 of-the-soil. To say the least, one would rather not make 
 money precisely thus ; one would rather not shake the hand 
 of the man who could do it. 
 
 A walk over the hills brought me to a verge looking down 
 into Anstey's Cove, where the red cliffs and tumbled frag- 
 ments, crested and seamed with bright green sward, the 
 firm sands, purple sea, sunny blue sky, seemed familiar as 
 my birth-place, by reason of a little picture of the place by 
 George Boyce on my w^all at home. I was able at last to 
 satisfy my curiosity as to the end of the headland, which 
 lay outside the picture ; but I missed the man on horseback 
 from the road, forgetting for an instant that he must have 
 passed a long while ago. 
 
 An elderly man and his pretty little grand-daughter were 
 at the choice view-point where a block of stone lies on the 
 bank by w^ay of seat. They seemed to take little or no 
 notice of the prospect ; were come to meet the child's 
 mother who had gone down to the beach on some errand.
 
 KENT'S HOLE. 115 
 
 The man lived only a mile or two away, but had not been 
 here for I think he said ten years before to-day. He was a 
 mason and had speculated in house-building, not to his 
 gain, I understood ; but some one else whom he named, 
 some contractor, had ' made a lot of money,' and on this 
 he would have talked for hours. His eyes were turned in- 
 wards and downwards ; to his entrails as Swedenborg would 
 have said. This is the state of vast numbers around us, 
 and held to be the right state for them too. These are some 
 of the men, with their 2001. capital, their greediness and 
 stupidity, who build Cockneyville-super-mare on every fair 
 coast, with the co-operation of speculators, loan-societiep, 
 building-companies, cunning lawyers, quack-architects, gam- 
 bling contractors, and swindling money-brokers. The little 
 local men commonly lose their venture. There are some 
 more rows of tawdry stucco, for the beait, monde and its 
 imitators, while the fashion lasts, to lounge and flirt and 
 yawn away a part of its time in ; while quieter folk, instead 
 of a homely lodging, must pay three or four times as 
 much for French varnish and gilt curtain rings, with a 
 hundred times worse food and attendance than of old, and 
 no kindness or gratitude. 
 
 After a delightful spell of solitary freedom in the midst of 
 beautiful scenery, I joined a swarm of masters and scholars 
 in science, and we all made together for Kent's Hole, a 
 rather ugly slimy cavern burrowing and branching into the 
 limestone bowels of a grovy hill. From hot sun and dusty 
 hedgerows we stepped into an icy gloom dim-lit with 
 numerous candles stuck against the dripping walls, on 
 gluey stalagmites and heax^s of quarried rubbish ; heard a 
 geologic lecture, then wandered off through narrow pas- 
 sages, and peeped into dark holes, and out again to the hot 
 air and cheerful daylight world. In these unsunned recesses 
 under the slow incrustations of many thousand years, are 
 found bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave-bears, and 
 
 8 — 2
 
 116 EXETER AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 other monsters, and less deeply imbedded, tokens of the 
 presence of hnman creatures hke ourselves, bone needles, 
 flint tools, and even some bones and skulls. 
 
 Several men, I think three or four, dig and pick daily in 
 this cavern, at the cost of the British Association, and 
 under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly of Torquay, 
 who has now collected herefrom over 50,000 various bones, 
 and kept account of the situation and depth where each 
 was found, Mr. Pengelly is a brisk and ruddy old-bone- 
 man, with merry bhie-gray eyes. 
 
 I don't wonder that students of physical science are com- 
 monly long-lived, healthy, and cheerful. Their field of 
 study, whatever the department may be, is practically 
 boundless. They advance into it with sure and deliberate 
 steps, adding particular experience to experience, and at 
 the same time gaining a wider interest in the general uni- 
 verse ; while the pursuit in itself is amusing and full of 
 expectation, and employs the senses along with the 
 intellect. 
 
 In the carriage for Exeter I fell in talk with a gentleman 
 whose special study is entozoa, those queer little creatures 
 that live and breed inside the bodies of beasts, birds, 
 and fishes, and our own too, inhabiting the blood, muscles, 
 liver, brain, etc., and there making out life in their own 
 fashion, without, in the majority of cases, it would seem, 
 the least inconvenience to their landlord. Each of u.s 
 lodges crowds of these, and it is very rarely that one turns 
 troublesome ; they are by far more peaceable than an ordinary 
 Irish tenantry. My scientific friend tells me that his ex- 
 perienced eyes never fail to see some entozoa in every dish 
 of animal food that comes to table, and often a great many. 
 ' When there are a great many, what do you do ? ' ' Eat 
 'em, if the meat be properly cooked. The odds are millions 
 to one that no harm will come of it.' Sometimes when he 
 encounters an extra-large Distoma, or Spiroptera, or Cys-
 
 ENTOZOA. 117 
 
 ticercus, he sets it aside on his plate, and not long ago 
 totally refused a dish of mutton, because it swarmed with 
 Echinococci ; for if a creature from the body of a sheep, 
 cow, pig, be transferred alive into yours or mine, the con- 
 sequences might be serious. Such appearances at the 
 dinner-table might make some people uncomfortable, but 
 my friend proved no exception to the rule as to men of 
 science, being a merry, fresh-complexioned man whose food 
 clearly agreed with him. 
 
 The universality of entozootic life makes one cease to care 
 much about it. But trichinosis is a real and dreadful 
 disease for all that, like hydrophobia ; and though one may 
 see no risk in eating a rasher or patting a dog, there are 
 certain precautions fit to be observed. My microscopical 
 friend does not think the little beasts in the pig more dan- 
 gerous than others ; but ham, sausages, etc., are often eaten 
 with slight cooking, whence come evils. 
 
 Science, it would seem, is in hopes of being able to trace 
 all the steps between an Entozoon and a Goethe, but long 
 before it arrives at Goethe's soul (pass me the old-fashioned 
 phrase) science will find its instruments fail it, I imagine. 
 
 I am far from thinking, however, that our leaders in 
 science wish to teach that there is nothing but matter ; or 
 that they suppose it possible for themselves, or for any man, 
 to comprehend all phenomena physical and mental, or to 
 know the innermost nature of any single thing. They say, 
 as I take it, there are certain exact methods called scientific, 
 of investigating any given subject ; to some subjects these 
 methods are found to be more applicable, to others less ; we 
 will strictly apply these methods as far as we are able to 
 every subject that presents itself. As soon as we clearly 
 perceive them to be inapplicable in any case (a perception 
 which is an important element in the pursuit of truth) we 
 will cease our attempts in that particular direction. On the
 
 118 EXE TEE AND ELSEJFHERE. 
 
 other hand, so long as our methods of investigation show a 
 real hold upon any subject and a fruitful relation to it, we 
 will employ them with the utmost simplicity and fearless- 
 ness, — truth (which is multiform and yet one) being safely 
 left to protect her own interests. 
 
 This, au fond, is probably the attitude of the best scientific 
 minds of our time. And yet there are, perhaps, some real 
 dangers connected with the vastly increased activity of 
 scientific investigation. First, a successful investigator is 
 under the temptation of building up theories, top-heavy for 
 the basis on which they are raised ; of forgetting that the 
 most learned of men is still but a young pupil in the great 
 school of nature. Secondly, one set or combination of facts 
 may be so put forward as that they shall for a time take up 
 a disproportionate share of attention, and throw out of 
 balance many minds of thinking men, thus affecting, in- 
 juriously, the general health of public thought. Thirdly, 
 the tone of scientific authority itself may be less modest 
 (keeping within its proper limits) and less reverent than it 
 might be in presence of the wonders and mysteries (so 
 unfathomed, so unfathomable) of the universe, and man's 
 life therein. The Man of Science — I mean the Master in 
 Science — should be exact, fearless, and profoundly reverent. 
 Eeverence, you may tell me, is a moral not an intellectual 
 quality, but I own that to me it appears that moral and 
 intellectual qualities are inseparable, and that a masterly 
 insight into nature is only possible to the reverent spirit. 
 True Masters, indeed, are always rare ; but we have usually 
 plenty of clever people, and a fair supply of able ones, and 
 some of these are no more unwilling to wear the robe of 
 ephemeral mastership, than the multitude is unwilling to 
 confer it. 
 
 From Exeter to Moreton-Hampstead, on the eastern edge 
 of Dartmoor, is no more than twelve miles as the bird flies,
 
 DARTMOOR. 119 
 
 but hills intervene, and our railway took us three times the 
 distance round about, winding at last among deep vales. 
 Moreton (Moor-town), a gray old village, sent us on in a gig 
 to Chagford, a smaller and grayer old village, with rude 
 stone cottages straggling up-hill, and a few new brick houses 
 of the meanest ugliness. To east and north rise woody 
 hills, and westward the bare slopes and crest of Dartmoor, 
 cheerful to-day in the sunshine, but in bad weather gloomy, 
 dreary, and desolate. In summer, we are told, folk say, 
 ' Chaggiford, and what d'ye think o't?' in winter, ' Chag- 
 giford — Good Lord ! ' Climbing Featherbed Lane, the dry 
 course of a mountain stream, its rocks bordered with ferns, 
 shaded with hazel and holly, we emerged a-top on the 
 heather, and made for Castor Eock, one of those huge heaps 
 of gray granite which dominate like ancient castles the 
 broad expanses of Dartmoor, its slopes and ridges of heather, 
 and its huge morasses whence flow a dozen rivers to all 
 points of the compass. 
 
 It was sultry in the vale, but not on Castor Eock. A 
 strong and steady southerly breeze swept over purple heath 
 and green fern-brake, blowing health and freshness into our 
 blood. Broad sunny lights and shadows rested on the wide- 
 spread loneliness. Far below v/e could see, winding through 
 the waste, an avenue or double row of rude stones, whose 
 origin and purpose are lost in antiquity, and in a seam 
 fledged with coppice the infant Teign was leaping, invisible, 
 though not inaudible, from pool to pool. A large and pure 
 contentment infused itself into our souls, and we found 
 nothing better for the time than to lie on Castor Eock, 
 drinking in the solitude, the antique mystery, and the 
 autumnal glory of the vast moorland. Descending, we 
 failed not, as sworn hydrophilists, to visit the Teign, where 
 tall trees, mossy rocks, crystal pools brimmed with green 
 shadows, drew us into a mood of more gay and lyrical 
 dehght. On our drive back to Moreton we heard some anec-
 
 120 EXETER AND ELSEWHEEE. 
 
 dotes from a clergj^man of the neighbourhood, of the people's 
 behef, at this day, in pixies, witches, and supernatural cures. 
 ' Seventh son of a seventh son,' is a not uncommon inscrip- 
 tion, he said, on a herb-doctor's signboard, and the herb- 
 doctor's patients are mainly treated by ' charms ' of various 
 kinds. 
 
 It v^as nightfall when I quitted the train at Totnes station, 
 and walked off alone along a dark bit of road under the stars, 
 to enter a strange town, — a special delight ; turned a corner 
 into the long, narrow, roughly -paved High Street ; downhill, 
 to the poetic sign of The Seven Stars, a large, old-fashioned 
 hostel, with garden to the river ; then, after choosing bed- 
 room, out again for the never-to-be-omitted- when-possible 
 immediate and rapid survey, by any sort of light, of the place 
 not seen before since I was born. 
 
 Uphill goes the steep, narrow sti-eet, ci'ossed, half-way up, 
 by a deep arch bearing a house ; then the houses on each 
 side jut over the side-path supported on stumpy stone pillars ; 
 then I zig-zag to the left, still upwards, and by-and-by come 
 to the last house, and the last lamp, throwing its gleam on 
 the hedge-rows and trees of a solitary country road. This 
 last house is an old and sizable one, with mullioned windows, 
 one of which is lighted, and on the blind falls a shadow from 
 within of a woman sewing. The slight and placid move- 
 ments of this figure, at once so shadowy and so real, so close 
 at hand and so remote, are suggestive of rural contentment, 
 a life of security and quietude. Yet how different from this 
 the facts may be ! 
 
 Inexhaustibly interesting to the imagination is any old 
 edifice ; and the nearest to my own sympathies, the most 
 touching, is neither church nor castle, but a dwelling-house, 
 not a grand one, but such as generations of the stay-at- 
 home sort of people have been born in, have lived in, and 
 died in ; every particle of its wood and stone, as it were,
 
 THE OLD GUILDHALL OF TOTNES. 121 
 
 imbued with human Hfe. No vast antiquity is needed ; a 
 hundred years does as well as a thousand ; long dates only 
 confuse and baffle the imagination. Enough if the house be 
 evidently before our time, if men before us have lived and 
 died there. Death, the great mystery, is the dignifier of 
 Human Life. Where Death has been, as formerly where 
 lightning struck, the ground is sacred. 
 
 Next morning I mounted to the castle-keep of Judael de 
 Totnais, through a wildly-tangled shrubbery, and from the 
 mouldered battlements looked over Totnes's gray slate roofs 
 and gables, and the silvery Dart winding amongst wooded 
 hills. Opposite, stood the tall, square, red sandstone tower 
 of the old church, buttressed to the top, and with a secondary 
 round turret running up from ground to sky near the centre 
 of its north face, an unusual and picturesque feature. Then 
 hied I to the churchyard, and beside it, in a rough back 
 lane, saw an old low building, with an old low porch ; the 
 old key was in the old iron-guarded door, and I entered, 
 without question asked, the old Guildhall of the old town. 
 Over the bench hung a board painted with the arms of 
 Edward VI., supported by lion and wyvern, ' Anno Domini, 
 1553,' with motto, ' Du et mond Droyit.' The latticed 
 windows looked into an orchard whose apples almost touched 
 the panes. It was a little hall with a little dark gallery at 
 one end, for the mediaeval public, and under this the barred 
 loopholes for the mediaeval prisoners to peep through. But 
 it is still in use, as testified by two modern cards on the 
 walls : ' This side, Plaintiff and Plaintiff's witnesses ; ' 
 ' This side. Defendant and Defendant's witnesses.' On 
 the Defendants' side I found, roughly cut on the wood panel, 
 ' E. P., 1633,' but could not guess in what cause he ap- 
 peared. 
 
 No pleasanter change in travel from more or less fatiguing 
 exercise, than the rest in motion of a river steamboat, sliding 
 from reach to reach of some easy-flowing stream, like that
 
 122 EXETER AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 which bore us seven miles from the woody slopes of Totnes 
 to the steeper hills of Dartmouth's almost land-locked 
 harbour, and again, from broader to narrower reaches, 
 back again to Totnes. Then, bidding adieu to The Seven 
 Stars, off started the Eambler once more on his favourite 
 vehicle, sometimes called Irish tandem — namely, one foot 
 before another ; striking off by field, park, meadow, and 
 millpond for a certain hamlet obscurely Ivirking somewhere 
 among the swelling hills and deep lanes — Dean Prior, the 
 church and vicarage of old Eobin Herrick.
 
 EAMBLE THE SIXTH. 
 
 DEAN TEIOR. 
 
 Devousliirc Lanes — Herrick's Poetry — Dean Prior — Sketch of the Poet's 
 Life — Herrick and Martial. 
 
 ISTAETED on foot from Totnes in search of a hamlet 
 hidden among romided hills of corn and coppice, and 
 shady Devonshire lanes, deep, steep, solitary ; often show- 
 ing, where the tangled hedges opened at some gate, a wide 
 and rich prospect over harvest fields and red ploughed lands. 
 Long and sultry was the pilgrimage, the way often taken at 
 haphazard, sometimes mistaken, in lack of people or houses; 
 but at last the scent grew hot, when, after climbing an end- 
 less lane, I found myself descending t'other side the hill 
 with Dartmoor's uplands before me, dim in afternoon sun- 
 light; and, at foot, the square church tower of Dean Prior, 
 of which Eobert Herrick was a long while vicar, two cen- 
 turies ago. Many a time he certainly trudged up and down 
 this steep old lane — now lamenting his banishment fi'om 
 London, now humming a lyric fancy newly sprung somehow 
 in that queer gross-fine brain of his. 
 
 More discontents I never had 
 
 Since I was born, than here ; 
 Where I have been, and still am sad, 
 
 In this dull Devonshire. 
 Yet justly too, I must confesse, 
 
 I ne'r invented such 
 Ennobled numbers for the presse 
 
 Than [As .'] where I loatli\l so much. 
 123
 
 124 DEAN PRIOR. 
 
 Saying these lines to a tune of their own making, 
 I went down the long lane, its wide borders all a-tangle 
 with leaves and flowers, mint, meadowsweet, golden 
 fleabane, blackhead, hemp-agrimony, and red campion, 
 countless green tufts of hartstongue, male fern, and 
 bracken, and a few late foxglove-bells. In front, at 
 every step rose higher the bare purply slopes of Dart- 
 moor, ridge over ridge, putting on, from this point of 
 view and in this light, the aspect of a solemn mountain 
 region. 
 
 I was not prepared to find so grave a charm of landscape 
 in Herrick's Devonshire, and it has left no trace in his 
 verses, which carry the impression (I mean the best of them) 
 of a quiet, sleepy, remote ruralism among flow^ery meadows, 
 hay and corn-fields and old farm-houses, its winter season 
 cheered with great wood fires, flowing cups, and old-world 
 games. 
 
 Of the larger aspects of nature and life, Herrick had no 
 apprehension — at least, no habitual apprehension ; if he 
 caught a glimpse of these it was by efl^ort and against his 
 will. His flower-pieces have a flower-like delicacy and 
 sweetness, as in the unfading little song — 
 
 Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 
 
 Old Time is still a-flying, 
 And this same flovv'r that blooms to-day 
 
 To-morrow will be dying, etc. 
 
 Or this— 
 
 Faire Daiiodills, we weep to see 
 
 You haste away so soone ; 
 As yet the early rising suu 
 Has not attaiu'd his noone. 
 Stay, stay, 
 Until the hasting day 
 Has run 
 But to the even-song ; 
 And having pray'd together, we 
 Will goe with you along, etc.
 
 HERRICK'S POETRY. 125 
 
 Only, daffodils are by no means among the evanescent 
 flowers. His pages are full of roses, violets, pi'imroses, 
 asphodels, breathing a natural freshness : — 
 
 I siug of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers. 
 Of April, May, of June, of July-flowers ; 
 I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes. 
 Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. 
 
 In his style is a quality of elegant naivety, grown rare of 
 late in English poetry. The French cultivate and excel in 
 this. Our Thomas Hood has it. In his ' Matins, or Morning 
 Prayer,' old Eobin sings : — 
 
 First wash thy heart in innocence, then bring 
 Pure hands, pure habits, pure, pure everything. 
 
 How simple without flatness are such lines as these : — 
 
 Here down my wearied limbs I'll lay ; 
 My pilgrim's staffe, my weed of gray. 
 My palmer's hat, my scallop-shell. 
 My cross, and cord, and all farewell. 
 For having now my journey done. 
 Just at the setting of the sun, 
 Here have I found a chamber lit, 
 God and good friends be thankt for it. 
 Where if I can a lodger be 
 A little while from tramplers fi'ce. 
 At my uprising next I shall. 
 If not requite, yet thank ye all, etc. 
 
 He abounds in happy turns of phrase, which sometimes 
 carry a very pleasant tinge of humour. A quaint gravity 
 sits well upon him, as in the lines 'Thus I, Passe by, And 
 die,' etc., or these — ' Give me a cell, to dwell, Where no 
 foot hath a path,' etc. Of delicate sense of metre, the 
 most specially poetic of natural gifts (using the word poetic 
 in its strict meaning), he has a larger share, perhaps, than 
 any other English poet of his rank. As good in its manner
 
 126 DEAN PRIOR. 
 
 as the pensive gaiety of ' Gather ye rosebuds while ye 
 may,' is the jolhty of 
 
 The Blay-pole is up, 
 Now give me the cup ; 
 I'll drink to the garlands around it ; 
 But first unto those 
 Whose hands did compose 
 The glory of flowers that crown'd it. 
 
 And the best of his longer pieces (yet not long), ' Corinna 
 going a-Maying,' winds delightfully throughout its course. 
 Verse, like wine, acquires a special fine flavour by age. But 
 to imitate this in new verse is like fabricating mock old-wine, 
 and such concoctions are scarcely palatable or wholesome, 
 though they often take the public taste for a while. 
 
 I hardly know why Herrick seems interesting beyond 
 other poets of a similar rank. There was not ' much in ' 
 the man, and there is not much in his verses : and perhaps 
 that's just it. The endurance of his little writings gives 
 strong testimony to the value of art. His subject-matter is 
 neither new nor remarkable. There is no interest of narra- 
 tive or of characterisation ; very slight connection with the 
 times he lived in, or with any set of opinions, national, 
 social, or individual. That which has saved the verses and 
 name of the obscure Devonshire vicar is simply and solely 
 ars poctica. The material is nothing, the treatment every- 
 thing. If good verse can preserve even trivialities, how 
 potent a balsam is good verse, and how fit to entrust fine 
 things to ! 
 
 What does appear of the man himself disposes one to a 
 mood of good-humoured slightly contemptuous toleration — 
 usually a rather agreeable mood. We can't look up to him ; 
 he is frail, faulty, sometimes rather scandalous, often ab- 
 surd ; but he confesses as much himself, and gives the 
 world in general that sort of easy lazy toleration which he 
 would fain receive. A Pagan he habitually is, though 
 varnished with another creed. The ideas of home and
 
 LYRICAL POETS. 127 
 
 fireside, of pleasure, of death, even (despite his parsonhood) 
 of marriage, of prayer, of funeral-rites, present themselves 
 to his mind in the same light, and commonly under the 
 same forms as they did to Horace or Martial. It seems 
 more than mere adoption of classic phraseology and huagery, 
 like that of Milton in ' Lycidas ; ' it was his way of seeing 
 things : — 
 
 So when you and I are made 
 
 A fable, song, or fleeting shade ; 
 
 All love, all liking, all delight, 
 
 Lie drown'd with us in endlesse night, etc. 
 
 This is the felicity he truly aims at : 
 
 I'll feare no earthly powers, 
 But care for crowns of flowers. 
 
 Anything for a quiet life : 
 
 The Gods ai'e easie, and condemne 
 All such as are not soft like them. 
 
 He loves good cheer, and is convinced that 
 
 Cold and hunger never yet 
 Co'd a noble verse beget. 
 
 In his ' Farewell to Sack,' ' Welcome to Sack,' and 
 elsewhere, are some admirable Bacchanalianisms. An easy- 
 going, light-hearted man, he is not given to look below the 
 surface of things. He has no narrative or dramatic power. 
 His views of human life are general, coloured with percep- 
 tion of beauty, with gaiety and desire, with sense of tiae 
 shortness of life. His attempts at individualising take the 
 form of the rudest ill-drawn caricature. His amorous verse 
 is frankly sensuous and outward. His Julia, Electra, 
 Corinna, are names for the bodily sweetness of womanhood. 
 There is just a modicum of sentimentality, itself superficial, or, 
 as it were, subcutaneous. We find here no chivalrous strain 
 like Lovelace's ' Tell me not, sweet ; ' no ingenious comfort 
 in neglect like Wither's ' Shall I, wasting in despair ; ' no
 
 128 DEAN PRIOR. 
 
 heap of glittering clevernesses as in Donne's x^ages (with here 
 and there a wonderful bit of old coloured-glass, as it were, 
 worth keeping even as a fragment) ; no exaltation of mental 
 and disparagement of external qualities as in Carew's ' He 
 that loves a rosie cheek.' Herrick sings of Electra's petticoat, 
 of Julia's bosom, of bright eyes, trim ankles, fragrant 
 breath. He is not, or very seldom, prurient, only pagan, 
 bodily, external. There is not the slightest hint of those 
 modern schools — the sceptical, the scoffing, or the diabolic. 
 His tone, too, entirely differs from the witty, ingenious im- 
 morality of the next generation, Eochester, Sedley, and 
 other Merry-Monarchy men. Herrick's collected poems were 
 published in 1648, when the author w^as about fifty-seven. 
 
 But here is Dean Prior. What is it ? Church and church- 
 yard on one side the road, vicarage on the other ; three 
 or four cottages, a brook, a farmyard, some solitary country 
 lanes; visible inhabitants, a man and a boy, to whom, after- 
 wards, enter an old woman. The vicarage, though it has a 
 gray old-fashioned look, is not of Herrick's time^a dis- 
 appointment ; 'tis perhaps of x\nne's reign, or one of the 
 earlier Georges. But it probably stands on the site of 
 the older edifice. The present vicar was unluckily from 
 home, and the old woman who showed the church knew 
 nothing beyond parish matters of her own day. The church, 
 old, but restored throughout, is now a trim ordinary edifice 
 of stone, with a w^est tower. Inside you find three aisles 
 (it is not a small church) , and on the wall of the north aisle 
 a brass palate , about 36 inches by 20, surrounded by a deep 
 frame of w^hite stone or marble, cut into Eenaissance scroll- 
 work, like what you see on title-pages of the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries. The inscription runs: ' In this Church- 
 yard lie the remains of Egbert Herrick, Author of the 
 Hesperides, and Other Poems, Of an ancient family in 
 Leicestershire, and born in the year 1591. He was educated 
 at St. John's College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Pre-
 
 'HESPERIDES: 129 
 
 sented to this Living by King Charles I. in the year 1629, 
 Ejected during the Commonwealth, and reinstated soon 
 after the Eestoration. This Tablet was erected to his 
 Memory by his Kinsman, William Percy Herri ck, of Beau 
 Manor Park, Leicestershire, a.d. 1857. 
 
 Our mortall parts may wrapt in seare-clothes lye, 
 Great spirits never with their bodies die. 
 
 IlesjJerides. 
 Virtus Omnia Nobilitat.' 
 
 The churchyard has many old graves, among which the 
 poet's lies perdue. 
 
 Dean is a lonesome place, the old dame admits ; so much 
 so, it appears, that servants can hardly be got to live at the 
 vicarage. Think what it must have been 200 years ago. 
 No wonder if the lively young scamp who had left 
 Cambridge in debt, and lived a gay life in London till both 
 purse and credit were quite exhausted ; getting somehow 
 ordained, as a lyis-allcr, and then presented to a living by 
 his friends' influence (for such appears to be something like 
 what the few known facts amount to) ; no wonder that this 
 jovial, clever, petted, insolvent, amatory poet turned parson, 
 finding himself stuck in the Devonshire clay, four days' 
 journey from town, should sometimes grumble at his fate. 
 He was about thirty-eight years old when he came to Dean, 
 and remained there some twenty years, till Cromwell turned 
 him out. It was in 1648, the last year of King Charles 
 (and which that monarch spent mostly at Carisbrooke), that 
 Herrick's volume appeared, ' to be sold at the Crown and 
 Marygold in St. Paul's Churchyard.' It is dedicated ' to 
 the Most Illustrious and Most Hopefull Prince, Charles, 
 Prince of Wales.' The political allusions are not many ; 
 all on the loyal side, of course. It is manifest that he had 
 no notion of the dangerous condition of the king's affairs. 
 Nor indeed had the king himself, even up to tliat day in 
 January when he so unwillingly appeared in Westminster 
 
 9
 
 i;30 BEAN rrjOB. 
 
 Hall, and at first ' laughed ' when the charges against him 
 were read. 1648 was an odd year for the publication in 
 London of a book of light lyrics, mingled with compliments 
 to royalty. 
 
 See, this brook among the hazel-bushes is that very Dean- 
 bourne to which friend Robin bade farewell in no very affec- 
 tionate strain. Never could he wish to see it again, ' were 
 thy streames silver, or thy rocks all gold.' 
 
 Eockie thou art ; and rockie we discover 
 Thy men, and rockie are thy wayes all over. 
 men, manners ; now, and ever knowne 
 To be a rockie generation ! 
 A peeple currish, churlish as the seas, 
 And rude almost as rudest salvages ! 
 
 On his ' Eeturne to London ' he writes : 
 
 From the dull confines of the drooping west, 
 To see the day spring in the fruitful east, 
 Eavisht in spirit, I come, nay more, I flie 
 To thee, blest place of my nativitie ! 
 
 London my home is : though by hard fate sent 
 Into a long and irksome banishment. 
 
 Yet, by degrees, as old age crept on, and after experience, 
 probably, of hoAV much worse it is to have no home than a 
 dull one, he became reconciled to his rural life, and has left 
 many pleasant pictures of it. 
 
 Sweet country life, to such unknown 
 Whose lives are others', not their own. 
 
 His ' Grange, or Private Wealth,' is delightfully quaint 
 in which, as often elsewhere, he praises 
 
 A maid, my Prew, by good luck sent 
 
 To save 
 That little, Fates me gave or lent. 
 
 When Charles H. was 'restored,' Herrick came back to 
 Dean, now a man of near seventy years of age, and there he
 
 'NOBLE numbers: 131 
 
 lived peaceably some fourteen years longer, and laid down 
 his bones in the dull quiet churchyard through which he 
 had passed so many thousand times from vicarage to church , 
 and from church to vicarage. 
 
 The Poet did not entirely forget his cassock. In deference 
 thereto, he appended to his 'Hesperides' a set of quasi- 
 religious poems, under the title of ' Noble Numbers,' but 
 most of these are evidently no less artificial than that one 
 which is so arranged as to print in the figure of a cross. 
 The best pieces, probably, in this division, are ' A True 
 Lent ' and the ' Litanie,' which has a serious naivety that 
 is touching, though even here peeps out evidence that it is 
 mainly the poet's fancy that is engaged. This is quaintly 
 natural : 
 
 When the priest his last hath praj^'d, 
 
 And I nod to what is said, 
 
 'Cause my speech is now decay'd, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me I 
 
 but this runs into the comic : 
 
 When the artless doctor sees 
 No one hope, but of his fees, 
 And his skill runs on the lees, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 The true and habitual meditative glances of the man were 
 turned to the shortness of life ; his philosophy was the 
 w'isdom of gathering rosebuds while you may. Moments of 
 graver mood no doubt he also had, and he expresses here 
 and there the sense of hurt or rather ruffled conscience in 
 one whose love of pleasure is stronger than his w^ll. He 
 stumbles and hurts his shin, recovers himself, walks care- 
 fully a few steps, grows careless, and trips again, never quite 
 falls, but goes on his way stumbling and resolving not to 
 stumble so much. 
 
 A fat, sly, droll, good-humoured, lazy, smutty old parson 
 was Eobin Herrick, thick-necked, double-chinned, with a 
 
 9 — 2
 
 132 DEAX PBIOn. 
 
 twinkle of humoui- in his eyes, fond of eating, drinking, and 
 singing, part man-of-the-world, part homely and simple 
 almost to childishness. He doesn't hate anybody, blames 
 nothing but what teases him, longs for a quiet life, has no 
 opinions, and is ready to conform to anything. He reads 
 little, looks into a few favourite Latin poets, cares very 
 slightly for contemporary literature, saving the verses of 
 two or three friends of his, and especially ' Saint Ben ' 
 (whose minor poems are a good deal like Eobin's). There 
 is no Saint Will in his calendar. Will, unhappily, though 
 clever, was not an 'educated' man, like nous autres ; and 
 this undoubtedly was the general feeling as to Jiim among 
 the lettered class. 
 
 A century after the old vicar's funeral, it would have 
 seemed that his verses (though not without some recognition 
 in their own day) were no less lost in silence and oblivion 
 than his bones. But they possessed an unsuspected vitality. 
 Somebody rediscovered them, and made known the fact in 
 the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' in 1796 and 1797 ; the 
 ' Quarterly Eeview ' followed suit, with due deliberation, 
 in 1810. By that time a selection from Herrick's poems 
 had appeared, edited by Dr. Nott. In 1823 a collective 
 edition was published at Edinburgh, another by Pickering 
 in 1846 ; ' Selections ' by Murray in 1839 ; ' Works ' (but 
 not complete) by H. G. Clarke & Co. in 1844 ; ' Works ' 
 by Eeeves & Turner, edited by E. Walford, 1859 — from 
 which my quotations are made. Lastly, a complete edition, 
 including several pieces hitherto uncollected, was published 
 in 1869 by J. Eussell Smith, edited by W. C. Hazhtt. 
 
 Whether or not it is necessary or desirable to resuscitate 
 nil the writings of such a writer as our old friend, is a ques- 
 tion of no small importance. His Floralia, so to speak, are 
 accompanied by a great deal of licence. He sets before his 
 guests roast partridge, apricot tart, and clotted cream, but 
 alas ! with these, rotten fish, aiid even dirt-pies. He is not
 
 HEERICK AND MAItTIAL. 133 
 
 only often sensual, but not seldom coarse and even filthy, 
 in imitation for the most part of classical models. He has 
 gleaned and translated from Anacreon and from Horace, but 
 most I think from Martial. For example, ' What kind of 
 Mistresse he would have' (329), has its parallel in the 
 Eoman poet's ' Qualem, Flacce, velim quaeris, nolimve 
 puellam,' etc. ; as have these lines — 
 
 Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, 
 Unlesse they have some wanton carriages : (p. 414). 
 
 in Martial's ' Ad Cornelium ' (i. 36). 
 
 ' On a Perfumed Lady ' (155) conveys the ' non bene 
 olet, qui semper bene olet.' Herrick's epitaphs much 
 resemble that pretty one on Erotion, 
 
 Hie festinata requiescit Erotion umbra (s. 61). 
 
 Fat be my hinde ; unlearned be my wife ; 
 Peacefull my night ; my day devoid of strife (420) 
 
 is a translation of 
 
 Sit mihi verna satur : sit non doctissima conjux ; 
 Sit nox cum somno : sit sine lite dies (ii. 90) ; 
 
 and so is 
 
 When the rose reigns, and locks with ointment shine 
 Let rigid Cato read these lines of mine, 
 of 
 
 Cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli, 
 Tunc me vel rigidi legant Catones (x. 19). 
 
 'To my ill Eeader,' agrees with 'Ad Fidentinum' (i. 89). 
 He often echoes Martial's ' Possum nil ego sobrius,' and 
 his 
 
 Lassenturquo rosis tempora sutilibus, 
 Jam vicina jubent nos vivcre Mausolea, 
 
 as well as imitates the old writer's confidence in his verses, 
 innnortality — 
 
 Casibus hie nullis, nullis delebilis anuis.
 
 134 DEAN PRIOR. 
 
 Herrick's 
 
 Let others to the printing presse run fast ; 
 
 Since after death comes glory, He not haste (p. 450) 
 
 is Martial's 
 
 Vos tamen nostri ne festinate h"belli : 
 
 Si post fata vcnit gloria, non propero. (v. 10) 
 
 and so on. 
 
 In a crowd of short epigrams, if he fails to match the un- 
 paralleled foulness of Domitian's flatterer, he outdoes the 
 occasional pointlessness of his prototyx^e : — 
 
 Upox Eeles. Epig. 
 
 Eeles winds and tnrnes, and cheats and steales : yet Eeles 
 Driving these sharking trades, is out of heels. 
 
 Upon Penxie. 
 
 Brown bread Tom Pennie eaf^es, and must of right, 
 Because his stock will not hold out of white. 
 
 Upon Mudge. 
 
 Mudge every morning to the postern comes, 
 His teeth all out, to rinse and wash his gummes. 
 
 Upon Croot. 
 
 One silver spoon shines in the house of Croot, 
 Who cannot buie or steale a second to't. 
 
 Flatness in this degree becomes funny, but it seems 
 scarcely worth while to go on making luxurious reprints of 
 matter like this. The question as to foul parts, unhappily 
 too many, is more serious. Sui'ely, mere filthy words, de- 
 void of either literary or antiquarian value — these, at least, 
 need not be carefully resuscitated, be kept alive and in cir- 
 culation, because the writer of them also wrote things 
 worthy of preservation. Even in the case of ancient 
 writers, and giving full weight to the venerableness of anti- 
 quity, should we really lose much by losing the intolerably 
 disgusting passages of Catullus and Martial ? At least let
 
 LITERARY MORALS. 135 
 
 these literary coprolites (but not deodorised by time) rest as 
 far as possible among the shadows of learned shelves. Are 
 they thus treated? Here is a subject which "has received 
 less consideration than perhaps it deserves. Look at cer- 
 tain volumes of Bohn's ' Classical Library,' which has an 
 immense circulation in England and America. Any book- 
 seller will sell them ; any boy may have them as crihs. 
 They translate literally into English all but the perfectly 
 intolerable passages ; of these they give the original text in 
 large type (so that they can be turned to one after another 
 at a moment's notice), accompanied by a French or Italian 
 translation, or both, and also in many cases by a veiled 
 English version. Martial, with his w^orst passages imbed- 
 ded in a jungle of close Latin pages, is bad enough. 
 Martial, with all tlie worst passages set forth in distinctive 
 type, and all the filthiest pb rases of the Latin tongue sup- 
 plemented by French or Italian equivalents, or both, is a 
 public offence. Nothing more charming in their way than 
 this poet's pieces on the villa of Julius Martial (iv. 64), or 
 those addi'essed to the same Julius, ending 
 
 Summum nee metuas diem, nee optes (x. 47), 
 
 or those on his own ' rus in urbe,' where a cucumber hasn't 
 room to lie straight (xi. 18) ; nothing happier than many of 
 his lines and plnrases : yet there is in him a deep vein of 
 blackguardism, a very different thing from sensuality. I 
 believe him when he says he invented vile things delibe- 
 rately to make his books sell. 
 
 Strange, to find in his pages those solemn words (inscribed 
 on a clock in Exeter Cathedral, and on the Temple sun-dial), 
 ' Pereunt et Imputantur.' But the phrase, I should think, 
 is not applied in precisely Martial's meaning — ' If you and 
 I,' he says to his friend Julius (v. 20), 'were really to 
 enjoy our lives, we should quit the halls of patrons and rich 
 people, and the cares of public life, and drive, walk, read,
 
 13G DEAN PRIOR. 
 
 bathe, converse at leisure. But now neither of us can Hve 
 in his own way, and sees his good days fly and vanish ' — 
 
 Nunc vivit sibi neuter, heu, bonosque 
 Soles effugere atque abire sentit ; 
 Qui nobis pereunt, et imputantur ; 
 Quisquana vivere cum sciat, moratur ? 
 
 ' Should any one that knows how to live (i.e., pleasantly) 
 put off doing so ? ' By ' imputantur ' he seems to have 
 merely meant ' are reckoned up ' in our assigned number. 
 Certainly the expectation of any reckoning in a deeper sense 
 for his foul and deliberate treasons against human dignity 
 might well have made the Spaniard shiver. If there be any 
 right or wrong in these matters, he and such as he are 
 damnahlij wrong. 
 
 Several other volumes of ' Bohn's Library ' are almost if 
 not quite as bad. Nor is the indecency committed in a 
 merely stolid and business-like manner ; prurient leers and 
 winks are not wanting in the notes. In the Plague of 
 London, letters were sent to obnoxious people enclosing rags 
 from a plague sore. These pages, steeped in foulest mental 
 contagion, fly over all the world, and especially into the 
 hands of the young. As regards the relation of the sexes, 
 Latin poetry is the most degraded in all literature. And 
 now our girls are learning Latin. Some think all this of no 
 consequence, but ' Eank thoughts of youth full easily run 
 
 wild.' 
 
 Dociles imitandis 
 Turpibus ac pravis omnes sumus. ' 
 
 External prudishness (England is notably prudish) and inner 
 coarseness make a very bad combination. 
 
 Herrick is nothing like so bad as Martial, or as Herrick 
 
 would himself have been perhaps as a poet of the Eoman 
 
 Empire ; still there is much of his ■v\T:iting that were best 
 
 allowed to fall into oblivion. The graceful fancy and lyric 
 
 'Juvenal, xiv. 40.
 
 LITERARY MORALS. 137 
 
 sweetness of his best verses will long preserve them in men's 
 memory. 
 
 So, Dean Prior, adieu ! — Robert Herrick, thy name echoes 
 pleasantly after all, and I drink this cup of cider, in default 
 of sack, to thy half-disreputable shade. How unlike to thy 
 contemporary brother-poet and brother-clergyman, the 
 almost too-respectable vicar of Fuggleston, near Salisbury, — 
 George Herbert ! 
 
 Various the tones, the skills, the instruments ; 
 One Spirit of Music at the heart of all. 
 
 I had several questions to ask at Dean, but found no one 
 to put them to. It was Saturday evening ; it was some 
 four miles to Brent station, wath just time to catch the last 
 train for Exeter ; I caught it by the tip of the tail, as it 
 were, and was whisked away by that Fiery Dragon of our 
 period.
 
 EAMBLE THE SEVENTH. 
 
 BIDEFOED AND CLOVELLY. 
 
 Exeter Again — A Cathedral Service — Bicleford — Westward Ho ! — 
 Bathing— Clovelly. 
 
 THE tall-housed Exeter High Street, with its blazing 
 shops and Saturday-night bustle, has a metropolitan 
 air as I pass up. It was only yesterday morning that I 
 passed down ; and a crowd of new images meanwhile have 
 taken lodgment in the mystic chambers of my brain, and 
 swarms of thoughts have been busy. 
 
 At the Guildhall is the police station, and with a con- 
 stable's leave you can enter the spacious and stately old 
 Gothic hall, dimly lit with gas throughout the night, see its 
 lofty window with the emblazoned date ' 1464,' and the 
 full-length pictures of Henrietta, daughter of Charles I., of 
 Monk, Duke of Albemarle, of King George II., of Chief 
 Justice Pratt, the first two by Lely, the second two by 
 Hudson, with several more. At one end is an old gallery, 
 at the other the magistrate's bench. 
 
 Next morning I renewed and deepened my mind-pictui'e 
 of the beautiful Cathedral, and heard a Sunday afternoon 
 choral service, worship without words or nearly, waves of 
 solemn harmony, like the billows in a great sea-cavern, 
 rolling down those vaulted aisles ; and also a sermon, which 
 was as remarkable for earnest eloquence as cathedral ser- 
 mons usually are. Modern Thought, that pushed itself in 
 last week, is gone again, like a ship that touched at some 
 enchanted island, and all is tranquil as of old. 
 
 138
 
 SERMONS. 139 
 
 Last week there were sermons on ' Science and Eeligion,' 
 even here ; but the disturbers are gone. The lotos reigns 
 in its old territory. The robed procession moved along the 
 aisle, between ancient carven pillars and coloured windows, 
 Jiike a moving picture. 
 
 The congregation assembled in the nave, and nearly filled 
 it. A cathedral is certainly a great resource on a British 
 Sunday, and the sermon keeps it from appearing too pleasant 
 — a set-off against the music and architecture. Surely an 
 easy and most valuable reform in the Church of England 
 would be the total abolition of sermons in connection with 
 the ordinary service. Let there be sermons, lectures, expo- 
 sitions, discourses of whatever kind, ordinary or special, at 
 times and in ways thereto appointed, close following a service 
 of prayer and praise if you will ; but enable us to join in 
 such a service by itself, bishops and archbishops ! and 
 earn the gratitude of millions of distressed laymen, nay, I 
 doubt not, of hundreds and of thousands of the clergy also. 
 Pulpit-incubus ! vile impersonation of solemn ineptitude, of 
 heartless and brainless routine, pretending to be an oracle, 
 a prophet, an angel, how many souls hast thou numb'd — 
 coming upon them perhaps all secretly a-tremble with 
 mystic joy of praise and prayer, social at once and pro- 
 foundly personal. What unsuspected evils — but hold, 
 Patricius, wilt thou. thyself begin to preach, and without 
 a licence of any sort ? Certainly, however, this too, is an 
 evil under the sun, and I hope I shall live to see the end of 
 it. 
 
 My thoughts wandered over hill and vale to the lonely 
 
 church of Dean Prior. The old vicar in his ' Hesperides ' 
 
 ventured to address one little piece ' To Jos. Lo. Bishop of 
 
 Exeter : ' 
 
 Whom shoVl I feare to write to, if I can 
 Stand before you, my learnVl Diocesan .' 
 
 for none of my poems, says he, are ' so bad but you may
 
 UO BIDE FORD AND CLOVE LLY. 
 
 pardon them.' I suppose the classicahty excused a great 
 deal ; and indeed Herrick most Hkely would never have 
 thought of soiling his pages as he has done, save through 
 the childish superstition (only just dying out) of imitating 
 classic models, not merely in style, but in matter. He 
 made no independent reflections on the subject. It was 
 easy and in a sense creditable to follow a classic lead, even 
 into the mire. In our day the Vicar of Dean would pro- 
 bably have been a contributor to ' Good Words,' perhaps 
 a canon of the cathedral, and consumed his share of 
 ' sack,' or else port, in a fitting and undemonstrative 
 manner. What would he have said to Darwin and Hux- 
 ley ? Not much, I fancy, one way or another. He would 
 have eaten his lotos and been thankful. 
 
 One of my old landscape-longings was Bideford Bay, and 
 though but a day and a half remained of my holiday, I 
 resolved to snatch a taste of that North Devon coast which 
 Charles Kingsley's pen and John Hook's pencil are so fond 
 of. With a passing glimpse at neat-looking Barnstaple, set 
 snugly in tall trees by its river-brink, I reached Bideford 
 — By-th'-Ford — after sunset ; and having pitched camp, 
 established a fresh basis, founded a new little home for a 
 day in the civil inn by the water-side, set off along the quay 
 and up and down the steep lanes of the old town ; then 
 crossed the famous bridge, and walked left way beyond the 
 houses, to look back from a hillock on the broad dim river, 
 and the lamps that marked the bridge, the quay, and the 
 irregular cluster of buildings rising from the water. 
 
 Next morning showed me the broad tidal stream, sweeping 
 merrily round its grovy hills and corn-slopes, the sun- 
 shine dancing on its mingled currents. A silver salmon 
 leapt up and disappeared with a splash. Two or three 
 small vessels sailed in and came to anchor. Eo wing-boats 
 crossed. Windlasses rattled on the quay. The first omni-
 
 A BRIGHT MORNING. 141 
 
 bus went off to the railway. Shops opened in lazy rural 
 fashion. Whatever life belonged to little Bideford was 
 awake and stirring. Bright morning, open window, cheer- 
 ful ]Di'ospect, breakfast, beginning with fresh salmon cutlet 
 and ending with clotted cream and presei-ve, the offerings of 
 Devonshire river, dairy, and garden — these (with temper 
 and mood to taste them — how needful the postulate !) make 
 no unpleasant combination. I enjoyed it, and the main 
 relish was the expectation of new scenes, of realising 
 places hitherto but names, and converting them into solid 
 memories. 
 
 Our memory is ourself — ' that immortal storehouse of the 
 mind.' True, it may be said that material objects are little 
 or nothing in themselves ; but the framework, the body of 
 this world is material, and all its phenomena are abundantly 
 significant in their varied relations to us. Moreover, even 
 the wine of abstract thought is often presented to us in the 
 cup of external circumstance, and if that be of Cellini's gold 
 the draught is more precious. A happy hour is good to 
 remember, and can reflect its brightness upon dark seasons. 
 I am in gloom : so have I been ere now, and said, ' joy is 
 no more,' yet after all came the free and happy hour-, and I 
 perceived that the clouds had been in me — of my own 
 making most likely — not in life. With health of body and 
 soul (merely that !) nothing could daunt or depress for a 
 moment. Yet I know that the dark hours are fateful, they 
 too are precious. 
 
 ' All this about a good breakfast ! ' Well, that was a 
 part of the matter — but only a very little part, a touch of oil 
 to the machinery. 
 
 The morning's surv^ey of Bideford added not much to the 
 night's impressions. The ancient bridge has been widened 
 by two side paths, supported on iron brackets, which, with 
 the iron balustrade, give it the air of a railway bridge. The 
 Bridge Hall, where the trustees meet, re-edified in 1758,
 
 142 BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 
 
 was done up in 1859 ; but the old tapestries remain. The 
 old Guildhall has been destroyed ; and the old church, too, 
 except its tower. I peeped into the new church, spick and 
 span Puginesque with gaudy glass, and found morning ser- 
 vice going forward, with a single worshipper. Bideford 
 shops are rustic and backward ; the one newsroom dis- 
 coverable was very poor and rude. As to my waterside 
 inn, it was civil, comfortable, and cheap. 
 
 Two or three miles below Bideford is the bar, and the 
 double river loses itself in the wide bay. On the right juts 
 out a distant headland ; on the left run the long and level 
 rabbit-burrows, faced with a barricade of shingles, and at 
 the angle where the hilly south shore trends to Clovelly 
 and Hartlanfl Point stands the cluster of new houses — a 
 big hotel and two or three score of bathing-villas — named 
 ' Westward Ho ! ' from Mr. Kingsley's novel. ' Kingsley 
 Terrace ' and ' Kingsley Hotel ' are also to be seen, an 
 embodied fame. Pleasant traces from the said novel 
 remained in my own memory : the author has a certain 
 glow and entrainemcnt irresistible to youthful readers. I 
 like the name ' Westward Ho ' so far as it is a compliment 
 to Charles Kingsley ; but, unluckily, as a topographical 
 designation, it is a monument of bad taste. ' Hoe ' is a 
 common word in Devon, meaning 'Height' (Haut), but in 
 the title of the novel, borrowed from an old play, ' Ho ! ' is 
 an interjection, and the temptation to follow up Martinhoe 
 and Morthoe with a Westward Ho ! ought to have been 
 resisted. The new name is a kind of bad pun. 
 
 From Westward Ho! (since it must be so), I followed 
 the south coast of the bay, on the edge of its clay and pebble 
 escarpment, rough green hills one after another shutting out 
 the inland prospect ; on the other hand a rough, rocky shore, 
 summer waves rising, rolling in, breaking without tumult, 
 and a blue sea-line stretched from the dim northern horn
 
 JFESTJVARD HO! 143 
 
 of the curve to its nearer southern Umit, where the coast 
 became ahiiost precipitously steep, and was seen, though 
 some seven miles off, to be clothed in rich verdure from 
 top to base. Something in the distance that might be 
 taken for the broken steps of a gigantic stair, at one point 
 climbed from the shore and lost itself among the foliage, and 
 this was the famous old fishing village of Clovelly — a rich 
 name to ear and fancy. Meanwhile the bare green hills, 
 and rocky shore beset with solitary surges, the wide blue 
 bay with its guardian headlands, reminded me strongly of 
 another bay by which I often rambled — that of Donegal in 
 the north-west of Ireland. The two bays are much of a 
 size, the Torridge with its bar and sandbanks stands for the 
 Erne ; nor are the town and bridge of Bideford altogether 
 unlike, at least in position, their ragged Irish cousins at 
 Ballyshannon. Moreover, Lundy Island answers curiously 
 to Innismurray. The scenery of the English bay, as a 
 whole, is much richer, in its foliaged shores and inland 
 glimpses ; that of the Irish is wilder and grander, watched 
 by blue mountain ranges and the great ocean cliff of Slieve- 
 League, 
 
 8ix hundred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep. 
 
 It struck me, too, that I had noticed some curious resem- 
 blances in the speech of North Devon to the somewhat 
 peculiar accent of English which is found in part of Donegal, 
 and speculated whether a colony from this bay might not 
 have settled on that other. Of some such thing as this 
 having happened in Elizabeth's time I seem to have heard, 
 but cannot for the present trace it out. The ' say ' for sea, 
 ' tay ' for tea, and so on, now supposed to mark an Irish 
 tongue, are ordinary Devonian. 
 
 In Hibernian English are many old forms of English, and 
 many provincial forms, and along with these a strong Keltic 
 admixture of words (some translated, some not), phrases,
 
 144 BIDEFOED AND CLOVELLY. 
 
 and grammatical constructions : to these add mistakes and 
 awkwardnesses in the use of a foreign tongue, and you have 
 a strange compound, deserving perhaps a closer examination 
 than it has yet received. An English-speaking Irish peasant, 
 while expressing the same meaning, would shape almost 
 any sentence whatever differently from a Londoner of a 
 similar degree of intelligence and education. 
 
 At Portledge the rocks yielded to a space of sand, over 
 which I gladly ran, in Adam's dress, into the embrace of the 
 folding waves. The afternoon sun sparkled on the wide 
 sea ; two merry fishing boats danced past under sail. As 
 the embrace of Earth invigorated the old giant, so doth the 
 sea renew her sons. First, the sense of individuality when 
 you stand in the face of earth, sea, and sky, without one 
 husk or lending, defenceless, undesignated. Eags or robes, 
 purse and credentials, if you had them, are gone. Next, 
 the ' reverential fear,' the profound awe of committing 
 your helpless self to the terrible and too often treacherous 
 potency. A little prayer is never out of place. Then the 
 thrilling flash of will — the self-abandonment — the victorious 
 recovery, the triumph over a new element — and the glow 
 bodily and mental of one's emergence, not soon fading even 
 when the livery of servitude, the trammels that remind us 
 of ' man's fall,' are resumed. 
 
 Leaving the shore, whose huddled rocks offer little 
 convenience to the foot, and winding up a glen or 
 ' mouth ' to the high road, I push on quickly for Clo- 
 velly, full of expectation. The long plain road between 
 hedges was adorned and made important by my condition 
 of expectancy, and therefore I recall it clearly. I was 
 on the edge of realising a place often thought about, never 
 seen. 
 
 The sun had almost set when I turned, on the right hand, 
 through a gate and into a dark avenue of trees, winding 
 down^vards till the sea came through its branches, and
 
 IX THE DUSK. 145 
 
 running round one headland after another ; the purple bay 
 on my right through foliage, and the great bank of trees on 
 the left. At every turn I hoped to see Clovelly, but it was 
 some three miles long, this winding way terraced among the 
 slanting woods, and the golden clouds had sunk from 
 western heaven, and a dark pui'ple dome overhung the 
 darker ocean, when two or three glimmering lights far below 
 beckoned to me from cottages near the little harbour. 
 Venturing a bye-path, it led me to a small opening in the 
 woods. The trees, heap after heap, were piled into the 
 stars. At my feet, between precipitous banks, a very steep 
 and narrow glen dropped sheer to the sea, losing itself in 
 foliage, and among the foliage were actually roofs and 
 chimneys, cottages one below another, holding on somehow 
 to the dangerous slope. Far down, the unseen surf was 
 heard gently breaking on the beach, and the dim sea rose 
 in front like a mighty and mysterious wall. I had been 
 regretting the lack of daylight, but now felt glad to be 
 entering Clovelly thus. Everything looked very remote and 
 old-world, very quiet, very beautiful. A sense of soothing 
 solitude, of largeness in the lofty woods and wide ocean, of 
 pathos in the cluster of ancient cottages, and the little 
 street, like a ladder, into which I was about to step down, a 
 stranger seeking supper and bed ; and these feelings were 
 harmonised and deepened by the dusky twilight sky, lit with 
 some faint stars. 
 
 I was afraid of finding Clovelly, famous in picture, spoilt, 
 but it has as yet escaped the hand of ' improvement : ' no 
 villas here, no railway, nor even a coach ; the street is still 
 only two to three yards wide ; the inn, while clean, is 
 properly old-fashioned and rustical. I regret to add that I 
 found a pert and careless handmaiden and a heavy bill. 
 ' There was a very nice lass at the inn,' I heard next day, 
 ' but she's married, and now it's the landlord's niece, and 
 she's too proud for her place.' There are lodgings, I under- 
 
 10
 
 146 niDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 
 
 stood, where they would be glad to harbour you even for a 
 single night. 
 
 ' Clovelly Street ' is a very long flight of flag-stone steps 
 descending between two irregular rows of cottages, in one 
 place passing under an archway house, and then dropping 
 more steeply than ever to the little harbour, whose pier, 
 built in Eichard I.'s reign, puts its arm of gray stone round 
 a little fleet of hen-ing-smacks. The steep and lofty sea- 
 bank is smothered in woods, from shingle-beach to sky. In 
 my bedroom, to which I ascended by many stairs, I found a 
 second door, opening on — the garden, and to this garden 
 one did not descend but ascend, and above it were still other 
 gardens, and above these a dark mass of trees. So like a 
 cluster of shore-side nests is this ancient fishing-hamlet. 
 
 Next morning, bright, breezy and gay, I made some 
 acquaintance with the villagers. A girl was scrubbing a 
 doorstep, and her skirt (not a fashionable train) reached 
 quite across the street. Under the archway sat a shoe- 
 maker at work with open door, and showed all the readiness 
 of his craft for conversation. He nmst have quite a variety 
 of visitors, and takes intellectual toll of all strangers. 
 ' Crazy Kate's House ' on the beach, well known to photo- 
 graphers, has no right, he told me, to any such name, w'hich 
 has merely been stuck upon it by some idle tourist. From 
 an old man who had lived here all his days, I learned that 
 there is no doctor in or near Clovelly, ' he couldn't get a 
 livin'.' He himself 'had never touched a dose of medi- 
 cine.' 'Was Clovelly much altered since his youth?' 
 ' Oh, yes, very much ! the street was new-paved from top 
 to bottom, and two new houses built nigh the foot of the 
 hill.' An elderly woman w'ho takes care of the Methodist 
 Chapel (there are many Methodists among the nine hundred 
 Clovellians) praised the beauty of the Clovelly children, 
 their regularity at school, and the pride their mothers had 
 in keeping them tidy. Mr. Hook, Mr. Naish, and other
 
 CLOVE LLY. 147 
 
 painters, were well known to the general population, and 
 inquired after as friends. 
 
 Half-way down the street is a sea-captain's house with a 
 china bowl in the window, embellished with a ship under 
 sail, and the legend, ' Success to the Mary Jane of Bide- 
 ford,' and here is a favourite lodging for artists, and to all 
 appearance a comfortable. The captain was at sea when I 
 called, but passes the winter at home. It seemed it might 
 be a good sort of life, with its alternation of adventure 
 with deep home-repose. 
 
 But I must say good-bye, for my part, to the beautiful 
 old sea-hamlet. A cart bound for Bideford market helped 
 me along the miles of road, first winding up a long hill ; one 
 of my fellow-travellers being a girl with a touch of fashion 
 in her dress, a Clovelly maiden, now at service in London 
 ('a very black place,' she said), and sent home for a month 
 to revive the faded roses in her cheeks. Three weeks were 
 gone and had done her much good ; in another' she must 
 return to the Great Smoke — ' A pity,' remarked an old 
 woman beside us, ' to miss the first of the herrin'.' 
 
 But London sucks in people and things from every corner 
 of the land. As courtly and intellectual centre, Herrick's 
 wishes pointed to it from Dean Prior, and these attractions 
 still belong to it ; but its more widely-felt power nowadays 
 is from mere magnitude, the mass of money and human 
 needs packed within a fifty-mile circuit. Thither gravitate 
 coarse things and fine, are sucked in and absorbed, some to 
 their natural uses, many to waste and destruction. 
 
 I came into Clovelly at nine yesterday evening, and leave 
 it at eight this morning : I seem to have lived there about 
 two years. 
 
 In gliding out of Devon into Dorset the landscape grows 
 evener and simpler. I leave behind me a peaceful region of 
 rich swelling hills, loaded with corn and woodland, and deep 
 fertile valleys, with a coast, north and south, of verdured 
 
 10 — 2
 
 148 BIDEFOnD AND CLOVE LLY. 
 
 cliff and leafy glen, and ' bowery hollows crown'd with 
 summer sea ; ' old towns and old farmhouses ; an easy- 
 going, good-natured population of stalwart men and comely 
 lasses ; a state of life not yet broken up, though not unaf- 
 fected by the brute powder of monstrous London, that 
 Mountain of Loadstone.
 
 RAMBLE THE EIGHTH. 
 
 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMOEE. 
 
 Wiuiborne — River Stour — Blandford — Sara Cowell — Popular Songs — 
 Sturminstcr Newton — Barnes's Poems — The Dorset Dialect — The 
 Peasantry. 
 
 IN the spring-time ' longen folk to gone on pilgrimages,' 
 and in that season also I turn often to the poetry 
 phelves of my little library. So, stepping into Dorset for a 
 two-day walk, I had for a companion a little volume of 
 poems ; and many recollected snatches of verse, and 
 thoughts about poetry and poets, mingled with the vernal 
 delights of those ' woods and pastures new,' and clear 
 flowing waters. 
 
 The map of Dorset seems peculiarly crowded with douhlc- 
 worded names, many of them quaint and enticing. Cerne 
 Abbas, Bere Eegis, Melcombe Horsey, Milborne St. Andrew, 
 Winterborne St. Martin's, Sturminster Marshal, Owre 
 Moyne, Winfrith Newburgh, Iwerne Courtnay, Froom St. 
 Quintin, Toller Fratrum, Wooton Glanville, Mintern Magna, 
 Blanford Forum and a host beside. Here am I at the rail- 
 way station of Wimborne Minster, viewing with expectation 
 the two beautiful towers which dominate the little town. 
 A long and crooked street, noway remarkable (yet it is 
 always a peculiar pleasure to walk into a new place — you 
 thus take possession of it), led me to the churchyard, where 
 the pollard-lindens parallel to the street, with boughs inter- 
 woven overhead and forming a green arcade, yielded 
 
 149
 
 150 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 
 
 glimpses through their thin fohage of the central tower of 
 red sandstone, broad and short, with crooked pinnacles at 
 the four corners ; its rich look enhanced by a growth of ivy 
 rooted high up on the south face, embroidering with verdure 
 the interlaced arches of the stonework. There was once a 
 spire, which fell 250 years ago. The gray-coloured west 
 tower is taller, and of perpendicular gothic. A little girl 
 nursing a baby and two or three other children loitered in 
 the light-leafy linden arcade ; the street was full of spring 
 sunshine and empty of people ; one wondered why the 
 shops were kept open. It was the middle of the day, the 
 townsfolk at dinner, the boys in Queen Elizabeth's grammar 
 school at their lessons. 
 
 I found the north door of the Minster open, and entered ; 
 the verger was showing the church to some rural acquaint- 
 ances, and I followed a little way off, evading the vexations 
 of a formal guidance. The oldest parts of the Church are 
 some 800 years old. Steps over a pillared crypt ascend to 
 the choir, and there lie, hand-in-hand, the well-carved 
 alabaster figures of a Duke and Duchess of Somerset, who 
 left this earth 450 years ago. His helmet, hanging above 
 upon a nail, does more towards making the vanished man 
 real. He died some years after Joan of Arc was burned, 
 and while the Duke of York was Eegent of France. The 
 lid of the tomb was raised not many years ago, and this 
 verger looking in saw the two cof&ns apparently perfect, 
 and some cords, supposed the cords by which they had been 
 lowered. He showed in the wall aside the altar, the j^iscina, 
 a thing not used by the present owners of this costly build- 
 ing. They have lately, however, got all the Minster 
 repaired and re-embellished, by means of a public subscrip- 
 tion, and not merely or mainly on archeeologic claims, but 
 in great part on religious. 
 
 Our nobles of to-day wear no helmets ; our clergy dip 
 their fingers in no inscina ; but we still have dukes and
 
 THE RIVER STOUR. 151 
 
 huge domains, bishops and great churches. "We are hving 
 strangely in the end of a long period, among names and 
 things gray with the crust of antiquity, delightful from an 
 antiquarian point of view, and retaining, some of them, an 
 aroma of that romance, a tinge of that picturesqueness, 
 infused without conscious effort into men's doings in certain 
 by-gone times. No wonder that these names and things, 
 and the thoughts connected with them, should be dear and 
 venerable to many minds. Modern life, public and private, 
 in its typical forms, is neither romantic nor picturesque. 
 Those who love the ideal in man's life (body and spirit) are 
 not well at home in this present time ; they belong more to 
 the Past and to the Future. 
 
 At the other end of the church an old clock-face of large 
 size on the wall inside, marked with twenty-four hours, 
 showed correctly the passing hour of the new spring day by 
 means of a gilt sun travelling round the circle. A ball 
 represents the moon and her changes. The ancient carven 
 font below was not dry like the inscina, but besprinkled 
 from the baptism of two babes that morning ; and the 
 brazen water-jug, replaced on its old shelf, stood ready to 
 continue its share in the mysterious office for children yet 
 unborn. 
 
 To get out of any building, however beautiful or interest- 
 ing, into the open air and free world, is to me a pleasant 
 escape. Narrow streets hem in the Minster. I first 
 reached the market-place, an irregular open ; and then, 
 through bye-lanes, a pretty field-path on the west side of 
 the town, where, amidst broad meadows, guarded north 
 and south by heavily-wooded slopes, winds the tranquil 
 Stour, with deep pools, where, looking into the transparent 
 water, I could see some of the inhabitants, little pike at 
 feed, who know nothing of Wimbourne, or Dorset, or the 
 South Western Eailway, but have their own towns and 
 districts and lines of travelling. Two young ladies came
 
 152 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 
 
 along the path from the town, sat down on the grassy 
 margin close to an island or promontory shaded with tall 
 green withies, and began to read unknown mysterious 
 books ; it was poetry I felt sure, and finer than any I have 
 yet seen in print. Yet could I have looked over their 
 shoulder it would doubtless have changed into . . . The 
 damsels themselves seemed, in that sunny spring meadow 
 by the clear river, more than semi-celestial ; yet already 
 their features have mingled irrecoverably with the cloudy 
 past. I too had my companion book, the third series of 
 Barnes's ' Poems in the Dorset Dialect ; ' and the little 
 river, winding down from the Vale of Blackmore to meet 
 the waters of the Avon in Christchurch Harbour, flows 
 also through the book ; wherefore every sunbeam in the 
 real stream was brightened, and every shadow enriched. 
 Strolling northward, I struck a road which went by a mill 
 among trees and hedges, on a clear brook or bourne, the 
 Wim, huiTying to join the Stour : and so returned to the 
 town, the little market-place with the two old church-towers 
 rising behind it making a picture as one approached. At 
 the inn were good refreshments and a civil landlady. 
 
 The right-hand window of the railway-carriage showed 
 the meadows, groves, and hamlets of Stour Vale and Brad- 
 bury Rings (supposed an ancient British fortress) conspicuous 
 on a hill some miles away ; and so brought me to Blandford 
 Forum — otherwise called, descending from classic to 
 vernacular, Market Blandford. Entering on foot by back 
 streets, I stood to admire a not large yet impoi'tant-looking 
 old square house of dark red brick, ivied, and shaded with 
 tall trees growing in a little court-yard. The bricken 
 chimneys are cf rich design, apparently octagonal, with a 
 slender detached pillar at each angle, and a double cornice 
 a-top. These chimneys I saw afterwards, overtopping other 
 roofs, and found them as pleasurable as a fine piece of land- 
 scape. This old house is the Mayor's, two children tell me,
 
 BLANDFOED. 153 
 
 and be has often been mayor. Is be a properly quaint old 
 gentleman, I wondered — with an old library, old pictures, 
 old furniture, old-fashioned hospitality ; loving his native 
 town and townsfolk, full of fatherly care of all their interests, 
 lapt round in his age with honour and affection ? Might he 
 not possibly send out an old servitor to greet the stranger, 
 observed gazing at his picturesque dwelling with intelligent 
 and respectful interest, and invite him — even me, Patricius 
 Walker — to an inspection of the interior curiosities, and a 
 glass of old port wine ? The old house took no notice of 
 me : I have already left it behind, and turned into the High 
 Street, which has a very different aspect. 
 
 The town of Blandford Forum was burnt down, all but a 
 few houses (of which the above-mentioned was one) on the 
 4th of June 1731, and rebuilt mainly by a general public 
 subscription. The High Street, therefore, with its solid 
 bricken houses, and large Imnpish church with urns on the 
 cornice, square steeple, and hea,\j portico, is like a street in 
 Hogarth's pictures. Blandford, thus built at a stroke, has 
 more of a town look than most other places in this part of 
 England. "Wimborne, Fordingbridge, Eingwood, are like 
 large villages ; and even Salisbury in great part has a 
 village look — the appearance probably of all our towns 
 under the first class, some centuries ago. The ' Crown,' a 
 stately inn, and comfortable withal, fronting the west end 
 of the High Street, commands a view of Lord Portman's 
 rich park, a broad meadow bounded by the cui-\'ing Stour, 
 with lofty bank of trees beyond. This Bryanston Park has 
 given name to a London square, not far from which are its 
 cousins of Portman, Dorset, and Blandford. 
 
 An uphill street led me northward out of the town and by 
 a cemetery, and I turned down a little rustic lane, where I 
 had never been before and would most likely never be again 
 (a singular delight — I know not why). There were orchards, 
 and a wooded vale to the westward, and a gentle cloudy
 
 154 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 
 
 twilight coming on. Then I returned to supper at the 
 ' Crown,' in a room adorned with engraved portraits of famous 
 musicians — composers, singers, instrumentahsts, including 
 one of a Hungarian violin-player with autograph, a gift from 
 the original. What does this mean? I learn from the 
 conversable waitress, that mine host of the ' Crown ' is himself 
 a professional musician of no small note ; is even now at 
 Weymouth, taking part in a public concert. Having 
 alluded to my stroll as far as the cemetery, I am asked, 
 Did I see Sam Cowell's grave ? ' No : who was Sam 
 Cowell ? ' The celebrated comic singer, — yes, to be sure, — 
 and how came he to lay his bones at Blandford? The 
 little story was not without interest. Among the many 
 curious branches of industry which are to be found in the 
 metroi^olis, is the production of those slang songs which are 
 so great an attraction in the Music-halls, ' coal-holes,' 
 ' cider-cellars,' and other night-resorts of London. As the 
 old ones get stale, new are put forward in their stead, jing- 
 ling the topic of the hour in a quasi-comic fashion of their 
 own, and hitching into rhyme the latest inventions of 
 cockney jargon and buffoonery. Now and again one of 
 them makes ' a tremendous hit,' the Great So-and-So is 
 re-engaged for another month, and soon you may hear the 
 children in every rural hamlet throughout the kingdom 
 yelling the new slang ditty, redolent of gas and sewerage. 
 The hay field borrows its lyrics from the Haymarket, and on 
 the sea-shore, if you hear a sailor sing, or a fisherman 
 wdiistle, ten to one it is some melody of the Strand, W.C. 
 Often the singers who bring these into vogue are the con- 
 coctors also ; and to be successful in their line they must 
 of course possess special gifts ; the notabilities are generally 
 skilful and telling, and sometimes show remarkable neat- 
 ness and agility of vocalisation, along with some real power 
 of comic expression, which could hardly be worse applied, 
 for the words are always trashy and frequently base. A
 
 A COMIC SINGER. 155 
 
 few years ago, the favourite name in the bills of the music- 
 halls and on the covers of comic song-books was j)erhaps 
 that of Sam Cowell. I have before me a ' Comic Songster,' 
 price twopence, with several of his famous ditties, one being 
 ' The Eatcatcher's Daughter,' of which here is a verse : 
 
 They both agreed to married be 
 
 Upon next Easter Sunday, 
 But ratcatcher's daughter she had a dream, 
 
 That she wouldn't be alive on Monday, 
 She vent vunce more to buy some sprats, 
 
 And she tumbled into the vater ; 
 And down to the bottom, all kiver'd with mud, 
 
 Yent the putty little ratcatcher's daughter. 
 
 Sj)o7iC7i : — Considering the state of the Thames at the present moment, 
 what mustn't she have swallow'd ! 
 
 Doodle doe, etc. 
 
 Her lover, a man w4io sold ' lilyvite sand,' said ' Blow me if 
 I live long arter ! ' 
 
 So he cut 'is throat vith a pane of glass, 
 
 And stabbed 'is donkey arter ; 
 So 'ere is an end of Lily-vite Sand, 
 
 Donkey and ratcatcher's daughter ! 
 
 Doodle dee, etc. 
 
 Spolicii : — Well, ladies and gentlemen, arter the two bodies was 
 resusticated, they buried them both in one seminary, and the epigram 
 which they writ upon the tombstone went as follows : 
 
 Doodle dee ! doodle dum ! 
 Di dum doodle da 1 
 
 Let us shut up our song-book. Pain, mui-der, death and 
 the grave, are very favourite ingredients in all these ' Comic 
 Songsters.' But humorists of higher rank, the clever 
 Barham and the true poet Hood, for example, are by no 
 means guiltless in this respect. 
 
 Sam Cowell had constant engagements, and was well paid. 
 What more ? A counnon story — ' unbounded applause,'
 
 156 VP THE VALE OF BLACKMOEE. 
 
 unwholesome living, drink, broken health. Said our host of 
 the ' Crown' one day (being up in London, and knowing all 
 these celebi'ities) ; ' You're not looking well, Sam ; come 
 down to Blandford, and we'll set you right again.' Some 
 months after which, a ghostly pale man arrived at the 
 ' Crown ' in the railway omnibus, and this was the celebrated 
 Mr. Cowell. The waiter and chambermaids regarded him 
 with curiosity; the stablemen talked of him over their beer; 
 his arrival made more or less sensation throughout the 
 town. He was very ill ; grew worse and w^orse ; consumed 
 a bottle of brandy per diem, when he could get it ; and was 
 sometimes noisy. At length the ' Crown's ' hospitality being 
 worn out, though not the host's kindness, a lodging was 
 taken in the town, and the sick man's wife brought from 
 London. He was carried dowaistairs in an arm-chair ; and 
 next and lastly, before many days, his body was laid in the 
 cemetery, among these Dorset fields and orchards. A little 
 subscription was made for his w^ife and children, and a 
 stone placed over his grave. Some well-meaning people had 
 administered ghostly consolation of the usual kind to the 
 poor Grotesque, and his last words were, ' Safe ! safe ! ' 
 On his tomb is engraved, ' Here lies all that is mortal of 
 Sam Cowell. Born April 5, 1819. Died March 11, 1864;' 
 with the words of a text — Hebrew^s vii. 25. 
 
 During the last seven years or so the most popular 
 English songs, as well as I can remember, have been these : 
 ' The Eatcatcher's Daughter,' ' The Perfect Cure,' ' Bob 
 Eidley,' ' I'm a Young Man from the Country,' ' The 
 Whole Hog or none,' ' Paddle your own Canoe,' ' Polly 
 Perkins of Paddington Green,' ' A Motto for every Man,' 
 ' Slap Bang,' ' Jessie at the Eailway Bar,' ' Champagne 
 Charley,' ' After the Opera is Over,' ' Not for Joseph.' 
 This last has, like most of them, a catching bar or two 
 in the tune ; the words set forth the same subject as 
 ' The Young Man from the Country,' and many other
 
 OLD AND NEir. 157 
 
 ditties — a countryman in town who is too shrewd to be 
 taken in, e.g. : 
 
 Then a fellow near whisper'd in my ear — 
 
 ' I would the bargain soon close if 
 I'd got the cash, but haven't, so buy it for yourself ; ' 
 I in reply said, ' Not for Joseph ! ' 
 
 The sixth and eighth in our hst are vulgar-economic (a class 
 by itself) ; while ' Champagne Charlie,' ' Slap Bang,' and 
 ' After the Opera,' are songs of Haymarket life, as inane 
 as they are ugly — unless, as a particle of salt, they may be 
 thought to involve some coarse satii'e on the ' Young Man 
 about Town.' 
 
 The country is the natural birthplace of lyric poetry ; the 
 dwellers in the Big Smoke ought to be solaced with sweet 
 songs of wholesome life and nature, and not the country 
 contaminated by the ugly selfishness and vulgar satire of 
 the city. Town will have its slang and its sarcasm, no 
 doubt ; but the preponderance now of ugly town elements 
 in the popular songs of the kingdom is one of the unpromis- 
 ing signs of the times. • Popular song ' and ' slang song ' 
 are almost convertible expressions ; and the slang, too, is 
 mean and witless. Looking into any old song-book, I fancy 
 that I perceive a degeneracy in our own day. The standard 
 of taste thirty years ago was not very noble ; but compared 
 with that of the present time it seems sentimental, romantic, 
 poetic. The influence of modern London upon English 
 thouglit, character, and society — here is a fruitful subject 
 for reflection. It can hardly be denied that ill effects 
 are more discernible than good ; and, with the Popular 
 Song, many things have become less sweet and wholesome 
 than they used to be in more tranquil and deliberate times. 
 
 Next morning I went by rail to Sturminster Newton, an 
 old village with an old church, crooked lanes, small rustic 
 shops, civil people (who looked at the one stranger with a 
 natural curiosity), and its bye-nooks sheltering snug 
 embowered houses, with flower-gardens and climbing roses.
 
 158 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 
 
 Passing out at the top of the street, I followed a country 
 road ; on my left hand, fields sloping to the Stour, and a 
 rich view under showery clouds of the vale with its river 
 winding along. Taking shelter from a dash of rain in a poor 
 but neat enough cottage, where an old woman and a girl 
 were sewing leather gloves — a common employment in the 
 district — I asked the old dame about Duncliffe Hill, showing 
 her the woodcut of it in Mr. Barnes's volume, and trying to 
 awaken some interest in ' Poems in the Dorset Dialect.' 
 But it was impossible for her to conceive that a printed 
 book of which she had never heard before could hold any- 
 thing to coiicern her. 
 
 My next shelcer was under a hedge, where I turned over 
 the leaves of my pocket companion. The verses were much 
 unlike those of the 'Comic Songster.' Eural pictures, fresh 
 and pure, their minute touches harmonised into a general 
 tone, and their apparently artless simplicity concealing no 
 slight mastery of execution ; the ways of life (sweetened by 
 love and neighbourliness) among fields and flowers and 
 wholesome country labours — the neat cottage, the home 
 vale, the winding brook and bridge, the field-path to the 
 church, the tidy wife and dear children ; dashes of country 
 fun interspersed; a sense of rustling leaves, flowing waters^ 
 lowing cattle, tinkling sheep-bells ; with this a gentle 
 humanity towards all creatures, and an old-fashioned, 
 homely piety — these delightful impressions were renewed as 
 I turned over the pages of the little book, pausing here and 
 there at sight of some special favourite — ' Echo,' or ' The 
 Snowy Night,' or ' Zummer Winds,' or — 
 
 The Rwose in the Dark. 
 In zummer, leate at even^n-tide, 
 
 I zot to spend a moonless hour 
 'Ithin the window, wi' the zide 
 
 A-bound wi' rwoses out in flow'r, 
 Bezide the bow'r, vorsook o' birds, 
 An' Hsten'd to my true-love's words.
 
 DORSET POEMS. 159 
 
 A-ris^n to her comely heij^lit, 
 
 She push'cl the swiiig^n ceiisement round ; 
 
 And I could hear, beyond my zight 
 
 The win'-blown beech-tree softly sound, 
 
 On higher ground, a-sway^n slow 
 
 On drough my happy hour below. 
 
 An' tho' the darkness then did hide 
 
 The dewy rwose's blushen bloom, 
 He still did cast sweet air inside 
 
 To Jeane, a-chatt^n in the room ; 
 And tho' the gloom did hide her fcace, 
 Her words did bind me to the pleiice. 
 
 An' there, while she, wi' runn&n tongue, 
 
 Did talk unzeen 'ithin the hall, 
 I thought her like the rwose that flung 
 
 His sweetness vrom his darken'd ball, 
 'Ithout the wall ; an' sweet's the zight 
 Ov her bright feace, by morn^n light. 
 
 But the general effect of Mr. Barnes's poetry is still more 
 delightful than the impression, however charming, made by 
 any of the poems taken separately. It is like the content- 
 ment remaining after a long and pleasant day of rambling 
 by rustic ways through a country of groves and green flowery 
 pastures, and clear brooks and happy cottages, where the 
 wayfarer is regaled with home-made bread and sweet milk, 
 and perhaps a leaf of strawberries or a plate of red-cheeked 
 apples. To some palates such simple diet and narrow scenes 
 would be unsatisfactory, and few of us would choose to be 
 confined to them ; but there are many, surely, to whom a 
 day so spent would yield large stoi'e of sweet and whole- 
 some memories. Human nature is portrayed by our Dorset 
 bard mainly with reference to the domestic affections in 
 humble life — virtuous courtship, happy maiTiage, pai'ent- 
 hood and childhood, filial piety, family bereavements, with 
 the village church always in the background of the picture, 
 and sometimes in the foreground. The author (whose 
 father and grandfather were farmers in this rich, soft,
 
 160 UP THE VALE OF BLACK MO RE. 
 
 secluded Vale of Blackmore, where I sit reading his book) 
 came to be, first, a schoolmaster ; then, in mature life, a 
 clergyman of the Church of England ; and is now vicar of 
 the small parish of Winterbourne-Came, in his native 
 county (close to Dorchester), dwelling in an appropriate 
 cottage vicarage, with his little old church hid in lofty elms 
 a mile away, among the green slopes of Came Park. A 
 simple, cheerful, wholesome and happy life is unmistakably 
 reflected in his poetry ; the childhood in the farmhouse, the 
 manhood aiming at and at last attaining the quiet rural 
 parsonage. "With his love and practice of poetry he com- 
 bines a considerable research in philology, and prides 
 himself, no doubt justly, on using his native Dorset dialect 
 with thorough accuracy and purity. 
 
 ' To WTite,' he says, in the preface to this third collection 
 of poems, ' in what some may deem a fast out-wearing 
 speech-form, may seem as idle as the writing of one's name 
 in snow of a spring day. I cannot help it. It is my mother- 
 tongue, and is to my mind the only true speech of the life 
 that I draw.' 
 
 Whatever difference of opinion there may fairly be as to 
 the propriety of clothing in a provincial dialect such thoughts 
 and images as belong to general literature and are perfectly 
 expressible in modern English, few if any will deny the 
 fitness and success with which Mr. Barnes has used the 
 Dorset forms of speech in ti'eating purely rustic subjects, 
 like ' Not goo hwome to-night,' ' The Humstrum,' ' Don't 
 ceare,' ' What Dick and I done.' ' Christmas Invitation,' 
 ' The Farmer's woldest Daeter,' and especially in dialogues, 
 such as 'The Waggon a-stooded,' 'A bit o' sly Coorten,' 
 'Shodon Feair,' 'The best Man in the Yield,' 'A Witch,' 
 and many more. For my own part, I am thankful for all 
 these poems, just as they stand. In even those which are 
 substantially least rural, come verses and phrases that have 
 a new and delightful flavour ; and we feel that, as the poet
 
 MB. BARXES. 161 
 
 tells us, this is his natural mode of speech, in which he was 
 born and bred, the ready instrument of his heart and tongue. 
 
 The Dorset dialect, according to our author himself, 'has 
 come down by independent descent from the Saxon dialect, 
 which our forefathers, who fou.nded the kingdom of Wessex 
 in Britain, brought from the south of Denmark ; ' ^ it is 'a 
 broad and bold shape of the English language, as the Doric 
 was of the Greek,' 'rich in humour, strong in raillery and 
 hyperbole,' ' purer, and in some cases richer, than the 
 dialect which is chosen as the national speech ; ' ' it retains 
 many words of Saxon origin, for which the English substi- 
 tutes others of Latin, Greek, or French derivation,' and ' it 
 has distinctive words for many things which book-English 
 can hardly distinguish but by periphrasis.' As an example 
 of niceties owned by the Dorset, take iheas and thik ; these 
 pronouns are not mere equivalents of this and that (which 
 are also used), the former being applicable ' only to indi- 
 vidual nouns, not to quantities of matter ; ' so that if one 
 Dorset man heard another mention ' theas cloth ' and 
 ' thik glass,' he would know that a table-cloth and a 
 drinking glass, or some such distinct things, were meant ; 
 but 'this cloth' and 'that glass' would convey the notion 
 of a quantity of cloth, as in a bale, a quantity of glass, as in 
 sheet or in broken pieces. To make use of such phrases as 
 ' theas milk,' ' thik water,' is a common blunder of imita- 
 tors of the dialect, which ' is spoken in its greatest purity in 
 the villages and hamlets of the secluded and beautiful vale 
 of Blackmore.' 
 
 Our poet has written from what he knows and feels. As 
 to "Style, his verse has the essential quality of melodiousness, 
 and many Dorset names come in with a sweetness that 
 scarcely Val d'Arno could outvie — Lindenore and Paladore, 
 Meldonley and Alderburnham. His manner of description 
 is minute ; we see the mossy thatch, the shining grass-blades, 
 ' Dissertation, in Pocins of Burul Life, 2nd edition, 1848. 
 
 11
 
 162 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMOEE. 
 
 the bubbles on the stream, the gypsy's shaggy-coated horse 
 and the carter's sleek-haired team, ' the cows below the 
 shiady tree, wi' leafy bough a-swayen,' the gMs' bonnets 
 ' a lined wi' blue, and sashes tied behind,' grammer's gown 
 pulled through her pocket-hole to keep it from the dirt, ' a 
 gown wi' girt flowers like hollyhocks.' A thousand truthful 
 touches bring his rustic scenes and people before our eyes. 
 
 Some of those critics who prove, if nothing else, their 
 own narrow limitations by disparaging one style in art to 
 the exaltation of another, or perhaps all others, can easily 
 make objections here, complaining of elaboration of detail, 
 triviality, w^ant of breadth and loftiness ; too much of this, 
 too little of that. But ought the works of all artists to be 
 alike ? Do we wish to have every picture in a gallery done 
 in one particular style ? If the great principles of art, you 
 say, are invariable, an infinite variety is possible and 
 desirable in the application of them. What an artist ought 
 to do is that which he finds himself fitted to do and 
 delighted in doing. Nor does this imply neglect of work, 
 lazy and careless handling : it implies real work, the closest, 
 watchfullest, and most thorough execution of which the man 
 is able ; ' labour of love ' is the effective kind of labour in 
 the world of art. 
 
 To every true-born artist (in words, musical tones, forms, 
 colours) working in this spirit, the right attitude of the 
 public and of the critics is one of respect. It is not that any 
 artist whosoever is to be regarded as above criticism, but 
 that we should always keep in mind that the true principles 
 and rules of the critics can be derived from no other source 
 than the genius of the executive artists. Abstract criticism 
 on art is an absurdity. The true artist proves that beautiful 
 Jihings, otherwise impossible, can be done, by doing them ; 
 the intelligent critic may then, if he will, and so far as he 
 can (thoroughly he never can), point out the how and the 
 why, and thus do service of its kind, helping us all to know
 
 ART AND CRITICISM. 163 
 
 good %york when we see it. The artist, whatsoever his 
 medium of expression or his rank among others, is a miracle- 
 worker, Hterally inspired from heaven, able to be an enricher 
 and exalter of hmiian hfe, and to deserve the gratitude of 
 mankind. Happy are they whose power of enjoyment sym- 
 pathises with good art of many different styles, with Van 
 Eyck and Eenibrandt, with Holbein and Titian, with 
 Hogarth and Eeynolds and Turner, with Greek Architecture 
 and Gothic, with Pheidias and Cellini, with Bach, Mozart 
 Handel, Beethoven, Eossini, and the old harp and bagpipe 
 tunes, with J^lschylus and Theocritus, with Dante and 
 Beranger, with Homer and Burns, with Spenser and Shake- 
 speare and the Border Ballads. 
 
 To return to our Dorset friend — his little volume (the third 
 of a series of. three) was a pleasant pocket-companion up the 
 soft, wide, woody-hilled, brook-watered Vale of Blackmore, 
 with many a quiet gray village and village-church, and many 
 a snug old farmhouse in its * home ground,' with garden 
 and orchard, and rook-nested elms. I have compared a 
 reading of these poems to a fine day's walk through such 
 a district as this, and in each one sees mostly the pleasant 
 side of things. Tinges of gentle melancholy are not want- 
 ing ; we see aged cottagers at their doors, and glance at the 
 inscriptions in rural graveyards ; but the ugly pain and dis- 
 appointment, the sins and struggles of life, lie out of ken. 
 All the better for the delight of our day's walk, and perhaps 
 for our pleasure in the book also ; yet^yet — one can't help 
 sometimes glancing or perhaps even prying into the actual 
 daily life that underlies these fair pictures. If the peasantry 
 hereabouts, old and young (thought I), have so warm and 
 intelligent a love for the Church and her clergy and her 
 ceremonies as the poet indicates, and so pure a tone of 
 morals, they must be much unlike any English peasantry 
 that ■ I have any acquaintance with ; but this reflection was 
 partly of a speculative kind, and one that I did not wish to 
 
 11 — 2
 
 164 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 
 
 pursue. Presently I come to a swing-gate, across a charm- 
 ing shady fieldpath, leading towards the church and vicarage 
 of MarnhuU, on which gate is some pencil- writing, decidedly 
 unfit for publication, smacking of the slums of Drurj- Lane, 
 wofully out of keeping with an innocent idyllic scene. And 
 here let me recall another little incident which occurred to 
 me later in this same county of Dorset, some twenty miles 
 farther south. Taking shelter from heavy rain in a rather 
 poor cottage, I found an elderly man and woman, two 
 grown-up daughters, and two children. ' Were these grand- 
 children?' 'Yes.' Each daughter owned one. 'Did 
 they all live in that cottage?' 'Yes.' 'The daughters' 
 husbands too?' 'They've a-got no husbands.' 'What! 
 both widows, and so young ? ' ' Na ! th'ant never bin 
 married.' The questioner was the only person who showed 
 any embarrassment at this answer ; and I learned subse- 
 quently that there was nothing uncommon in the situation. 
 From Marnhull Church and its noble yew-tree, I descended 
 the other side of the hill, and finding a stone-breaker sitting 
 at work on a heap of stones by the road-side, put some 
 questions to him as to the localities. He was not old, but 
 poor and sickly-looking, and answered in a slow, confused 
 manner, for which he begged my pardon, saying that his 
 head was wrong sometimes. I found he was subject to 
 epilepsy, and had had a fit that day. He used to live a good 
 way off, with his brother, but his brother married, and then 
 there was no room for him. He came to this neighbour- 
 hood, and sometimes got a little work on a farm, some- 
 times on the roads. Some days he was not able to do any 
 work. He got no parish relief, because this was not his 
 parish. He had a place to sleep in at a cottage. This poor 
 man uttered no tone of complaint, showed no desire to talk 
 of his miseries, nor even any recognition of them as such : 
 he had no expectation of anything in the world, not even of 
 a chance sixpence ; he answered my questions, one by one,
 
 THE STONE-BREAKER. 165 
 
 neither willingly nor unwillingly, but with a certain effort, 
 sometimes looking vaguely at me without the least curiosity, 
 and all the while chopped slowly and mechanically with his 
 hammer. It was another bit of harsh reality. 
 
 My lyrical, idyllic, artistic mood was rebuked and abashed. 
 From the bitter weed of that poor man's condition, I tried 
 to extract some drops of medicine for my own discontents. 
 The mood was abashed indeed, but not shamed ; and so it 
 gradually recovered itself, as I walked on by bowery roads 
 and green paths, over hill and dale, with the Stour, now a 
 rushy, willowy brook, twisting hither and thither in the 
 meadows, through the villages of Stour Provost (pausing to 
 admire an ancient house smothered in ivy), and East Stour; 
 till Duncliffe Hill, 'the traveller's mark,' rose on my right 
 hand, and a wide rich prospect, extending into Wiltshire, 
 opened in front. Again seeking shelter from a sudden 
 shower, I tried to interest the people of the cottage in my 
 volume of Dorset poems, and read a comic piece to them, 
 but to little purpose ; the goodwife at first thought my object 
 was commercial, but finding I did not want to sell the book, 
 she knew not what to think, and retired into herself. 
 
 At Gillingham, a long straggling street, I dined, and 
 stepped into the train for Salisbury.
 
 EAMBLE THE NINTH. 
 
 AT SALISBURY AND BEMEBTON. 
 
 Salisbury — Old Sariim — Stonehcnge — 'Wilton House — Bemerton — George 
 Herbert's Life and Poems — His brother, Lord Herbert. 
 
 AEEIVED at Salisbury, I left my bag at an inn, made 
 straight for the Close, turned a corner, and there, 
 from greensward carpet, behind a light veil of budding 
 elm boughs, the gracious old warm-gray Cathedral (with its 
 long centre-line, two transepts, lancet-windows, lofty tower 
 and spire) sprang light, perfect, musical. Evening sunshine 
 glowed upon the grass and on the elm-tops, where high- 
 church rooks were cawing by their nests, and on the warm 
 old red-brick domiciles of the dignified clergy ranged round 
 the sacred precinct, and spread lights and shadows over the 
 great edifice, without disturbing its harmonious miity. 
 More solemn buildings I have seen, more stately, more 
 fantastic, more rich ; none so elegant. 
 
 The verger who showed me round the interior next morn- 
 ing had the air of mild superiority and gentle dogmatism 
 which characterises the higher specimens of his order, and 
 delivered his routine information with a very creditable air 
 of impromptu. The building is all of one period, and in one 
 style (called 'Early English'), say 1220-50, except part of 
 the tower and the spire, which were added some years later. 
 The vast weight of these has pushed askew some of the 
 sustaining pillars and arches. The great interior has a bare 
 
 166
 
 THE CATHEDRAL. 167 
 
 and cold aspect ; but the chapter-house, with its quaint bas- 
 rehefs from Scripture, is newly done up in bright colours. 
 Under the shadow of his cathedral, on its west side, stands 
 the Bishop's palace in its pleasure-grounds, and the gray 
 pile, with cloisters and chapter-house, takes new aspects of 
 beauty rising between and above the flower-shrubs and 
 foliage. 
 
 Apart from this its jewel, the city of Salisbury is not to be 
 ranked as a striking place ; yet it is quietly pleasant and 
 interesting. It stands on a fiat among trees, chiefly elms, 
 with low sloping green hills on every side, between which 
 wind the clear waters of the Avon and its tributaries, irri- 
 gating bright green pastures, full of sheep. The quiet, homely 
 streets, with here and there an ancient gable-front, or gate- 
 way, have rather a village than a city aspect. There are 
 two or three old churches, of ' perpendicular ' gothic, and 
 an old market-cross with buttressed arches, the whole in 
 shape like an imperial crown. Nearly every street shows 
 you a green hill or grove at its end, and here and there 
 comes a glimpse of fresh-flowing waters, with a mill, a 
 bridge, a group of willows or poplars. Footpaths lead 
 through gardens and cottages into the open country ; and at 
 every turn you see once more the tapering stem and spire 
 with bands of stone diaper- work and airy cross. I recollected 
 Mr. Pecksniff, who is said to have lived hereabouts, and his 
 views of Salisbury Cathedral ' from the north-east, north- 
 west, south-south-east,' etc. ; and now, being at Salisbury, 
 I perceived that the author of ' Martin Chuzzlewit ' had 
 never been there up to the time of his writing that novel ; 
 at least, the topography of the book (if it matters) is so far 
 entirely wrong. 
 
 In the wide market-square, whereto flows the produce of 
 many a Wiltshire and Hampshire farm (the market, long an 
 important one, has been much increased by the railways) 
 stands the Court House, and in front of this the statue of
 
 168 AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTOX. 
 
 Sidney Herbert — black, bareheaded, gigantic, in frock-coat 
 and trousers, on a hideous hght-gray granite pedestal of the 
 modern British pattern, rectangular, with ill-proportioned 
 cornice, lumpish and scraggy at once. Why are such things 
 done ? Who likes tliem ? Could we not, in the matter of 
 pedestals, at least follow some good model ? The garish, 
 many-coloured tomb in the Cathedral to a late major of 
 volunteers aims at richness, as the Plerbert monument at 
 simplicity, and with no better success. 
 
 I cannot help fancying that W'ilts is a county of mo're 
 gentle and kindly manners than its neighbour Hants. High 
 people and low, at the railway and the inn, shopkeepers, 
 children, rustics, all were good-natured and obliging. I 
 well remember, in my first days in Hampshire, how rude 
 and insolent I thought most of the people. The South Wilts 
 accent, too, sounded quiet and mild, and without that self- 
 asserting drawl of ' Ya-a-as ! ' and ' Nau-au-o ! ' From the 
 talk of the children in any place one can soonest catch 
 the flavour of the local speech. 
 
 Famous Old Sarum surpassed my expectations. I looked 
 for a bare green mount, with half-obliterated entrenchments, 
 a ' rath ' on large scale, scarce distinguishable from the 
 surrounding fields ; but the great terraced hill is a marked 
 and grand object in the landscape ; beautiful, too, in the 
 unbroken sweeping curves of its grassy mounds, and the 
 grovy crest of its inner foss — a dell of coppice wood mixed 
 with larger trees. The outer foss you find to be huge and 
 deep, a narrow vale between two steep grassy slopes ; and 
 from this to the inner circle stretches a broad, green, level 
 space. Here and there, too, remains in its old place some 
 fragment of flint-built wall ; but the largest is so under- 
 mined by the picking of visitors and idlers that to all 
 appearance it may tumble any day. A little modern masonry 
 applied in time would preserve it. In the central space the 
 grass is heaved and sunk in little mounds and hollows,
 
 OLD SARUM. 169 
 
 where lie buried the foundations and low fragments of the 
 castle, and of that ancient church whose j)i"oud successor in 
 the valley lifts in view its lofty head ; one day, sooner or 
 later, to come into the same condition. 
 
 Sarum, Sorhiodunum, Latinised form of a Keltic name, is 
 usually translated, ' The Dry Fortress ; ' but another, and 
 perhaps better interpretation, is ' Service-tree Fort.' At 
 all events, the wild service-tree, or sorb, still buds in the 
 new spring sunshine on this hill — the stronghold in turn of 
 Ancient Briton, Eoman, Saxon, and the modern Borough- 
 monger — for, as everyone knows, till some thirty years ago, 
 two members represented in Parliament the blackbirds and 
 field mice who had long been the only inhabitants of this 
 green city. 
 
 The words of another living poet (of firm worth, but 
 unshowy, and whose voice is for the present drowned by the 
 street-cries of pseudo-poetry and pseudo-criticism) came 
 into my mind : 
 
 I have stood ou Old Sarum : the sun, 
 With a pensive regard from the west, 
 Lit the beech-tops low down in the ditch of the Dun, 
 Lit the service-trees high on its crest : 
 But the walls of the Roman were shrunk 
 Into morsels of ruin around, 
 And palace of monarch and minster of monk, 
 
 Were effaced from the grassy-foss'd ground. 
 Like bubbles on ocean they melt, 
 Wilts, on thy long rolling plain ; 
 And at last but the works of the hand of the Celt, 
 And the sweet hand of Nature remain.' 
 
 Quitting with reluctance the lonely city, I walk north- 
 ward by a long path from field to field, which leads me to 
 the edge of a steep green slope, and see shining through the 
 vale below a pure silvery river, called by the commonest of 
 
 ^ Lays of the Western Gael, etc., by Samuel Ferguson. ]5ell and 
 Daldy, 18G5.
 
 170 AT SALISBURY AXD BEMEBTON. 
 
 all Keltic names for flowing water — ' Avon.' I am now 
 some thirty miles west of the Stom*, but tiie two rivers 
 mingle under the old Norman tower of Christchurch. 
 Below, as in a picture-map, the green Vale shows its villages 
 and farmhouses, warm-brown, amid orchards and home- 
 groves, its mills and willows and little islands, under the 
 varying sky of spring. From river pastures and sloping 
 hills comes the sound of the sheepbells, saying their name 
 in German, glocke ! glocke ! glocke ! Then I drop into 
 the valley, issuing, at last, upon huge solitary fields, the 
 beginning of the Wiltshire Downs. I am approaching 
 Stonehenge, one of those things that in childhood we hope 
 to see before we die, like Niagara, Switzerland, Eome, the 
 Pyramids, a volcano, etc. At Amesbury (mere straggling 
 village now, whatever it may have been) I found shelter in 
 the inn, where two great men once on a time got no milk to 
 their tea (see ' English Traits '), and set off again between 
 and through heavy spring showers : but these, I think, have 
 some electric and vitalising quality; autumnal or wintry 
 rain is an enemy to meet, but vernal rain (if one is in 
 health) exhilarates.- The road to my object was disappoint- 
 ingly trim and civil, leading past a park with big white 
 mansion, on the site of the ancient abbey ; and other enclosed 
 ground. A mile or two further on, I found a man, who 
 proved to be on duty. He was placed there by the lord of 
 the soil to look after ' the Stones ' (that is their local title) 
 and to see that the expected holiday visitors (for it was 
 Easter Monday) did not carry them aw^ay — bits at least, as 
 they were too prone to do. ' And how far to the Stones? 
 ' You'll see 'em when you turn the corner.' Sure enough 
 there they were : but not, alas ! 
 
 A cirque 
 ■ Of Druid-stones upou a forlorn moor. 
 
 New macadamised roads cross the long slope of the Down, 
 a newish fannhouse crownis the ridge, a new and formal
 
 STONEHENGE. 171 
 
 grove of fir-trees intrudes its wedge below. At the Stones 
 I found only one visitor, essaying a pencil sketch from 
 under his umbrella. He had long desired to see Stone- 
 henge, he told me, had come down from London on purpose 
 by an excursion train, and was going back early the next 
 morning. He was a plain little man, apparently of the 
 mechanic class, and disclosed no other interesting qualities ; 
 but his having made this holiday- journey alone and with 
 such an object was interesting, and I misliked the rain 
 more for his sake than my own. 
 
 I was not particularly impressed in any way by the 
 famous Stones. Similar things I had seen elsewhere, 
 smaller, but not a whit less charged with antiuqe mystery. 
 There was no new sensation here, and the immense notoriety 
 of the place made one feel, as sometimes happens, rather 
 sulky and captious. As to wondering at the size, that is 
 childish. Even the Great Pjoramid considered as a bulk of 
 building is a thing of which any commanded swarm of men 
 are capable, with the aid of a few common tools and 
 mechanical appliances. That man can impart beauty to his 
 work — beauty from the same Divine source that fills every 
 atom and veinlet of the universe with enchantment — here, 
 it seems to me, is something worthy of wonder and awe. If 
 the sudden sight of Salisbui-y Cathedral sends a thrill 
 through one's body and soul (as through mine it did) it is 
 not because so many cut stones have been laboriously lifted 
 into the sky. A sentence of Shakespeare, a strain of Mozart, 
 carries the same effect — a celestial thrill, from the recog- 
 nition of Beauty. The Great Pyramid has acquired respec- 
 tability, and even solemnity from its vast age ; it is but 
 a stupid brutal bulk after all, and must weigh like a 
 nightmare on the spirit of the gazer. 
 
 Forgive me. Old Druidic Circle ! (if such thine origin) — 
 think me not unfeeling. Fain would I wander again and 
 often, by sun and moon, among thy tall, gray stones, where
 
 172 AT SALISBURY AND BEMEIiTON. 
 
 they stand in rude pillars and portals, or lie confused upon 
 the sward — at some fit hour perhaps to receive a vibration 
 from the uncouth and solitary presence. 
 
 The walk back to Salisbury, by path and road, and margin 
 of willo%vy Avon, was wet and long. Next day I saw Wilton 
 House, without much result ; the housekeeper showed a 
 large mansion, with pictures and busts far too many to look 
 at, a great room with Vandyke portraits, and windows 
 viewing the lawns and groves of a handsome park. Such 
 places make one sad ; all the appliances of life in perfection 
 and over-abundance, to such little purpose, great parks and 
 pleasure-grounds and palaces kept up at huge cost, for the 
 owners to yawn in and run away from. Not far off rises 
 the gaudy New-Anglican church, built a few^ years or months 
 too soon, for it represents a phase of opinion (or pseudo- 
 opinion) out of which the founders by-and-by took their 
 departure. 
 
 On my road back to Salisbury was a more interesting 
 church, a little old ivied building, about the size of a 
 cottage, with steep roof and small leaded panes ; and a 
 plain old little rustic interior. This was Bemerton, George 
 Herbert's chapel of ease, and familiar house of prayer ; and 
 they brought me the key from the parsonage across the 
 road, which was his parsonage. This little old church, or 
 chapel, is now shut up, but will not, let us hope, be 
 destroyed. 
 
 Barnes's poems are full of natural rustic piety, Herbert's 
 reflective and didactic. A simple attachment to Mother 
 Church appears unobtrusively in the Dorset vicar's poetry 
 — a spire peeping in a rural landscape. Our Wiltshire 
 priest is loftily clerical. This clericalism, while it deprives 
 Herbert of the wider influence which belongs to w'ider 
 poetry, attaches to him a certain special class of 
 admirers ; and some of his wise thoughts and terse 
 admonitions are not easily forgotten by any reader ; for,
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 173 
 
 as he himself says, ' A verse may find him who a sermon 
 flies.' 
 
 My own thoughts certainly run a good deal on poetry 
 and poets, especially in spring-time. Many people, as I now 
 know very well, think this a frivolous subject ; perhaps they 
 are right. All I can say is, that I took to it very early in 
 life (in infancy, I may say), out of pure love, and it still 
 retains my affection. ' The holy incantation of a verse ' 
 comes often into my mind ; many a verse, fitting many a 
 mood, soothing or heightening it. I can remember, in a 
 thousand cases, the ij^sissima verba of the poets, which 
 carry their own music, and waft besides an aroma of de- 
 lightful associations. Man}^ of the objects that occupy men, 
 even the grave and dignified, seem to me, on the other hand 
 (I must own it), frivolous enough. Not that I have not 
 often had qualms about poetry, w^iether it were not a delu- 
 sion ; but I have always come back to faith in it, and a 
 firmer faith. George Herbert was no mighty man, yet his 
 thoughts and moods, being embalmed in musical words, do 
 still live. Many are in my own and other memories ; and 
 whoso needs his book has but to ask for it in a shop. He 
 had really in him a touch of the Poet ; and the good old 
 Shopkeeper and Angler who wrote his life had also some 
 sprinkle of that preservative spice which we name Genius. 
 
 I saw in Salisbury yesterday in a second-hand bookseller's 
 a good copy of another writer's folio, also connected with 
 this place; it contained the 'Arcadia,' 'Defence of Poesie,' 
 and ' Sonnets.' The preux chevalier, good at sword and 
 pen, being at Wilton (but not in this present house, which 
 Inigo Jones built), wrote his romance of 'Arcadia' to 
 please his sister, wife of Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and to 
 fill up some of the hours of an exilement from Court. When 
 Sir Philip Sidney, years later, and then only thirty-two 
 years old, was fatally wounded at Zutphen, Edward Her- 
 bert, afterwards Lord Hei'bcrt of Cherbury, was a child of
 
 174 AT SALISBURY AND BEMEBTON. 
 
 three years, whose brother George did not come into the 
 world until seven years after this. 
 
 Of George Herbert, no important yet not an insignificant 
 or uninteresting human being, I have a clear little picture 
 in my head, which has formed itself since I saw his par- 
 sonage and chapel. Men and events, I confess, are to me 
 vague and shadowy, scarce half-believed, until I can place 
 them distinctly. At Paris, Napoleon the First became real 
 to me ; at Weimar, Goethe. 
 
 The younger son of a high old family, always of delicate 
 health, shy and studious, but lofty and hot-tempered, 
 George Herbert was brought up and guarded with the most 
 anxious care (even after he had attained to manhood) by a 
 pious and prudent mother, his father having died when the 
 boy was but four years old. He was born in Montgomery 
 Castle, in 1593, and spent his childhood ' in sweet content ' 
 under the watchful eyes of his mother and the tuition of a 
 chaplain. When about twelve years old he went to West- 
 minster school, ' commended to the care ' of Dr. Neale, 
 Dean of Westminster, and by him to Mr. Ireland, the 
 head master ; and by his ' pretty behaviour ' there seemed 
 plainly to be ' marked out for piety.' The words between 
 inverted commas I cull from good Izaak Walton. About 
 his sixteenth year, being a king's scholar, he was elected to 
 Trinity College, Cambridge ; and his mother procured Dr. 
 Neville, Master of Trinity, to take the youth ' into his parti- 
 cular care, and provide him a tutor.' She had before this 
 time accompanied her eldest son Edward (afterwards Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury) to Oxford, and there taken up her 
 abode during four years, ' to see and converse with him 
 daily,' and so, by the methods of love and good example, 
 prevent his falling into vice or ill company, in which she 
 happily succeeded. In his first year at Cambridge we find 
 George writing to his mother, ' my poor abilities in poetry 
 shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory,' he finding
 
 GEORGE HERBERT . 175 
 
 the heathenism and Hghtness of the poets of the day very 
 contrary to his mind. He encloses two sonnets : 
 
 My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee 
 
 Wherewith whole shoals of martyrs once did burn, 
 Besides their other flames ? Doth Poetry 
 
 Wear Venus' livery ? only serve her turn ? 
 Why are not sonnets made of thee ? and lays 
 
 Upon thine altar burnt ? cannot thy love 
 Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise 
 
 As well as any she ? Cannot thy dove 
 Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight ? . . . 
 
 The second sonnet ends thus : 
 
 Why should I women's eyes for crystal take ? 
 
 Such poor invention burns in their low mind 
 Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go 
 To praise, and on thee, Lord, some ink bestow. 
 
 Open the bones, and you shall nothing find 
 In the best face b^^t filth ; when. Lord, in thee 
 The beauty lies in the discovery. 
 
 These verses of the boy show in an unusual degree all the 
 characteristics of his maturer writings : a decided talent for 
 writing in verse, some imagery, a certain subtlety and 
 vivacity of thought, a tendency to conceits ; and the whole 
 pervaded by a genuine piety, but of that sort which feeds 
 itself with disdain of all mere natural beauty and pleasant- 
 ness, valuing them only as matter for a sermon or a hymn. 
 
 In the same letter George speaks of his ' late ague ; ' and 
 he seems to have spent the most part of his life under 
 sufferings from one or another kind of sickness. In person 
 he was ' inclining towards tallness,' ' very straight,' and 
 ' lean to an extremity.' He was a strict student, and in 
 1615, being then in his twenty-second year, became M.A. 
 and fellow of his college. ' The greatest diversion from his 
 study was the practice of music, in which he became a great 
 master.' If his friendly biographer can find in him any 
 error, it is that ' he kept himself too much retired, and at 
 too great a distance with all his inferiors ; and his clothes
 
 176 AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON., 
 
 seemed to prove that he put too great a vahie on his parts 
 and parentage.' And here I must add a touch to the 
 portrait, from his brother's autobiography : ^ * He (George) 
 was not exempt from passion and choler, being infirmities 
 to which all our race is subject ; but, that excepted, without 
 reproach in his actions.' This tendency, however, we may 
 be sure, was well controlled and subdued, and only lived 
 in him in later life as a warm, religious, and virtuous 
 vehemency. In 1619, aged twenty-six, he was chosen 
 Orator of the University, and held that office for eight years 
 with high credit. He was not insensible, as his letters 
 prove, to the glory of it, nor was the salary of 30Z. a year 
 unacceptable. Though of high family his allowance was 
 not large, and in an interesting letter to Sir John Dan vers, 
 his mother's second husband, written in 1617, more than a 
 year after gaining his fellowship, he writes : ' I want books 
 extremely,' especially books of divinity, and wishes to raise 
 a sum on security. '"What becomes of your annuity?" 
 Sir, if there be any truth in me, I find it little enough to 
 keep me in health. You know I was sick last vacation, 
 neither am I yet recovered ; so that I am fain ever and 
 anon to buy somewhat tending towards my health, for 
 infirmities are both painful and costly. ... I am 
 scarce able with much ado to make one half-year's allovv^ance 
 shake hands with the other.' 
 
 The Orator's first great opportunity was in writing a letter 
 of thanks to King James {Serenissime Domine noster, Jacobe 
 invictissimc !) when that learned monarch enriched the 
 University with a copy of his invaluable book entitled 
 ' Basilicon Doron.' Our orator finished off thus : 
 
 Quid Vaticanam Bodleianamque objicis, Hospes 1 
 
 Uuicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber. 
 Talk of the Vatican, Bodleian, — stuff ! 
 Here in one Book we've libraiy enough. 
 ' Life of Edward Lord Ilcrhcrt of Clwrhury, written by himself, 
 London, 1770 ; p. 12.
 
 QEORGE HERBERT AT CAMBRIDGE. 177 
 
 ' This letter was writ in such excellent Latin, was so full 
 of conceits, and all expressions so suited to the genius of the 
 king ' that he made inquiries regarding the Cambridge 
 Orator and began to notice him ; whence George conceived 
 great hopes of court favour, and trimmed his sails accord- 
 ingly. After this, Herbert engaged in some pen-combats 
 with one Andrew Melville (a good honest man, it appears) 
 minister of the Scotch Church, and rector of St. Andrews, 
 who ' had scattered many malicious and bitter verses 
 against our liturgy, our ceremonies, and our church-govern- 
 ment.' Melville being summoned to a friendly conference 
 of clergy at Hampton Court, so much offended the king, 
 that he was deprived of his rectorship and shut up in the 
 Tower of London, ' where (saith Izaak) he remained very 
 angry for three years.' There were short methods in that 
 day of dealing with too troublesome controversialists. 
 Herbert wrote ex officio Latin epigrams against Melville, 
 but not very bitterly. Among the memorials of this part of 
 his life we have a very long letter of George's, written from 
 Cambridge to his mother, then lying in sickness ; from 
 beginning to end a sermon-like composition and much too 
 proper. 
 
 When King James came a-hunting to Newmarket, he often 
 visited Cambridge, ' where his entertainment was comedies 
 suited to his pleasant humour ; and where Mr. George 
 Herbert [though theoretically regarding all these things as 
 dust and ashes] was to welcome him with gratulations and 
 the applauses of an orator.' He was rewarded with a 
 sinecure of 120Z. a year, the prebend of Layton Ecclesia in 
 the diocese of Lincoln, the same which Queen Elizabeth 
 had formerly conferred on Sir Philip Sidney ; and being 
 thus richer, ' he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes and 
 courtlike company, and seldom looked toward Cambridge 
 unless the king were there, but then he never failed.' Ho 
 had often desired to leave the University, but continued, 
 
 12
 
 178 AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 
 
 at his cautious and careful mother's wish. Finding the 
 parish church of Layton Ecclesia in a ruinous condition, the 
 conscientious prebendary (though warned by his mother, 
 ' George, it is not for your weak body and empty purse to 
 undertake to build churches ') re-edified it, with the help of 
 subscriptions from his kinsmen and friends. His mother, 
 who, after twelve years' widowhood had married a brother 
 of the Earl of Danby, died in 1627. In 1629 George, suffer- 
 ing from ague, removed to the house of his brother, Sir 
 Henry Herbert, at Woodford in Essex, where (according to 
 Walton) he cured himself of that disease by eating salt meat 
 only, but brought on ' a supposed consumption ; ' and there- 
 fore he moved again to Dauntsey in Wiltshire, the house of 
 Lord Danby. Here his health and spirits improved ; and 
 he declared his resolution both to marry and to enter the 
 priesthood. 
 
 He was now about thirty-six years of age. Having 
 resolved to marry, he had not long or far to seek for a wife. 
 Mr. Charles Danvers of Bainton, Wilts, a near kinsman of 
 Lord Danby, and an old and attached friend of George Herbert, 
 had ' often publicly declared a desire that Mr. Herbert 
 would marry any of his nine daughters — for he had so many 
 — but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because 
 Jane was his beloved daughter.' When George came to 
 Dauntsey, Mr. Danvers was dead ; but George and Jane 
 met, and each having heard much commendation of the 
 other, they agreed without many words, and were married 
 ' the third day after this first interview.' The true friends 
 to both parties who brought them together ' understood 
 Mr. Herbert's and her temper of mind, and also their 
 estates,' so well before their interview that the suddenness 
 was justifiable by the strictest rules of prudence. Their 
 short union was a hajDpy one ; their ' mutual content and 
 love and joy did receive a daily augmentation, by such daily 
 oblio-insness to each other as still added such new affluences
 
 GEORGE HERBERTS MARRIAGE. 179 
 
 to the former fulness of these divine souls, as was only 
 improvable in heaven where they now enjoy it.' 
 
 About three months after this marriage the living of 
 Bemerton became vacant, and was offered to Mr. Herbert. 
 He, dreading the responsibility, now that it came close to 
 him, considered on it for a month, fasting and praying 
 often, and sometimes almost resolving to give up both 
 priesthood and living. In the midst of these spiritual con- 
 flicts, Mr. Woodnot, an old friend, coming to visit Mr. Her- 
 bert, they went together to Wilton House, King Charles and 
 the Court being then at Wilton or Salisbury. Mr. Herbert 
 thanked his kinsman the Earl of Pembroke for the offer of 
 the living, at the same time declining it ; but Dr. Laud, 
 Bishop of London, who was with the Court, came and 
 reasoned with George on the subject, and did * so convince 
 Mr. Herbert that the refusal of it was a sin, that a tailor 
 was sent for to come speedily from Salisbury to Wilton to 
 take measure, and make him canonical clothes against the 
 next day ; wiiich the tailor did : and Mr. Herbert being so 
 habited ' was immediately inducted (he was already a 
 deacon) into the living of Bemerton and Fugglestone. 
 When at his induction he was shut into the church, ' being 
 left there alone to toll the bell, as the law requires him,' he 
 remained so long that Mr. Woodnot looked in at a window 
 and ' saw him lie down prostrate on the ground before the 
 altar.' He was setting himself rules of life (as he after- 
 wards told his friend) and vowing that he would labour to 
 keep them. That same night he said to Mr. Woodnot, ' I 
 now look upon my aspiring thoughts, and think myself more 
 happy than if I had attained what I then so ambitiously 
 thirsted for.' 
 
 When King James looked so favourably on him, Herbert 
 is thought to have aspired to be made a Secretary of State. 
 He accepted at last the humble position of a country clergy- 
 man, not without effort, and carried all through a certain 
 
 12 — 2
 
 180 AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 
 
 self-consciousness in his humility and piety, which never- 
 theless were very genuine. Having ' changed his sword 
 and silk clothes into a canonical coat,' and thus returned to 
 his wife at Bainton, he said to her, ' You are now a minis- 
 ter's wife, and must now so far forget your father's house as 
 not to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners,' etc., 
 to which she cheerfully agreed. Going over one day to 
 Bemerton about repairs of the church, the new rector met 
 a poor old w^oman who began to tell him her troubles, as 
 poor old women do, but through fear and shortness of breath 
 her speech failed her, whereupon Mr. Herbert ' was so 
 humble that he took her by the hand, and said, "Speak, 
 good mother; be not afraid to speak to me;"' etc., and 
 gave her both counsel and money. Telling this to his wife 
 when he went home, Mrs. Herbert ' was so affected ' that 
 she sent the poor old woman a pair of blankets with a kind 
 message. All which was very kind and pretty, but scarcely 
 enough to account for the rapturous manner in which it is 
 narrated by friend Izaak, who remarks : 'Thus worthy, and 
 like David's blessed man, thus lowly, was Mr. George 
 Herbert in his own eyes, and thus lovely in the eyes of 
 others.' 
 
 The rector repaired the parish church (which is not called 
 Bemerton, but Fugglestone, and stands near Wilton), and 
 almost rebuilt the parsonage at his own charge. He also 
 improved the little chapel of ease of Bemerton (which I 
 visited), just across the road from his parsonage; and in 
 this appeared twice every day at church prayers, ' strictly 
 at the canonical hours of ten and four,' with his wife and 
 three nieces (the daughters of a deceased sister) and his 
 w4iole household. 
 
 I wish I knew what Mrs. Herbert was like : I can see the 
 tall, thin, straight figure of the rector, with a long, mild, 
 serious face, somewhat pale and hollow-cheeked ; and hear 
 his grave tones, with a cough now and again, ' which makes
 
 THE NEW PARSON. 181 
 
 me sorry.' ' If he were at any time too zealous in his ser- 
 mons,' it was in reproving those worshippers, and those 
 ministers too, who did their part in the divine service in an 
 indecorous or hasty manner ; and he took great pains to 
 expound the meaning and value of all the appointed forms 
 and ceremonies and set times of the Church. ' His con- 
 stant public prayers did never make him to neglect his own 
 private devotions,' nor family prayers, which were always 
 a set form, and not long, ending with the collect of the day. 
 
 Yet Mr. Herbert in these matters came much short of his 
 friend and correspondent, Mr. Farrer, of Little Glidden, 
 near Huntingdon (ex-fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge), who, 
 besides all possible Church prayers, fasts, vigils, etc., etc., 
 had an oratory in his house in which praying and reading 
 or singing of psalms was kept up continuously, day and 
 night, for many years, the members of his family keeping 
 watch and watch ; and ' in this continued serving of God, 
 the Psalter or whole Book of Psalms was in every four 
 and twenty hours sung or read over, from the first to 
 the last verse.' ^ This Mr. Farrer, sometimes called the 
 'Protestant Monk,' died in 1639. 
 
 Mr. Herbert's chief recreation was music ; he composed 
 many hymns and anthems, and sung them to his lute or 
 viol. He usually attended twice a week the cathedral ser- 
 vice at Salisbury, and afterwards went to a private music- 
 meeting in the city, at which he was one of the performers. 
 One day, in his walk to Salisbury, the rector saw a poor 
 man's horse fallen under his load, and helped the man to 
 unload, lift, and reload his beast : ' at his coming to his 
 musical friends at Salisbury, they began to wonder that 
 Mr. George Herbert, which used to be so trim and neat, 
 came into that company so soiled and discomposed ; but he 
 told them the occasion.' One of them seeming to think that 
 the rector ' had disparaged himself by so dirty an employ- 
 
 ' Walton.
 
 182 AT SALISBURY AND BE ME ETON. 
 
 ment,' Mr. Herbert made a proper and somewhat elaborate 
 little speech (unless Izaak has made it for him), saying that 
 certainly it was not pleasant to do ; but that he felt he had 
 acted conscientiously ; the thought of it ' would prove music 
 to him at midnight,' and he praised God for the oppor- 
 tunity — ' and now let us tune our instruments : ' an anecdote 
 w^hich has a certain comic colour not intended by good 
 Mr. Walton. Both he and his wife were very bountiful to 
 their poor parishioners ; and when a friend advised him 
 to be more frugal, he made a speech (according to Izaak) 
 ending thus : ' Sir, my wife hath a competent maintenance 
 secured to her after my death ; and therefore this my 
 resolution shall, by God's grace, remain unalterable.' 
 
 In fact, as to the external conditions of life, Mr. Herbert 
 had an easy time of it all through, though at one period he 
 found his allowance hardly enough to admit of his purchas- 
 ing all the books of theology which he desired. This easy 
 and secure life, from birth to death, a contemplative intro- 
 spective habit of mind (' he would often say he had too 
 thoughtful a wit '), a sickly body, and a temperament that 
 inclined him in all things, both physical and mental, to 
 orderliness, punctuality, and primness, go far to explain his 
 character and the form into which his religious aspirations 
 were moulded. In addition, he had that melodious faculty 
 which expressed itself both in music proper and in verse, 
 and which makes him interesting. 
 
 Nothing, I think, can be more erroneous than to look on 
 poetical writings as mainly fantastic and trivial. They 
 delight us by their happy and melodious forms ; but we are 
 also attracted by their sincerity. In the w^orks of a true 
 poet, be his rank what it may, you find an expression — 
 freer than he could elsewhere venture — of how he was im- 
 pressed by life. In verse the poet (a choice kind of man) 
 declares his best self: if you know how to look, you will find 
 the essence of his love, his faith, his hope and fear, his
 
 VALUE OF POETRY. 183 
 
 strength and weakness. Herbert, in his prose ' Country 
 Parson,' cannot write one free sentence, nor even in a letter 
 to his friend or his mother ; he is sophisticate to the 
 marrow. In his poems, precisian as he still is, a larger 
 wisdom shines out here and there ; ' the glory of the sum 
 of things ' declares itself ; he rises at moments out of formal 
 into universal religion. 
 
 The good rector held his parish less than three years. 
 The seeds of early death were in him. One usually thinks 
 of George Herbert as an elderly man, from his grave look 
 and reputation ; but he was only forty when he died. When 
 much weakened by consumption he continued to read 
 prayers twice a day in the chapel close to his parsonage ; 
 but at last was persuaded by his wife to allow his curate to 
 take that duty, he himself attending as a hearer as long 
 as he could. About a month before his death he was 
 visited by a clergyman, one Mr. Duncon, bringing a brotherly 
 religious message from Mr. Farrer, of Glidden Hall. Mr. 
 Herbert lay on a pallet, weak and faint, and asked Mr. 
 Duncon to pray with him, in ' the prayers of my mother, 
 the Church of England : no other prayers are equal to 
 them ; ' and Mr. Duncon ' saw majesty and humility so 
 reconciled in his looks and behaviour,' as begot 'an awful 
 reverence.' 
 
 His old and dear friend Mr. Woodnot came from London 
 to Bemerton, and never left him till the end. On the 
 Sunday before his death he rose suddenly from his couch, 
 called for one of his instruments, and having tuned it, played 
 and sang a pious verse. ' Thus,' says "Walton, ' he sang 
 on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels, and he, 
 and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven.' On the day of his 
 death, his wife and nieces ' weeping to an extremity,' he 
 entreated them to withdraw to the next room and there 
 pray for him. After murmuring some pious words he 
 breathed his last, ' without any apparent disturbance ; ' and
 
 184 AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 
 
 Mr. Woodnot and the curate, Mr. Bostock, closed his 
 eyes. 
 
 The quaint biographer remarks : ' If Andrew Melville ' 
 — he who was in the Tower for three years very angry — 
 ' died before him, then George Herbert died without an 
 enemy.' 
 
 Izaak Walton, London tradesman, fond of reading, and 
 his holiday amusement angling, had for his wife's brother a 
 clergyman, who rose to be Bishop of London. Izaak's social 
 dignity thus came to him through the Church ; and his 
 mind, loving literature, ran also continually on Church men 
 and matters. After retiring from business he wrote ' The 
 Complete x\ngler,' and the lives of Wotton, Donne, Hooker, 
 Sanderson, and Herbert, and won himself a place on the 
 bookshelf. 
 
 As to George Herbert's writings : he left behind him ' The 
 Country Parson; or. Priest to the Temple,' containing his 
 own rules, which at his death came in manuscript into the 
 hands of his friend Mr. Woodnot ; and poems, under the 
 itle of ' The Temple,' which, being on his death-bed, he 
 sent in manuscript to Mr. Farrer to be made public or not, 
 according to that friend's opinion. In his college days 
 he had written some Greek and Latin poems, not 
 remarkable. 
 
 The first words of ' The Country Parson ' plainly indicate 
 the author's point of view. ' A pastor is the deputy of 
 Christ ; ' and a few sentences down we find, ' Christ .... 
 constituted deputies in his place, and these are priests.' 
 In the divine services he hears the sins of the congrega- 
 tion. He ' exacts of them all possible reverence ' and 
 observance of the forms of worship. Those w^ho do not 
 attend church, or habitually come late, must be ' presented.' 
 He must fast on Fridays. He is to give much to the poor, 
 but chiefly to those who can say the Creed, etc. The church 
 is to be carefully kept, and at times ' perfumed with
 
 HIGH CHURCH. '185 
 
 incense.' He must persuade the sick or otherwise afflictfed 
 ' to particular confession, labouring to make them under- 
 stand the great good use of this ancient and pious ordinance, 
 and how necessary it is in some cases.' ' Those he meets 
 on the way he blesseth audibly.' ' The Country Parson is 
 in God's stead to his Parish, and dischargeth God what he 
 can of his promises. Wherefore there is nothing done, 
 either well or ill, whereof he is not the rewarder or 
 punisher.' ' He exacts of all the doctrine of the Cate- 
 chism ; ' ' that which nature is towards philosophy, the 
 Catechism is towards divinity.' ' The Country Parson 
 being to administer the Sacraments, is at a stand with him- 
 self — how or what behaviour to assume for so holy things. 
 Especially at Communion times he is in great confusion [or 
 perturbation] as being not only to receive God, but to break 
 and administer him.' The Churchwardens are ' to present 
 [i.e. lodge an information against] all who receive not thrice 
 a year ; ' and also ' to levy penalties for negligence in 
 resorting to church,' etc. ' The Country Parson desires to 
 be All to his Parish ; and not only a Pastor, but a Lawyer 
 also, and a Physician. Therefore he endures not that any of 
 his flock should go to law ; but in any controversy, that they 
 should resort to him as their Judge.' ' If there be any of 
 his flock sick, he is their Physician, or at least his wife.' If 
 he or his wife have not the skill he is to maintain relations 
 with some practitioner, who is to act with and under the 
 parson. ' If there be any of his parish that hold strange 
 doctrines,' he ' useth all possible diligence to reduce them 
 to the common faith.' ' It is necessary that all Christians 
 should pray twice a day every day of the week, and four times 
 on Sunday, if they be well. This is so necessary and 
 essential to a Christian that he cannot without this maintain 
 himself in a Christian state.' Prayers beyond this are 
 ' additionary ; ' and the Parson, in this and other matters, 
 is to point out the distinction between ' necessary ' and
 
 186 AT SALISBUEY AND BEMERTON. 
 
 ' aclditionaiy ' duties. ' Neither have the Ministers power 
 of blessing only, but also of cursing.' 
 
 Our excerpts sufficiently indicate the idea in Mr. Herbert's 
 mind of a country parson's right position and duties in the 
 world. That such notions are based on erroneous jDi'inciples, 
 and are impossible to carry into practice, it seems needless 
 to point out. Yet we see that the vicar of Bemerton does 
 to this day by no means lack successors in this line of think- 
 ing. "With all this are mingled in his book many wise and 
 subtle thoughts, and a continual inculcation of holiness of 
 life, love and humility, as the parson's best weapons — 
 weapons wherewith Mr. Herbert himself was nobly 
 armed. 
 
 And now let us turn to his j)oetry, without w^hich his 
 memory would have but a slight interest. George Herbert's 
 little book is alive after two centuries. He wrote the verses 
 from and for himself. They are religious musings. No 
 human figures or incidents appear in them ; there is but 
 himself and his God. The world of nature only serves to 
 illustrate his spiritual relations. He has a ' heart in 
 pilgrimage,' and his life is a prayer; all day long he feels 
 the great Presence — ' If I but lift mine eyes, my suit is 
 made.' When — such as all men must have — he has 
 times of forgetfulness, or unfaith, he flies back into 
 contrition : 
 
 But as I raTGcl, and grew more fierce and wild 
 
 At every word, 
 Methought I heard one calling ' Child ! ' 
 And I rei)lied, ' My Lord 1 ' 
 
 Many are his acknowledgments of sin ; not expressed 
 with fear of punishment (he never speaks of hell in the 
 vulgar sense, and he says that 'devils are our sins in 
 perspective'), but with deep aw^e and humble contrition, 
 and a pleading that he may not be deprived of his
 
 HERBERTS POETRY. 187 
 
 Father's love and care. Here is a very tender little 
 religious poem : 
 
 Love. 
 
 Love bade me welcome ; yet my soul drew back, 
 Guiltie of diist and sinne. 
 
 But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack 
 From my first entrance in, 
 
 Drew nearer to me ; sweetly questioning 
 If I lack'd anything. 
 
 ' A guest,' I answered, ' worthy to be here — ' 
 
 Love said, ' You shall be he.' 
 
 ' I the uukinde, ungi'atefull 1 Ah, my deare, 
 I cannot look on thee.' 
 
 Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, 
 
 ' Who made the eyes but I ? ' 
 
 ' Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them : let my shame 
 Go where it doth deserve.' 
 
 ' And know you not,' sayes Love, ' who bore the blame ? ' 
 ' My deare, then I will serve.' 
 
 ' You must sit down,' sayes Love, ' and taste my meat : ' 
 So I did sit and eat. 
 
 Herbert has many a beautiful verse and stanza of 
 universal religion, strains of meditation, aspiration, or holy 
 tranquillity ; but his piety and poetry have clothed them- 
 selves for the most part in those special dogmatic forms by 
 which he set so much store. He often runs into quaint 
 conceits and oddities ; yet in his purer and simpler moods 
 he sometimes attains an unusual happiness of expression, at 
 once easy and terse : 
 
 What skills it, if a bag of stones or gold 
 
 About thy neck do drown thee ? raise thy head 
 
 Take starres for money ; starres not to be told 
 By any art, yet to be purchased. 
 
 Scorn no man's love, though of a mean degree ; 
 Love is a present for a mighty king.
 
 188 AT SALISBURY AND BEMEBTON. 
 
 There are frequent touches of practical wisdom, such as 
 these : 
 
 When thou dost purpose aught within thy power 
 Be sure to doe it, though it be but small ; 
 
 Constancie knits the bones, and makes us stowre, — 
 
 Who breaks his own bond, forfeiteth himself. 
 
 Envie not greatnesse : for thou mak'st thereby 
 Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater. 
 
 Be not thy own worm. Yet such jealousie 
 As hurts not others, but may make thee better. 
 
 Is a good spurre. 
 
 Look not on pleasures as they come but go. 
 
 His verses bloom out here and there in true and delicate 
 beauties, like little flo\Yers among grass : 
 
 I made a posy while the day ran by : 
 
 But Time did beckon to the iiowers, and they 
 By noon most cunningly did steal away, 
 
 And wither'd in my hand. 
 
 I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains. 
 The killings and the relishes of it ; 
 
 The propositions of hot blood and brains ; 
 
 What mirth and music mean ; what love and wit 
 Have done these twentie hundred years and moi-e. 
 
 Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
 
 The bridal of the earth and skie : 
 The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ; 
 
 For thou must die. 
 
 But the three other verses of this poem are very inferior, 
 save this one line : 
 
 Sweet Spring, full of sweet daj's and roses. 
 
 Among the best pieces are the allegorical — as ' Peace ' 
 ('Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell?'), and the
 
 GEORGE HERBERTS DEATH. 189 
 
 ' Pilgrimage,' — reminding one of Bunyan ; and the moral- 
 meditative poems, as ' Constancie,' ' Employment,' ' Man ' 
 (' Man is one world and hath another to attend him '), 
 'Mortification' ('How soon doth man decay'), ' Miserie,' 
 ' Providence.' 
 
 Altogether, George Herbert's character, views, life, and 
 writings are easy to understand. Of kind natm'e, shy 
 temperament, and sickly body, refined fancy, meditative 
 mind, and tender conscience, receiving careful and seclusive 
 training — domestic and scholastic ; timidly conservative in 
 all his ideas, seeing everything through the medium of his 
 Church, and hearing (most characteristically) ' church bells 
 beyond the stars,' such was the vicar of Bemerton. We 
 seem to have seen the tall thin consumptive man, in his 
 black skull-cap, mildly grave and ceremonious, scarce middle- 
 aged, yet old-looking; to have heard him reading the Church 
 prayers in a hollow solemn tone, or repeating a few of his 
 own verses in the x^arsonage garden, or playing some little 
 sacred air upon his lute, by a window commanding a distant 
 view of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. There were 
 doubtless few dry eyes among those parishioners who followed 
 the coffin to the parish church of Fugglestone, when George 
 Herbert's body was laid under the altar. 
 
 Mr. Herbert had no children. ' His virtuous wife ' (says 
 Izaak) ' continued his disconsolate widow about six years, 
 bemoaning herself and complaining that she had lost the 
 delight of her eyes,' etc. ' Thus she continued mourning 
 till time and conversation had so moderated her sorrows 
 that she became the happy wife of Sir Eobert Cook, of 
 Highnam, in the county of Gloucester, knight.' 
 ' Mrs. Herbert was the wife of Sir Eobert eight years, and 
 lived his widow about fifteen ; all which time she took a 
 pleasure in mentioning and commending the excellencies of 
 Mr. George Herbert.' This, however, one can imagine to 
 have now and then become tiresome. ' Lady Cook had
 
 190 AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 
 
 preserved many of Mr. Herbert's private writings, which 
 she intended to make public, but they and Highnani House 
 were burnt together by the late rebels.' 
 
 George's eldest brother (Lord Herbert) says, in his 
 autobiography, that ' about Salisbury where he [George] 
 lived beneficed for many years he was little less than 
 sainted.' The time was only about four years, and this 
 mistake perhaps indicates that there was no very close 
 intimacy. 
 
 Edward, Lord Herbert, equally or still better guarded 
 by his careful mother, lived a very different life from George. 
 He married at sixteen, had several children, was a chival- 
 rous soldier, a learned student, a gallant courtier, a wise 
 ambassador, fought duels, travelled and saw courts and 
 varieties of life, and wrote philosophical treatises that drew 
 the attention of the literati of Europe. Yet, different as 
 they were, a family character is very perceptible in the 
 brothers. 
 
 In the small quarto edition of the autobiography (from 
 Horace Walpole's press) is a large portrait of Edward, 
 Lord Herbert, lying meditative by a brook in a wood, 
 a man in the background holding his horse ; he is in 
 full dress of James I.'s time, and by him lies a shield 
 inscribed ' Magica Sympathise' (' By the magic of sym- 
 pathy'), and emblazoned with a heart in flames. His 
 notions of herbs, cures, and other natural things, were 
 like George's. 
 
 Edward was a theist (which is not the same as atheist), 
 believing in God, in right and wrong as shown by the 
 conscience, and in a future life. His treatise ' De Veritate,' 
 in defence of natural religion, excited much attention 
 and some attacks. His two Latin poems — ' Vita ' and 
 ' De Vita Coelesti Conjectura ' — are in substance the most 
 impressive modern Latin poems I have ever met. He 
 seems to have cared little for English literature, and
 
 LORD HERBERT. 191 
 
 speaks slightingly of his brother George's English 
 writings. 
 
 From Sahsbury I sped back south-eastward, after two 
 pleasant spring days, full of fancies and thoughts.
 
 EAMBLE THE TENTH. 
 
 AT CANTEEBUEY. 
 
 St. Saviour" s — The ' Tabard ' — Chaucer and the Pilgrims — Sketch of 
 Chaucer's Life — Canterbury — Outside the Cathedral — Erasmus — 
 Modern Statues — Augustine — Satui'day Night — Inside the Cathedral 
 — Harbledown — The Nightingale — New Spring and Old Poetry — The 
 Martyr's Field— Charles the First— The Riverside. 
 
 ICAEEIED a couple of American friends the other day 
 to one of the most interesting parts of London, especi- 
 ally to natives of the new country, and yet a terra incognita 
 to man}' thoroughbred cockneys : namely, certain old places 
 on either side of London Bridge ; and first to that ancient 
 church, Saint Saviour's, with its tombs of Eletcher, Mas- 
 singer, and Gower. 
 
 From the fine old church, dishonoured by modern hands 
 both in what has been done and what left undone, it is but 
 a step to the Borough High Street, with its row of ancient 
 inn-yards, all much alike in plan — a gateway leading into a 
 wider space overhung with wooden galleries. There are the 
 'George,' the 'White Hart,' the 'Queen's Head,' which is 
 the trimmest ; but the most famous and the one we have 
 come to see is 'The Talbot,' formerly, as the sign tells us, 
 ' The Tabard ' — the herald's coat having given way to the 
 
 192
 
 'THE tabard: 193 
 
 mastiff probably through mere corruption of the sound of 
 the word. 
 
 ;j, Befell that, in that season [April] on a day^ 
 
 In Southwark at The Tabard as I lay, 
 
 Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage 
 
 To Canterbury with full devout courage^ 
 
 At night was come into that hostelrie 
 
 Well nine and twenty in a company 
 
 Of sundry folk, by aventure i-fall 
 
 In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all 
 
 That toward Canterbury wolden ride. 
 
 The chambers and the stables weren wide, 
 
 And well we weren eased atte best. 
 
 And shortly, when the sunn^ was to rest^' 
 
 So had I spoken with them everyone 
 
 That I was of their fellowship anon. 
 
 How pleasant and fresh sound the old, old lines ! Ancl 
 now see a new April day, and pilgrims, from a land that 
 even Poet Chaucer never dreamed of, come to look, for his 
 sake, at the old Inn ! 
 
 I had heard a rumour that it was pulled down, aiid 
 approached the gateway with some touch of anxiety, and, 
 going through, saw with relief, the tavern on the right hand, 
 the old balconies and tottering roofs on the left, the stables 
 at the end, all remaining exactly as I first saw them, a 
 young poetic pilgrim, some five=^and-twenty years ago. 
 Perhaps nothing in the present edifices can be proved to 
 1)6 of Chaucer's time ; but pai'ts of them are several cen- 
 turies old, and the inn in all probability holds the same site 
 and the same general plan as in the l^eign of Edward III. 
 Indeed, as far as I can see, w© are not forbidden to suppose 
 that portions may still be here of the very ' Tabard ' of 
 Chaucer. 
 
 The yard was fiUl of the clatter and litter of a carrier's 
 inn, and half blooked Up with huge carts and elephantine 
 horses. The balconied part I'ests upon stout oaken pillars, 
 which show no sign of decay ; but from the empty and 
 
 13
 
 194 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 neglected state of the rooms one infers that the old edifice 
 is awaiting the harlequin stroke of this motley Nineteenth 
 Century of ours. A big, carter-like man, who was lounging 
 against one of the pillars, handed me the key — ' You can go 
 up and take a look round.' There was nothing to see in 
 the nest of little chambers — made, most of them, by parti- 
 tions out of one large room, the very room, as some enthusi- 
 asts declare, in which the thirty pilgrims met — nothing save 
 the squalid desolation of a long-forsaken house of the 
 humbler sort. It was odd to find so much waste space 
 within a bow-shot of London Bridge, and things can 
 scarcely stay so much longer. When the ' Talbot-Tabard ' — 
 up to this moment remaining the same that it has always 
 been within the limits of living memory (only more grimy, 
 perhaps, than it was a generation or two back, and these 
 empty rooms were then occupied) — shall be really pulled 
 down, London will certainly be the poorer by an object of 
 interest to readers of English poetry.^ 
 
 Yet, after all, the supper at which Harry Bailey presided 
 was never aught but a dream-supper, the lively picture of a 
 company which no room ever held. Doubtless the 'Tabard' 
 was a usual starting-place for Canterbury pilgrims ; but 
 those pilgrims for whose sake we still seek the dirty inn- 
 yard in the Boro' are but children of a poet's brain. Out 
 of true material indeed he shaped them ; but his the 
 shaping and the bringing of them together, twenty-nine 
 representative figures from the England of Edward III. 
 Many million men and women have passed and left no 
 discoverable trace, while these fine puppets remain. 
 
 But one feels sure that Chaucer did come to the 'Tabard,' 
 and see the humours of the place. Our American friends, 
 too, have an immense appetite for every ' famous thing 
 of eld,' and are the reverse of sceptical or captious. No 
 folk so charming to go about with in the Old World. Besides 
 ' It has since beeu utterly demolished.
 
 THE PILGRIMS AT SUPPER. 195 
 
 their habitual bonhommie, frankness, and obhgingness, their 
 curiosity and appreciation open the eyes of a native to 
 many things not seen because always seen. ' Chaucer's 
 Tabard,' that is enough ; and whether the old balcony is of 
 the time of Edward or Elizabeth, or the Second Charles, 
 matters little, — it is crusted with antiquity and perfumed 
 with poetic associations. Let us also take the wise part 
 of making the most of our ' Tabard.' After all, though the 
 great fire of Southwark, in 1676, most likely burned part of 
 the ancient inn, it may have spared part. Would any such 
 balcony have been newly put up at that time of day ? 
 
 I fancy Chaucer sleeping here, and constructing — he, the 
 English ' maker ' — out of the dream-stuff of which the real 
 pilgrims whom he met were composed, his own company of 
 more durable phantoms. And thus remain alive for us to 
 this day the honourable Knight, the gay young Squire, the 
 sturdy Yeoman, the gentle Prioress (who had a nun and 
 three priests with her), the lusty fat Monk, the merry Friar, 
 the grave Merchant, the learned Clerk, the discreet Sergeant 
 of Law, the dinner-loving Franklin, the Haberdasher, the 
 Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer, the Tapisser, the Cook, 
 the Shipman (' with many a tempest had his beard been 
 shake'), the Doctor of Physic, the naughty Widow from 
 Bath, the poor and pious Parson, the sturdy Miller, the 
 Ploughman, the Manciple, the Pardoner, the Eeeve, ' a 
 slender, choleric man,' and the Summoner, with ' fire-red 
 cherubyne's face.' 
 
 They all met at supper, with abundant victuals and strong 
 wine, the host of the inn, Harry Bailey, at the head, no 
 doubt, of the table. He was a large man, a seemly, and 
 a manly, bold of his speech and merry, but also wise and 
 well-taught. 
 
 Supper done, he makes a speech to his guests, in style at 
 once familiar and respectful, proposing to accompany their 
 pa,rty to Canterbury at his own cost, and to act as their 
 
 13—2
 
 196 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 guide, and further that, to make the journey pleasanter, 
 each pilgrim shall agree to tell two stories going, and two 
 more on the way back ; the best story-teller to sit free at 
 another general supper here at the ' Tabard ' when all is 
 finished. 
 
 This was accepted ; and next morning, ' when that day 
 began to spring/ they all arose, and being gathered in a 
 flock, rode forth at an easy pace, the miller playing them 
 out of town with his bagpipe ; and when they reached the 
 watering place of St. Thomas (at the second milestone, 
 'tis said, on the road to Canterbury) ^ the host made them 
 all draw cuts, and it fell to the Knight to tell the first 
 
 tale — 
 
 "VVliilom, as okle stories tellen iis, 
 There was a duke that highte Theseus ; 
 
 who wedded the Queen Hippolyta, 
 
 And brought her home with him in his countre 
 
 With much giorie and great solemuite, 
 
 And eke her young sister Emelye. 
 
 Antl thus with victorie and with melodie 
 
 Let I this noble Duke to Athens ride. 
 
 So will we let the pilgrims ride forward. But that 
 return-supper, ordered five centuries ago, has not yet been 
 eaten ; indeed, the company never arrived at Canterbury, 
 however near they came, and are still — men, and women, 
 and horses, in all their fourteenth century array — some- 
 where on the road, ever riding forward and telling their 
 tales in turn. 
 
 Nay, this were to wrap the bright procession in too dark 
 a cloud of fancy ! Rather let us hold for certain that they 
 knelt at the shrine of ' the holy blissful martyr,' rode 
 prosperously back to London, telling many a fine tale on 
 the homeward journey, and sat down to a noble supper at 
 the 'Tabard,' at which all drank to the best storyteller, by 
 decision of their manly host and fellow pilgrim Harry
 
 CHAUGEJVS YOUTH. 197 
 
 Bailey. Who that best was, and what the stories told on 
 the retura, we shall never know; inasmuch as the quiet 
 pilgrim, rather short and fat, with mild, grave face — which, 
 however, had somewhat ' elvish ' in it— and who usually 
 looked upon the ground, as though he would ' find a hare,' 
 laid down his pen too soon, and no other man could repeat 
 the sayings and doings of the company. 
 
 The sum of all the accounts of Chaucer's early life is 
 simple and complete as the of Giotto. Nothing is known 
 of Chaucer's early life. We cannot learn where or when he 
 was born, or anything authentic as to his family or educa- 
 tion. The name originally is French (spelt Chancier, 
 Chaussier, and other ways), and means shoemaker, or 
 perhaps breeches-maker. It is guessed that he was born in 
 London, about the year 1328. There are rumours, all 
 baseless, of his having been a member of the University of 
 Cambridge, of Oxford, of the Inner Temple, and beaten a 
 friar in Fleet Street. That he somehow received a high 
 cultivation, and came into Court favour, is certain ; and he 
 appears to have gone to France with Edward the Third's 
 army, in 1359, and to have been made prisoner ; but he got 
 safe back to England, and within a few years took to his 
 wife Philippa, daughter of Sir Payne Eoet, and maid of 
 honour to the Queen. Another daughter of Sir Payne, 
 Katherine by name, was of the retinue of Blanche, Duchess 
 of Lancastef, first wife of John of Gaunt. Katherine 
 married Sir Hugh Swinford, a LincolnBhir© knight, became 
 a widow, returned to John of Gaunt's household as governess 
 to his childi'en ; ho having meanwhile lost his Duchess 
 Blanche, and married a Duchess Constance, After a time, 
 this Duchess also died, and then John of Gaunt married 
 the governess, his old friend Katherine ; and thus Poet 
 Chaucer, of no family, became closely connected by marriage 
 with the Eoyalty of England. 
 
 He and his wife enjoyed vai'ious gifts and pensions ; and
 
 198 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 Chaucer was frequently employed in the King's sendee, on 
 diplomatic missions ; for in those days kings thought a good 
 brain a useful commodity, and were glad to find work for 
 it. In Italy, at the same time, the learned Petrarch was 
 busy in state affairs. 
 
 But neither Chaucer nor Petrarch had a public and its 
 publishers to depend upon, and little foresaw, with all their 
 wit, into what a glorious thing Literature was one day to 
 develop itself. If they could have been told prophetically 
 of the books, magazines, newspapers, etc., that would be 
 produced in London alone, in a single twelvemonth, the 
 ' capital invested ' therein (this phrase would have been a 
 puzzle), and the revenues accruing, it would certainly for a 
 moment have surprised them. While on a mission in 
 Lombardy, Chaucer is thought to have met Petrarch, that 
 ' learned clerk,' at Padua ; and perhaps he did ; but there 
 is no proof of it. 
 
 Chaucer filled, moreover, for a number of years the office 
 of Comptroller of Customs for the Port of London, and was 
 returned to Parliament in 1386, as knight of the shire for 
 Kent ; the feeble Second Eichard, aged 19, being King. 
 Eichard wished to govern through a clique of his personal 
 favourites. Parliament met in October, 1386, and impeached 
 the King's ministers. At the end of a month of violent dis- 
 putes, the King dissolved Parliament, and Chaucer, as one 
 of the obnoxious members, and a connection and supporter 
 of the Duke of Lancaster (who was in opposition), was dis- 
 missed from the Customs' service. This at least is the 
 residuum of probability from a mixture of various state- 
 ments. It has often been stated that, to avoid the enmity 
 of the Government, Chaucer retired to the Continent, and 
 on coming back to England was imprisoned for three years 
 in the Tower. There is no real ground for any such state- 
 ment ; but it does seem certain that the Poet in his old age 
 was ill-off for money, and in 1398 the King granted him a
 
 CHAUCER'^ OLD AGE. 199 
 
 protection from arrest. Next year Bolingbroke (son of John 
 of Gaunt, Chaucer's friend and connection by marriage), 
 took the crown, and immediately granted Chaucer a pension 
 of 26^. 13s. 4:cl. a year. 
 
 On Christmas Eve, 1399, the Poet, some seventy j'ears of 
 age, and now, let us hope, at ease from duns, went into a 
 house situated in the garden of ' the Chapel of the Blessed 
 Mary ' (where Henry the Seventh's Chapel now stands), 
 which house he took from the Abbot and monks of West- 
 minster, on a lease of 53 years, at 21. 13s. ^d. a year. But 
 he occupied it only ten months. He died October 25, 1400, 
 and his body was laid in the adjacent Abbey. 
 
 Soon after this visit to the ' Tabard,' I enjoyed my first 
 sight of the, famous old city of St. Augustine and Thomas 
 a Becket. At a curve of the railway the three towers of the 
 Cathedral rush into view not far off ; and here is Canterbury 
 Cathedral. 
 
 Why, I wonder, are all the railway stations in this part of 
 England — the rich and flowery Kent — so mean and uncared 
 for ? The ' London, Chatham and Dover ' has a blight 
 upon it, which perhaps extends to the station-masters, and 
 they are too dispirited to plant mignonette or train a rose- 
 bush. The aspect of the stations on the London and 
 Hastings line (to take one in the same part of England) is 
 very different. 
 
 Here is part of the gray city wall, with green hawthorns 
 growing out of the bastions, and tall elm-trees rising within. 
 That grassy mound at one angle bears the odd name of 
 ' Dane John ' — corruption probably of donjon, which, by the 
 way, is the same as dungeon, and means a strong place. 
 The word is Keltic, and gives name to several places 
 in Ireland, including Dangan in Meath, the Duke of 
 Wellington's birthplace. 
 
 And now we turn into the High Street — long, level,
 
 200 AT CAXTEEBUBY. 
 
 narrowish, slightly bending, with many old gables and pro- 
 jecting windows ; the houses not lofty ; the general aspect 
 rural and quiet. Up a narrow bye-w^ay on the right is 
 caught an exciting glimpse of a huge stone gateway covered 
 with time-worn sculpture; while in front, closing the street, 
 stands the old West Gate of the city — a massive fortalice, 
 through whose low-browed ai"cb is seen the suburb of St. 
 Dunstan. Over the battlements rises to view a grovy hill, 
 part of the sloping ridge that shelters the shallow vale of 
 Canterbury on the west. 
 
 The ' London, Chatham and Dover ' brought us in behind 
 time in due coui^e — about half an hour — and it was too late 
 to get into the Cathedral ; nevertheless, I hastened to that 
 fine old gateway up Mercery Lane. At the left-hand corner 
 of the lane was once a famous pilgrims' inn, in which, if you 
 like, you cai"> fancy Chauoer's company putting up. The 
 Cathedral-yard is not a striking one. The south porch (the 
 principal one in all Saxon-English churches) is finely pro- 
 portioned ; but, ah mo! how the restaurateur has been at 
 w^ork ! What raw and coarse recutting of the sculpture work ! 
 What mean little new statues ! Not mean because little : 
 m good sculpture, figures the size of a penny doll may be 
 as grand in their sort as the Parthenon. 
 
 More of these statues are swarming in the lower niches of 
 the west towers — ' by Phyffers,' says Murray. ' And who 
 is the sculptor Phyffers?' I asked a virger ('rod-carrier,' — 
 the spelling adopted here being perhaps the etymological 
 Dean Alford's doing). 'I don't know, sir, more than he 
 lives in the Walwoi^th Road, London, and whoever sub- 
 scribes 251. can have a statue put up.' Not, I suppose, one 
 to himself. Surely, statues ought not to be cheap ? They 
 ought to represent somebody worth recollecting. Nowadays 
 they are springing up, little and big, like mushrooms, or 
 rather toad-stools. However, these statues are dear — dear 
 at the money.
 
 Il RASMUS. 201 
 
 Among the latest of Phyffers' performances are Erasmus 
 and Dean Alford, side by side. Erasmus's claim to stand 
 here in cheap stone is in kind no better than I may myself 
 boast of by-and-by. He made a ramble to the Cathedral 
 about 350 years ago, and Avrote some account of it in his 
 ' Colloquia Familiaria,' under the title, ' Peregrinatio 
 Religionis ergo.' Ogygius, devout believer in holy things, 
 describes to his friend Menedemus three pilgrimages he 
 has made — one to St. James of Compostella, who 
 gives his devotees a scallop-shell, ' because he has plenty 
 of them from the neighbouring sea,' and who of late 
 has had fewer visitors ' by reason of this new opinion 
 that is spreading abroad in the world ; ' another pilgri- 
 mage to the shrine of St. Maiy at Walsingham, where 
 he saw% among other relics, a vial of the Blessed Virgin's 
 milk. After this, Ogygius went to Canterbury, ' one of 
 the most religious pilgrimages in the world.' ' There are 
 two monasteries in it,' he says, ' almost contiguous, and 
 both of Benedictines, St. Augustine's being the elder. 
 But the church sacred to the divine Thomas — divo ThonicB 
 — lifts itself to heaven with such majesty that even from a 
 distance it strikes the gazers with religious awe. With its 
 splendour it dims the neighbouring lights, and throws 
 into obscurity that anciently thrice-renowned place of St. 
 Augustine. There are two great towers, saluting from afar 
 all comers, and sounding with a wondrous boom of brazen 
 bells through all the neighbouring regions far and wide.' 
 
 This passage seems to describe the Cathedral before the 
 great central tower, that beautiful model of the perpendi- 
 cular style, was raised above the roof, or at least before 
 it was finished. Professor Willis and others date this erec- 
 tion 1495 ; but tlie original authorities cited only say tliat it 
 was raised by Prior Goklstone II. and two other ecclfsias- 
 tics. Goldstone became prior in 1495, but tliis does not 
 X^rove the tower to have been raised in that year, and
 
 202 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 indeed it could scarcely have been one year's work. Now 
 Erasmus came to England in 1497, and then began his 
 personal acquaintance with John Colet. (See Colet's letter 
 dated Oxford in ' Eras. Op. Omn. Lugd. Bat.' 1703, Epist. XL) 
 This Colet, afterwards famous Dean of St. Paul's and 
 founder of the school, was the very Gratiamis Pullus, or 
 Gratian Dark, who visited Canterbury along with Erasmus; 
 each being then — if I am right as to the time — about thirty 
 years of age. 
 
 That Gratiamis is Colet is beyond question. Witness 
 Erasmus himself, who in his ' Modus Orandi Deum ' speaks 
 again of the relics shown at Canterbury, adding, ' To John 
 Colet, who was w^ith me, these things gave much offence ; 
 but I thought it best to endure them till an opportunity 
 should come to amend them quietly.' And elsewhere he 
 says of Colet, ' non nisi pullis vestibus utebatur, cum illic 
 vulgo sacerdotes et theologi vestiuntur purpura ' — he wore 
 nothing but black or dark robes, instead of the usual scarlet. 
 
 But later in the Colloquy, Warham is named as Arch- 
 bishop, whose rule began not till 1503. Probably Erasmus 
 paid several or many visits to Canterbury during that 
 wandering, poor-scholar life of his, and puts no exact des- 
 cription of its appearance at any particular date into the 
 mouth of Ogygius in this ' Colloquium,' which was not 
 completed till 1521 (witness the date of Virgin Mary's letter 
 quoted therein). But I think it likely that he first saw the 
 Cathedral before the great central tower had lifted its 
 beautiful lines of stone into the sunshine and rainclouds 
 of Kent. 
 
 Let us go on with the Colloquy, which I translate in 
 abbreviated manner, for the English version of Nathan 
 Bailey, <pi^o\oyos (1725), has the garlic flavour (so to speak) 
 common to Sir Eoger L'Estrange, Mr. Thomas Brown, and 
 other such writers of that time. Among many similar 
 wants (discreditably many), our literature has no good
 
 OGYGIUS AND MENEDEMUS. 203 
 
 translation of any of the works of Erasmus. A translated 
 selection of the ' Epistolae,' well done, with brief elucida- 
 tions, would be valuable as well as amusing. 
 
 ' In the south porch ' (proceeds Ogygius) ' stand three 
 armed men sculptured in stone, w^ho with their impious 
 hands murdered the most holy man ; their names added, 
 Tusci, Fusci, Berri ' [possibly meaning, it is guessed, Tracy, 
 Fitz Urse, Brito.]. ' Why this honour to such men?' (asks 
 Menedemus). 'They have the same kind of honour done 
 to them as is done to Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas ; and they are 
 set there as a warning. For their crime drove them raging 
 mad, and they recovered their senses only by the solicited 
 favour of most holy Thomas.' ' the perpetual clemency 
 of martyrs ! ' ' When you enter, a certain spacious majesty 
 unfolds itself; and to this part everyone has free access.' 
 'Is there nothing to be seen, then?' 'Only the massive- 
 ness of the fabric and some books fastened to the pillars, the 
 Gospel of Nicodemus among them [a spurious gospel : they 
 ought to have known better, hints the satirist], and also a 
 sepulchre of I know not whom. Iron gratings prevent 
 ingress to the choir, but allow of a view of the whole extent 
 of it. You mount to this by many steps, under which a 
 kind of vault admits to the north side, where they show a 
 little wooden altar sacred to the Blessed Virgin, only notable 
 as a monument of antiquity condemning the luxury of these 
 times. Here the pious man is said to have uttered his last 
 farewell to the Virgin when death was imminent. On the 
 altar is the point of a sword, wherewith was pierced the 
 skull-top of that best prelate. We religiously kissed the 
 sacred rust of the sword for love of the martyr. Thence 
 we went to the crypt, which hath its mystagogues. And 
 first we were shown the perforated skull of the martyr, 
 covered with silver save the top of the cranium, which is 
 left bare to be kissed. At the same is shown a leaden plate 
 {lamina) with the name TJioiitce Acroisifi insculpt upon it.'
 
 204 AT CAXTEUBURY. 
 
 [^Corpus understood? Such plates were placed inside coffins. 
 It is not settled what Acrensis was meant to say ; some 
 think 'of Acre,' i.e., born there, and that his mother was a 
 Saracen. One ingenious guesser sees in Acrensis the Latin 
 equivalent of a Bee, of the beak, or point ; a Becket being 
 diminutive.] ' Here, also, hang up in darkness the hair- 
 shirts, girdles, breeches, with which he used to subdue the 
 flesh ; enough to make one shudder ; and condemnatory 
 truly of the softness and delicate living we now indulge in.' 
 ' And the monks, too, perhaps.' ' That I will neither assert 
 nor contradict ; 'tis no affair of mine.' ' You say right.' 
 
 ' We now returned to the choir, where various reposi- 
 tories were opened, and ! what a quantity of bones they 
 brought forth — skulls, jaws, teeth, hands, fingers, whole 
 arms— all of which, having first adored, we earnestly kissed. 
 There would have been no end to it, I think, but for the 
 indiscreet interruption made by one of my companions, an 
 Englishman, by name Gratianus Pullus, and a man of 
 learning and piety, but not so well affected toward this part 
 of religion as I could wish.' ' I opine he was a Wicliffite.' 
 ' I think not ; but he may have read his books. This gen- 
 tleman, when an arm was brought forth with some bloody 
 flesh still sticking to it [this seems incredible ! ] shuddered 
 at the notion of kissing it, and showed his disgust in his 
 countenance. Whereupon the mystagogue shut up all his 
 things. After this we saw the altar and its ornaments, the 
 wealth of which would beggar Midas and Croesus ; and in 
 the sacristy a wonderful pomp of silken vestments and 
 golden candlesticks. There also we saw the foot of 
 divine Thomas plated with silver ; and a coarse gown of 
 silk, without ornament, and a handkerchief retaining marks 
 of sweat and blood. These were shown by special favour, 
 because I was somewhat acquainted with the most reverend 
 Archbishop William Warham, and had from him three 
 words of recommendation.' ' I have heard he was a man
 
 RELICS. 205 
 
 of singular humanity.' 'He was humanity itself : of such 
 learning, such sincerity of manner, and piety of life, that no 
 gift of a perfect prelate was wanting in him.' 
 
 ' Behind the high altar we ascended as into another 
 church, and here saw the whole face of the best of men set 
 in gold with many gems. Here Gratian got entirely out of 
 the good graces of our attendant by suggesting that St. 
 Thomas, in his lifetime so kind to the poor, would be better 
 pleased to see all this wealth applied to charitable uses 
 rather than in a vain show. The mystagogue frowned, 
 pouted out his lips, and looked with the eyes of a Gorgon ; 
 and I doubt not would have spat upon us and turned us out 
 of the church, but that he knew we were recommended by 
 the archbishop. I partly pacified him with gentle w^ords, 
 saying that Gratian spoke not seriously, but had a jesting 
 way with him, and I also gave him a little money.' 
 
 ' I entirely approve your piety. Still it sometimes comes 
 into my own mind that it is a very wrong thing to expend 
 such vast sums in the building, adorning and enriching 
 of churches. I would have the sacred vestments and 
 vessels of a proper dignity, and the structure of the edifice 
 majestic ; but to what purpose so many fonts and cande- 
 labra and golden images ? Why this innuense expense for 
 organs, as they are called? Why this musical whinnying 
 \_i)niHLcas Jiumitiis — I fear Erasmus was not a lover of music], 
 got up at such cost, when meanwhile our brothers and 
 sisters, Christ's living temples, are pining with hunger and 
 thirst?' To this Ogygius in reply agrees that moderation 
 in these costlinesses is desirable, but thinks at the same 
 time it is better for kings and great folks to spend their 
 money on churches than in gambling or in war, and says he 
 would rather of the two see a church luxurious than bare 
 and mean. 
 
 Then he goes on to tell how the Prior came, and showed 
 them the shrine itself of the martyrs. They did not see the
 
 206 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 bones, which is not permitted, nor could it be done without 
 a ladder ; but the outer wooden case being lifted up by 
 pulleys, gave the inner shrine to view. ' The basest 
 material in it was gold. Every part beamed, glittered, and 
 flashed with precious stones, the hugest and rarest, some of 
 them bigger than a goose-egg. Some of the monks stood 
 round in attitudes of the deepest veneration ; and when the 
 cover was lifted we all adored. The Prior touched with a 
 white rod the jewels one by one, telling its name in French, 
 the value, and the donor ; the chief ones being the gifts of 
 monarchs.' 
 
 'Hence the Prior carried us back into a crypt, and showed 
 us by candle-light a wonderfully rich altar of the Yirgin, 
 guarded with iron bars ; then again to the sacristy, where 
 was brought out a, box covered with black leather, and 
 placed on the table ; it was opened, and all present fell on 
 their knees and adored.' 'What was in it?' 'Torn 
 pieces of linen, many of them bearing marks of having been 
 used to blow the nose with. Others, they told us, were 
 used by the pious man to wipe the perspiration from his face 
 and neck. Here again Gratian got out of favour. The Prior, 
 knowing something of him as an Englishman of reputation 
 and of no little authority, kindly offered to bestow upon him 
 one of these bits of rag as a most valuable gift. But Gratian, 
 far from being grateful, took it fastidiously on the point of 
 one of his fingers, and laid it down, making a contemptuous 
 movement of his lips, as though he said " Phew ! " ' 'I 
 was both ashamed and alarmed by this ; but the Prior, who 
 is no stupid man, pretended not to notice it, and after giving 
 us a glass of wine, kindly dismissed us ; and we went back 
 to London.' 
 
 This touch about the Prior is delicious, and his urbane 
 omission to take notice contrasts well with the anger of the 
 inferior exhibitor of relics. The whole account is very curious, 
 especially considering the point of time to which it refers.
 
 ^T. MARTIN'S. 207 
 
 Erasmus little thought there was a boy then in England 
 whose breath would by-and-by scatter these relics to the 
 four winds. Yet the world moves slowly. Here, in the 
 year 1872, stands this great edifice, not on the terms on 
 which some rare shell is preserved in a museum, but as 
 though it were still the habitation of the deepest and 
 dearest thoughts of living England. Erasmus's prior of 
 300 years ago is very like Emerson's bishop (see ' English 
 Traits '). — ' If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman and 
 reads fatal interrogatories in his eyes, he has no resource but 
 to take wine with him.' Have we got no further, after all 
 the satirists and reformers? Civility costs nothing, it is 
 said — nothing, that is, to him that shows it ; but it often 
 costs the world very dear. 
 
 It is not .likely that friend Desiderius could possibly have 
 foreseen that his own statue would ever decorate a niche of 
 the famous edifice in right of his having written (an odd 
 claim surely !) the sub-sarcastic account of his visit to the 
 Cathedral which we have just been reading. But in our 
 day some one has given 251., and there stands Erasmus (a 
 small copy of the Eotterdam statue) beside King Ethelbert 
 and Dean Alford, carved by Phidias of the Walworth Eoad. 
 
 Is it possible that Patricius Walker may one day find an 
 ecclesiastical pedestal somewhere? One might take this 
 Erasmus statue, if it meant anything, to have affinity to the 
 Prior's glass of wine — one other example of how civil the 
 Church is to everybody. But in truth it meai:is nothing ; 
 men have long since ceased to care about these things as 
 questions of truth and error, right and wrong. The 
 dilettantism of archaeology, and the more serious affairs 
 hinted in the phrase ' loaves and fishes,' are now the only 
 two living interests connected with these old monuments. 
 
 The raw statues and scraped south porch disheartened 
 me ; the uniform west tov/ers (one rebuilt) are just tolerable, 
 rather pleasing, not beautiful, and the whole aspect of the
 
 208 AT CAKTEEBURY. 
 
 Cathedral yard was disappointing. There was a cold sky, 
 too, and a chilly wind blowing, and I felt lonely and tired, 
 and as if I had no business at Canterbury. Still there was 
 an enticement in the Norman transepts and towers of Andrew 
 and Anselm, and the strange inbending of the wall beyond. 
 Out of the city I walked eastwards, under great trees, and 
 mounted the hill to the little Church of St. Martin, itself 
 very old, and built, 'tis said, on the site, and partly on the 
 walls, of an older church which stood here, already bearing 
 St. Martin's name, when Augustine and his monks came to 
 convert the pagan English ; for the Keltic British were 
 Christians, but their conquerors remained heathen. 
 
 Ethelbert — or, if you like, ^thelberht — King of Kent, 
 Saxon and pagan, married the Christian Bertha, daughter 
 of Charibert, King of Paris, and for her and her attendant 
 bishop was the little Christian chapel set on the slope of 
 this hill near the capital of the kingdom of Kent, earliest 
 permanent settlement of the Teutons in Britain. Ethelbei't, 
 moreover, as at this time ' Bretwalda,' exercised a 
 supremacy, not exactly definable, over the other kings ; 
 
 There are three good reasons why Augustine came first 
 to Canterbury: Queen Bertha's Christianityj King Ethel- 
 bert's authority, and the nighness of the eity to Eutupiffi, 
 the usual landing-place of visitors to Britain. At Rutupiae, 
 now ' Eichborough,' between Eamsgate and Sandwich, 
 where the great fragments of Eoman fortification still look 
 forth from their low cliffs — but the sea has receded from 
 them, and level green pastures now' Stretch below — at 
 Eutupiaj Augustine and his monks landed, and sent a 
 message to the king. He ordered them to stay where they 
 were for the present, and that meanwhile they should be 
 supplied with all necessariesi. Some days after, the king 
 came into Thanet, and reeeived the missionaries in the open 
 air, where he would be less subject to magical arts than in 
 a house. After conference he said, ' You speak very fairly.
 
 AUGUSTINE. 209 
 
 I cannot forsake ray old worship ; but you are free to come 
 to Canterbury and teach whom you will.' ^ 
 
 A thousand years later, by-the-bye, there was (rightly or 
 wrongly) much less toleration in England for new teaching. 
 
 So the monks from Rome travelled along the Eoman road 
 and reached this very hill, whence they looked down on the 
 wooden and wicker city of the Cantuarii, with its earth- 
 works of defence and palisades, in the broad vale among 
 trees and thickets. It cannot be doubted that they stopped 
 to worship at the little shrine of their faith ; then lifting a 
 tall silver cross they formed into a procession, and, w^th 
 choristers chanting a Gregorian litany, descended into 
 Canterbury, and were well received. 
 
 This little Church of St. Martin was handed over to 
 Augustine, and some of these very stones and bricks (Eoman 
 bricks) that I touch may be part of the walls within which 
 the first English king was baptised into Christianity, an 
 event commonly spoken of as one of the most momentous 
 in the history of the human race ; and perhaps it may be 
 allowable so to speak of it. Mighty temples (like this of 
 Canterbury), establishments, Church-and-state conjunctions 
 and rivalries, persecutions, wars, reformations and revolu- 
 tions, creeds, books and art-works, civic and family 
 arrangements, — all modes wherein human life, public and 
 private, can manifest itself and send on its influences — 
 have they not taken form and colour for a thousand years 
 and more from that mystic sprinkling ? 
 
 Missionaries have usually been the bearers not only of a 
 theological creed, but of a superior civilisation and culture ; 
 and monasteries were long the refuges and nurseries of 
 learning. These are facts which go far to account for 
 success and authority; but also make more difficult the 
 question to which the answer has never yet perhaps been 
 
 'Bede's Ecclesiastical Ilistory. 
 
 14
 
 210 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 fairly sought), how much and in what ways any creed, as 
 such, has modified human hfe and manners. "What, for 
 examj)le, were Ethelbert's life and character like, whilst he 
 was a pagan, and what afterwards? The English in 
 general, from a.d. 500 to 1000, what were they as heathens, 
 and what as Christians, say in the matters of truth, 
 courage, humanity, purity, wise and happy life ? Certainly 
 the new rules had no effect of making men leave off fight- 
 ing ; that continued to be the main business of their lives ; 
 and, indeed, promises of success in battle and extension of 
 territory were among the usual bribes (in addition to 
 eternal salvation) employed to persuade men of note to be 
 converted. The monkish chroniclers often record instances 
 where these promises were fulfilled ; but, after all, the pagan 
 Jutes and Saxons and Angles beat the Christian British. 
 The pagan Danes afterwards beat the Christian Saxons, 
 who by that time had fallen, as a people, into a very weak 
 and confused state. In short, the word ' Christianity,' as 
 commonly and loosely used, is one of those vague and 
 misleading terms for each of which it would be beneficial to 
 substitute at least three or four of a more definite sort, to 
 be used on their proper occasions. The very first thing 
 that ought to be aimed at in language, and usually the very 
 last thing aimed at, is definite expression of definite meaning. 
 But since the latter is too often missing in writers and 
 speakers, they can scarcely be expected to strive for the 
 former. 
 
 After peeping in through the windows of this thrice- 
 famous little Chui'ch of St. Martin, I mounted the hill 
 behind, through a market-garden, and found atop a haw- 
 thorn in bloom — my first this year. With what a delicious 
 soothing flowed the well-remembei'ed fragrance over my 
 sense ! One has nothing to quarrel with in these lovely 
 joys of nature. ' I love this hawthorn-bush,' I exclaimed 
 aloud, ' twenty times more than Canterbury Cathedral, with
 
 HAWTHORN BUDS. 211 
 
 all its pillars and arches, in every style of Gothic ! ' and, 
 picking a pearly tuft, went over to the windmill, and stood 
 awhile under its lee ; now looking up with awe at one great 
 sail after another swashing down like a Titan's sword, now 
 looking forth on the prospect of green sloping corn-fields, 
 with here and there a grove, and amid a shallow vale the 
 simple city, with its one dominant edifice, three-towered, in 
 the midst. 
 
 It was Saturday night, and I walked about the streets by 
 gas-light, presenting them older and more picturesque than 
 garish day ; but the Cathedral yard was locked up, which 
 did vex me. I remembered York last year, and that 
 great pile by moonlight, and how I stood on the west steps 
 and climbed with mine eyes into the stars by the ladder of 
 those vast towers. 
 
 But the west gate of Canterbury is satisfactory, is mighty 
 and massive. In the wider street outside are a good many 
 old wood-fronted houses ; one of which w^as formerly an inn, 
 where pilgrims a.rriving after the gates were closed used to 
 put up for the night. I enjoyed the little old-fashioned 
 shops, with their low ceilings and miscellaneous jumble of 
 articles, and often paused at a window or door to watch the 
 friendly greetings and gossipings of vendor and customer, so 
 characteristic of a country town not too large for everybody 
 to know nearly everybody else. Countryfolk, their market- 
 ings finished, got deliberately into their carts and drove 
 away. I saw no tipsy person, or night prowler, or any sign 
 of disorder, all along the main thoroughfare, from the tall 
 dark foliage of St. George's Place to where the street of 
 St. Dunstan melted into the darkness and solitude of a 
 country road, with a white horse grazing on its hedge-side 
 grass. 
 
 The last house at this end of the city stood alone, ancient 
 and decayed, at its gable a dead tree seen weirdlike against 
 
 14 — 2
 
 212 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 the broken night-sky. It looked hke a house with a history ; 
 at least, like every old house, it has the scene of many 
 histories under its uneven roof, and behind its lead-latticed 
 windows ; not of people and events who are ' historic ' in 
 the usual sense (for this is but a small house, and never was 
 a rich one), but of simple human beings, of infancy and 
 maturity, old age and death. Many a child of the house 
 must have played round that withered tree when it, too, 
 was green and gay, and gone to sleep under those battered 
 tiles in a garret more full of wonders than all the palaces 
 and temples of the outside world. Could one but have the 
 record — the real inner record — of the life of one of those 
 unknown and for-ever-forgotten children, I would not give 
 it for the best extant history of St. Thomas a Becket, 
 and of St. iVugustine to boot — two personages for whom, 
 taking the reports of their admirers, I confess to feeling 
 but moderate regard. 
 
 Wending northwards, I came into the neighbourhood of 
 the barracks, and then first on some token of nocturnal 
 revelry. From the ' Duke's Arms ' and the ' British Grenadier ' 
 issued sounds of rude chorusing, in one case with some 
 attempt at 'singing a second.' What a good little thing, 
 I thought for the thousandth time, if part -singing were 
 universally taught in schools, so that whenever two or more 
 singers met, they might have a repertory of kindly song- 
 music at their command. Elsewhere in the same street 
 was the notice, ' A Free and Easy every night. Miss 
 AdeHna Villiers, lady dancer ; Mr. Brown, pianist ; singing.' 
 In the dim road a few belated soldiers were making for 
 their quarters ; and presently the patrol came round the 
 corner and marched past with a slow swing. At the 
 barrack-gate paced the sentry with his gun ; while inside 
 lay quietly, each on his own pallet, hundreds of strong men, 
 of coarse unruly natures many of them, ready to start up, 
 one and all, at the bugle's sound to-morrow morning, and
 
 INSIDE THE CATHEDRAL. 213 
 
 'fall in,' each to his allotted place. The most wonderful 
 of machines is an army, composed of that complicated and 
 variable material, human nature ; yet acting at its best with 
 a powerful concert and regularity as of the heavenly spheres 
 themselves. Might not men be trained to act with equal 
 order and combination to peaceful ends? Undoubtedly. 
 Let us manage that little business of part-singing to begin 
 with ; and go on to the organisation of labour. 
 
 Next day was Sunday, and I went to morning service in 
 the Cathedral, heard the living river of choral harmony, 
 heard the Athanasian Cread, and a sermon, or rather the 
 noise of it, lil^e the cawing of a rook, for the words slipped 
 through my mind unheeded. In the quarto Prayer-Book 
 on the ledge before me was a book-plate of old device, 
 showing enclosed in scrollwork a cross with X at the centre, 
 and written underneath, ' Christ Church, Canterbury.' On 
 one side of the cross in this book some profane pencil had 
 drawn (most likely at sermon-time) a grotesque face or 
 mask. The nave and choir looked almost as new and fresh 
 as though Pugin had built them yesterday ; and one half- 
 expected to see here and there a warning of 'Wet Paint.' 
 It was only by turning to certain corners and details that 
 the eyes assured themselves they were gazing on a thrice- 
 venerable building Seen from where I sat, the uniformity 
 of the newly cleaned pillars and groinings of the nave, and 
 the uniformity of the panellings of the choir, along with 
 the execrable modern stained-glass, made the general effect 
 disappointing. There was a kind of dismal tidiness and 
 smartness ; no grand gloom anywhere. Even the oblique 
 glimpses of the transepts (usually effective in cathedrals) 
 were uncomfortable, showing, as it were, a jumbled museum 
 of various kinds of arches. 
 
 I learned next day that most of the modern glass is the 
 doing of a private gentleman of Canterbury, solicitor by 
 profession, who having, first, a turn for designing painted
 
 214 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 windows, secondly, money to spare, thirdly, an ambition to 
 distinguish himself, and fourthly, interest with the Cathedral 
 authorities, has filled, not one or two, but perhaps a dozen 
 or more of the great windows with his handiwork. Let me 
 offer my contribution to his fame, by copying the in- 
 scription, ' George Austin, d edi cav i t, ' a,ud add the remark of 
 a virger on the subject : ' Well, sir, there they are, and 
 we can't take 'em away, you see ; and the boys won't 
 break 'em.' 
 
 I wished to ascend the great tower, but was told it was 
 inaccessible to visitors, the stairs being out of repair. Most 
 part of the crypt, also, is in a very disorderly condition. 
 
 Leaving closer examination for the morrow (which I duly 
 accomplished : but vide Professor Willis, Dean Stanley, 
 and many others), I went forth for a country walk, and was 
 lucky in my course. Mounting by St. Thomas's Hill, a 
 slope of the gentle ridge that shuts in Canterbury vale on 
 the west, I took a field-path to the left. Zephyrus came 
 over the flowery meads, and every breath carried conscious 
 health and sweetness into the blood. 
 
 The path led me to the edge of a steep little dell, into 
 which it sloped. On the right hand was a thick grove not 
 yet in full leaf; on the left stood, some fields off, a little 
 church ; in the hollow, among orchards, peeped the brown 
 roofs of an old hamlet, and thither I gladly descended ; nor 
 was my pleasure lessened to find that this hamlet was 
 Harbledown, formerly Herbaldo\%Ti, the very place — at 
 least I doubt it not — which Chaucer calls ' Bob-up-and- 
 down, under the Blea ' (now the Blean, still a wild tract of 
 half-forest land), and certainly where Erasmus was stopped 
 to kiss St. Thomas's old shoe. 
 
 ' Having set forth for London,' says Ogygius, ' we came, 
 not far from Canterbury, to a place where the road descen- 
 ded, steep and narrow, into a hollow, hemmed in with 
 banks on either side, so that there is no escape : you cannot
 
 BABBLE DOTFX. 215 
 
 take any other way. Here on the left hand is a little alms- 
 house of old men. When they spy a horseman coming, one 
 of them runs out, sprinkles the traveller with holy water, 
 and then offers him the upper part of a shoe bound round 
 with brass, in which is set a bit of glass by way of a gem. 
 After kissing this, you give a small piece of money.' ' Well,' 
 says Menedemus, ' I'd rather meet a set of old almsmen in 
 such a place than a gang of sturdy robbers.' ' Gratian,' 
 continues Ogygius, ' rode on my left, next to the little alms- 
 house. He bore the sprinkling pretty well, but when the 
 shoe was held out, he asked what was that? "St. 
 Thomas's shoe," says the man. Upon which Gratian got 
 angry, and turning to me exclaimed, "What do these 
 a,mm&h [j^ecudes] want? would they have us kiss all good 
 people's shoes? They might as well ask us to kiss their 
 spittle, and so forth ! " I pitied the old man, who was 
 looking doleful at this, and consoled him with a little 
 money.' Menedemus. ' In my opinion Gratian was not 
 wholly . unreasonable in being wroth. If such shoes or 
 slippers be preserved, as proofs of the wearer's frugality, I 
 don't object ; but it seems to me a piece of im^Dudence to 
 thrust these things upon everybody to be kissed. If any- 
 one liked of his own free will to kiss them out of a 
 vehement impulse of piety, I should hold that pardonable 
 enough.' Ogygius. ' ' Twere better these practices were 
 given up, I confess ; but from things which cannot suddenly 
 be amended, it is my habit to extract what good I can lind, 
 if any good there be.' A sentence very characteristic of 
 friend Erasmus. 
 
 And here is the very place — the hollow of two hills and 
 the narrow way between steep banks where Erasmus and 
 Colet rode by ; and here is the almshouse or hospital of 
 St. Nicholas, the very same charitable institution that 
 harboured the old man who ran forth with his holy shoe, 
 for the Keformation spared little Herbaldown Hospital. It
 
 216 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 is rebuilt as to its walls, and now stands in the form of a 
 small group of trim red dwellings, wherein nine old 
 brethren and seven old sisters abide. 
 
 In the first letter to John Colet in the collection 
 (Epis. xli.) dated Oxford, 1498, Erasmus gives an interesting 
 sketch of his own character, which has probably full as 
 great a share of truth as is usual in such confessions. From 
 this letter, along with Colet's previous one (Epis. xi.) already 
 alluded to, I infer, contrary to the statements of biog- 
 raphers, that they had no personal intercourse until this 
 visit of Erasmus to England. After much compliment and 
 deprecation of Colet's too high estimation of him, Erasmus 
 says, ' I will describe myself to you, and better than any 
 other can, since no other knows me so well. You shall 
 find in me a man of little fortune, nay, none at all ; averse 
 from ambition ; most ready to affection ; but slightly skilled, 
 it is true, in literature, yet a most flagrant admirer of it ; 
 who religiously venerates another's goodness, though he has 
 none of his own ; who easily yields to all in matters of 
 doctrine, to none in matters of faith ; simple, open, free ; 
 well-nigh ignorant of simulation and dissimulation ; pusil- 
 lanimous, yet honest ; sparing of speech ; and in fine one 
 from whom you must expect nothing but his soul [animum].' 
 
 Climbing the steep bank on the south side of the hollow 
 way at Harbledown, I came to an old weedy churchyard 
 with a little very old church with square tower and Norman 
 door. The low side-wall is crumbling, the old high-pitched 
 roof seems almost ready to fall in. As usual, everything has 
 been let go to the verge of destruction for the want of a stone 
 here, a tile there, till at the last moment shall step in the 
 restorers (a clergyman most likely the ringleader) to make a 
 grand job of it. Some such thing, I gathered, is about to 
 happen to this little gray church also. 
 
 Mounting the hill westward, and catching sight, as the 
 pilgrims used to do at this point, of the great cathedral, at
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE. 217 
 
 the same moment a rich gurgle of song broke from a thicket 
 close at hand — a nightingale ! My first this year, and the 
 song lifted me again to poetry and Chaucer. 
 
 ' As I lay' awake (says Chaucer) ' the other night,! thought 
 of the saying, that it was of good omen for lovers to hear the 
 nightingale sing before the cuckoo ; and anon I thought, as 
 it was day, I would go somewhere to try if I might hear a 
 nightingale ; for I had heard none that year, and it was the 
 third night of May. So as I espied the daylight, I would no 
 longer stay in bed, but boldly went forth alone to a wood 
 that was fast by, and held the way down by a brook-side, 
 till I came to a land of white and green, the fairest I ever 
 saw. The ground was green, and powdered with daisies ; 
 the flowers and the grass of the same height, — all green and 
 white, and nothing else to be seen. There I sat down 
 among the fair flowers, and saw the birds trip out of their 
 bowers, where they had rested all night ; and they were so 
 joyous of the daylight, they began at once to do honour to 
 May, singing with many voices, and in various songs. They 
 pruned them, and danced, and leaped on the spray, and were 
 all two and two in pairs as they had chosen each other on 
 St. Valentine's Day. And the river whereby I sat made such 
 a noise as it ran, accordant with the birds' harmony, me- 
 thought it was the best melody that might be heard of any 
 man.' 
 
 For very delight he fell into a half-slumber, not all asleep, 
 
 not fully waking, and in this he heard a cuckoo sing, which 
 
 vexed him, and made him say to the bird, ' Sorrow on thee ! 
 
 full little joy have I of thy cry ! ' 
 
 And as I with the cuckoo thus 'gan chide 
 I heard, in the next bush beside, 
 A nightingale so hxstely sing, 
 That her clere voice she made ring 
 Through all the greene wood wide. 
 
 Then followed a dispute between the birds, the nightingale 
 
 praising love, and the cuckoo disparaging the same, till at
 
 218 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 last the former cried out bitterly, ' Alas ! my heart will break, 
 to hear this lewd bird speak thus of Love, and his worshipful 
 service.' Then (says Chaucer) methought I started up and 
 ran to the brook, and got a stone and flung it heartily at the 
 cuckoo, who for dread flew away ; and glad was I when he 
 was gone. For this service the nightingale thanked the 
 Poet, saying, 
 
 One avow to love make I now, 
 
 That all this May T will thy singer be ; 
 
 and promising that next May he should hear her song first, 
 and meanwhile must believe no whit of the cuckoo's slanders 
 against love. Nothing (replies Chaucer) shall bring me to 
 that ; — and yet love hath done me much woe. 
 
 ' Yea ? Use,' quoth she, ' this medicine, 
 
 Every day this May or thou dine, — 
 
 Go look upon the fresh daisie, 
 
 And, though thou be for wo at point to die. 
 
 That shall full greatly lessen thee of thy pine. 
 
 And look alway that thou be good and true, 
 And I will sing one of my songes new, 
 For love of thee, as loud as I may cry.' 
 And then she began this song full high, 
 ' I shrew all them that be of love untrue ! ' 
 
 and so she flew away. 
 
 Chaucer's hearty and untiring delight in grass and daisies 
 and birds' songs, and his sincere belief, which he preserved 
 into old age, in the curative balm for anxious thoughts which 
 is given to men in these simple joys, is one of those things 
 for which we dearly love the old poet. His very heart and 
 soul are soothed by a pleasant grove, a green field, a clump 
 of wild flowers. And so did these vernal sights and sounds 
 and odours soothe me that day as they soothed old Geoffrey 
 five centuries ago. 
 
 ' The Flower and the Leaf,' by-the-bye, is certainly not 
 Chaucer's (say the experts), but later, and most likely by a 
 woman. In that case, the name and memory of a great
 
 THE MARTYRS' FIELD. 219 
 
 English poetess, able to write of these things as well as 
 Chaucer himself, lie buried among the dark centuries. She 
 too, whilst yet her eyes could see daylight, rejoiced greatly 
 
 in the 
 
 branches broad, laden with leaves new, 
 
 That spriugen oiit against the snnny sheen, 
 Some very red, and some a glad light green — 
 
 of early spring, and the rich fields ' covered with corn and 
 grass,' and the fragrance of flowers. 
 
 — Suddenly I felt so sweet an air 
 
 Of the eglatere, that certainly 
 
 There is no heart, I deem, in such despair. 
 
 Nor with thoughts froward and contraire 
 
 So overlaid, but it should soon have bote [relief]. 
 
 If it had once felte this savour sote [sweet]. 
 
 By this time I had come back into the city, and here my 
 meditations took another turn. Close to the railway station 
 is a grass-field, and in a corner of it two or three children 
 were gathering handfuls of buttercups. ' Is this the field 
 where the people were burnt ? ' ' Yes, sir,' says a little maid 
 of four years, dropping a curtsy. ' And where did they 
 burn them?' 'Down there, please, sir,' pointing to a 
 gi'assy, weedy hollow. This, then, is the Martyrs' Field. 
 
 In the year 1556, on March 2, Cranmer was burnt alive at 
 Oxford, in front of Balliol College ; and the same day 
 Queen Mary made Cardinal Pole Archbishop of Canterbury 
 in his room. Under his primacy about 2,000 Protestants, 
 men and women, were burnt alive ; eighteen of them in this 
 hollow, within sight of the great Christ Church and the 
 monastery of the first English saint ; such being the prac- 
 tical result of a thousand years of ' Christianity.' No shrine 
 covers the ashes of these ' martyrs ; ' only the spires of grass 
 spring above them ; only the indiscriminate rain falls upon 
 the scene of their torture. Yet, if voluntary acceptance for 
 conscience' sake of the worst extremities of suffering con- 
 stitutes martyrdom, some of these poor men and women —
 
 220 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 long since at peace — are better entitled to it than Thomas a 
 Becket, slain in a wrangle with fierce knights of his own 
 creed, on motives political and personal ; or Alphage (whose 
 church is here, close to the Palace), carried off a prisoner 
 by the heathen Danes when they sacked Canterbm-y in 1011, 
 and after seven months' captivity, slain by the stroke of an 
 axe. Alas ! how men torment each other and themselves. 
 Is hmnan life in its own nature too long and too happy? 
 
 The sun shone out gaily, the children gathered king-cups; 
 a white butterfly came wandering into the Dell of i\gony, 
 and poised for a moment on a tall stem of grass. 
 
 Another walk, that kindly afternoon, led me to the ' Dane 
 John,' where were many folk in Sunday clothes, enjoying, 
 according to their several measure, the grass and trees, and 
 the prospects from the battlements. Then I found the Old 
 Castle, a shapeless mass of pebbled wall. To one corner 
 telegraph wires are fastened, and the fortress is now a gas 
 factory. Behind it lurks the little old church of St. Mildred 
 with a quiet avenue of lindens. Thence by bye-streets, 
 such as set one meditating on life in a country town, both 
 to-day and in its past generations, for everywhere is the sug- 
 gestion of peaceful continuity, I slipt into a field-path, among 
 young corn and hop-poles, and so came round by Long Port 
 to a quaint little space named ' Lady Wotton's Green,' and 
 facing upon it the great old gate, older than Chaucer's time, 
 of St. Augustine's Monastery. 
 
 Looking from the shade of a linden on the mullioned 
 window of the room above the gateway, I thought of it now 
 as the marriage-chamber of a happy bridegroom and bride, 
 he five-and-twenty, she not sixteen ; he an Englishman, tall, 
 slender, handsome, dignified, full of chivalrous courtesy and 
 grave tenderness ; she French, girlish, vivacious, spirituelle, 
 with clear brown complexion and soft black eyes, a sparkling 
 brunette, now timid in a foreign land and new condition ; he
 
 THE YOUNG QUEEN. 221 
 
 a king, jtist come into his ancient heritage, she the daughter 
 of many kings. How gay was the old gateway with flags 
 and flowers as the young royal pair drove through, coming 
 from Dover to sup and sleep here ! 
 
 Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of King Henry the 
 Fourth of France, married by proxy in Notre Dame, May 
 21, 1625, to King Charles of England, was detained a month 
 by weather and else, during which time the King waited 
 much at Dover for his bride ; but he was at Canterbury 
 when she landed, on Sunday evening, about eight o'clock, 
 June 23 (N.S.). Next morning about ten came the King to 
 Dover Castle, when his sweetheart was at breakfast. 
 Hearing of his arrival, she hurried down, and would have 
 knelt, but ' he wrapped her in his arms with many kisses.' 
 The trembling little bride began a set speech — ' Sire, je suis 
 venue dans ce pays,' &c., but broke down in a burst of weeping. 
 The courteous tenderness of her bridegroom soon reassured 
 her ; and when, finding her taller than he had expected, he 
 glanced towards her feet, she showed her shoes with a smile, 
 saying, ' Sir, I stand upon my own feet ; I have no helps by 
 art ; ' and they drove off together to Canterbury. ' The 
 same night, having supped at Canterbury, her Majesty went 
 to bed, and some time after his Majesty followed her ; but 
 having entered her bedchamber, he bolted all the doors with 
 his own hand. . . . The next morning he lay till seven 
 o'clock, and was very pleasant with the lords that he had 
 beguiled them, and hath ever since been very jocund.' ^ The 
 lords in waiting had planned, doubtless, not to exempt even 
 Majesty from some of the old-fashioned epithalamic 
 ceremonies. 
 
 Next morning at breakfast the young couple (' Mary ' is 
 the name he calls her by), looking out through that large 
 window, see before them in the June morning sky this same 
 
 ' Contemporary Letters, given in Court and Tiincn of Chavlcx I. 
 London, 1846.
 
 222 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 great tower, with its attendant pinnacles. The httle Queen 
 is unfortunately a ' Papist,' which may make some trouble 
 by-and-by, when the priests and politicians get to work, 
 but hardly in present circumstances. They say something, 
 it is likely, of the past history of the city and the kingdom. 
 Over the future history of England, over their own future, 
 hangs for them a thick, impenetrable veil. 
 
 From Canterbury the happy young pair travelled to 
 Eochester, the next day to Gravesend, and in the State barge 
 they entered the capital, — the river banks, in spite of a heavy 
 shower of rain, lined with loyal and applausive multitudes ; 
 and landed at Whitehall. Happy, thrice happy, young King 
 and Queen ! 
 
 Thence I passed to North Gate Street, and the Hospital 
 of St. John (founded under Lanfranc, 1070-1089), 'twin- 
 hospital of Herbaldown.' Through an old arched gateway, 
 mostly of wood, I passed into a quiet quadrangle (rebuilt) 
 with tall trees behind and a space of little garden-lots where 
 the inmates cultivate their patches of peas and lettuce, mixed 
 with many gay flowers and fragrant potherbs. Below this 
 a meadow gently slopes to the winding Stour. 
 
 Coming back to the street I walked northwards to the 
 barracks, and there a sideway led me to the river's brink 
 beside a great mill, and a path that followed the watery 
 windings by many a great old pollard-willow. Swallows 
 skimmed the slow-flowing stream ; on the other bank were 
 little orchards and sleepy red houses, and for landmark rose 
 ever the long roof and tall towers of the Cathedral. This 
 predominance in visible form of a supernatural idea gives 
 (even yet) the suggestion of a reverent unity pervading the 
 life and thought of those who dwell within the compass of 
 its immediate presence. Nor is there much in Canterbury 
 to disturb this impression. Barrack and railway have in- 
 truded themselves, but the old city is not swallowed up in 
 the results of modern ' industry and prosperity.'
 
 THE EI FEE. 223 
 
 I returned by the Abbot's Mill, with its dam and rushing 
 weir, fronted by a grass-field in which stand four mighty 
 trees of the poplar kind, mountains of shivering leaves. 
 Higher up, tanneries pollute the stream, and the cows' 
 hoofs, for glue, hang up in ugly rows. In benighted pagan 
 times a river was held sacred. Still, recollecting what the 
 Medlock is like where it crawls with its inky load of foulness 
 by Manchester Cathedral, one may be almost thankful for 
 the Stour's condition. 
 
 I had walked a good many hours, but the calm starlight 
 night drew me forth again, and approaching the dim bulk 
 of the West Gate, I heard a nightingale singing on the left. 
 
 There might you hear her kindle her soft voice. 
 
 Finding a path to the river, where it flowed down through 
 the fields and into a shrubbery just before entering the city, 
 I stood close to the unseen singer, sometimes whistling to 
 him, and answered, I chose to think, with a louder and 
 more triumphant strain. 
 
 ' She,' our old poets always said, following the Greeks 
 and Latins, and it was natural to make feminine this airy 
 charm of sound ; but we cannot now afford to disregard so 
 broad a natural truth as that the male birds of every kind 
 are always the chief and often the only singers. A poetic 
 statement and a scientific statement are essentially differ- 
 ent ; yet they must both be statements of tinUh ; and as 
 scientific truths pass more and more into general appre- 
 hension, these, in place of old mistakes, will form the 
 natural and proper vehicles and illustrations of poetry. 
 
 At midnight, through my open bedroom-window, came 
 the distant song of the tireless bird, and I thought again of 
 Chaucer. With eagerness and faith can I listen to bird or 
 poet ; not to bishop, or dean, dead or living. As to those 
 old saints, their unscrupulous piety seems to have been 
 capable of any lie — one might almost say of any crime ;
 
 224 AT CANTERBURY. 
 
 and, with all their good intentions and self-denying labours, 
 they left a terrible legacy to mankind, of which we also are 
 heirs. 
 
 But all this is growing dreadfully wearisome even to 
 think of, at our time of day. Better look at antique 
 edifices and establishments with the mere eyes of an 
 archaeologist or an American tourist. The Americans 
 enjoy English cathedrals so much that I believe they would 
 keep them up by subscription if necessary. If they were 
 in the market, Mr. Barnum would very likely buy Canter- 
 bury and York, to number the stones and set them up in 
 Central Park and Boston Common, and perhaps make a 
 handsome bid for the respective archbishops, deans, vicars- 
 choral, and virgers. 
 
 We had better go to bed. 
 
 Chant on, dear bird, God's chorister, 
 
 and do thy might 
 The whole service to slug 'longing to May. 
 
 Ah, Chaucer, where now art thou, this new May night ? 
 If one could learn that, 'twere worth a pilgrimage. Good 
 night !
 
 EAMBLE THE ELEVENTH. 
 
 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 The Mersey — Irishism — Americanism — The Docks — Commerce and Credit 
 — The British Association — Mr. Huxley on Vital Germs — Mr. Tyndall on 
 Scientific Imagination — Physical and Moral Philosophy — Science and 
 Religion — Liverpool Architecture — Corn Stores — An Emigrant Ship — 
 Poor Streets— Birkenhead Park — In the Train. 
 
 IEEMEMBEE very clearly my first sight of England. I 
 was eighteen years old. Awake in my berth in the 
 steamer, the perturbation, external and internal, at an end, 
 how delightful ib was to look through the little round win- 
 dow, its bull's-eye open to a fresh morning breeze, and see, 
 gliding past, the bank of a large river with numerous clusters 
 of houses shining in the sunlight — first sight of English 
 houses and English land. Seen from deck, the broad 
 Mersey sparkled and danced, as though it had been a mere 
 holiday river, between the terraces and villas of the Birken- 
 head shore on one hand, and on the other an endless line of 
 huge warehouses with a forest of masts in front, and here 
 and there a tower or cupola rising from the dark mass of 
 houses behind. This was Liverpool. Large ships lay at 
 anchor in the stream ; others, of all sizes, sailing or steam- 
 ing, moved every way across the picture. At the great 
 landing-stage rows of steamships sent their hissing clouds 
 aloft, porters and sailors bustled and shouted, and passen- 
 gers kept landing and embarking among heaps of baggage, 
 
 225 15
 
 226 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 each intent on his own affairs, crossing gangways and shifting 
 and shoving to and fro among boys and bystanders, wliile 
 on the pavement above waited the jarvies, with uplifted 
 whip, crying ' Keb, sir, keb ! ' which I set down as my first 
 experience of the true native English accent. Everything 
 in Liverpool had the freshness of a foreign country (though 
 I came no farther than from the Irish West), and I noted 
 every point of English novelty, and found myself plunged 
 in a torrent of new experiences. 
 
 Revisiting Liverpool this autumn, having in the meantime 
 lived much in London and the south of England, it is my 
 first impression that Liverpool is rather more Irish than 
 Dublin. The huge station, slovenly and ill-kept, swarms 
 with frowsy interlopers. Porters, coachmen, little boys, 
 policemen, accost or answer you, in nine cases out of ten, 
 in a rich Emerald brogue. Milesian names cover the sign- 
 boards of shops and market-booths — Murphy and Duffy, 
 Donovan and Conellan. Maguire's * cars ' (even the word 
 cab seems to be almost supplanted) are in chief request. 
 The streets abound in barefooted, ragged children, wrinkled 
 l^eldames with dudeens, stout wenches, loosely gii't as Nora 
 Creena, balancing baskets on their heads ; unshaven men in 
 every variety of old hat lounge at corners ; and if you 
 venture into one of those byways which lead out of the 
 })est business streets, the foul gutters, the flung-out refuse 
 under foot, the dangling clothes hung aloft to smoke-dry, 
 the grimy houses, their broken panes stuffed with rags, the 
 swarm of half-naked babes of dirt and poverty about the 
 open ^oors, here suckled, here scolded by their intensely 
 slatternly mothers, the universal squalor mixed with 
 an indescribable devil-may-care-ishness, and the strong 
 flavour of brogue that pervades the air, will all remind 
 you forcibly (if you have ever been there) of that 
 famous ' Liberty ' vvhich surrounds the cathedral of St. 
 Patrick.
 
 THE GllEAT SEA-PORT. 227 
 
 The Irishism of Liverpool is a strong (in every sense) 
 and all-pervading element : its Americanism, though much 
 less marked, is sufficiently noticeable. The big ' Washing- 
 ton Hotel,' the three-horse omnibuses trundling and 
 jingling along their tramways, the United States journals at 
 the newsvendors', the not unfrequent negroes, the unmis- 
 takable Transatlantic intonation which often strikes the ear 
 in public rooms, the ' Oysters stewed in the American 
 style,' with many other hints, remind one that here is a 
 chief portal between Europe and the great West, and 
 indeed the wide world. Placards abound of the starting 
 of ships and steamers for New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
 New Orleans, the West Indies, Valparaiso, Melbourne — 
 wheresoever the salt wave washes ; and looking down 
 street after street, the vista ends in a crowd of masts and 
 riggincr. 
 
 Thus, underlying the Irish and the American elements, is 
 everywhere visible the general seafaring character of the 
 town, whereon rests the mighty line of docks and ware- 
 houses, and behind these the countless outfitting shops and 
 nautical instrument shops, shops of every kind, polyglot 
 hotels and taverns, drinking bars (with a glass barrel for 
 sign), lodging-houses, sailors' dancing-rooms; and moreover 
 the crowds of comfortable and luxurious villas that be- 
 sprinkle the country for miles around Liverpool, inhabited 
 by ship-owners, ship-insurers, corn merchants, cotton 
 brokers, emigrant agents, etc., etc., men with 'one foot on 
 sea, and one on shore,' yet to one thing constant ever — 
 namely, money-making — and therein duly successful ; with 
 the thick fringe of humbler houses in the immediate suburbs 
 wherein their clerks abide. 
 
 Mostly in the filthy heart of Liverpool itself, the squalid 
 
 byways and pestiferous alleys, dwell the dock labourers, 
 
 •arters, stevedores, all the grim hard-handed men, white 
 
 ,'ith flour, black with coals, yellow with guano, fluffy with 
 
 15 — 2
 
 228 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 cotton, dusty with maize, who ai'e hoisting and lowering, 
 heaving and shovelhng, dragging and hauhng, carrying and 
 trundhng great bales, boxes, bags, barrels, weights of iron 
 bars and pigs of lead, mountains of coal, mountains of corn, 
 amid creaking of windlasses, rattling of chain-cables, roll 
 of heavy wheels, trampling of great slow horses, and busy 
 turmoil of a throng of grim human creatures like them- 
 selves, in that endless range of waterside sheds, with 
 endless range of tall stores looking down across the long 
 narrow street full of mud and noise, and over the prison- 
 like line of the dock-wall. 
 
 Mortally oppressive is this whole region — the huge ware- 
 houses, the blank wall, the lumbering drays, the heavy 
 weights swinging in mid air : 
 
 What dreadful streets are these I tread ! 
 Bales, hogsheads, haug above my head — 
 
 boundless mud, smoke, stench, with perpetual grinding, 
 rolling, clattering. Inside the dock gates is some little 
 relief — not much : the water is usually foul, the ships lie 
 jammed together like bullocks in a market pen ; the 
 monotony of the long sheds and long walls and long paved 
 causeways, crowded and dirty, the drays and horses and 
 grim men and great burdens again at every step, the trap- 
 like and ponderous bridges, the huge stonework of the 
 docks and piers, the brutal and unfeeling bigness and ugli- 
 ness of every instance of power, the uncertainty of getting 
 out by any given route (for a bridge may be open or a gate 
 locked), the certainty that you have no choice of direction, 
 the stagnant water on this hand, the gi'ay wall on that, 
 and your sense of the dreary spaces which in any case you 
 must traverse to escape — these oppressed me years ago, 
 when I first walked in to see these famous things, and 
 oppressed me this last time still more dismally. It was 
 like a nightmare. The very memory of it is burdensome.
 
 COMMERCE AND CREDIT. 229 
 
 Such is part of the machinery of commerce on the large 
 scale, a necessary detail in the grand scheme of modern 
 civilisation, a department of life and work where a Eambler 
 with tastes for the picturesque and sentimental cannot 
 reasonably expect much pleasure. Would you have no dock 
 for the ship, no wall for the dock, no store for the cargo, no 
 hands to move it ? Or would you wish to find the long wall 
 painted in fresco, and each stevedore with a bunch of violets 
 in his buttonhole? Well, I don't feel easy in my body 
 among these grand docks, and will get out of the place as 
 soon as I can ; but neither do I feel easy in my mind. Sup- 
 pose our modern commerce, rich and mighty as it appears, 
 should prove some day to be based not on sound principles, 
 but on unsound. Suppose the human race, or any commu- 
 nity of it, to discover Credit, on which of late all trading 
 transactions are built, to be not a rock, but a sandbank ; 
 Credit, with all its bourses and banks and bills, to be in the 
 long run of maleficent effect to men in general (while 
 enabling a few lucky and astute persons to sweep enormous 
 gains into their pockets) — to be on the whole a pernicious 
 thing, diminishing happiness, increasing misery, a huge loss, 
 not a grand gain, to mankind. Commerce nowadays rests 
 mainly on an artificial system of Credit, and is almost 
 synonymous with * Speculation ; ' and Speculation in a 
 vast number of cases is something very like Gambling. 
 With all trading put on a different basis — say a tripod of 
 ready money, real securities, personal (not legal) credit — 
 I doubt if huge Liverpool and huge Manchester could 
 concentrate so much ill-organised human labour within 
 their melancholy walls, overdriven when speculation is 
 lucky, left to idleness and starvation when speculation 
 is out of luck — could gather round them so widespread 
 and close-packed, so dark and ugly a multitude of ill-fed, 
 ill-taught, filthy, diseased, • vicious, helpless, hopeless 
 human beings. And I also doubt if this concentrating
 
 230 AT LIVEIirOOL. 
 
 process, as at present effected, be a blessing to England 
 and the world. 
 
 If I were Lord Chancellor to-morrow I would frame a 
 Bill to abolish all laws for the Eecovery of Debt. Besides 
 the check upon huge, unwholesome, inorganic conglomera- 
 tions as aforesaid, a vast swarm of useless and worse than 
 useless intermediaries in commerce would be nipped and 
 suppressed by the no-recovery principle, and honest buyers 
 would get their things purer and cheaper. Now they pay 
 for the rogues, and get bad things to boot. Half the shops 
 in London would shut up — far more than half of the luxury- 
 shops, finery-shops, bauble-shops ; and those that remained 
 would still perhaps be too many. It is a struggle for 
 existence among the general body of shopkeepers now, spun 
 out in the individual cases by credit received and credit 
 given (debts to come in by-and-by, bills that may be 
 renewed for three months longer), and the stragglers clutch- 
 ing in their bitter anxiety at all possible ' tricks of trade,' 
 almost always including adulteration, and very often unjust 
 charges and false weights and measures beside. Most of 
 these are non-producers ; their sole business is transmission, 
 and for this, I repeat, there are far too many ; and they do 
 it dishonestly and expensively — give us worse things at 
 higher cost. 
 
 I don't suppose that a ready-money system would reform 
 all the evils of the mercantile and shopkeeping world ; but I 
 do believe it would cut across many dishonesties, dry up a 
 good deal of waste, and help to make life, national and 
 individual, more wholesome. 
 
 The inconveniences would prove to be mainly imaginary. 
 You do not go to a railway station without your fare in your 
 pocket. If you have but a third-class fare, you do not ask 
 for a second or a first-class ticket. That is the natural and 
 wholesome arrangement, and applicable to every affair of 
 buying and selling. The number or magnitude of the trans-
 
 NO RECOVERY OF DEBT. 231 
 
 actions makes no real difference : if you are legitimately 
 engaged in large transactions, you will find or soon make 
 proportionate means and conveniences for buying and pay- 
 ing as you go. Neither would trust {personal trust) fail, 
 within proper limits, — which limits, however, would be 
 something very different from the present undefined, almost 
 boundless, area of ' Credit,' in whose soil and climate 
 Speculations and Peculations, upas-trees and poison-fungi, 
 do rankly grow and flourish, to the great moral and physical 
 detriment of mankind. 
 
 Contracts resting on real securities would be dealt with by 
 the law as such ; and all bond fide business would soon 
 adjust itself and go on without difficulty. Certainly mala 
 fide business would be checked, and that large department 
 of trade much discouraged which is only a kind of gambling ; 
 which elbows fair trading out of the field ; which produces 
 so many compositions with creditors, and ever and anon 
 culminates in a ' commercial crisis,' in which multitudes 
 of little people suffer who had no part in the ' specu- 
 lations,' while the gamblers very usually set up again ; 
 and then perhaps as ' trade revives,' they have a run of 
 luck, and all goes merrily forward — till the next crisis. 
 Details I v/ill leave to the Lord Chancellor of the future 
 to work out. 
 
 Meanwhile, here is the huge town — Hibernico-American- 
 English Liverpool, seafaring, rough, busy, dirty, wealthy. 
 Hither converge in ceaseless streams the cotton of America, 
 India, Egypt, the wool of the Australian plains, the 
 elephants' tusks and palm oil of African forests, the 
 spermaceti of Arctic seas, the grain from the shores of 
 Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Elbe, Loire, Danube, Vistula, 
 and many another stream, the hides of South America, the 
 sugar, copper, tobacco, rice, timber, guano, etc., of every 
 land the sun's eye looks upon. Hence radiate to all quai'ters
 
 232 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 of the globe, bales of cotton goods, linen, woollen, bulks of 
 machinery, inexhaustible leather and hardware, salt and 
 soap, coals and iron, copper and tin. 
 
 Liverpool at this time, busy as she seems, complains of 
 bad times. The docks are full of ships — post horses in 
 stable, eating their heads off. Nevertheless, Liverpool, 
 portal and caravanserai of the human race, is thronged with 
 visitors and passers-through. Americans who have been 
 seeing Europe, now homeward-bound in the fall, swarm at 
 all hotels, waiting for their steam-packets ; and, moreover, 
 the British Association is this year (1870) holding its seven- 
 day congress in the Town of Ships. 
 
 Its presence makes a gala week in such a towT^i as Norwich 
 or Bath. Exeter last year was like a house made ready for 
 guests, and busied in entertaining them. But the Scientific 
 Congress, with its sections and savants and skirmishers, 
 hardly quickens the pulse of a big, busy place like Liver- 
 pool. Ask your way to the Eeception Eoom, your answer 
 may be a shake of the head. The President himself pushes 
 unnoticed through the hasty crowds of Lime Street or Bold 
 Street, and his likeness has not supplanted Bismarck or the 
 fallen Emperor at the photograph shops. But this apathy 
 by no means extended to the hospitalities of Liverpool, 
 civic and private ; and the Town itself gradually became 
 aware, in some degree, of the Association, under the influ- 
 ence of the long daily reports and comments of the local 
 newspapers, and the splendid soirees at St. George's Hall, 
 the Free Library and Museum, the Philharmonic Rooms, 
 and his Worship the Mayor's two receptions at the Town 
 Hall, embellished with a great show of modern pictures, lent 
 by people round about. I should not be surprised to hear 
 that Lancashire buys more modern pictures than any three 
 other comities. Professor Huxley is President this year ; 
 his address was on the subject of 'vital germs.' Over and 
 above the regular business of the meeting, the Association
 
 THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 233 
 
 arranges to have two or three lectiu-es of a popular or semi- 
 popular character. This time the chief of these was given 
 by Professor Tyndall to a very large audience in the 
 Philharmonic Hall. It was long and without experiments, 
 and more fit to be read at home than listened to amid the 
 difficulties of a large public assembly. Still it is always 
 something to see a man of note in the flesh, and hear his 
 living voice ; and this interest, over and above that of the 
 topic and treatment, secured general attention for the best 
 part of two hours. With clearness and originality, in an 
 easy voice agreeing with his elastic bearing (he has light- 
 ness without levity — a kind of agile earnestness, ^o to 
 say), the Professor threw forth hint after hint on the 
 nature of scientific investigation, and on the directions 
 which it has taken in our own time (illustrating mainly 
 from the study of Light), and connected all into a firm 
 chain of thought. 
 
 Drawing towards the end of his discourse, the lecturer 
 spoke of the well-known nebular hypothesis — fiery mist con- 
 densing into suns, which throw off planets. When first 
 detached from the sun, ' life, as we understand it, could 
 hardly have been present on the earth. How, then, did it 
 come there ? ' Life (he said towards the end of his dis- 
 course, with a semi-apologetic reference to the English 
 Clergy) was either ' potentially present in matter when in the 
 nebulous form, and was unfolded from it by way of natural 
 development, or it is a principle inserted into matter at a 
 later date.' In brief, the first is the scientific, the second 
 the theologic view ; and those who hold the second call the 
 first degrading, debasing, demoralising, destructive — all 
 kinds of terrible names. 
 
 Now, whether or not ' emotion, intellect, will ' were once 
 ' latent in a fiery cloud,' I must own seems to me, P. 
 Walker (whom it concerns as much as another), a question 
 which, however interesting speculatively, is not of the
 
 234 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 slightest practical importance. Man is the highest being we 
 know of. He is, somehow or other, what we term a sxDiritual 
 being, but this we cannot explain or define. His under- 
 standing, imagination, judgment, aesthetic sense, moral 
 instinct, will, personal consciousness are thoroughly real 
 and effective manifestations of his nature ; and it is by and 
 in them that human life, in its truly comprehensive sense, 
 really is. Its connection with atoms or fiery clouds, what- 
 ever mental steps may be taken in the direction of esta^blish- 
 ing it (and the complete journey, judging by all experience 
 and all intuition, is for ever impossible to us) — that seeming, 
 and possibly real connection is, I repeat, of no practical 
 importance in any way. "Whether we think of man at first 
 as moulded at once out of clay, like a sculptor's figure, or 
 developed gradually from a fiery cloud, how can it make any 
 difference as to our place in the universe, our powers, our 
 duties, our prospects ? People are curious just now about 
 protoplasm, development, spontaneous generation, and so 
 forth ; first, on account of the scientific novelty of some of 
 the views put forth, and then, I suppose, because they 
 vaguely expect some new light upon the nature of the 
 universe and the duby and the destiny of man. They had 
 better give up every shadow of such expectation for good 
 and all. 
 
 The Evolution hypothesis (our Man of Science con- 
 fessed) ' does not solve — it does not profess to solve — the 
 ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in fact, 
 tliat mystery untouched. Its really philosophical defen- 
 ders best know that questions offer themselves to thought 
 which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency 
 to solve.' 
 
 Often, in the pauses of reflection, the scientific inves- 
 tigator finds himself overshadowed with awe — is aware of 
 ' a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but 
 which he can neither analyse nor comprehend.'
 
 JP^HAT IS 'A PHILOSOPHER'? 233 
 
 So ended our Professor, rising for a moment into that 
 region which Immanuel Kant declared to be ' above all other 
 spheres for the operations of reason,' and indeed the only 
 philosophy deserving to be so called. The mathematician, 
 the natural, philosopher, and the logician (says Kant) are 
 merely artists, engaged in formalising and arranging concep- 
 tions ; they cannot be termed philosophers. They but 
 furnish means. In view of the complete systematic unity 
 of reason, there can only be one ultimate end of all the 
 operations of the mind. To this all other aims are subor- 
 dinate, and nothing more than means for its attainment. 
 This ultimate end is the destination of man, and the 
 philosophy which relates to it is termed Moral Philo- 
 sophy. The superior position (he adds) occupied by moral 
 philosophy, above all other spheres for the operations of 
 reason, shows why the ancients always included the idea 
 of moralist in that of philosopher. ' Even still, we call 
 a man w^ho appears to have the power of self-government, 
 even though his knowledge may be very limited, by the 
 name of philosopher.'^ These are practical and preg- 
 nant words of the old German, and worth meditating 
 upon. 
 
 The mysteries of man's spiritual life, science has ' no 
 tendency to solve.' Nay, far short of this our knowledge 
 stops — even her w^ngs of imagination fail her in the inner 
 region of physical nature's profounder subtleties. We can 
 trace sound-waves and light-waves into the auditory and 
 optic nerves ; but when we ask how this force is translated 
 into the sensations of hearing and of seeing, Imagination 
 itself does nothing for us — gives no least hint of help. We 
 examine in every case, not nature itself, but our conceptions 
 of nature ; and the very link which connects us as thinkers 
 with the world, as we conceive it in thought, is utterly 
 beyond our cognition. Physical science attempts to explain 
 
 ^ Krltik dcr Jlcincn ]'enni»ft. (Second edition, Last chapter but one).
 
 236 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 by formulae certain facts given by human consciousness, and 
 the explanations are no more than a tracing of connections. 
 The least approach to a discovery of origins has never been 
 made. Endless curiosity and investigation are proper to 
 man. So also are awe, and reverence, and humility. It was 
 Newton w^ho compared himself to a child picking up pebbles 
 on the shore of the great sea of Truth ; and in this he only 
 referred, I think, to the extent of compreheyisihle truth, 
 beyond which lie the measureless regions of truth incom- 
 prehensible to man. 
 
 Theories of Atoms and Motion, Evolution, Natural 
 Selection, etc. ; from these vantage points, carefully built 
 up of observation and reasoning, we get wonderful 
 glimpses into the workings of wide physical nature in i':s 
 relations to our intellect. True conceptions of cause and 
 effect we also glean here and there, some of them appli- 
 cable most beneficially to the external conditions of our 
 earthly existence. As to the nature of human life, all 
 the ac3umulated science of mankind up to this hour has 
 not one word to say. 
 
 Let us take heart, then, brethren — do our work, gather 
 knowledge, tell truth, say our prayers, be kind and helpful 
 to each other, enjoy landscapes and flowers, books and 
 pictures, music and poetry, and fear no protoplasmic philo- 
 sophies. For my part I believe neither Huxley nor Darwin 
 will hurt a hair of our heads. 
 
 The work of Modern Science as regards the mixture of 
 moral philosophy and mythology which goes by the name 
 of religion has been one with that of historical and literary 
 criticism — demolition ; troublesome and vexatious but ne- 
 cessary work, already we hope almost complete. What 
 remains is that the attained results be publicly and practi- 
 cally recognised, and that life, social and national, should 
 adapt itself to admitted facts, getting rid of a huge lumber 
 of individual and incorporated obstructiveness. After this
 
 ARCHITECTURE. 237 
 
 we may at length hope for some constructive work on a large 
 scale. Obstruction — Destruction — Construction. May the 
 era of Construction soon arrive ! 
 
 "We cannot roam for ever through a boundless universe 
 of vibrating atoms. The human soul (whatever the 
 human soul may be — ' soul ' is one of the faint efforts of 
 language in the region of the inexpressible) is as little to 
 be satisfied with ' a vibrating atom ' as with ' a multiple 
 proportion.' 
 
 What boots it to send our thoughts wandering into 
 the empty wilderness of a material world ? What wisdom 
 or comfort bring we back into our inner life? Socrates 
 (as Aulus Gellius reports) used very frequently to repeat, 
 with an application of his own, a certain line from the 
 Odyssey : ^ 
 
 6tti Toi iv fxeyvdpoLcri KaKov t dyadvv re rervKrai. 
 The evil and the good that have befallen in thy own house. 
 
 Mankind must sooner or later, I am deeply convinced, 
 come back to a simple faith and trust — personal trust in a 
 personal Ruler of us and all things ; finding Him first 
 within, not without. 
 
 Out of the brilliant Hall we pass again into the dirty 
 labyrinthine streets of this windy, tarry, briny Town of 
 Ships, full everywhere of the indescribable seaport briskness 
 and shabbiness on a great scale. In a moment of ill- 
 humour I was inclined to describe it thus to a Londoner : 
 Take Thames Street and the Docks, set Islington behind 
 them, with here and there some huge gray stone building of 
 brutal bulk ; put in a great deal of dirt and clatter and 
 Irish brogue, and make the natives say ' oop ' for ' up,' 
 and you have some notion of Liverpool. Well, tliis would 
 not be a fair description, I admit. The Mersey with its 
 
 'iv. 392.
 
 238 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 shipping is grand in its own way. So in its w&y (ludicrously 
 unsuitable as it is to the place, the purpose, and the climate) 
 is that vast Greek temple called St. George's Hall. The 
 region of the Exchange has a busy and wealthy aspect of 
 civic importance, befitting one of the commercial centres of 
 the globe. Considered architecturally, however, the Ex- 
 change buildings give little delight, and perhaps the new 
 part of the quadrangle is the very worst thing I have yet 
 seen in modern architecture, the most pretentiously mean — : 
 true cork-cutter's Eenaissance. The old part is stately in 
 comparison. The central monument with its black figures 
 in chains, might once have well seemed an allegory of Liver- 
 pool Commerce supported by Negro Slavery. It used to be 
 said that every brick in the town was cemented with human 
 olood. To come back to our own day, what opportunities 
 .re thrown away, what sums of money misspent every year, 
 n our modern architectural exploits ! Look once more at 
 his new Eailway Station and Hotel in Lime Street, and 
 vonder by what ingenuity of stupidity so huge an edifice, of 
 uch costly materials and workmanship — fine yellow stone 
 ut and fitted to perfection — is contrived to look paltry and 
 ansubstantial. 
 
 After these pretentious failures, there is comfort to the 
 eye in the great corn stores, based on iron pillars of Egyp- 
 tian girth, rising in storey after storey of grain-lofts, broad, 
 lofty, and airy, and enclosing three sides of the docks in 
 which their ships lie quiet after thousands of miles of stormy 
 water, sending grain, grown in California, Canada, or on 
 the shores of the Danube, up an ' American lift,' from the 
 hold to the top loft, whence it flows in rivers of maize, rivers 
 of wheat, on endless horizontal bands, about eighteen inches 
 wide, worked by hydraulic power, to every part of the stores. 
 In this great corn warehouse, the greatest in the world, they 
 say, Liverpool commerce showed itself in its most pleasing
 
 AN EMIGRANT SHIP. 239 
 
 aspect. It was dealing with the first of bodily necessaries, 
 man's bread of life ; and though the processes (of unlading, 
 cleaning, transferring, etc.) were on a great scale, they were 
 managed with so much ingenuity and simplicity combined, 
 worked so smoothly to these ends with a minimum of dust 
 and noise, as to give one a comfortable and even pleasurable 
 sense of perfect adaptation, such as one finds in Nature's 
 own doings. Neither was there here any hint of cheating 
 — a suspicion, alas ! which the known usages of commerce 
 so often infuse. What the baker does, is done outside these 
 walls. If corn-dealers ever mix good corn with worse — 
 avaunt ! Thou canst not say these do it ! No : but it is 
 done, not seldom. 
 
 In another dock I found the ' Great Britain,' at first unlucky 
 in Dundrum Bay, lucky since in many voyages, and now 
 preparing for another, to carry half across the globe her 750 
 passengers and 150 sailors, and hoping to come to anchor 
 under the warm summer sky of Melbourne harbour a month 
 at least before Christmas. Strange reading our ' Christmas 
 books ' and picture-papers must be to an Anglo-Australian 
 child. And then I went with a Government official on board 
 the ' Holland,' at anchor in the river, just starting for New 
 York, and saw the mustering of her emigrants. She can 
 carry 1,250 full-grown passengers, all of one class. This 
 time she had much cargo, and only 300 passengers, of whom 
 many were Swedes and Norwegians, who reach England by 
 way of Hull. The sturdy figures, and homely, honest, 
 flaxen-haired faces of the Scandinavians, were pleasant to 
 see, telling of steady, unambitious industry and domestic 
 faith. Yet here is the stout miner of Fahlun, or boatman 
 of Saltenfiord, or farm-worker of Fossdal, in his big boots 
 md fur cap, with his flaxen-haired wife, and flaxen-haired 
 oys in woollen night-caps, and girls with long rat-tail plaits 
 f flaxen hair, and not seldom with an old wrinkled grand-
 
 240 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 mother whose once flaxen hair is now snow-white, all bound 
 to the new hopes, new labours, and new fortunes of the 
 Great Eepublic, where land is as yet of less value than men 
 and women. Now and again a slim Norse jj/V/e steps shyly 
 up to the inspector, answering to her name, and hurries past 
 with glad smile to join the crowd ' for'ad ' who stand watch- 
 ing those ' aft ' that have still to pass muster. The Govern- 
 ment doctor stops any one who has symptoms of fever, small- 
 pox, measles, etc., and the master of the ship takes care to 
 carry no one whom the American authorities might turn 
 back to the Old World as obviously unable to earn a living. 
 All on board to-day passed with little question, save a boy 
 about four years old, who, with his parents and two younger 
 children, was forced to wait till all the others were disposed 
 of. The child was heavy-eyed, and suspected of measles. 
 The poor father and mother — they were from South Wales, 
 and seemed scarcely able to speak a word of English — sat 
 very doleful in fear of being turned back on the threshold to 
 which they had no doubt painfully struggled ; and it was a 
 great relief at last when the doctor, after turning up the 
 boy's eyelids with his thumb, said, carelessly, ' That'll do — 
 pass on.' 
 
 I hear there are no few Welsh in the United States, 
 and they often live grouped together, and continue to 
 speak their old Kymric in that conglomerate of races and 
 nationalities. There were few Irish emigrants in the 
 ' Holland,' and Liverpool is no longer so much their transit 
 port as it used to be, for many of the Liverpool passenger 
 steamers to the States call either at Cork or Derry. The 
 arrangements of the ship seemed very good as to berths, 
 cooking, hospital accommodation, etc., except that un- 
 married women and married couples are placed in the same 
 division of the ship — a plan, the Government inspector 
 agreed with me, not free from objection. Away slid our 
 steam tender, and soon I saw the big ship steadily following
 
 FOUL STREETS. 241 
 
 her busy, puffing tug-boat down river, her deck crowded 
 with gazing passengers. 
 
 Less pleasant than the river experience w^as a walk of 
 several hours through some of the worst and poorest parts 
 of the town of Liverpool — Scotland Koad, Vauxhall Eoad, 
 and their cross-ways. The names on the corners were sug- 
 gestive of all pleasant things : the streets of Meadow, Eose, 
 Arden, Paradise, and then of Chaucer, of Ben Jonson, of 
 Addison (with its ' Morning Star ' whisky shop) — irony of 
 nomenclature ! What foul vistas are these crowded sti^eets ? 
 The garments, gwasi- washed, which dangle overhead on 
 clothes-lines stretched across, draw one's eyes upward, and 
 lo, far above the chimneys, through the veil of smoke, is 
 evidence of a cloudless blue sky, filled with sunshine and 
 sweet air. Below, all is squalor and stifle, rags and drunken- 
 ness, an atmosphere thick with fever. Many Irish are here. 
 At one dirty corner I came on the Church of St. Joseph, and 
 I have no doubt the priests do their appointed functions 
 diligently and fearlessly. Elsewhere was a dirty crowd 
 round a dirty door, with two dirty w^omen talking vehemently 
 to a policeman, and another policeman bearing down leisurely 
 on the scene of action. The shops were mostly for drink, cheap 
 provisions, and cheap haberdashery, with here and there a 
 petty newsvendor's, in which the ' Flag of Ireland ' kept 
 company with ' Eeynolds' and sheets of comic songs. 
 A great many police cases, another constable told me, 
 come from this quarter, ' but nothing very bad mostly ' 
 (he added with toleration) — ' only drunkenness and 
 assault.' The Hospitals and other charitable establish- 
 ments of Liverpool are liberally and well managed, I 
 believe. I visited the General Infii'mary and the Nurses' 
 Home connected with it, and found them apparently 
 models in their kind. But alas ! here in Meadow Street 
 and Paradise Street are the roots of the evils, ever germi- 
 nating and spreading. 
 
 16
 
 242 AT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 After this one wants a little fresh air, so away again to 
 the landing-stage and across the broad Mersey, and by a 
 mile or two of tramway to Birkenhead Park, w^hose smooth- 
 winding bowery w^alks and clear pools, and trees that now 
 lattice a red and gold sunset — the seeming threshold of a 
 purer world — ^have few this evening besides myself to' enjoy 
 their peaceful beauty. Returning after dusk, the ferry 
 steamer shows a striking night-picture of the river, 
 dotted with interminable lamps stretching eastward and 
 westward, ships at anchor with their lights dimly reflected 
 in the dark stream, and over Liverpool a lurid gleaming 
 arch, Aurora Urbana, the gaseous halo crowning Modern 
 Civilization. 
 
 Next day the triumphal car of that Power carried 
 me away from the great Seaport, for whose present 
 condition the lonely bird by the water brink, and 'Dens 
 nobis hcec otia fecit,'' are by no means the most fitting crest 
 and motto. 
 
 River, ships, docks, landing-stages, the big, murky town, 
 with its struggling and striving, business and wealth, igno- 
 rance, disease, and vice, charities and hospitals and free 
 libraries, vile and dark human swarms, noble and generous 
 lives — all these, now that visible Liverpool also is gliding 
 away from me into a distance of space and time, shape 
 themselves into one memorial impression, sombre and 
 pathetic. 
 
 And we have sped our wondrous course 
 
 Athwart a busy, peaceful land, 
 Subdued by long and painful force 
 Of planning head and plodding hand. 
 How much by labour can 
 Poor feeble, timid man ! 
 
 I am in the midst of another busy scene of England's 
 daily life, a huge inland manufacturing town. Poor laborious 
 generations of feeble men, blindly working on from day to
 
 MODERN CIVILIZATION. 243 
 
 day, what seek ye ? what find ye ? Great and wonderful 
 are the visible effects of your persistent labours : are you 
 steadily increasing the value and happiness of all human 
 existence ? 
 
 END OF VOL I.
 
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