CHAPTER VIII.

The Vicar of Morwenstow as a Poet. - His Epigrams. · "The Carol of the Pruss."-"Down with the Church."—"The Quest of the Sangreal." -Editions of his Poems. - Ballads. -"The Song of the Western Men." "The Cornish Mother's Lament." "A Thought." - Churchyards.

WHEN the vicar of Morwenstow liked, he could fire off a pungent epigram. Many of these productions exist; but, as most of them apply to persons or events with whom or with which the general reader has no acquaintance, it is not necessary to quote them. Some also are too keenly sharpened to bear publication.

The Hon. Newton Fellowes1 canvassed for North Devon, at the time when the surplice controversy was at its height, and went before the electors as the champion of Protestantism, and "no washing of the parson's shirt."

On the hustings he declared with great vehemence that he "would never, never, never, allow himself to be priest-ridden." Mr. Hawker heard him, and, tearing a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote on it, —

"Thou ridden ne'er shalt be, by prophet or by priest:

Balaam is dead, and none but he would choose thee for his beast!"

1 Afterwards Lord Portsmouth.

And he slipped the paper into the hand of the excited and eloquent speaker.

He had a singular facility for writing off an epigram on the spur of the moment. In the midst of conversation he would pause, his hand go to the pencil that dangled from his button-hole, and on a scrap of paper, the fly-leaf of a book, or a margin of newspaper, a happy, brilliant epigram was written on some topic started in the course of conversation, and composed almost without his pausing in his talk.

Many of his sayings were epigrammatical. On an extremely self-conceited man leaving the room one day, after he had caused some amusement by his self-assertion, Mr. Hawker said, "Conceit is the compensation afforded by benignant Nature for mental deficiency."

His "Carol of the Pruss," Jan. 1, 1871, is better:

"Hurrah for the boom of the thundering gun!

Hurrah for the words they say!

'Here's a merry Christmas for every one,

And a happy New Year's Day.'

Thus saith the king to the echoing ball:

'With the blessing of God we will slay them all!'

'Up!' saith the king, 'load, fire, and slay!'

'Tis a kindly signal given:

However happy on earth be they,

They'll be happier in heaven.

Tell them, as soon as their souls are free
They'll sing like birds on a Christmas-tree.

Down with them all! If they rise again,
They will munch our beef and bread :

War there must be with the living men;

There'll be peace when all are dead!
This earth shall be our wide, wide home:
Our foes shall have the world to come.

Starve, starve, them all, till through the skin
You may count each hungry bone!
Tap, tap their veins, till the blood runs thin,
And their sinful flesh is gone!

While life is strong in the German sky,
What matters it who besides may die?

No sigh so sweet as the cannon's breath,
No music like to the gun!

There's a merry Christmas to war and death,

And a happy New Year to none.

Thus saith the king to the echoing ball:

'With the blessing of God we will slay them all!'"

Sir R. Vyvyan and Sir C. Lemon were standing for East Cornwall in the Conservative and Church interest. The opposition party was that of the Dissenters; and their cry was "Down with the Church!" Thereupon Mr. Hawker wrote the lines

"Shall the gray tower in ruin bow?
Must the babe die with nameless brow?
Or common hands in mockery fling
The unblessed waters of the spring?
No! while the Cornish voice can ring
The Vyvyan cry, 'Our Church and King!'

Shall the gray tower in ruin stand
When the heart thrills within the hand,
And beauty's lip to youth hath given
The vow on earth that links for heaven?

Shall no glad peal from church-tower gray
Cheer the young maiden's homeward way?
No! while the Cornish voice can ring,
And Vyvyan cry, 'Our Church and King!'

Shall the gray tower in ruins spread?
And must the furrow hold the dead
Without the toll of passing knell,
Without the stoléd priest to tell
Of Christ the first-fruits of the dead,
To wake our brother from his bed?1
No! while the Cornish voice can ring,

And Vyvyan cry, 'Our Church and King!'"

When the Irish Church was disestablished, the vicar was highly incensed, and at the election of 1873 voted for the Conservative candidate instead of holding fast in his allegiance to the Liberal. But when the Public Worship Bill was taken up by Mr. Disraeli, and carried through Parliament by the conservative government, his faith in the Tory prime minister failed as wholly as it had in the leader of the Liberal party; and he wrote the following bitter epigram on the two prime ministers:

"An English boy was born, a Jew, and then
On the eighth day received the name of Ben.
Another boy was born, baptized, but still
In common parlance called the People's Will!
Both lived impenitent, and so they died;
And between both the Church was crucified.
Which bore the brand, I pray thee tell me true,
The wavering Christian, or the doubtful Jew?"

1 Four lines in the last verse I have supplied, as the copy sent me was imperfect.

There is another epigram attributed to him, but whether rightly or not I am not in a position to

state:

"Doctor Hopwood,* the vicar of Calstock,* is dead;

But, De mortuis nil nisi bonum, is said.

Let this maxim be strictly regarded, and then
Doctor Hopwood will never be heard of again!"

The following is the solitary piece in which the influence of the tender passion seems manifest. It was written in 1864.

"The eyes that melt, the eyes that burn,
The lips that make a lover yearn,

These flashed on my bewildered sight
Like meteors of the northern night.

Then said I, in my wild amaze,

'What stars be they that greet my gaze?'
Where shall my shivering rudder turn?
To eyes that melt, or eyes that burn?

Ah! safer far the darkling sea
Than where such perilous signals be:
To rock and storm and whirlwind turn

From eyes that melt, and eyes that burn."

A lady was very pressing that he should write something in her album, — she thought his poems so charming, his ballads so delicious, his epigrams so delightful, &c. Mr. Hawker was impatient at this poor flattery, and, taking up her album, wrote in it :