Lord Camelford introduced to the rectory of his parish the Reverend Benjamin Forster, a contemporary at Cambridge of congenial taste, and worthy of his friendship, the associate of Gray and of Mason; and with a mind like theirs suited for retirement and for literary leisure.[14] In his hours of relaxation he adorned the woods and shades, the vales and the rivulets, of Boconnoc with descriptive and appropriate illustrations from ancient and from modern poetry. To the Glebe-house he applied,
A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side,
Far from resort of people that did pass
In travail to and fro.
Mr. Forster has been long since deceased, his rectory taken down, and most of his friends departed from this life. His memory is for the present preserved by a tablet (brevi et ipsa interitura) bearing the following inscription:
Underneath rest the remains of Benjamin Forster, B.D. of C.C.C. Cambridge 1760; Lady Camden’s Lecturer at Wakefield in Yorkshire 1766; Rector of St. Mary Abchurch in London 1772; from thence removed to the Rectories of Boconock with Braddock in Cornwall, and to Carshayes, St. Michael, St. Stephens, and St. Dennis, in the same county, 1773.
Born Aug. 7, O.S. 1736. Died Dec. 2, N.S. 1805.
Epitaph written in the 33d year of his age:
Here, hapless mortal! thy sure refuge find,