Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/375

 MORWENSTOW 369 nothing to avert the disasters which, to their mind, were sent by a merciful providence. There w^as even a proverb that it was unkicky to rescue a drowning man — widespread, for Scott mentions it in the " Pirate" ; the bad luck which these coast- folk had in view being the fact that a rescued personage could claim his property that the sea had cast up. Hawker was born in Norley Street, Plymouth, December 29, 1803 ; his grandfather and uncle were both clergy in Plymouth at the time. Thus, though he has won a world-wide fame as the Cornish poet, Hawker was really Devonian ; in this borderland of the two counties there is prac- tically no difference. In the same manner the Grenvilles were of Devonshire, yet Cornwall treasures their memories with justifiable pride. In after years Hawker used to say that, could his mother have foreseen how sorrowful his life would be, she would have given a gentle pressure to his throat in his first hour, and so have averted all his earthly trials. He grew^ to be a mischievous and daring lad. One of his pranks was to swim out to the crags at the mouth of Bude haven, and there pose as a mermaid ; which he did to the prolonged bewilderment of the country folk. 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 mar- riage, 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 20