THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW.*

THERE are some men of simple homespun character whom we know very quickly, and thereafter by whom we are never surprised. Such men—of whom Hawker, the Vicar of

Morwenstow, was one—need very brief biographies ; but, as in the present case, they very often get very long ones. Where a man of mark has odd twists and corners and unexpectednesses we want a full record, lest we miss perhaps the most interest- ing recess of all; but where all is plain a little well chosen is as indicative as much, and in spite of very many new pages and patient elaboration, we are constrained still to consider

Mr. Baring-Gould's slender Memoir of Hawker a better book than the stout and weighty volume before Hs. According to Mr. Byles, Mr. Baring-Gould often blunders, and furthermore has committed that most irritating fault of not embodying in his last edition the corrections of blunders; and yet the

spirit of Hawker, the man himself, is, we think, more visible, more vital, in his little monograph than here. Just as woods cannot be seen for trees, so biographees often are obscured by biography. There are far too many letters in Mr. Byles's work,—one after another, one after another, all so much alike. From a greater mind such measure would be welcome enough ; but Hawker's was not a great mind so much as an honest, independent, forthright mind. His value was in his relation to life far more than in his pen. He was a parson and farmer first, a shepherd of his flock ; a desultory literary man at long distance afterwards. Hence it is what he did and said that interests us infinitely more than what he wrote to this friend and that.

We have extracted from the six hundred and fifty-nine pages of Mr. Byles's labour of love a few passages which seem to us to present Hawker very vividly, and to be important memoranda for the readers of the letters to keep before them :—

" The Vicar of Morwenstow was a tall and strongly built man, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. His voice was rich and powerful. He could be heard all over his globe, and would sometimes carry on a conversation with his neighbours at a farm across the valley. Like many other poets, ho had no ear for music, and literature appealed to him far more than the other arts. His dress was unconventional and picturesque. He absolutely declined to follow the fashions of ' the cloth,' and would not wear anything black. His usual garb, in earlier years, was a brown cassock. A blushing brown,' he said, was the hue of our Lady's hair, as typified in the stem of the maiden-hair fern.' In this cassock he even managed to clamber up and down the cliffs. Later it was exchanged for a long coat of purple shade. Instead of a waistcoat, he wore a fisherman's blue jersey, in token that he was called to be a fisher of mon. A small red cross was woven in the side, to mark the entrance of 'the centurion's cruel spear.' I'heae jerseys were knitted for him by a fisherman's wife at Clovelly. A broad carpenter's. pencil (chosen in reference to the Carpenter of Nazareth) usually dangled from his button-hole. Round his neck he wore a limp white cravat : ho could never endure a stiff collar. Ho carried a cross-handled walking stick, somewhat resembling a wooden sword, which he called his pastoral staff.' Hessian boots and a wide-awake beaver hat completed his out-of-door equipment. Once, at a clerical meeting, when some of his brother rascals,' as he called them, commented on the strangeness of his attire, he replied At all events, brethren, you will allow me to remark that I don't make myself look like a waiter out-of-place, or an unemployed undertaker, and that I do scrupulously abide by the injunctions of the 74th canon of 1603.' On another occa- sion, in Barnstaple, he found a waggonette full of clergy, most of whom he knew, starting off to a visitation. 'I congratulate you,' be said, on the funereal appearance of your hearse.' Hawker's eccentricity of dress extended also to other personal matters. It seemed as though he were constitutionally incapable of doing things like other men. Possibly, to some extent, he aimed at peculiarity. Though simple and abstemious in his habits, he was fastidious in certain minor luxuries such as tea, tobacco, and stationery.. For such articles he always wrote direct to the heads of the most famous firms. For tea he paid 5s. 4d. per lb. at Twining's. He did not take to smoking until late in life, but when he did begin be smoked heavily. His tobacco was pure Latakia, and his pipes short, large-bowled clays. He would take a basketful, ready-filled, to his cliff but. His notepaper, thick and parchment-like, and ruled with faint red lines, was specially made for him by Messrs. De La Rue, who undertook not to supply the same to anybody else."

"He was very restless and impatient. At dinner, instead of ringing a bell, he would walk out and shout for the maidens by name, and if they didn't come instantly he would fume about, exclaiming, Not a soul in the place. All gone out, as usual.' Once,' says a friend, 'when we were preparing to leave the house, the stableman was not to be found, so we /mit to the horse ourselves. Mr. Hawker was in a fury, and shouted up and down for John. John appeared, and said he had been doing something in the field. "It's a lie !" shouted the Vicar, but his anger was all over in a moment, and he and John as friendly as ever. His servants understood him and took no offence."

"When his men were working in the field, the Vicar would take them out a bottle of gin. As he poured out for each man, he would stand between him and the wind, so that he might take it comfortably. The Vicar himself rarely touched spirits. It is now near twelve years,' he writes in 1861, since I swallowed fermented fluids of any sort. A man is said to be a fool or a physician at forty. I was both. Said Dr. Budd, "Your irritable brain cannot bear one glass of wine." My answer was, "It is no sacrifice. I will taste no more." Nor have I since.' He was not always, perhaps, judicious in serving out liquor to his men."

" An amusing story is told by the Vicar's sister with reference

to his sermons. When first ordained,' she writes, Robert always preached from manuscript, so that a large number of sermons had collected, and he had them burnt. A clergyman told him be ought to be ashamed of himself ; how did he know but that they might have done good to many had they been printed ? His answer was, "My dear C., I had all the ashes spread over a turnip field, and I assure you there was not a single turnip more in that field than in any other.""

" One day he was showing the church to a stranger who had just been taking refreshments at the Vicarage. As they were leaving the church the visitor put his hat on before he reached the door. The Vicar, from behind, promptly knocked it off. Thinking it was done by accident, the stranger replaced his hat, whereupon the Vicar knocked it off again A certain Church Dignitary had said that the Virgin was the mother of other children besides Jesus. 'Blaspheming dog ! ' exclaimed Hawker, when he heard of this; 'he had better not come here, for I shall not be at home."

"About nine I was called in by a messenger. 'A corpse found !' Where ?" At Marshland Mouth, washed in just where the wreck came ashore : we have left him, Sir, not touched till you came, as you told us.' Away on Oony. When I arrived it was a singular scene. A bright, calm, joyous Summer or Spring day. The.Sea calm. The wind gone down. A cluster of Rocks, with Men seated round, and in their midst on his back as tho' asleep a young man about 18 or 19, a little bruised about the face by the rocks but otherwise a fine calm look. I removed my hat in the presence of the dead, and thanked the men. Then I had a temporary bier prepared of pieces of wood, and Four men took him up, and followed me up from the rocks towards the road, and so home. I preceded them when I approached the house, to prepare the usual place wherein I have laid out and shrouded and coffinecl now four and twenty dead Sailors."

Now here we have the materials of a strong and interesting figure, which are, however, sadly watered down by the masses of correspondence which Mr. Byles prints. If only they could have been amplified and fortified, and yet kept bright and noticeable throughout, the book would have been a fine achievement, perhaps a deathless achievement. As it is, taken as a whole, we are forced to call it dull, and we are disposed to continue to find our best Hawker reading in Mr. Baring- Gould's Memoir and the sturdy Vicar's own Footprints and Cornish Ballads.

One of the most interesting chapters contains an account, recently discovered, from Hawker's pen, of a visit paid to him by Tennyson in June, 1848. We quote a large portion of this valuable document :— " It was in the month of June 1848 that any Brother-in-law John Dinham arrived at Morwenstow with a very fine-looking Man whom he had been called in to attend professionally at Bude for an injury in the knee from a Fall. He said that the Stranger —for he was unaware of his Name—had made earnest inquiries about myself—if easy of access, affable, Szc., (1:c., to all which he had given him satisfactory replies. I found my guest at his entrance.a tall swarthy Spanish-looking man, with an eye like a sword. He sate down and we conversed. I at once found myself with no common mind. All poetry in particular he seemed to use like household words, and as chance led to the mention of Homer's picture of night he gave at once a rendering simple and fine. When the Sky is broken up and the myriad Stars roll down, and the Shepherd's heart is glad.' It struck me that the trite translation was about the reverse motion of this. We then talked about Cornwall and King Arthur, my themes, and I quoted Tennyson's fine acct. of the restoration of Excalibur to the Lake. Just then he said, How can you live here thus alone ? you don't seem to have any fit companions around you.' My answer was another verse, from Locksley Hall'— . I to herd with narrow foreheads vacant of our glorious gains,

Like a Beast with lower pleasures, like a Beast with lower pains.'

Why that Man,' said he, seems to be your favourite Author? Not mine only but England's,' answered I. Just at this time J. Dinham went away, and I proposed to shew my unknown friend the shore. But before we left the room he said, Do you know my name ?' I said, No, I have not even a guess.' 'Do you wish to know it ? " I don't much care—" that which we call a rose," etc." Well, then,' said he, my name is Tennyson!" What I' said I, the Tennyson ? " What do you mean by the Tennyson ? I am Alfred Tennyson, who wrote "Locksley Hall," which you seem to know by heart.' So we grasped hands, and "rile Shepherd's heart was glad.' questioned him about his mode of composition in this so wandering life. He said he usually made about ten lines every day, multi- tudes of which were never written down, and so were lost for ever. I strongly chode with him for this. By and .bye we went back to the house to dine. He said his chief reliance for bodily force was on Wine, and I should conceive he yielded to the conqueror of Ariadne ever and anon The bard is a handsome well-formed man and tall, more like a Spaniard than an Englishman—black, long elfiocks all round his face, mid which his eyes not only shine but glare. His garments loose and full, such as Bard beseems, and over all a large dark Spanish cloak. He speaks the languages both old and new, and has manifestly a most bibliothee memory. His voice is very deep, tuneful and slow—an organ, not a breath. His temper, which I tried, seemed very calm—his spirits very low. When I quoted 'My May of Life,' and again, • 0 never more on me,' etc., he said they too were his haunting words. He went next day to the Castle of his hero King, and traced, I think, the route I had marked out for him by the Lower Sea. But I saw him no more; it may be, shall not greet him in the flesh again. Still it is to me a great memorial day in this my solitary place to have heard the voice and seen the form of Alfred Tennyson."

It is a pity, we think, that Mr. Byles did not include here and there a few of Hawker's most characteristic poems. It is not as if they were in every one's hands. We believe in

making the biographies of minor writers contain also their most representative work. Mr. Byles, although he enters at some length into the question of the origin of Hawker's Trelawny ballad, does not even print those verses. He gives, however, some epigrams and a few passages from Hawker's notebooks, of which this is the most beautiful :—

" Birds.—They were first seen in the soft Sunlight of the fifth day, and as they floated through the silent air with their silver plumage and feathers like Gold, the Angels said to one another, 'Behold what beautiful images of the Mind of God have come forth with wings.'"