Who hath receiv'd my Sovle, now I am wel."
This perhaps plumbs the depths of tortured conceits, with its back and forth play upon "William Sawle," "I am well," and the resemblance of "Soul" to "Sawle": a closer resemblance in the speech of the West Country than it would appear in print to be. Any day the stranger in Devon and Cornwall may, for instance, hear the common salutation, "Well, how be 'ee t'-daa, my dear sawle?"
"Aw, pretty tidily, thank 'ee."
There is no village of St. Winnow, only a farmhouse and a vicarage, at the foot of a hill, bordered by a noble beech avenue.
About a mile above St. Winnow, the narrowing stream comes to Lostwithiel quay, where the navigable Fowey River ends.
LOSTWITHIEL CHURCH.
"Lostwithiel!" I like that name. It is musical. To repeat it two or three times to one's self is an ineffable satisfaction. One is immediately seized, on hearing it, with a desire to proceed to the town of Lostwithiel. Romance, surely, lives there. Foolish country folk in the neighbourhood, noting that great heights rise all around the little town, say the meaning of its name is "Lost-within-the-hill." I blush for them, for it means nothing of the sort; but who wants to attach a meaning to that melody? Not I, at any rate, and I care little whether it be properly "Les Gwithiel," the Palace in the Wood, or the "Supreme Court." The old palace indicated is the ancient Duchy House, a seat of the early Dukes of Cornwall, who also had their Stannary courts, that is to say, their tin-mining tribunals, here. The buildings, much modernised, in part remain; and up in the valley of the Fowey, one mile further inland, are the remains of their stronghold, Restormel, properly "Les-tormel," Castle.
There is not much of Lostwithiel. Past the railway station, and over the nine-arched, partly thirteenth-century bridge across the river Fowey, and you are in a town of about two thousand inhabitants, which looks as though it accommodated only half that number. Yet, small though it be, it is divided into two parts, Lostwithiel proper, and Bridgend, and has a Mayor and Corporation. The central feature and great glory of Lostwithiel is the lovely octangular stone spire and lantern of its parish church of St. Bartholomew, a work of the Decorated, fourteenth-century period of architecture, before which most architects very properly abase themselves in humble admiration, while many hasten to adopt its beautiful lines for their own church designs. Lostwithiel spire has, in especial, been the model for the spires of many latter-day Wesleyan and Congregational chapels.