Originally published in The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review (J. Limbird) vol.1 #23 (23 Oct 1819).
In the year 1812, the writer of this article, being in the neighbourhood of Ormskirk, went with a small party to visit the 'Hermit,' as he was called, who lived about three miles from that town, on a part of the estate of Wilbraham Bootle, Esq. We found a venerable looking old man, his hair white as snow, with a mild and benevolent countenance, still retaining a little of the ruddy colour of youth. His manners, as one might expect from a hermit, were simple, yet civil, and even polite. He invited us into his little house, or hermitage, which is well sheltered with trees, and situated at the western extremity of his garden, which he cultivates with his own hands, and from which he derives the greater part, if not the whole, of his subsistence. He is a man of great devotional feeling—a Catholic. He is also a poet, at least a maker of rhymes; his compositions, some of which he shewed us, being chiefly paraphrases of the Scriptures in verse. We were told he had spent the last thirty years of his life in this place, living in almost total seclusion from human society, like the hermits of whom we read in Catholic countries: a course of life which he at first embraced from a disappointment in love; we are not certain whether from unrequited attachment, or the perfidy of his mistress.
Though it has been said, 'that the age of chivalry is gone for ever,' yet, we think, our fair readers will agree with us, that the depth of feeling, the devoted attachment to the sex, evinced by this singular individual, in a cold and calculating age, proves that there are still some traces remaining of that glorious period, whose light, as it were, shines back to us, like the rosy-tinged clouds of the west, which we gaze at for their beauty, but which remind us of the departure of that luminary now sunk below the horizon, whose presence gave to every object its variety of hue—which filled our hearts with love and joy, but whose absence will blot out the landscape, and leave us in the obscurity of night.
We ought to have mentioned, that it is the intention of our hermit to be buried in his garden. At the request of a lady of the party, we wrote, soon after this visit, some verses as an inscription for his monument. We only wish we had fulfilled our 'task' in a manner more worthy of the subject.
Inscription.
Stranger! if thou hast come with curious feet,
To trace the beauties of this lone retreat,
And now, with pond'ring eye, would'st wish to know
Who sleeps so soundly in the grave below.—
This garden's narrow bound was his domain;
The world beyond he deemed a scene of pain;
Of hopes, and fears, and joys producing sorrow,
Of new born hopes that live not till to-morrow;
Of faithful love, by friends or fortune crost;
That true remains though fickle mistress lost.
What, though no tender wife, at close of day,
Blest his return and smil'd his cares away;
Nor prattling imps, when father's steps they hear,
Would run with eager voice his heart to cheer;
What, though domestic joys, to him unknown,
Think not his heart became unfeeling stone.
That spark of love, to infant man first given,
God's image is, the miniature of heaven:
Fann'd with the breath of mutual love, we find
It gently burns to warm all human kind;
E'en chill'd by blasts of cold neglect, 'twas seen
To burn still bright in this secluded scene,
The simple birds, of social man afraid,
His play-mates were, joint tenants of the shade.
When forth he walk'd to breathe the morning air,
The joyous lark was sure to meet him there;
The linnet, and the blackbird, and the thrush,
Would greet his steps, and hop from bush to bush,—
Would walk beside him on the path-way sand,
His humble friends, and breakfast from his hand[1].
Of nature, each sublime and beauteous form,
The feathery snow, the rainbow, and the storm,
The sun, the silent clouds, still varying driven,
The moon, the stars, and the blue arch of heaven—
Were view'd by him with all a poet's eye—
Yet more—his pious mind would oft descry
In these, the footsteps of the Deity;
Or emblems of th' unseen mysterious power,
Supporting all things each succeeding hour;—
Fill'd with the scene, his soul would spurn the sod,
'And look through nature up to nature's God:'
With nature's holy influence supplied,
With nature having liv'd, with nature died!
This is literally a fact, and shews, that if man would treat with kindness these fellow commoners of the earth, how familiarly they would live with us.