residence out of the
question, Dr. Turton recommended that his patient should establish
himself without delay in Devonshire.

When my father communicated this impending change in his life to Wolcot,
the modern Skelton shook his head. He did not believe that his friend
was in a consumption, but being a Devonshire man, and loving very much
his native province, he highly approved of the remedy. He gave my father
several letters of introduction to persons of consideration at Exeter;
among others, one whom he justly described as a poet and a physician,
and the best of men, the late Dr. Hugh Downman. Provincial cities very
often enjoy a transient term of intellectual distinction. An eminent man
often collects around him congenial spirits, and the power of
association sometimes produces distant effects which even an individual,
however gifted, could scarcely have anticipated. A combination of
circumstances had made at this time Exeter a literary metropolis. A
number of distinguished men flourished there at the same moment: some of
their names are even now remembered. Jackson of Exeter still survives as
a native composer of original genius. He was also an author of high
aesthetical speculation. The heroic poems of Hole are forgotten, but his
essay on the Arabian Nights is still a cherished volume of elegant and
learned criticism. Hayter was the classic antiquary who first discovered
the art of unrolling the MSS. of Herculaneum. There were many others,
noisier and more bustling, who are now forgotten, though they in some
degree influenced the literary opinion of their time. It was said, and I
believe truly, that the two principal, if not sole, organs of periodical
criticism at that time, I think the "Critical Review" and the "Monthly
Review," were principally supported by Exeter contributions. No doubt
this circumstance may account for a great deal of mutual praise and
sympathetic opinion on literary subjects, which, by a convenient
arrangement, appeared in the pages of publications otherwise professing
contrary opinions on all others. Exeter had then even a learned society
which published its Transactions.

With such companions, by whom he was received with a kindness and
hospitality which to the last he often dwelt on, it may easily be
supposed that the banishment of my father from the delights of literary
London was not as productive a source of gloom as the exile of Ovid to
the savage Pontus, even if it had not been his ha