Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/145

 io- 8. iv. A™, o, 1905.) NOTES AND QUERIES. 117 NOTES ON BOOKS, &o. The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker, sometim Vicar of Morwenstow. By bis Son-in-law, C. E By lea. (Lane.) THE lives of Hawker by the Rev. Sabine Baring Gould and Dr. F. G. Lee, the former especially, an largely responsible for the estimate generally found concerning the eccentric and interesting vicar o Morwenstow. Written as these are by men who while approaching and regarding him from differen points, are in close sympathy with him, they migh have been regarded as adequate in the case of one whose claims upon enduring consideration wereevei greater than those of the author of ' Records o the Western Shore,' 'Cornish Ballads, and other Poems,' and ' Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall.' Dr. Lee was in sympathy with Hawker's liturgical views and shared his vehemence of con troversial utterance, while Mr. Baring-Gould was as ardent a student as his subject of folk super stition, lore, and legend. While the account of th< latter, however, has won general acceptance, ant been more than once reprinted, and while it is the "standard biography,'' if the use in this case of such a phrase can be justified, it failec to satisfy family exigences, was regarded as un- authorized, and was branded by Mrs. Hawker, in The Atheiueum of 8 September, 1876, as " full ol misstatemeuts, and written by one whose persona knowledge of Mr. Hawker was scarcely that of a mere acquaintance." The work now issued belongs to another category. Occupying as it does seven hundred pages, it must be taken as adequate; and written as it is by an affectionate and adinirinf! son-in-law, with access to all family documents and traditions, aided by very many of those who came into closest association with Hawker, and were moat impressed by his fervent and assertive indi- viduality, it fulhie all requirements, and may well, in its way, be accepted as final. When perused by one who knew Hawker best by favour- able report, and was prepared to applaud and expectant of delight, it leaves a curious impression. Portions of it reveal the figure, eccentric and in part heroic, we expected to see. The general tone of Hawker's utterances is, however, querulous and not seldom aggressive. He has a morbid sensitiveness and a regrettable amount of lite- rary vanity. We like him best in his periods of action, when his efforts to rescue those hurled upon that stormiest of coasts are indeed heroic; and we admire the ardent and mystical piety which in his case, as in that of many of his reve- rend compeers, landed him in the Roman Catholic Church. His wit, on which Mr. Byles insists, approaches dangerously near rudeness or want of feeling. To some extent, then, the revelation of the man is to us disappointing. The same may not, however, be said of the book, which gives a faithful picture of the vicar and his environ- ment, is saturated with atmosphere, and is an ideal companion for the holiday jaunt now immi- nent. Its illustrations constitute an eminently attractive feature, and Lord Carlisle's coloured portrait of Hawker, which serves as frontispiece, gives the best idea accessible of the subject of the book. Lord Carlisle supplies another striking por- trait, while other designs present him at various periods, front his undergraduate days to within a •very short time of his death. Portraits of his parents and associates, and views of spots connected with its birth and ministrations, abound. Very early in its career *N. & Q.' counted him among its con- tributors. He complains, however, of the treat- ment he received from the originator and first editor, and is not very largely represented in its pages. Similar annoyances seem to have been caused him in other periodicals, and may be re- garded as part of the rather morbid self-assertive- ness that seemed to impress him with the notion that in treating a subject he acquired a vested interest in it, and might warn off trespassers. An agreeable feature in Hawker is his fondness for animals. In one of his letters he writes: " The mice are actually at play on my table while I write." What is said (p. 96) of Disraeli, Thiers, and Napoleon is, we fancy, inaccurate. It is news to us that Hawker at one time took opium. This may account for his remarkable fits of depression. It is a pleasant story that when a scarecrow in Hawker's clothes was put up the birds took it for him and came to it. What are we to say about Hawker's grave assertion that at an indicated spot he had seen mermaids? (See p. 167.) Now and then the biographer puts off his attitude of reverence and becomes outspoken. On p. 20t he wrote: "The fact is that in his composition there was something of the Grand Inquisitor. In the dis- comfiture of heresy he put aside his human and per- sonal sympathies, and regarded opposition to himself as an offence against the Almighty through an eart hly representative." It is to be feared that a view of the kind was not confined to religious heresy. Again, Air. Byles says Hawker was sometimes unreasonable on the question of originality. Deal- ing with his own faults, Hawker says, with no exaggerated self-depreciation (p. 456): "I know that I am dogmatic, proud, and mysterious." Again, with strange self-oblivion, he says (p. 471) that he does not sympathize with satirical writings: " There is too much in our natures to sadden and subdue, and I do not like that men should mock one another, all being in God's image and brother men." On the question of his claim on immortality the biographer says (p. 651), " He never did himself justice." That estimate, with all it implies, we accept. But the book is good, and has strong claim on our readers. MR. R. J. WALKER'S version of Septem Pnalmi PmnitfntialeH in Latin elegiacs, sold by Samuel Bewsher, St. Paul's School, is an admirable exer- cise of scholarship, one, indeed, of exceptional grace. In Christian epitaphs and sacred verse a writer is, we think, perfectly justified in departing rom the best models as much as Prudentius, for nstance, does from the Virgilian style, and in tutting these " apples of gold in pictures of silver " . n in. But Mr. Walker, like the best modern composers, does more. He has the fluency and elegance of Ovid, the grace of Virgil, in such a ine as Me, quam longa dies, inimici tristibus urgent. The whole is natural enough to be free of Macau- ay's sneer about Latin verse as " a sickly exotic." •MI. -h work is the fine flower of scholarship, a delight or which, alas ! few have time, but which can only >'• understood, as Mr. Walker says in his intro- luctory Latin lines, by those who have practised a ike art themselves. The present reviewer has one so for many years in the intervals of a busy ife, and found surprising solace in an exercise