SHELBURNE ESSAYS FOURTH SERIES THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 1875 to be exact, English Church, SOME thirty years ago, in that unstable compound, the was shocked by the news that a Cornish clergyman, dying away from home, had received the sacraments from the hands of a Roman priest. Over the head of his young wife, who had summoned the ministrant to his bedside, there was poured a bitter stream of controversy, as was the wont of the Establishment in those days; and the storm was not allayed by the publication a few months later of a somewhat irresponsible biography of the apostate by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. It was then seen that this deathbed conversion was only the last act of a life crammed with eccentricities, and from that day to this the Vicar of Morwenstow has enjoyed a kind of pre-eminence in curiosity. At last his son-inlaw, Mr. C. E. Byles, has collected his scattered prose and verse in two attractive volumes, and has added to these a full and accurate record of 1 his life. There is no doubt as to the value of the result. Hawker cannot by any stretch of courtesy be called quite a great writer, but I do not hesitate to say that the works and biography together bring us acquainted with one of the most original and most interesting personalities of the past century. He is likely to be remembered longer than some who have achieved more as artists. And if he cannot be ranked among the great, at least his writings, long before Mr. BaringGould made him a subject of romance, had attained an anomalous celebrity. One of his curious methods of reaching the public was to print off a poem in the form of leaflet, which he then inclosed, like advertisements, n business and friendly letters. In this way and through other obscure channels of publication, some of his poems attained a kind of life apart from their author. They even received the dubious praise of being imitated and stolen, and his best work had a humourous trick of gaining currency as anonymous and ancient folklore. His Sir Beville 1 Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. By R. S. Hawker. New York: John Lane, 1903. Cornish Ballads and Other Poems. By R. S. Hawker. John Lane, 1904. The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker (Sometime Vicar of Morwenstow). By his Son-in-law, C. E. Byles. John Lane, 1905. |