Chapter XXIII: Part 23

Castell-an-Dinas was the most complete and perfect relic of prehistoric times existing in Cornwall, till a Mr. Rogers, of Penrose, took it into his head to erect a tower on the summit, that was neither useful nor beautiful, and to obtain material the walls of the fort were pulled about and pillaged. It is still an interesting specimen of a hill fortress, notwithstanding the mischief wrought by the builder of the tower.

On the side of the swelling hill crowned by the old fortress is a small walled enclosure, like a donkey-pound, and in this is the tomb of James Hoskin, a farmer, who desired that he might not be laid in consecrated ground. He was buried in 1823 at the age of 63. He was baptized at Ludgvan on March 8th, 1760, and was the son of James Hoskin.

There are, in fact, three headstones within the enclosure: that which is central is to James Hoskin; on the left is one to his eldest son, who died in 1812, aged 20, and above it is the inscription, "Custom is the idol of Fools"; on the right is one to a married daughter and her child, also in 1812, the mother aged 22 and the daughter 7, probably months, not years, in this latter case. Above this headstone is the inscription: "Virtue only consecrates the ground." But although there be these three memorial stones, only James Hoskin, the father, aged 63, lies here.

What caused James Hoskin to desire to be interred on the moor away from consecrated ground? Tradition in Ludgvan says that he kissed the parson's wife, and the rector, furious at the insult--his name was J. Stephens--vowed that if he survived Hoskin he would bury him in the most obscure corner of the graveyard on the north side of the church. So in order to defeat the parson's intentions, he made provision for his body to be buried at Castell-an-Dinas. Whether this be true or not I cannot say, but certain it is that there was a lasting difference between J. Hoskin and the Rev. J. Stephens.

The Hoskin family lived in a farm, Treassow, Castell-an-Dinas, the original seat of the Rogers Family from before 1633. Sold by Captain J. P. Rogers recently.

His was a small yeoman family in very fair circumstances. James Hoskin had two sons who lived, besides John, the eldest, who died young. These were John William and Richard Vinnicombe. This last went as a clerk to Jamaica to Sir Rose Price. His grandsons are now living in Ludgvan. According to some poor inflated verses, written by a Miss Lean, of Ludgvan, in 1803, addressed to James Hoskin, he made the farm on the slope of Castell-an-Dinas, from which height, she says--

... Barren places are thence descryed,
But none more barren than its own rough side,
Till Hoskin rose, a man of birth obscure,
Heir to no wealth, and forced by fate to endure
The toils of humble life, till innate worth
And active fancy drew his talents forth.
On Castle Downs his fertile mind he cast,
And soon by industry did improve its waste.
The starving poor who knew not where to gain
The scanty pittance that should life sustain,
Employed by him, and by his bounty fed,
They had the honest means to earn their bread;
Nor stayed the hireling's wages in his hand,
But weekly each his stipend might command.
Some pick the stones, some cut the turf, and some
Dig from the pit the builders' useful loam.
The straw-thatched cottage rises from the ground,
And the strong stone enclosure spreadeth round.
And now where moss-grown rocks and heath did rise,
Green meads and beauteous cornfields greet the eyes.
The lowing herds and fleecy bleating flocks
That crop'd the scanty herbage round the rocks,
Now ruminating stand and seem to say,
May Heaven's best gift our benefactor pay.
The Master sees, well pleased, and smiles to see
The honest fruits of live industry.

The "poem" concludes with invocations of blessings on the head of Mr. Hoskin--

Long, very long may he survive to see
The distant fruits of his industry;
And may Almighty power to him dispense
Earth's greatest bliss--Health, Peace, and Competence.

Having heard of the prosperity of those who had settled in America, he resolved on going thither and seeing the condition of the farmers in the States and the quality of the land, so that he might be able to advise others whether to leave the mother country and settle there, and with half a mind himself to cast in his lot with those who were farming there. On his return he printed, but did not publish, his experience and his observations. He printed for his own use, and kept a very few copies for distribution among his relations and friends. Through the kindness of the Rev. A. C. Boscawen, Rector of Ludgvan, I have been afforded a sight of his Narrative. It is interesting as affording a picture of the condition of the States and the farming there a century ago. The "Narrative" was printed by Vigurs, of Penzance, "for the Author" in 1813. In his preface, he says:--

"I am well aware that in the composition there may be much room for criticism; to this I answer, I have neither the wish nor qualification to become an AUTHOR, I need only say I am a FARMER. This carries its apology with it, for the book contains plain facts on agricultural subjects, which I affirm are nearly, if not perfectly, correct. [I have written nothing designedly false.] The passage within brackets he cancelled with his own hand after the book was printed.

"I sailed from Penzance on the 28th of December, 1810, on board an American schooner called the _Packet of Boston_, bound for New York with a cargo of iron, boxes of tin-plate, etc. On leaving the quay the seamen of a brig gave us three cheers, which we returned. Soon a number of people on the quay gave us three more. I asked the men, was it customary on sailing? They said they had been on the pier two months, but never saw it done before. So much for cordiality towards the Americans."

Blood is thicker than water. This is interesting. It shows that even then, after the States had declared their independence, and only two years before war was declared between England and the States, the feeling, at all events in Cornwall, was one of affection and regard for the gallant people who had been driven by stupidity into revolt against the Crown.

After a very rough passage, on the 14th February, 1811, in the depth of winter, the little vessel reached Vineyard Island. "We soon landed, and put up at Dr. Spalding's tavern, a handsome house, with good entertainment and accommodation. Our host was a doctor, a justice of the peace, a tavern keeper, but quite the gentleman. The family at meal times sat down with us--this is the American fashion. With our tea we had plenty of beefsteaks, boiled eggs, preserved fruit, hot cakes, etc. This is customary all over America. We paid a dollar per day (bed included), but all through America we saw nothing of those pests of beggars, waiters, chambermaids, coachmen, postboys, etc., which constantly harass and frequently insult the traveller in England."

On reaching New York he got into trouble with his captain, who was "slim," and tried to take advantage of him. "I was detained three weeks by the captain I came over with from England. I bought at Penzance some earthenware to carry out. On the passage I sold the whole to the captain, and had a written agreement from him to pay me on arriving at New York. At first he put off the payment for want of money, so on one pretence or another until he began to unload the vessel, and then he told me that he had given me no bill of lading to show the goods were mine, and that I could not prove them mine. Indeed he did everything in his power to plunder me of the whole. I then went to the merchant to whom the cargo was consigned. He was much hurt at the captain's conduct in attempting to defraud me, and wrote him a letter immediately. The next day the merchant called on me, and told me if the captain did not pay me in half an hour to acquaint him, but before the half-hour was expired the captain was come with the money."

From New York Hoskin sailed in the _William Eaton_ schooner for Alexandria and Washington.

"The captain (being intoxicated) would have the cook to kill and pick a fowl and dress it in an instant (the cook was an old man, a negro). The poor man set about it with all speed, but in the boiling the captain found fault, caught up the hot fowl and beat it in the cook's face. The captain confessed that he had sprung six feet high, and thought he should have fallen overboard. The captain scalded his three fingers, etc. Two days after he was full of spite and vengeance towards the poor old black man. 'D---- the negroes,' said he, 'I hate them,' and going on deck beat the poor man dreadfully with pieces of trees cut to burn, some time after with a rope, and after that with a fire-shovel. The poor man was very bad all night. I expected he would have died before morning. Next morning in that condition he would make him work. I said, 'Captain, I will attend breakfast; I can do it better than he.' So I kept him out of the way. In the afternoon the captain would make the poor creature come on deck. 'Shall I pay him wages for nothing?' says he. I told him that the cook could do nothing, but that I could do much better, and that I would work for him. In three hours after word was brought to him that the cook was dying. After he was dead, the captain came to me and asked what I thought was the cause of his death, which I turned off."

James Hoskin excuses himself for not trying to bring the captain to justice. His reasons are not very satisfactory. First, "it might destroy the happiness of a dear woman, his wife." In the next place, the mate would have sworn in the captain's favour; and, finally, by accusing the captain he would have done no good to the dead cook.

On ascending the Potomac he was put ashore for a while.

"I asked at the hut of a white woman for some water. I shall, while I live, never forget this hut. The outside was like a stable, built of logs, having no glass windows. She brought me a bowl of milk, a china pint to mix water with it. The water stood on a stool without doors, covered nicely. The hut and everything within were in such neat order. This milk and water was as a cordial of wine. I contemplated the happiness of the farmers in this place, flowing in abundance of the first necessaries of life; their wants few and easily supplied; no cares about raising money for other people, all being peace, plenty, and happiness around them."

He ascended the Delaware "in the steem [_sic_] boat." The boat was worked by a steam-engine "which turns round a wheel each side of the boat in the water. It has wide boards to the end of each spoke, like a water under-shut wheel. The boat is 100 feet long, wide and roomy, and a tavern kept on board. The passage comes very cheap, only 3 dollars for 100 miles, baggage included."

He tells a story of William Cobbett when in America. Cobbett conducted a newspaper entitled the _Pesca Post_ at Philadelphia, and kept a stationer's shop. He was very outspoken against the French Revolution, and that did not please the Yankees. One day some one entered the stationer's shop and asked for some quills. Cobbett sold them. "Ah, ha!" said the purchaser. "These be porcupine quills, I guess." "Porcupine quills they were till I sold them to you," was Cobbett's ready answer. "Now they are goose quills."

"As I was at breakfast one day on Long Island," says Hoskin, "there came in a young woman. 'The English,' said she, 'have pressed my brother in the Downs; I wish I could guillotine the English, I wish the English were guillotined.' 'But,' says one in the room, 'the Christian English will hang a man for stealing a horse, or stealing a sheep; but for stealing a man they shall have money.'" Hoskin was too discreet to bring up the case of the negro slaves and of the captain and the cook. He saw the first attempt at a torpedo. A Mr. Fulton had invented one "for the purpose of sinking it under vessels at anchor and blowing them up. Likewise to anchor under water and blow up ships coming in a harbour. The Congress has voted him 6000 dollars to defray the expenses for making trials, etc. Some time back a day was fixed for trial at New York, the _President_ a frigate of 44 guns, and the _Argus_ brig of war lay there; Mr. Fulton chose to attack the brig, the captain of which prepared for defence by casting a net round the brig to prevent the torpedo diving under, and by hanging shot and heavy weights to the yards and studding sail-booms, to destroy the torpedo if it came near; but Mr. Fulton could not succeed at that time; he says he has made vast improvements since, and shall succeed. This Fulton has a patent for the steamboats on the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. They go five miles an hour against wind and tide."

On his return to England he had a better passage than on going out. "Then chiefly three or four days in a week it blew what the sailors call a gale. In the gale of last week we sailed before the wind, and the ship rolled much more then than if it was a side wind. We laughed at supper, though tossed about. We had cords and bars spread over the table, which was bound fast to keep the things on it; one held the teapot, and the mate was desired to bind the tea-kettle with a string to the side of the cabin. This put me in mind of last winter's passage. The cook would be called an hour or two before day to light his fire, and get his kettle under way, as the phrase is on board; by and by we should hear the cook on deck crying and swearing, the sea breaking over having upset the tea-kettle--the fire is again lit, and the tea-kettle set on again. Soon we hear the cook in the like distress, and swearing he would rather go before the mast than be cook, and so on. Three times of a morning, one day, one of the tea-kettles went overboard; and some days we could only light fire in the cabin stove, and were obliged to boil beef in the tea-kettle."

In London, in January, 1803, he had fallen ill, and thought he had not long to live. This was seven years before he visited the States, and he then addressed the following letter to his children:--

"London, _January 13th, 1803_.

"My dear Children all and each,

"For the last three days I have found my illness so to increase,
and I am so exceedingly ill at this time, that I believe it is the
Lord's good pleasure that I shall never see your dear faces again.
The God of heaven take you under His precious, His most special
protection and care. Fear it not my dear sweet loves, but that
good and holy Lord of life and glory will be to you what He has
always been to me--a father. When I was about six years old, His
good pleasure was to take my mother. With her I lost I may say my
father, mother and all. But I had a Father in heaven, Who blessed,
watched, and protected me. If you would be wise, seek true
happiness. If you would be happy, rich and wise, be truly virtuous
in word, action, and, as much as possible, in thought.

Seek virtue, and of that possessed
Leave to Providence the rest.

"If you will tell a lie, you will tell another; if you tell two,
you will go on further and tell ten, and so on, to lying on any
occasion. If you lie, you will cheat, when occasion offers you,
and so on to other vices. With the loss of a virtuous disposition
of mind, you will lose your peace, troubles will come upon you,
one after another; you will endeavour to shun them, but they will
overtake you. Let the words of an affectionate and perhaps dying
father, sink deep into your hearts every time you read them.

"If you should fall in love with those true Christians, called
Quakers, how much, I think, would it, by God's blessing (of which
you need not fear) and their friendly aid to you, advance you in
piety and virtue. But beware of Methodists' Class Meetings. Not
but that there are many among them who are patterns of religion;
but the human heart being, as it has been truly said, 'the devil's
tinder-box,' the heart falls by degrees into some favourite sin,
and falsehood and deceit at these meetings are sent in the place
of piety, and of all states this is the most dangerous and
destructive to the soul. May the Lord of His goodness bless you,
protect you, be your guide through life, and in death receive you
to Himself is the prayer of

"Your father, JAMES HOSKIN."

Happily he recovered and lived on for many years.

JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET

"On the quiet evening of October 14th, 1820, in a straw-thatched, boulder-built cottage, with bare rafters and clay floor, locally known as the 'six chimneys,' on the top of Bolennowe Hill, Camborne, Cornwall, as the leaves are falling from the trees, and the robin mourns in the thicket, a gentle mother gives birth to a babe; and that baby-boy is a poet."

So John Harris begins his account of his own life. It is not always safe for a composer of verses to be too sure that he is a poet, and that his lines will live. Horace did it,[40] so doubtless has many another man who has hammered out verses; but only Horace was justified in his prophecy.

A plum-pudding without plums may be a good suet dumpling, and without suet also a respectable batter pudding, but neither is a plum-pudding; and a set of verses without ideas may be pleasant verses, but is not poetry; and without ideas and without imagination is very poor stuff indeed. John Harris could write smooth lines, he had a tender appreciation of the beauties of nature, but he went no further. His verses bear the same relation to poetry that Tupper's _Proverbial Philosophy_ bears to the Philosophy of Plato. But to return to his life. He tells us that "from first to last the majority of my poems have been written in the open air, in lanes and leas, by old stiles and farm gates, by rocks and rivers and mossy moors."

He was put to a miserable school where the hedge-school master was hard-hearted and cruel, and "verily hoots the lessons in his ears. He beats his pupils without mercy, with a polished piece of flat wood studded with small, sharp nails, until the blood runs down, and soon scares the little learner from his straw-roofed academy."

From this school he was removed to another after a few days. "On the edge of a brown common, in a little thatched school-house by the side of the highway, very near the famous Nine Maidens, he finds another master, who wore a wooden leg, with more of the milk of human kindness in his soul, a thorough Christian, and a man of prayer." He says further: "You might have seen him on a summer evening, when his merry schoolmates are chattering in the hollow--you might have seen him walking by the stream, or stretched on the moss listening to the wind tuning its organ among the rocks, or gazing up at the purple heavens. He roams among the flowers, kissing them for very joy, calling them his fragrant sisters. Born on the crest of the hill, amid the crags and storms, he grows up in love with Nature, and she becomes his chief teacher. And now come the promptings of early genius, which develop themselves in snatches of unpolished song, pencilled on the leaves of his copybook for the amusement of his wondering schoolmates. He often writes his rhymes on the clean side of cast-off labelled tea-papers which his mother brings from the shop, and then reads them to his astonished compeers with rapt delight."

At the age of nine he was taken from school and put to work in the fields. At the age of ten he was employed by an old tin-streamer to throw up the sand from the river, earning threepence a day. At twelve he was working on the surface "nearly three miles from his favourite home. As he travels to and fro from his labour through long lanes bramble covered, and over meadows snowy with daisies, or by hedges blue with hyacinths, or over whispering cairns redolent with the hum of bees--" he means thyme on which the bees hover gathering honey--"the beautiful world around him teems with syllables of song. Even then he pencils his strange ditties, reciting them at intervals of leisure to the dwellers of his own district, and older heads than his tell of his future fame."

One thing is evident, that at this early age he was inordinately conceited. He had a true appreciation of the beauties of Nature. He had a receptive soul, but it was that which might have made of him a painter, not necessarily a poet.

At the age of thirteen, or as he styles it, "When thirteen summers have filled his lap with roses, and fanned his forehead with the breeze of health, we find him sweating in the hot air of the interior of a mine (Dolcoath), working with his father nearly two hundred fathoms below the green fields."

So time passes, and he grows to manhood. Then in his stilted style he says: "Love meets him on his flowery pathway, and he weaves a chaplet of the choicest roses to adorn her head. He worships at the shrine of beauty till they stand before the sacred altar, and the two are made one." In plain English, he fell in love and got married to Jane Rule.

One of his earliest pieces of verse, "The First Primrose," got into a magazine, and attracted some little notice, amongst others that of Dr. George Smith, of Camborne, who gave him encouragement and induced him to publish. His first book appeared in 1853; soon after he was appointed Scripture Reader at Falmouth.

He says in his _Autobiography_: "Soon after my marriage, the Rev. G. B. Bull, of Treslothian, lent me a volume of Shakespere. The first play I read was _Romeo and Juliet_, which I greedily devoured, travelling over a wide down near my father's house. The delight I experienced is beyond words to describe, as the sun sank behind the western waters, and the purple clouds of evening primed the horizon, the bitters of life changed to sweetness in my cup, and the wilderness around me was a region of fairies. Sometimes I cried, sometimes I shouted for joy, and over the genii-peopled heights a new world burst upon my view." Next he read _Childe Harold_, or portions of it. "My younger brother James possessed an eighteenpenny copy of Burns' poems, to which I had access. One day, I was reading Burns in our Troon-Moor home. No one can tell the ecstasy of my spirit, or the deep joy of my heart. Not only was I tired with my mine-work, but also crippled in the quarry raising stone for the garden-wall. I believe I was in my shirtsleeves, when a middle-aged matron entered my home. Seeing a small book before me, she asked what it was. I told her, and her answer surely displayed her prejudice and her narrowness of mind. Looking at me with severity in her features, she exclaimed, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You, a local preacher, and reading Burns!' This strange sin put me quite beyond the reach of her favours, and I do not remember her ever speaking to me afterwards."

It is an infinite pity that John Harris did not inspire his muse from Burns; had he done so, his "poems" might possibly have lived, but _poëta nascitur, non fit_.

"For more than twenty years I was an underground miner, toiling in the depths of Dolcoath. Here I laboured from morning till night, and often from night till morning, frequently in sulphur and dust almost to suffocation. Sometimes I stood in slime and water above my knees, and then in levels so badly ventilated that the very stones were hot, and the rarified air caused the perspiration to stream into my boots in rills, though I doffed my flannel shirt and worked naked to the waist. Sometimes I stood on a stage hung in ropes in the middle of a wide working, when my life depended on a single nail driven into a plank. Had the nail slipped, I should have been pitched headlong on the broken rocks more than twenty feet below. Sometimes I stood on a narrow board high up in some dark working, holding the drill, or smiting it with the mallet, smeared all over with mineral, so that my nearest friends would hardly know me, until my hands ached with the severity of my task, and the blood dropped off my elbows. Sometimes I had to dig through the ground where it was impossible to stand upright, and sometimes to work all day as if standing to the face of a cliff. Sometimes I have been so exhausted as to lie down and sleep on the sharp flints." (There are no flints in Cornish mines.) "And sometimes so thirsty that I have drunk stale water from the keg, closing my teeth to keep back the worms. Sometimes I had wages to receive at the end of the month, and sometimes I had none. But I despaired not, nor turned the nymph of song from my side. She murmured among the tinctured slabs," etc. etc. That the water brought down from the spring for the use of the miners was ever full of worms is not to be believed, nor that he did not receive his regular monthly wages. John Harris was evidently vastly sorry for himself, thinking he was born for better things. I have known many a man who has worked underground as a common miner, without whining and breaking into extravagance such as this.

"We were at supper one evening in Troon-Moor house, our two daughters in a window, I at the end of the kitchen table, and Jane sitting on a chair beside it. We had fried onions, and the flavour was very agreeable. I was hungry, having just returned from a long day's labour in the mine. Suddenly we heard a step in the garden, and then a knock at the door. My wife opened it, and I heard a gruff voice say, 'Does the young Milton live here?' My wife asked the possessor of the gruff voice to walk in; and we soon discovered that it was the Rev. G. Collins. We invited him to partake of our meal, to which he at once assented, eating the onions with a spoon, exclaiming at almost every mouthful, 'I like fried leeks.' He asked for my latest production, and I gave him 'The Child's First Prayer,' in MS. He quietly read it, and before he had finished I could see the tears streaming down his face. Besides the two daughters, Jane and Lucretia, already named, we were afterwards blest with two sons, Howard and Alfred."

I have given this passage from the _Autobiography_ of John Harris with pleasure, as it exhibits the author at his best. Whether the tears may not have been an adjunct of his fancy, I do not pretend to say. When he writes simple English, concerning his own life and experiences, he is always interesting, but when he steps up into his florid car, as a chauffeur at the Battle of Roses at Nice, he is intolerable.

"Throughout my mining life I have had several narrow escapes from sudden death. Once when at the bottom of the mine, the bucket-chains suddenly severed and came roaring down the shaft with rocks and rubbish. I and my comrade had scarcely time to escape; and one of the smaller fragments of stone cut open my forehead, leaving a visible scar to this day. Then the man-engine accidentally broke, hurling twenty men headlong into the pit, and I amongst them. A few scars and bruises were my only injuries. Standing before a tin-stepe on the smallest foothold, a thin piece of flint (?), air-impelled, struck me on the face, cutting my lips and breaking some of my front teeth. Had I fallen backwards among the huge slabs" (the rock does not form slabs) "death must have been instantaneous. Passing over a narrow plank, a hole exploded at my feet, throwing a shower of stones around me, but not a hair of my head was injured."

"A more wonderful interposition of Divine Providence may be traced, perhaps, in the following record. Our party consisted of five men working in a sink. Two of them were my younger brothers. Over our heads the ground was expended, and there was a huge cavern higher and further than the light of the candle would reveal. Here hung huge rocks as if by hairs (!) and we knew it not. We were all teachers in a Sunday-school, and on the tea-and-cake anniversary remained out of our working to attend the festival. Some men who laboured near us, at the time when we were in the green field singing hymns, heard a fearful crash in our working, and on hastening to see what it was found the place full of flinty (?) rocks. They had suddenly fallen from above, exactly in the place where we should have been, and would have crushed us to powder were it not for the Sunday-school treat."

Moving in his little circle, surrounded by the ignorant, it is no wonder that John Harris was puffed up with vanity, and thought himself a poet.

He was very urgent in the promotion of the cause of peace and arbitration between nations, and wrote a series of tracts entitled _Peace Pages_, of which some hundreds of thousands were distributed, and produced as much effect on the policy of nations as waste paper. In the year 1864 a prize was offered for the best poem on the tercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare. It was competed for by over a hundred persons in Great Britain and America. Mr. Harris gained the prize, and was presented with a gold watch. It is not possible to estimate its value, poetically, without a knowledge of the "poems" that failed, and the discrimination of the judges.[41] From first to last John Harris published no less than sixteen volumes of verse. He died in 1884, and was buried in Treslothian Churchyard, near Camborne. He had received a grant of £50 per annum from the Royal Literary Fund, 1872-75, and £200 from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1877.

He had a son, John Alfred Harris, born at Falmouth in 1860, who became a wood engraver, working in a recumbent position owing to a spinal affliction. He illustrated some of his father's works. Another son, James Howard Harris, born in 1857, became master of the Board School, Porthleven, and wrote a memoir of his father.

John Harris had the faculty of receiving impressions from the objects of nature, as does a mirror, but had no power to give forth flashes of genius, for of genius he had none. His verses read smoothly and pleasantly, but will not live, as there is no vital spark in them. He stands, however, on a higher level than Edward Capern, the Devonshire postman "poet," but immeasurably below Burns and Waugh.

He published, moreover, a series of addresses, but all marked with the same paucity of idea, lack of original thought. A good but very self-satisfied man, he reaped far higher applause in his day as he deserved, and in another generation will be clean forgotten. He called himself the miner poet, but he is not even a minor poet. There is something pathetic in the contemplation of a man of this sort. I have come across several instances--men who have a love of nature, an appreciation of the beautiful and the good and the true, but have no genius, no originality, who can imitate but create nothing. It is the same with musicians. There are a thousand who can write songs, but only one in a thousand who can produce a pure melody. The mirror reflects objects, but the burning-glass focusses the sun's rays in a pencil of fire that kindles whatever it falls on. Such is the difference between the versifier and the poet.

Nulla placere diu, nec vivere carmina possunt
Quæ scribuntur aquæ portoribus.
Hor. _Ep._ I. 19.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] _Od._ I, 1; II, 20.

[41] These were Lord Lyttleton, G. Dawson, and C. Bray.

EDWARD CHAPMAN

Hals tells the following story of Mr. Edward Chapman, of Constantine. But before giving it, it will be well to say a few words of the Chapman family. The name suffices to show that it was not Cornish by origin, and indeed in the _Heralds' Visitation_ it is recorded to have come from the North. Why they came down one cannot say, but they married well. One John Chapman, of Harpford, in Devon, had to wife a daughter of Chichester, of Hall, and his son Edward married a Prideaux, and settled at Resprin in S. Winnow, and as that was a manor that belonged to the Prideaux family it is probable that his wife was an heiress. Edward, the grandson, baptized at S. Winnow May 12th, 1647, was probably the person mentioned by Hals, to whom the adventure is attributed. He was married to a daughter of Bligh, of Botathen.

"This gentleman received from God's holy angels a wonderful preservation in the beginning of the reign of William III when returning from Redruth towards his own house about seven miles distant, with his servant, late at night, and both much intoxicated with liquor (as himself told me); nevertheless having so much sense left as to consider that they were to pass through several tin mines or shafts near the highway, on the south-east side of Redruth town, alighted both from their horses, and led them in their hands after them. The servant went somewhat before his master, the better to keep the right road in those places, which occasioned Mr. Chapman's turning aside somewhat out of the way, whereby in the dark he suddenly fell into a tin mine above twenty fathoms deep, at whose fall into this precipice his horse started back and escaped; in this pit or hole Mr. Chapman fell directly down fifteen fathoms without let or intermission, where meeting with a cross drift (above six fathoms of water under it), he in his campaign coat, sword, and boots, was miraculously stopped, when, coming to himself, he was not much sensible of any hurt or bruises he had received, through the terror and horror of his fall; when, considering in what condition he was, he resolved to make the best expedient he could to prevent his falling further down (where, by the dropping of stones and earth moved by his fall, he understood there was much water under), so he rested his back against one side of the ruin, and his feet against the other, athwart the hole, and in order to fix his hands on some solid thing, drew his sword out of its sheath, and thrust the blade thereof as far as he could into the opposite part of the shaft, and so in great pain and terror rested himself.

"The suddenness of this accident, and the horse's escaping in the dark as aforesaid, was the reason why Mr. Chapman's servant, who went before him, did not so soon find him wanting as otherwise he might, which as soon as he did, he went back the roadway in quest of him, calling him aloud by his name; but receiving no answer, nor being able to find his horse, he concluded his master had rode home some other way, whereupon, giving up all further search after him, he hastened home to Constantine, expecting to have met him there; but contrary to his expectations, found he was not returned. Whereupon his servants, early next morning, went forth to inquire after him, and suspecting (as it happened) he might be fallen into some tin-shafts about Redruth, hastened thither, where, before they arrived, some tinners had taken custody of his horse (with bridle and saddle on), which they found grazing in the Wastsell Downs. Whereupon, consulting together about this tragical mishap, it was resolved forthwith that some of these tinners, for reward, should search the most dangerous shafts in order to find his body, either living or dead; accordingly they employed themselves that day till about four o'clock in the afternoon without any discovery of him. Finally, one person returned to his company, and told them that at a considerable distance he heard a kind of human voice underground; to which place they repaired, and making loud cries to the hole of the shaft, he forthwith answered them that he was there alive, and prayed their assistance in order to deliver him from that tremendous place; whereupon, immediately they set on tackle ropes and windlass on the old shaft, so that a tinner descended to the place where he rested, and having candle-light with him, bound him fast in a rope, and so drew him safely to land, where, to their great admiration and joy, it appeared he had neither broke any bone, or was much bruised by the fall; verifying that old English proverb, that drunkards seldom take hurt; for, as the tinners said, if he had fallen but two or three feet lower, he must inevitably have been drowned in the water. But maugre all these adverse accidents, after about seventeen hours' stay in the pit aforesaid, he miraculously escaped death, and lived many years after, and would recount this story with as much pleasure as men do the ballads of 'Chevy Chase' or 'Rosamond Clifford.'"

JOHN COKE, OF TRERICE

There is no thriving on ill-gotten goods, says the proverb, and this was exemplified in the case of the Cook or Coke family of Trerice, in S. Allen.

According to Hals, John Coke, attorney-at-law, came into these parts of Cornwall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth from Ottery S. Mary, in Devon, "without money or goods, and placed himself a servant or steward under Sir Francis Godolphin, Knight, where he began from, and with, his ink-horn and pen, to turn all things that he touched into gold, and that by indirect art and practices as tradition saith." This Cook or Coke derived from a Henry Cooke, a citizen of Exeter, who married the sister and heiress of Roger Thorne, in Ottery S. Mary; and the eldest branch of the family remained at Thorne till the end of the seventeenth century, when it became extinct.

Sir Francis Godolphin, finding John Coke a clever business man, left in his hands the management of his estate and his tin mines.

Coke took care that all the tin of his master's mines should be run into blocks and stamped with the dolphin, to show whence they came and whose they were. But after a while, as he saw that he was not specially overlooked, and that opportunity was afforded him for peculation, he had a considerable share of the block tin produced at the blowing-houses of Sir Francis for himself, and to distinguish it from that of his master's had it stamped with the figure of a cat, as cats are on the Coke arms; and this he disposed of to his own advantage, and eventually it was found that from the Godolphin mines more tin was produced and sold marked with the cat than was with the dolphin.

Hals says: "Sir Francis's lady being informed of his ill practices, and resolving by the next coinage to be better instructed in this mystery, at such time as Godolphin blowing-house was at work, privately, with one of her maids, in a morning, on foot went to that place, where according, as common fame reported, she found many more blocks or slabs of tin marked with the cat than there were with the dolphin; the one part pertaining to Sir Francis, the other to Mr. Coke. Whereupon, abundantly satisfied, she returned to Godolphin House, but could not be there timely enough against dinner; whereat Sir Francis was greatly distasted, having at that time several strangers to dine with him. At length the lady being arrived, she asked all their pardons for her absence, and told them it did not proceed from any neglect or want of respect, but from an absolute necessity of seeing a strange and unheard-of piece of curiosity, which could not be seen at any other time; viz. to see a cat eat the dolphin. And then gave an account of the premises, to their great wonder and admiration; whereupon, soon after, Sir Francis dismissed him from his service. But by that time he had gotten so much riches that forthwith he purchased the little barton and manor of Trerice, in S. Allen, and made that place his habitation till he purchased the barton and manor of Tregasa, and seated himself there, where, by parsimony and the inferior practice of the law, he accumulated a very considerable estate in those parts. But maugre all his thrift and conduct in providing wealth for himself and posterity, his grandson, Thomas Coke, succeeding to his estate, upon the issueless decease of his elder brother, Christopher Coke, and buying in his widow's jointure at a dear rate, and also undertaking the building of the present new and finely contrived house at Tregasa, though never finished, yet the said fabric was so costly and chargeable to him, together with the vain extravagance of his wife Lance, that he was necessitated to sell divers parcels of lands in order to raise money for his necessary occasions, and finally to mortgage the manor and barton of Tregasa and all his other lands that were before unsold, for about fourteen thousand pounds, to Hugh Boscawen, of Tregothnan, Esq.; and lastly, for that consideration and others, did, by lease and release, fine and proclamation, convey the same to the said Hugh Boscawen, his heirs and assigns, for ever. Soon after this fact Mr. Coke fell into great want and distress, together with his wife and children, and died suddenly by a slip of his foot into a shallow pit, wherein he was searching for tin, out of a conceited opinion he had that he should at last raise his fortune by tin, as his grandfather before him had done."

What Hals has omitted to state is that John Coke married a Godolphin, Prudence, daughter of William Godolphin, of Trewarveneth, by whom he had three sons--John, Edward, and Francis. Thomas Coke, who came to such grief, the sins of the grandfather visited on the grandchild, was Sheriff of Cornwall in the year 1651 under the Commonwealth.

THOMAS PELLOW, OF PENRYN

Thomas Pellow was born at Penryn, in all probability in 1704, and was educated in the Latin school of that place. But loving adventure better than books, and impatient to escape _propria quæ maribus_, he implored his uncle John Pellow to allow him to embark with him in the good ship _Francis_, owned by Valentine Enys, merchant, of Penryn, that was bound with a cargo of pilchards for Genoa. He soon began to regret having left the school bench, for his uncle not only made him work as a common seaman, but when not so employed held him to those hated books, and if he shirked, gave him the cat-o'-nine-tails. "So that by the time we got to Genoa I thought I had enough of the sea, being every day, during our voyage out, obliged (over and above my book learning) to go up to the main-top mast-head, even in all weather." On the return voyage when off Cape Finisterre the vessel was captured by Sallee pirates, and it with the crew conveyed to Morocco as captives. Thomas Pellow was in but his eleventh year, and his Moorish masters thought that they would have little difficulty with him in making of him a Mussulman.

He remained in Morocco for twenty-three years, during which time he kept a diary, and this was published in London in 1739 and 1740, but no date is affixed to the two editions. A third edition was published in 1775, and recently his record of adventure has been included in the "Adventure Series," edited with an introduction by Dr. Robert Brown, and published by Mr. Fisher Unwin, London, 1890. In this edition the narrative extends to 330 pages, and it is not my intention to give even a summary of its contents, the book itself being easily accessible. What must suffice is some account of the beginning of his bondage and an idea of the condition of Morocco whilst he was there.

Thomas Pellow was given as slave to Muley Spha one of the Sultan's favourite sons, but, as Pellow says, a sad villain. "My business now was to run from morning to night after his horse's heels; during which he often prompted me to turn Moor, and told me, if I would, I should have a very fine horse to ride on, and I should live like one of his best esteemed friends." As Pellow declined this invitation, "he committed me prisoner to one of his own rooms, keeping me there several months in irons, and every day most severely bastinading me.... My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh off my bones by fire; which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions, insomuch, that through my so very acute pains I was at last constrained to submit, calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that I never gave the consent of the heart, though I seemingly yielded by holding up my finger."

He was then, after having been instructed in the Moorish language, appointed to be chief porter to the Sultan's harem, where resided the Sultana and thirty-eight concubines. He received strict orders that no one should be admitted without due notice. On one occasion the Sultan arrived and knocked to be admitted without having previously intimated his intention of paying a visit to his harem. The outer porter made no difficulty in admitting him, but Thomas Pellow absolutely refused to admit His Majesty as he had received no notice that he was coming, and when the Sultan continued to knock, he discharged his blunderbuss through the door. The Sultan was so delighted at his trustworthy character and behaviour on the occasion, that he cut off the heads of the two complaisant door-keepers, and promoted Pellow to be one of his bodyguard.

After a few years the Sultan, "being on the merry fun, ordered to be brought before him eight hundred young men, and soon after as many young women, and he told the men, that he had on several occasions observed their readiness in obeying him, he would therefore give every one of them a wife; and which indeed, he soon did, by giving some by his own hand (a very great condescension), and to others by the beckoning of his head, and the cast of his eye, where they should fix. After they were all coupled and departed, I was also called forth, and bid to look at eight black women standing there, and to take one of them for a wife, at which sudden command, I (being not a little confounded) immediately bowing twice, falling to the ground and kissing it, and after that the Emperor's foot, humbly entreated him that he would be graciously pleased to give me one of my own colour. Then, forthwith sending them off, he ordered to be brought forth seven others, who all proved to be mulattoes, at which I again bowed to the ground, still entreating him to give me one of my own colour; and then he ordered them also to depart, and sent for a single woman, full dressed, with two blacks attending her. I being forthwith ordered to take her by the hand and lead her off, perceived it to be black also, as soon after I did her feet; at which I started back, and being asked what was the matter, I answered him as before; when he, assenting, ordered me to lift up her veil and look at her face; which I readily obeying, found her to be of a very agreeable complexion, the old rascal crying out in the Spanish language, _Bono, bono_, ordering me a second time to take her by the hand, lead her off, and keep her safe."

By this wife Pellow had a daughter. The Sultan was a monster of cruelty, but according to Pellow there was not much choice in rotten apples; he saw the rise of several, and one was as bad as another. He says of the first he served: "He was of so fickle, cruel, and sanguine a nature, that none could become for one hour secure of life. He had many despatched, by having their heads cut off, or by being strangled, others by tossing; but scarce would he on those occasions afford a verbal command, he thinking that too much--generally giving it by signs or motions of his head and hand.

"The punishment of _Tossing_ is a very particular one and peculiar to the Moors. The person whom the Emperor orders to be thus punished is seized by three or four strong negroes, who, taking hold of his arms, throw him up with all their strength, and at the same time turning him round, pitch him down head foremost; at which they are so dexterous by long use, that they can either break his neck at the first toss, dislocate his shoulder, or let him fall with less hurt. They continue doing this as often as the Emperor has ordered.

"The Emperor's wrath is terrible, which the Christians have often felt. One day, passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and being affronted that they did not keep time in their strokes, he made the guards go up and throw them off the wall, breaking their legs and arms, and knocking them on the head. Another time he ordered them to bury a man alive, and beat him down along with the mortar in the wall.

"In the year 1721 the Emperor despatched El Arbi Shat, a man of one of the best families in Barbary, being descended from the Andalusian Moors, and deserved the esteem both of his own countrymen and of us. Part of the crime laid to his charge was for going out of the country without the Emperor's knowledge, and having been friendly himself with Christian women, and often been in liquor. He was also accused of being an unbeliever. Early one morning he was carried before the Emperor, who commanded him to be sawed in two; upon which he was tied between two boards and sawed in two, beginning at the head and going downwards, till the body fell asunder, and must have remained to have been eaten by dogs, if the Emperor had not pardoned him--an extravagant custom, to pardon a man after he is dead, but unless he does so, nobody dares bury the body."