The Quantocks and their associations

THE QUANTOCKS

AND

THEIR ASSOCIATIONS

•»■'»»■■ I I • — I II H IM ;

W. L. NICHOLS

THE QUANTOCKS

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

THE

QUANTOCKS

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

BY THE LATE

Rev. WILLIAM LUKE NICHOLS, m.a., f.s.a.

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF

2>o&tnoton, Ibolfoi'fc, ant> St. Hubries.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED, WITH MAP
AND ELEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON :

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, AND COMPANY,

Limited,

<St. JHptfitsian’s

Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.

BATH : G. A. MUNDY.
1891.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016

https://archive.org/details/quantockstheiras00nich_1

TO

S/R ALEXANDER ACL AND HOOD . Bart.,

©f i-t. aunties,

THE NEW EDITION OF THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY HIS
FAITHFUL AND OBEDIENT SERVANT,

A. F. NICHOLS.

How bless’d, delicious scene ! the eye that greets
Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats ;

The unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales ;
The never-ending waters of thy vales.

Descriptive Sketches — Wordsworth.

NOTICE.

The Historic Paper on the Quantocks, by my late brother,
issued only for private circulation, has been long out
of print. It was his intention to reprint the little work,
with Illustrations, adding also an account of the
Dodington Tragedy, but that intention was frustrated
by the repeated spasmodic attacks to which he was
subject some time before his death ; he left, however,
a carefully revised account of the terrible but romantic
circumstances connected with it, of which many gar-
bled versions are current.

I regard it as a fraternal obligation to fulfil my brother’s
wishes by the re-publication of the original Paper with
the additions mentioned.

Dodington, Holford, and St. Audries are so inseparably
connected with the Quantocks, that it was deemed
expedient to add a chapter to the original work, giving
an account of those interesting features of the locality.

My friend, Mr. Peach, has kindly assisted me in the editing
and revision of the work and in passing it through the
press.

A. F. NICHOLS,

Uottbon,

September, 1891.

“ Naturane nobis hoc datum dicam, an errore quodam ; ut,
cum ea loca videamus, in quibus memoria dignos viros acceperi-
mus multum esse versatos, magis moveamur, quam si quando
eorum ipsorum aut facta audiamus, aut scrip turn aliquod
legamus ? Yelut ego nunc moveor. Yenit enim mihi
Platonis in mentem, quern accepimus primum hie disputare
solitum ; cujus etiam illi hortuli propin qui non memoriam
solum mihi afflerunt, sed ipsum videntur in conspectu meo
hie ponere. Hie Speucippus, hie Xenocrates, hie ejus auditor
Polemo ; cujus ipsa ilia sessio fuit, quam videmus.

Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis .” — Cicero de Finib ., Lib.
v., c. i.

“ I remember once, when Coleridge, Thelwell and I were
seated upon the turf on the brink of the stream, in the most
beautiful part of the most beautiful glen of Alfoxden, Coleridge
exclaimed, ‘ This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings
and conflicts of the wide world.’ ‘ Nay,’ says Thelwall, c to
make one forget them altogether.’ It was a chosen resort of
mine.”

Wordsworth.

CONTENTS.

QUANTOCKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS

A QUANTOCK TRAGEDY

DODINGTON

HOLFORD

ST. AUDRIES

APPENDIX

•• 37

.. 49

.. 56

.. 58

65

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE

MAP . . . . • • • • • • • • title

AUTHOR IN HIS STUDY i

THE WOODLANDS .. .. .. .. .. i$

WATERFALL .. .. .. .. .. ..24

COLERIDGE’S COTTAGE AT NETHER STOWEY .. 26

ALFOXDEN HOUSE, RESIDENCE OF THE

POET WORDSWORTH .. .. .. .-33

FOUNTAIN ON DODINGTON COMMON .. ..48

INTERIOR OF THE OLD HALL AT DODINGTON .. 54

HOLFORD CHURCH .. .. .. .. ..57

SCENE IN THE PARK AT ST. AUDRIES .. ..58

INTERIOR OF THE HALL AT ST. AUDRIES .. .. 59

ST. AUDRIES CHURCH AND RECTORY .. ..62

Womlbury Company.

THE AUTHOR IN HIS STUDY.

THE

QUANTOCKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

AVING resided for some time on the borders of the

Quantock-hills, I have been requested to give my
impressions of the scenery of the district, and especially
to note any reminiscences I may have met with of the two
great Poets, whose genius has thrown an additional charm
over the locality, and made it for ever classic ground.

The mountain range of the Quantocks, the Oberland of
Somersetshire, rises above the wide plain of Bridgwater
and the fair valley, or Dean 1 as it is called, of Taunton, and
runs for nearly sixteen miles in a direction from south-east
to north-west between the Bristol Channel and the latter
town, and attains its greatest elevation at Wilsneck, an
eminence rising between the two rival heights of Cothel-
slone and Dousborough.

The chief characteristic of Quantock scenery I venture
to designate as Cheerful Beauty. Unlike the savage
grandeur of the Scottish mountains, or the wild and bleak

1 This is a parcel of ground round about Taunton very pleasant and
populous, containing many parishes, and so fruitful, to use their own
phrase, with the j tun and zoil, that it needs no manuring at all. The
peasantry therein are as rude as rich, and so highly conceited of their
own country, that they conceive it a disparagement to be born in any
other place. — Grose's Provincial Glossary. For an account of the
Manor of Taunton-Dean see Savage’s History of Taunton, p. 46.

2

THE Q C/AN TO CHS ,

uplands of Northern England, its breezy summits rise in
gentle and graceful undulations, and sink into woody
combes of the most romantic beauty, thickly clothed, many
of them with scrub oak, and each with its own little stream
winding through it ; its slopes fringed with gorse and
ferns of luxuriant growth, or purple with heather, and
abounding everywhere with the pretty little shrub vac _
cinium myrtillus , or whortleberry, the fruit of which, locally
known by the name of “ whorts ” becomes from its sale
during the season a source of considerable profit to the
surrounding villages. The prevalence of the yew and the
holly may also be noted ; the former is found singly in the
woods and hedgerows, or in the churchyards, of which few
are without one or more specimens often of majestic growth
and venerable age. The holly is still more abundant, and
the fine undergrowth of this tree, like those in the grove at
Alfoxden, so much admired by Wordsworth, forms quite a
speciality of these woods. Nor must the charm which the
colour of the soil imparts be forgotten ; — that rich red sand-
stone which always gives such a warm tone to the
landscape, and so much luxuriance to the foliage. Those
numerous combes, however, in the sheltered hollows of
which may be found some of the rarest of our native plants , 2
form the most marked feature of the district ; and lying, as
they generally do, at right angles to the sea-shore, break the
outline of the mountain range into u Heads / 7 as they are
locally termed, and these eminences, seen from the Bristol

x Appendix, note i.

2 Note ii.

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

3

Channel, gave rise in days of yore to the Keltic name of
The Quantocks, i.e., the water-headlands.

Around the brows of these hills wind beautiful walks
that extend for miles through oak woods, once the favourite
haunt of the poets and their friends ; such are the valley of
the Seven Wells, Cockercombe, Hunter’s Dell, and other
points of similar interest. They have since been rendered
more accessible by the formation of drives that open out
the most charming scenes of woodland beauty. Southey,
in one of his letters, affirms that “ Devonshire falls very
flat after the North of Somerset, which is truly a magnifi-
cent country.” Few strangers, however, who travel along
the public road at the base of these hills would anticipate
the countless beauties that He hidden in the recesses of their
“ dingles and bosky dells, ” nor the splendid prospects
which their heights command. Certainly, as far as my own
experience extends, I never met with so much fine moun_
tain scenery that could be enjoyed with so trifling an
amount of climbing, nor a district in which so many spots
impressive from their solitude and seclusion could be so
easily reached. An advantage this, to be appreciated, it
may be, by persons somewhat advanced in years, more than
by the droves of good people infected by the modern vulgar
mania for climbing the snowy peaks of enormous mountains,
with, as it would seem, no intelligible object except that of
coming down again, and apart from any of those scientific
researches which justify and ennoble so great an expendi-
ture of time and toil. To such hunters after the sublime I

4

THE QUANTOCRS,

cannot commend this part of Somersetshire, nor invite their
steps to wander —

On seaward Quantock’s heathy hills,

Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float here and there like things astray.l

Our Quantock scenery, with its gentle features, and a
beauty more of expression than of form, would be to them
“a' is a picture to a blind man’s eye or might affect them
much as a pastoral symphony of Beethoven might affect the
crowd that is rushing from a “ monster concert 91 at Exeter
Hall.

This exaggerated passion for lofty mountains, so much in
vogue of late years, appears to have been unknown to
classical antiquity, and the greatest poets and painters
would seem to have drawn but little of their inspiration
from its influence. Beauty of scenery is in truth independ-
ent of mere altitude and expanse, and grandeur is not
necessarily connected with magnitude. To persons who
are susceptible of the true enjoyment of external nature,
and can watch with an intelligent eye the constant changes
of shade and colour in landscape, and note the delicate
harmonies and manifold transformations in sea, and sky,
and cloud, which succeed each other in such infinite
variety to them, the wild heathy moorlands, the softly
rounded heights, and the deep-sunk combes of the Quan-
tocks will, however inferior in scale, be found, in their way

Coleridge Poems, vol. i , p. 180,

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

5

scarcely less impressive than the passes of the Alps or the
mountains of Switzerland. For after all, it is upon the
mind which the spectator brings along with him that his
acquisitions of pleasure or profit must depend : —

we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone doth Nature live. 1

Other points of interest remain to be noticed. The
mountain heights not only afford views of great extent and
grandeur, but are many of them crowned with ancient
encampments. Of these perhaps the most considerable in
size, and commanding in position is Dousborough, a
corruption of How’s-borough, i.e ., the hill-fort. A long
green path of elastic turf leads up for. about a mile in
nearly a straight line from the gate of my residence, Wood-
lands, to the camp on the summit. This has been some-
times ascribed to the Romans, but, as appears to me, is
evidently a fortress of Belgic-British construction, and is
of great size and strength. In form it is nearly oval, but
accomodated to the shape of the hill. Its enclosure,
partially overgrown with heather and dwarf-oak coppice,
contains an area of more than ten acres. A deep fosse and
a lofty agger surround it, and the ramparts are pierced by
three entrances. On its western declivity may be traced a
raised road, or causey, leading to the British trackway, that,
running to the ancient ford at Combwitch, skirts the
entrenched post at Cannington Park Hill, keeps along a

1 Coleridge ; Poems v., p. 237,

6

THE QUANTO CHS,

valley to the south of Nether Stowey, ascends Quantock,
passing between Dousborough and Wilsneck, and then
descends to the vale of Crowcombe ; next it mounts the
Brendon Hills, and stretches far away over the wilds of
of Exmoor to the mining districts of Cornwall. On the
highest point of Dousborough, where stands the flag-staff,
a heap of loose masonry marks the sight of a specula , or
watch tower, and beside it are two or three circular pits,
which formerly held the beacon fires. These were in
correspondence with a chain of other forts of ante-Roman
origin on the long ridge of the Mendips, and on the opposite
Brendon Hills, protecting the Belgic frontiers, communi-
cating with both Channels, and ready on the appearance of
danger to convey onwards the telegraphic fire-signals, like
the flame from Mount Ida that leapt from height to height
to announce to Argos the news of the fall of Troy.

That the Romans, after their subjugation of this part of
Britannia Prima, may have occasionally occupied as castra
aestiva the military post constructed long before their day,
is not improbable. No Roman road, however, comes with-
in ten miles of the fort, although a few coins of the Lower
Empire have been found at the village of Kilton and
elsewhere in the vicinity. An oval-shaped barrow within
the enceinte , with a trench round it, which appears to have
been formally opened, is sometimes pointed out as the
Pretorium , but more probably marks the grave of some
Belgic chieftain, — the oldest form of sepulture and the

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

7

most durable. There is also at no great distance another
sepulchral monument in the hollow below the northern
slope of the encampment, on the left of the greensward
path leading up to the summit. This is a cairn or heap of
loose stones, surrounded by a shallow trench ; and on the
hill just above Woodlands, is one of those circular pits so
common on the Wiltshire Downs, which Stukely calls, oddly
enough, “ inverted barrows.” This excavation marks the
site of an outpost to the fort above, from which it was
visible ; it commands the road at the foot of the hill, and
was probably roofed over in a bee hive shape to form a
shelter for the guard. Many tumuli are found scattered
over the Quantocks, and but few Roman remains. Other
ancient beacons may be traced on Wilsneck, Cothelstone,
Morncombe, and elsewhere.

It was the judicious advice of a distinguished antiquary,
the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, “ to avoid above all things
the common error of looking for Roman stations on high
mountains ; but on the contrary to examine those gentle
eminences in the plains, having an open circuit of country
around them. This latter quality seems peculiarly to have
been considered by the Romans, as we may collect from
their historians ; and for this reason, the Britons seldom
ventured to attack the enemy in the open, but depended
more on surprising them unawares. Hence the Romans
fixed on situations for their camps where they could per*
ceive at a distance the Britons descending from their strong-
holds in the mountains.” The Roman generals, although

8

THE QUAXTOCKS ,

they never failed, even on halting for a single night, to
throw up entrenchments round their camp, yet relied less
upon mountain-heights and huge ramparts than upon the
disciplined bravery of their legions, and [their own superior
military tactics. Their camps, although occasionally found
intermingled with older British fortifications, were generally
smaller, of a square form with four gates, and placed on
some gentle eminence with water near at hand. Nor have
the Danes a greater claim than the Romans to the con-
struction of these grand military works that are sometimes
called by their name. Their camps were mostly small and
hastily thrown up to serve the purpose of some sudden
piratical landing. In the neighbourhood of Watchet and
Porlock are several small entrenchments near the coast,
which may with great probability be assigned to this
people ; while others, of dimensions equally small, consist-
ing of merely a single agger and a fosse, may be found
constructed on the hill-sides, or at head of some little
valley, commanding its approach from the sea, and placed
so as to defend the interior of the country from these
marauding descents. Such are “Trendle Ring,” on the
slope of Quantock, above Bicknoller, and another diminu-
tive earthwork, of which I know not the name, on a little
rocky promontory a mile further to the west towards
S tog umber.

It is not improbable that the whole of this wild outlying
district of the Quantocks, so far removed from the great
line of Roman traffic, remained for a considerable time a

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

9

woody fastness of the Belgic-Britons. An interesting dis-
covery which has been lately made on the Fairfield Estate,
goes far to confirm the supposition of their occupancy. It
consists of a great variety of objects in bronze, amounting,
together with fragments, to nearly 150 pieces. There are
portions of swords and their sheaths ; daggers and knives ;
spear heads of the leaf shape and of the barbed type ; more
than a score of Celts, of sections square or oval ; palstaves ;
gouges ; a disc of molten metal ; a number of jets from the
necks of moulds, &c. These articles were lately exhibited
at the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries, at Somerset
House, and are now arranged in the library at St. Audries.

The view from the summit of Dousborough is of great
extent and variety. Immediately beneath the spectator, on
the north, stretching away towards the Bristol Channel,
lies a level tract of woodland, interspersed with meadows,
and orchards, and farmsteads, from which shoots up the
spire of the fine old Priory Church of Stoke-Courcey, and
near it stand the moated walls of its Norman Castle. Hard
by is visible the ancient mansion of Fairfield, half hidden in
its trees. Across the Channel is seen the Coast of Wales,
and the horizon beyond is fringed by the mountains of
Glamorgan, Brecknock, and Monmouthshire. The broad
expanse of the “Severn-sea,” yellow as the Tiber, occupies the
middle distance, with the bold, rocky islet of the Steep
Holms rising abruptly from its bosom, — an out-lying mass
severed from the mountain limestone of the Mendips, and

10

THE Q C/AN TO CHS,

not without a little history of its own. For here the sur-
vivors of the pirate Danes, after the repulse of their
attempted landing at Watchet (A.D, 915), found a brief
refuge, and “sat on the island,” as the “Saxon Chronicle”
expresses it, foodless and forlorn, till most of them died of
hunger. Gildas, the oldest British historian, is said to have
retired to this secluded spot to write his book of lamenta-
tions, called a Treatise de excidio Britannic ? ; and here,
after the battle of Hastings, Girtha, the mother of Harold,
with some of the noble ladies of her court, found a tem-
porary asylum. The island, which has been lately fortified
with all the appliances of modern warfare, lies in the very
highway of Channel traffic, for here the “ Severn-sea u
becomes free and open to the Atlantic, and anyone of yon-
der vessels, whose white sails add so much animation and in-
terest to the view, might, it is said, make from hence in a
fair wind, without a tack, the harbour of New York. The
sister islet, the Flat Holmes, is less visible from hence,
except at night, when, as Coleridge describes it, —

Dark reddening from the channelled isle,

Twinkles the watch-fire, like a sullen star.

Turning towards the east, the long range of the Mendips
appears, beyond the sandy flats that mark the position of
the ancient estuary Uxella, now reduced, by their accumu-
lations, to form the mouth of the river Parret. On the
highest point of the range, is a beacon, once perhaps the
most important watch-tower in the county, being equally
visible from the north and south sides of Mendip. At one

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

ii

point, the long outline is obscured by a faint cloud of
smoke which hangs over the busy town and port of Bridge-
water, with its factories and foundries, and at another, a
sharp fracture indicates the position of the grand ravine of
Cheddar. More in advance towards the spectator the low-
lying ridge of Polden, with a Roman road running along it,
stretches away towards Sedgmoor ; and standing apart,
islanded by its circling marshes, and hidden now and then
by their mists, rises St. Michael’s famous tower, recalling
the lines of a fine descriptive poet .* —

“ How hath it vanished in a hasty spleen,

The Tor of Glastonbury ! ”

Still further south, Alfred’s tower looks out from the
woods of Stourhead ; and on a very clear day are visible the
double peaks of Montacute. On the west the prospect is
limited by high and heathery moorlands, the haunt of the
black game, except where a depression admits a glimpse of
the Brendon hills, and the fine bold headland of Minehead ;
and at times the peak of Dunkery, the monarch of western
mountains, may be distinguished. Immediately below, to
the left of the woods of Alfoxden, and looking across two
parallel coombs of great beauty, lies the little valley of
Kilve, and beyond its gap the glittering sea.

The view from Cothelstone Beacon has been so well
described in the Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological
Society, by the late Mr. Warre, that it would be difficult
to add much to the clever sketch he has left us ; and
Willsneck, although of somewhat greater altitude, has

12

THE QUANTOCKS,

little additional interest, and much in common with the
neighbouring height. Neither elevation, however, affords
a prospect so fascinating as that from Dousborough,
although both command a wider expanse of view over the
central part of the county, embracing a large portion of
that fair valley known far and wide as Taunton Dean ; a
goodly landscape, recalling to the recollection of the lover
of our elder poets the fervid encomium of Drayton in his
Poly-olbion ;

“ What eare so empty is, that hath not heard the sound

Of Taunton’s fruitfull Deane ? not matcht by any ground ; . . .

Where sea-ward Quantock stands

Having accomplished the ascent of Wilsneck, the climber
(and if a botanist, he may chance on its higher slopes to
light on a specimen of the rare stag’s-horn moss), finds
himself on the loftiest point cf Quantock. As his eye
ranges over the fertile campaign below, he will see innum-
erable meadows and cornfields, farms, and rural dwellings;
and, rising frequent from the valley, or nestling here and
there in the woody openings of the hills, the battlements
of some of those unrivalled 1 Perpendicular ’ Towers for
which Somersetshire over all other parts of England reigns
supreme. Nor will the survey prove less suggestive to the
historian or the antiquary. Within ken are the sites of a
score of battle-fields ; the mediaeval castle and the moated
grange lend their associations ; nor are wanting old his-
toric mansions, and

“ ghostly halls of grey renown,

“ With woodland honours graced

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

13

On the south the heights of Blagdon form a rampart to
the vale of Taunton, and at their extremity throw out a
bold projecting spur, crowned by the strong British en-
campment of Castle Neroche. Turning away from this fair
scene towards the west, we have at our feet the romantic
village of Crowcombe, and, on the opposite slope of the
valley, Combe-Florey, a name now well known from its
connection with the witty Canon of S. Paul’s, whose play-
ful sallies, never spiced by malice, were always sine felle
foci. His glebe is desciibed, in the memoir of his life, as
truly a “valley of flowers,” — “ a lovely little spot where
nature and heart combined to realise the Happy Valley.”
The long line of the Brendon hills extends in front of our
station, on an outlying point of which is conspicuous
Willett Tower, a modern erection, and behind it are the
Elworthy barrows, a large Belgic-British earthwork left
half finished. It has formed a subject of fruitless conjecture
with antiquaries, why these warlike fortifications were
discontinued, and for so many centuries,

‘ ‘ pendent opera interrupta, minaeque

Murorum ingentes

Yet one other distinction of the Quantocks remains to be
noticed, 'which they possess in common with the hill
country south of the Bristol Channel, including the heights
of Exmoor and a poition of North Devon ; and that is, the
fact that this district is now the last home in South Britain
vif the wild red-deer and that here alone still survive some
relics of the grand old stag-hunting establishments whose

14

THE Q VAN TO CHS,

sport and hospitalities are associated with the bye-gone
history of the county of Somerset. Here may still some-
times be seen the broad-antlered stag or the gracetul hind
hotly pursued by a gallant train of horsemen, while the
echoes of the Quantocks are roused by the shouts of the
gay cavalcade and the voices of the hounds swelling and
dying away over the autumn woods, till their deepened note
is followed by the wild bugle-call that proclaims “ the mort
o’ the deer.”

Into this charming country there came, between seventy
and eighty years ago, two men, destined to exercise by
their genius and their writings an influence upon the minds
of their generation more profound than any others of their
contemporaries. “Perhaps,” says a recent critic, “no two
such men have met anywhere on English ground during
this century.” It was the period when the stir and tur-
moil which disturbed men’s minds at the outset of the
first French Revolution had given place to comparative
calm and repose, and the political fever of the nation was
subsiding, that Coleridge, the younger of the two, “retired,”
as he himself informs us, “ to a cottage in Somersetshire at
the foot of Quantock, to devote himself to poetry and to the
study of ethics and psychology, and the foundations of
religion and morals .” 1 Wordsworth, his senior by more

1 The following letter was addressed by Mr. Nichols to the Rev.
J. R. Vernon, Rector of St. Audries, himself the author of an interest-
ing work on the same locality, published in the Leisure Hour in 1888.

THE WOODLANDS.

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

i ;

than two years, was attracted to the same neighbourhood
by mental sympathy with his brother philosopher and poet,
and a wish to enjoy the society of a man by whose mar-
vellous conversation he had been so much impressed. He
loved to describe Coleridge’s talk as “like a majestic river,
the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals ;
which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost
in sand ; then came flashing out broad and distinct ; and
even when it took a turn which your eye could not follow,
yet you always felt and knew that there was a connection
in its parts, and that it was the same river.” Those per-
sons who have listened to the discourse of “ the old man

Woodlands,

Holford, June n, 1888

My dear Sir,

Pray forgive my delay in replying to your note, I am only just
returned from London, and found a long arrear of bills and household
matters.

I wished to illustrate my own booklet with some pictorial embel-
lishments, connected with the two poets. After enquiry and personal
inspection of the Stowey residence of Coleridge, and the scene 'of the
brief Marazion of Wordsworth at Alfoxden, I found that the former
had been so much changed from the pretty low-roofed thatched cottage
of the past, by the addition of an upper storey ; the re-casing of the
walls and addition of an extra wing, that the bard himself would fail
to recognise his former domicile. The small country house of Alfoxden
has been replaced by a mansion, and merely one or two smaller rooms
within would recall it to Wordsworth if he could re-visit it. The
Waterfall alone still “flows on for ever,” and the Combe has been
intruded on by modern cottages, and the only contemporary one
removed.

THE QUANTOCKS,

16

eloquent,” in his after years, will recognize the accuracy of
this description.* * Yet no two men could be more unlike
than the poets who now met beside the Quantocks.
Coleridge, a student and recluse from his boyhood, of
immense erudition, a heluo libronim ; all his life a vale-
tudinarian who scarcely knew what health was — ever
planning mighty works — multa et pulcra minans — yet
so irresolute and infirm of purpose as never to realize his

The only perfect existing residence of Coleridge is at Clevedon,
where he brought his bride, and spent, perhaps, the happiest days of
his married life.

Soon after my Quantock book appeared, I received a letter from
a perfect stranger, Mr. Buxton Forman (now the President of the
Browning Society, and editor of the fine edition of the works of
England’s greatest lyric poet, Shelley, in six octavo volumes), requesting
on behalf of himself and a few friends to purchase or obtain the loan
of the book, and calling my attention to an article in a public print
taken almost wholly from the volume which they requested the gift of,
or loan, or purchase.

But I am almost afraid to look on the long epistle I have troubled
you with, and can only regret being unable to offer you a more satis-
factory response to your query.

Faithfully yours,

W. L. N.

* Coleridge, on his side, speaking in his Biographia Litevaria, of his
residence at Stowey, and the blessing he then acquired in the society
of Wordsworth, whom he could look up to with equal reverence as a
poet, a philosopher or a man, adds “ his conversation extended to al-
most all subjects, except physics and politics ; with the latter he never
troubled himself.”

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

17

aspirations — the very Hamlet of literature ; — Wordsworth,
on the other hand — as robust in body as one of the peasants
of his native Cumberland, of indomitable purpose, keeping
his way right onward when made the scorn of fools till he
became the glory of his age — was no reader of books, except
of the great book of nature, and his u study ” was on the
Quantock downs. It was his creed that

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man ;

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Over “these green hills, ” observes the same critic, “ the two
young poets wandered for hours together rapt in fervid
talk, Coleridge no doubt the chief speaker, Wordsworth not
the less suggestive. Never before, or since, have these
downs heard such high converse.” At that period,
Benedict de Spinosa was the master spirit whose spirit held
temporary sway over the mind of Coleridge ; and doubt-
less the somewhat mystical, but ennobling propositions of
the famous 5th book of his Ethics, which exercised so
profound an influence over the greatest minds of Germany,
would form a frequent subject of discussion and possess no
small attraction for both poets. But not alone philosophy,
poetry would naturally become their theme. Both were
disgusted with the inane and artificial versification which
then passed under its name, and with the false canons of criti-
cism and formal rules upon which it was based, English
poetry was indeed at that period at its lowest ebb, repre-

i8

THE QUANTO CHS,

seated mainly by the glitter and false taste of Darwin and
the turgid twaddle of Hayley. Burns, it is true, had been
lately in full song, but his wood notes wild were little known
in the south ; and Cowper, the herald of a better day, was
timid, and only half emancipated from the prevailing sys-
tem. It was at this period that the poems of Wordsworth
and Coleridge burst upon the literary world like a new
revelation. In after years, the elder poet thus recalled
their memorable rambles in those days of promise : —

Upon smooth Quantock’s airy ridge we roved
Unchecked, or loitered mid their sylvan combs,

Thou in bewitching words, with happy art,

Didst chaunt the vision of that Antient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes
Didst utter of the Lady Christabel ;

And I, associate with such labour, steeped
In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours,

Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found,

After the perils of his moonlight ride,

Near the loud waterfall ; or her who sate
In misery near the miserable thorn.

The Prelude, Book xiv.

The result of these musings on the Quantocks was the
publication in the following year (1798) of the famous
Lyrical Ballads, a volume which so startled the critics of
that day from their propriety. In anticipation of its recep-
tion, Wordsworth, the chief contributor, prefixed to the
second edition the motto, afterwards withdrawn, “ quam
nihil ad genium , Papiniane, tuum ,” and added an explana-
tory Preface of considerable length. The Antient Mariner ,

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

19

and the Christabel , planned during a walk along the
Quan tock Hills towards Watchet, time has stamped as,
“ after their kind, unsurpassed by any creation of the poet’s
own generation, or perhaps ot any generation of England’s
poetry.” The Christabel excited the warm admiration
of Sir Walter Scott, who frankly acknowledged his own
considerable obligations to the poetry of Coleridge, and
particularly admired his management of the supernatural.
“ Why,” enquires Sir Walter, “ is the Harp of Quantock
silent ? ” and, in the notes to one of his romances, having
occasion to refer to the popular superstition which formerly
existed, that evil spirits could not enter an inhabited house
unless invited, or even dragged over the threshold, he adds
the remark, that “ the most picturesque use of this popular
belief occurs in Coleridge’s beautiful, and tantalizing frag-
ment of Christabel Has not our own imaginative poet
cause to fear that future ages will desire to summon him
from his place of rest, as Milton longed

To call him up, who left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold ?

“ The verses I refer to/’ continues Sir Walter, “are when
Christabel conducts into her father’s castle a mysterious and
malevolent being, under the disguise of a distressed female
stranger : —

They crossed the moat, and Christabel
Took the key that fitted well ;

A little door she opened straight,

All in the middle of the gate ;

The gate that was ironed within and without,

20

THE QUANTQCKS ,

Where an army in battle array had marched out.

The lady sank, belike through pain,

And Christabel with might and main
Lifted her up, a weary weight,

Over the threshold of the gate :

Then the lady rose again,

And moved as she were not in pain.

So, free from danger, free from fear,

They crossed the court : right glad they were.”

On another occasion, speaking of u the singularly irregular
structure of the stanzas, and the liberty it allowed the
author to adapt the sound to the sense ” which he found in
Christabel , he adds the graceful remark, “ it is to Mr.
Coleridge that I am bound to make the acknowledgement
due from the pupil to his master .” 1 Even Lord Byron
owned the charm of what he called “ that wild, and
singularly original and beautiful poem and to the
Christabel we are indebted for the opening lines of one of
his now nearly forgotten tales in verse, The Siege of Corinth.
Indeed, few persons of sensibility can resist the marvellous
skill with which the poet of Stowey gives “ a local
habitation and a name” to the wild fictions of old romantic
superstition. The mysterious Geraldine, with her witch-
like beauty, uttering her spell over the sleeping Christabel,
chills the blood with creeping horror ; and the wonderful
art with which so many minute touches of quaint and
picturesque description are thrown in, adds immensely to
the magical effect. The mode of narrative, too, by question

1 Int. to The Lay of the Last Minstrel, p. 24.

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

21

and answer, then so novel and original, imparts spirit and
liveliness to the story, and the moonlit forest ; the moated
castle and its massive gate ; the angry moan of the old
mastiff ; the echoing hall, and the sudden flash of the
embers on its hearth, revealing only the serpent-eye of the
stranger lady ; the carven chamber, and its fresh-trimmed
silver lamp,

Left swinging to and fro, —

combine, one and all, to lay an irresistible hold upon the
imagination of the reader.

The year 1797, which gave birth to two such works of
genius as this poem and The Antient Mariner , may well be
called the annus mirabilis of the poet ! It was probably
the happiest year of his life; he had not yet lost the
springing hopes of youth, and keenly felt, no doubt, the
exhilarating consciousness of his own great powers. His
poetic prime,” observes his learned daughter, in her Notes
on her Father’s life, “ commenced with the Ode to the
Departing Year , composed at the end of December, 179b.”
The year following, the five-and-twentieth of his life
[during which, and in 1798, he resided in his cottage at
Nether Stowey], produced The Ancient Mariner , Love , and
The Dark Ladie , the first part of Christabel , Kuhla Khan ,
the tragedy of the Remorse , France , and This Lime Tree
Bower. Fears in Solitude , The Nightingale ) and The
Wanderings of Cain , were written in 1798. Frost at
Midnight , The Picture , the Lines to the Rev. G, Coleridge )
and those To W, Wordsworth , are all of the same Nether

22

THE Q C/AN TO CHS,

Stowey period. “It was in June, 1797,” continues the
poet’s daughter, “ that my Father began to be intimate
with Mr. Wordsworth, and this doubtless gave an impulse
to his mind. The poems which succeed are distinguished
from those of my father’s Stowey life by a less buoyant
spirit.” With these last I am not concerned in the present
paper, which is confined to the period of the poet’s
residence in this part of Somersetshire. Of the above
poems Kubla Khan , a dream within a dream, was composed,
as the author himself tells us, in a lonely farmhouse
between Porlock and Lynton. The Lines to his Brother
contain a touching biographical retrospect ; and the noble
verses addressed to Wordsworth record his own feelings on
hearing the grand poem of The Prelude read by its author.
The tragedy of The Remorse was written at the suggestion
of Sheridan, and some years afterwards represented at Drury
Lane, at the request of Lord Byron, and with great success.
In the little artistically-perfect gem, entitled Love , with
which as a poem of the affections, there is nothing antient
or modern that, in its way, can bear a moment’s comparison,
one knows not which most to admire, — its picturesque
description,— its apt locality, and the sculpture-like
precision of its handling, — its captivating melancholy, or its
exquisite biending of the spiritual and the sensuous.

Most of the poems by Wordsworth contained in the first
edition of the Lyrical Ballads (a little volume now of
extreme rarity), were produced at Alfoxden, a mansion
about three miles from Nether Stowey, the residence of his

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

23

brother poet, and are descriptive of Quantock scenery, or
founded on incidents that occurred in the neighbourhood.
The picturesque little domain of Alfoxden has naturally
acquired some celebrity from the circumstance that the
Poet of the Excursion resided there for awhile in his noble
poverty. An interesting memorial, now nearly effaced by
time, of the Poet’s sojourn at Alfoxden, used to be visible —
the letters W. W., deeply incised on one of the row of trees
on the hill above the house. I have met on the
neighbouring downs pilgrims from across the Atlantic on
their way to visit the shrine of the Poet, and have been
amused by the minute acquaintance they seemed to have
acquired at their home in the Dominion of Canada with
the names of some of our retired villages merely from their
occurrence in the verses of their favourite author, or from
the transient honour conferred upon them by his residence.

Miss Wordsworth, his accomplished sister, thus describes
the attractions of the place, as seen on their first arrival.
“ There is everything here ; the sea ; woods wild as fancy
ever painted ; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves,
found out a sequestered waferfall in a dell formed by steep
hills covered by full-grown timber trees. The woods are as
fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic ;
it has the character of the less grand parts of the lakes.
From the end of the house we have a fine view of the sea,
over a woody country, and exactly opposite the window
where I now sit is an immense wood, whose round top has

24

THE QUANTO CKS,

the appearance of a mighty dome. A quarter of a mile
from the house is the waterfall of which I spoke.”

It was by the side of this fall that Wordsworth composed
one of his sweetest lyrics — the Lines in Early Spring : —

I heard a thousand blended notes
While in a grove I sit reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

In reading a description which he afterwards wrote of
this little combe, one doubts whether his verse or his prose
be the most beautiful : “ It was,” he says, “ a chosen resort
of mine. The brook fell down a sloping rock, considerable
for that country, and across the pool below had fallen an
ash-tree from which rose perpendicularly boughs in search
of the light, intercepted by the deep shade above. The
boughs bore leaves of green that for want of sunshine had
faded into almost lify-white ; and from the under side of
this natural sylvan bridge depended long and beautiful
tresses of ivy, which waved gently in the breeze that might
be called the breath of the waterfall.” This dell, once
locally known as “ The Mare’s Pool,” but now consecrated
to all time as “ Wordsworth’s Glen,” was a favourite
trysting-place of the two poets and their friends. Coleridge
has described it in the graceful verses he addressed to his
old school-fellow Charles Lamb, who, with his clever sister,
then on a visit to the cottage of the Poet at Stowey, were
out on the downs enjoying the breezes of Quantock, while
their host, disabled during the whole time of their stay by

THE WATERFALL

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

25

an accident, was left to his solitary musings in the lime-
tree bower in his orchard. He thus follows in imagination
the route of his visitors in their charming ramble :

they meanwhile,

On springy heath, along hill top edge,

Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,

To that still roaring dell of which I told,

The roaring dell , o'er wooded , narrow , deep,

And only speckled by the mid-day sun ;

Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge ; that branchless ash,

Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,

Fanned by the waterfall !

*******

Now my friends emerge,

Beneath the wide, wide Heaven — and view again
The many-steepled track magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,

With some fair bark, perhaps, whose'sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles
Of purple shadow ! Yes ! they wander on
In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad,

My gentle hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined
And hungered after Nature many a year,

In the great city pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity ! Ah ! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun !

Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

Ye purple heath-flowers ; richlier burn, ye clouds !

Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves !

And kindle thou blue ocean !

Every reader of taste must be delighted with this grand

26

THE QUANTO CHS,

and nobly sustained piece of local descriptive poetry ; and
persons to whom the scene is familiar will recognise in the
latter portion of it the view from Woodlands Down.

Coleridge, who drew his inspiration far less than his
brother poet from external nature, has not failed however
to weave into his verses several notices of the neighbourhood
of his beloved “ Nether-Stowey, — clanim et venerabile
nomen ! ” He thus describes a homeward descent from
Dousborough : —

Through weeds and thorns and matted underwood
I force my way ; now climb and now descend
O’er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot

Crushing the purple whorts

Homeward I wend my way, and so recalled

I find myself upon the brow and pause

Startled ! and after lonely sojourning

This burst of prospect, — here the shadowing main

Dim tinted, there the mighty majesty

Of that huge amphitheatre of rich

And elmy fields. ....

And now, beloved Stowey, I behold

Thy church-tower, and methinks the four huge elms

Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ;

And close beside them, hidden from my view,

Is my own lonely cottage, where my babe
And my babe’s mother dwell in peace !

Any notice of the sojourn of Coleridge at Stowey would be
very imperfect without some reference to the friend to
whom he here alludes. This was Mr. T. Poole , 1 who
appears to have been one of the most kind-hearted and

1 Note iii.

COLERIDGE’S COTTAGE, NETHER STOWEY.

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

27

liberal of men, ever ready to assist humble merit ; and
though it would seem that he had not himself enjoyed the
benefit of a learned education, yet he must have been a
person of considerable mental culture, and fully capable
of appreciating the genius of the poet of whom he was the
generous patron. He must indeed have been no common
man to have been the “ dear friend ” of Coleridge and
Wordsworth. At the suggestion of this estimable person,
who was desirous of securing his gifted friend as a neighbour,
Coleridge, with his wife and child, and Charles Lloyd , 1
afterwards the translator of Alfieri, removed to a small
house at Nether Stowey, hard by the residence of good Mr.
Poole ; and like the poet Cowper at Olney, to obtain
greater facility of intercourse, made a communication from
his cottage-orchard into the garden of his friend. In this
orchard was the “ lime-tree bower,” the “ prison ” of the
disabled poet. Here too his friend Cottle describes a pretty
garden-scene during a visit he paid to him at Stowey ; “ the
orchard laden with fruit, the tripod table in the arbour,
with its simple meal, surmounted by a brown jug of the
true Taunton ale.” 11 There must have been witchery in
our fare,” he exclaims, “ and the very birds seemed to
participate in our felicity. As we sat in our sylvan hall
(T. Poole, C. Lloyd, S. T. Coleridge, and myself), Mrs.
Coleridge approached with her fine Hartley ; we all smiled,
but the father’s eye beamed transcendent joy.” At the

Note iv.

28

THE QC/ANTO CHS,

table of this kind neighbour, the poet had the advantage of
meeting a number of persons then, or afterwards, of
celebrity in literature and science. Seldom, in so retired a
village as Stowey, have there been gathered together so
many persons of intellectual eminence ; — Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lamb, George Burnet, Davy
(afterwards Sir Humphrey), 1 Dr. Beddoes, Basil Montague,
De Quincey, and a young man of great promise, too early
lost, the younger Wedgwood ; — the reputed inventor
of photography, and a most generous patron of the two
Quantock poets. All these persons occasionally sat around
the hospitable board of the Maecenas of Stowey.

At this distance of time few personal anecdotes can be
gleaned of the poet’s daily life at Stowey. That he was
fond of watching the progress of a water-wheel and mill
which Mr. Poole was erecting, and that the poetic
philosopher by his abstruse views of mechanical science
sometimes sadly puzzled the skilful engineer who was con-
structing the work ; that, like many others who are not
poets, he often sat up late, and that he sometimes got up
afterwards when a bright idea occurred to his mind, is the
little that is recorded.)

It was during one of these solitary watchings beside his
cottage-hearth at Stowey, that he wrote those fine verses,
so full of beauty and pathos, entitled Frost at Midnight .

1 Note v.

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

29

The frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud — and hark, again ! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude which suits
Abstruser musings : save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

’Tis calm, indeed ! so calm that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village ! Sea, hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings on of life,

Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live.

This fancy leads his thoughts back to his childhood,
“ and his sweet birthplace, and the old church tower,” and
its bells, and his school-days, and the wished-for advent of
the “stranger,” prefigured by the fluttering film upon the
bars. Then he addresses his sleeping babe, and contrasts
his own melancholy boyhood, in the great city, “ pent mid
cloisters dim,” with what he hopes will be the future life of
his child; and, with singular accuracy of prediction,
foreshadows the actual locality destined to be the abode in
after years of the little unconscious Hartley, “ cradled by
his side

But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of antient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

30

THE QUANTOCKS ,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags

“ Vates ” — (prophet and bard) — “ sic ore effatus amico est !”
The inhabitants of that “ populous village ” at the time
when the poet wrote these lines are now doubtless, all, or
nearly all, plunged in a deeper slumber than that which he
so impressively described. One of them, the last survivor
of those who had enjoyed any personal acquaintance with
the poet, died, some three or four years ago, in extreme
old age. He was accustomed, with harmless vanity, to
claim some small share in the production of The Antient
Mariner, from the fact that he had made, or mended the
poet’s pens , 1 who gratefully conferred upon him the title of
his “ Pennefactor.”

The elder poet, Wordsworth, has connected his verses
far more with his own residence and neighbourhood. He
himself describes his sojourn at Alfoxden “as a very
pleasant and productive time of his life ; ” and indeed he
has peopled its groves with the creations of his fancy, and
hung a thought on every thorn. The romantic glen
already described was the scene of his famous ballad, The
Idiot Boy , a poem which, together with that entitled We
are Seven , was a special favourite with Charles James Fox.
The latter poem is an exquisite production ; but in the
great statesman’s admiration for the other ballad, I am, I
confess, unable to share. One stanza, however, of rare

1 Note vi.

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

3i

beauty occurs in it : —

By this, the stars were almost gone,

The moon was setting on the hill,

So pale you scarcely looked at her :

The little birds began to stir ,

Though yet their tongues were still.

In truth Wordsworth, like his great prototype Milton,
and his contemporary Schiller, failed when he attempted
the humorous, of which he had little or no perception. In
Cowper’s ballad of John Gilpin we find genuine humour.
In this ballad of Wordsworth’s, which he threw in the face
of the shallow critics of his day, as a kind of wanton affront
to their prejudices, humour is entirely wanting. The ballad
was founded on an anecdote related to him by his friend
Thomas Poole, and was composed, he tells us, in the grove
at Alfoxden almost extempore. “ I mention this,” he adds,
“in gratitude to those happy moments, for in truth I never
wrote anything with so much glee.” The Last of the Flock
was also written here, and the incident on which it was
founded took place in the street of the village of Holford.
The affecting ballad of Simon Lee was suggested by a
homely occurrence near the entrance gate of Alfoxden,
where the poor man’s cottage, now pulled down, stood
“ near the water-fall, upon the village common.” He was
an old huntsman, a retainer of the estate : —

but no one now

Dwelt in the Hall of Ivor

Men, dogs, and horses, all were dead ;

He was the sole survivor.

32

7 HE Q HAN TO CHS,

The scene of the charming poem Ruth is laid by the bank
of Tone and on the highlands of Somersetshire, where the
sound of the wanderer’s flute

At evening in his homeward walk

The Quantock woodman hears.

Expostulation and Reply was composed in front of the
house at Alfoxden. The Thorn has vanished from the hill-
side of the Quantock, but still lives in the poet’s description.
Of a number of minor poems written here, a list will be
given in the appendix.

The meeting of our two poets with Thelwall in the glen
at Alfoxden has been already noticed. Thelwall was a man
of considerable mental powers, but had by his intemperate
politics made himself obnoxious to the Government of
the day, and became the subject of the satire of Canning
in a witty parody of Milton which appeared in the pages of
the Anti-Jacobin ; — “ Thelwall, and ye that lecture as ye
go.” He was now, however, quietly engaged in the culti-
vation of a farm near Nether Stowey, but his visit to
Coleridge gave occasion for the employment of a spy to
watch the proceedings of the three supposed conspirators.
Coleridge, 1 the spy pronounced to be comparatively harm-
less, but Wordsworth, who seldom spoke, was a dark and
dangerous personage. From the misrepresentations of this
man probably, and in spite of the regrets of his friend

1 Mrs. Sandford, in her interesting life of Mr. Poole, throws much
light on the proceedings.

ALFOXDEN — RESIDENCE OF THE POET

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .

33

Poole, and the indignant protestations of Coleridge — “ the
hills, and the woods, and the streams, and the sea, and the
shores will break forth into reproaches against us, if we do
not strain every nerve to keep their poet amongst them ” —
the ignorant agent who was employed to let the mansion at
Alfoxden refused to continue the lease, and — the poet was
driven from his paradise !

More than forty years afterwards, and in the plentitude of
his fame, 1 Wordsworth once more revisited his old abode.
“ We visited,” he writes in 1841, “ all my old haunts in and
about Alfoxden and Nether Stowey. These were farewell
visits for life, and of course not a little interesting.” He
was accompanied by his wife and daughter and a few chosen
friends ; but one friend, alas ! was wanting to share his
interest in each well-known scene. That adoring sister, 2
who had been for so many years the companion of his walks
and the partaker of his thoughts, and to whose manifold
excellencies and graces he has paid so many affectionate
tributes in his poems, was absent — lying, a melancholy
wreck in body and mind, at his home in Westmoreland.
As the old man stood once more in his favourite glen,
and listened to the waterfall, might not his own delicious
lines have come to his mind, and with a new significance ?

No check, nor stay, this streamlet fears ;

How merrily it goes !

1 Note vii.

*^Note|viii.

34

THE QC7ANT0CKS,

’Twill murmur on a thousand years,

And flow as now it flows :

And here on this delightful day,

I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain’s brink.

My eyes are dim with childish tears,

My heart is idly stirred,

For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

Thus fares it still in our decay ;

And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away

Than what it leaves behind.”

Here I must pause. I have not undertaken to write the
biography of the two poets, but my humbler task has been
to bring together a few scattered reminiscences of their
residence in the Quantock district.

To the extended influence of the writings of the
younger poet, I ought to mention one testimony recently
afforded by a royal personage, who, during his brief sojourn
amongst us, won golden opinions from the people of this
country. One of the earliest visits paid after his arrival in
London by the Emperor of Brazil, was to the grave of
Coleridge in the old churchyard at Highgate.

He might there muse upon the genius, the virtues, and
the frailties of one of England’s noblest poets and profound-

AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS.

35

est thinkers, and read there the poet’s own pathetic epitaph,
in which, “ he being dead, yet speaketh : ”

Stop, Christian passer-by ! Stop, Child of God !

And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A Poet lies, or that which once seemed he ;

Oh lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C.

That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death !

Mercy for praise ; to be forgiven for fame,

He asked, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.

A QUANTOCK TRAGEDY.