| CHAP. VII] | A POET’S HAPPY DEVICE | 75 |
This good old poet, and excellent old priest and prebend, who did good to literature by inspiring Coleridge and Southey, and who did still more good to society by setting an example of charitableness, contentment, and cheerfulness, had many little peculiarities, in addition to his amusing, quite amiable little vanities. He was very short-sighted, but, being fond of the saddle, he nearly always rode to dinner parties in the country on horseback, and returned in the same way. In these excursions, which often ended at rather a late hour of the night, he was attended by a hybrid-fellow, half gardener, half groom, who did not ride behind in groom fashion, but in front, to guide his master.
Notwithstanding this good arrangement, the reverend old poet rather frequently lost sight of his man, diverged from the road, and got a tumble, or fell into some other disaster. At last he hit upon this happy device. When the night was at all dark he made his man slip a snow-white smock over his dress, and carry a big lantern fastened to the cantle of his saddle.
It was thus next to impossible to lose sight of him, and by steering close in his wake, or by keeping the nose of his own horse close to the tail of the man’s horse, he could travel through a dark night in comfort and safety. With this oddly-equipped attendant before him, and the grins and titters of all the flunkies in the hall behind him, he would often ride from the Marquis of Lansdowne’s door at Bowood. But often his road from other houses lay across a part of Salisbury Plain, or through solitary, haunted lanes. The Wiltshire peasantry of the neighbourhood were very superstitious, and it took time and practice to reconcile them to the sight of a sheeted ghost on horseback, with a trail of fire, followed by the devil on horseback, dressed all in black.
| 76 | WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES | [CHAP. VII |
Several benighted clowns were scared out of their wits, and told frightful stories of what they had seen; but by degrees the mystery was explained, and it became known all over the country that the supposed devil was good Parson Bowles, and the ghost his man Tom.
He was very fond of sheep and the sound of sheep-bells. A good flock was always feeding on his glebe, or on the lawn close to his house. One day a great musical idea seized him. “Those bells,” thought he, “are all tuned to one key, and produce only one note. If I get bells made in different keys, hang them on different sheep, and disperse them through the flock, I shall get a tune, a harmony; at least something as musical and regular as a peal of church bells.” It was easy enough to make or to obtain sheep-bells of different keys, but when he came to hang them upon his fleecy, four-footed ringers, somehow or other they never would run about and ring them at the proper time, or in any accord with their fellow-ringers. When the poet wanted C sharp from some of his muttons or lambkins, the rogues were sure to come out with a G sharp; whenever he wanted a bass for his treble, he was sure to get more treble, and the further and further continuance of it. In short, he could make nothing of it; but he never could make out why his experiment should not have succeeded, and have given constant music to his rural parsonage.
Bowles and Tommy Moore were for a long time dwellers in Wiltshire, and agreed much better than might have been expected from two near neighbours, being poets both; but the prebend was thoroughly a kind, easy, gentlemanly old gentleman; and Moore, in essentials, was always a good fellow. Tommy, like W. S. Rose, would often “quiz” the veteran sonneteer, but it was in a way to make one love him, and love him all the better for his whims and oddities.
I never knew so ardent an admirer of Bowles’s
| CHAP. VII] | HIS ADMIRED SONNETS | 77 |
“As on we went beneath the summer wind.” |
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