t the mouth of Bude
haven, and there pose as a mermaid; which he did to the prolonged
bewilderment of the countryfolk. He was educated at Liskeard,
Cheltenham, and Oxford; coming to Morwenstow in 1834 after having held
the curacy of North Tamerton. He had already married a lady who was
twenty years older than himself--a marriage of the deepest lasting
affection. His second marriage, in his old age, was to a lady forty
years his junior; but by this time the poet's spirit had been broken
by solitude, grief, failure to win literary success, and by the
terrible scenes of shipwreck and death that often distracted him. He
died in 1875, having been received into the Romish Church a few hours
before his death; and the remains were laid in Plymouth Cemetery. On
his tombstone is a line from his own beautiful poem, "The Quest of the
Sangraal"--

"I would not be forgotten in this land."

There is now an elaborate memorial window in Morwenstow Church,
unveiled in 1904. The poet has not been forgotten in this land, nor is
he likely to be. He has impressed himself so vividly on the district
that was long his home, that we may now as justly speak of the Hawker
country as we do of the Scott or the Wordsworth country. The work was
accomplished even more by the man's personality than by his writings.
If only these writings had been preserved he would not pass to
posterity quite as fully as he merited; only a portion of the man
would survive. But there was the tradition of the man himself,
assisted by some inadequate memoirs; and now we have one of the most
charming biographies of recent times to bring him before us. He was
not only poet and essayist; he was cleric and mystic, preacher,
prophet, symbolist, philanthropist--some may add reactionary. His life
was permeated with Catholic doctrine and colour. When he passed, in
his closing hours, to a sister communion, the step was a natural and
easy one, however unnecessary some of us may think it to have been. He
loved the Church of England devotedly and unfailingly; but he always
looked upon her as the Old Church, rather than as a reformed body; and
to his unquestioning mind a few extra dogmas would never have
presented any difficulty. It was disbelief, doubt, that he abhorred.
Like Sir Thomas Browne, he was greedy for more mysteries, more
marvels, more sublimities for unhesitating acceptance. He was always
in sympathy both with the Roman and the early Greek Churches, and
sometimes in