No unworthy extract, this, surely, wherewith to close the annals of six centuries of stainless loyalty in a family whose motto has always been: “Deo, Patriæ, Amicis.”
Roger Granville.
THE AUTHOR OF BRITANNIA’S| PASTORALS AND TAVISTOCK.[[5]] | |By the Rev. D. P. Alford, M.A.
If beautiful country could beget good poets, Tavistock ought to abound in them. For, on one side, there is Dartmoor, with its rugged grandeur, stretching out protecting arms to Brent Tor and Whitchurch Down; on the other side, there is the majestic Tamar, winding through its deeply-wooded valley, from Latchley Weir, past New Bridge and the Morwell Rocks, to Gawton Quay; whilst through the midst, the sportive Tavy runs down from its lonely cleave, and gathering up the Walla on its way, with bright and tawny waters, now creeps, now rushes past, to break through the beetling cliffs beyond Crowndale, and glide beneath the Ramsham woods, to its happy meeting with the Walkham, and thence to the copse-covered banks at Denham Bridge.
Perhaps it was the rich and varied beauty round his home that forced some scraps of verse from the rugged soul of our Puritan incumbent, Thomas Larkham. At all events, two hundred years later, Vicar Bray was versifying in the quiet seclusion of his vicarage, and inscribing his best lines on slate slabs for the garden walls; and at the same time, Mrs. Bray was writing her local tales in imitation of Scott, sending letters to Southey about the borders of the Tamar and Tavy, and commending to his kindly notice her poetical protegée, the modest and gentle maid-servant, Mary Collins. Then, also, Miss Rachel Evans was writing verse, as well as prose; and her brother-in-law, Mr. H. S. Stokes, was beginning his career as a west-country poet here in Tavistock.
[West View of Tavistock Abbey], 1734.
(From an Engraving by S. and N. Buck.)
All these, however, are local celebrities; and our one poet of public fame is William Browne, the reverent disciple of Sidney and Spenser; the personal friend of Wither and Drayton, Selden and Ben Jonson; the poet’s poet, who suggested more than one idea to Milton, was admired by Keats, and highly commended by Mrs. Browning. He was a bright little man, beloved by his brother-poets for his simple manners and gentle character; such another as Hartley Coleridge, without his weakness of will; so that he was known amongst them as “Bonny Browne” and “Sweet Willy of the Western Main.”
William Browne probably came of a knightly family near Great Torrington; but he was born here in Tavistock in 1591—just the most stirring time for minds and morals that England has ever known. The Reformation had stimulated the conscience, as the New Learning had liberated the mind; and then our wonderful deliverance from the mighty power of Spain had produced an extraordinary national exultation. What wonder that this newly-awakened energy should find expression in Spenser and Shakspere, in Hooker and Bacon, and their innumerable, not unworthy satellites?