“Grains, grains, said majesty, to fill their crops;
Grains, grains!—that comes from hops—
Yes, hops, hops, hops.”
John Wolcot was in early life apprenticed to his uncle, an apothecary of Fowey. After accompanying Sir William Trelawney to Jamaica, as physician, he took holy orders, and was presented to a living in the island.
Returning to England and his old profession, he settled at Truro and Helston, finally removing to London in 1780, and bringing with him young Opie, whom he had discovered in the wilds of Mithian. In old age he became blind, and died in London 1819, and was buried in St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden.
When I say that Kingsbridge market-house has a turnip-like clock, I would not have you suspect me of flouting this prosperous little town, the market centre for the rich agricultural district of the South Hams. I would not do such a thing: my intentions are strictly honourable. Believe me, I simply and dispassionately state a grotesque fact, which you may verify from the drawing of Kingsbridge, and parallel from the almost exactly similar clock of St. Anne’s, Soho.
This morning we looked into Kingsbridge church, and copied the philosophic epitaph to “Bone Phillip,”[6] and then to the Grammar School, a sturdy stone building, with the following inscription over its doorway:—
This Grammar School was
Built and Endowed 1670
By
Thomas Crispin of ye City of
Exon Fuller, who was Born in
this Town ye 6th of Jan 160–7/8
Lord wt I have twas Thou yt Gavst it me
And of Thine owne this I Return to Thee.
There is a large portrait of Crispin still hanging on the principal staircase, rich in tone, representing the benefactor with the broadest of broad-brimmed hats and walking-cane—a mild-featured gentleman. And yet he is the terror of small boys, who hold the belief that this gentle soul comes forth at midnight from his frame, carrying his head under his arm. I have slept in the bedroom he is supposed particularly to affect in his nightly wanderings, but (needless to say) Crispin did not disturb me.
HEADMASTER’S DESK, KINGSBRIDGE.
There is, too, in the low-pitched, panelled schoolroom a headmaster’s desk, with canopy, worthy of note, surmounted with a painting of the Royal Arms, and the initials “C. R.,” with the date 1671; and, on every available inch of woodwork, schoolboys, more destructive than Time himself, have carved their names or daubed them in ink, evidences these of that noble rage for recognition, fame, or notoriety, of that yearning for immortality, that possesses all alike from cockney ’Enry upward.