"my native village." 187 



The foregoing account contains all that I have been able to collect 

 concerning the isle of Saturn : there are, no doubt, other facts con- 

 nected with it, which, if concentrated, might throw much light on 

 the question of " why the most westerly island of our triangular 

 Archipelago %\iO\i\di have been called Sainte et Bienheureuse ? " 

 We have, I think, discovered isles of refuge and asylum in the chan- 

 nel, so early as 1790 years ago; these islands, it appears to me, are 

 those we inhabit; if this be true, it is a curious coincidence. 



I have elsewhere examined, with great care, the opinion Rowlands 

 advances with respect to the isle of Saturn. It is surprising that so 

 erudite a man should not have consulted the original documents 

 which bear upon the point in question. He has transformed Clau- 

 dius into Caligula, who was never in Britain ; Demetrius he calls a 

 Roman spy ; the heroes of this grammarian he supposes to be a 

 Breton garrison ; the whole scene he has transferred to the isle of 

 W^ight-v-this, however, is the less surprising, as it was the birth 

 place of the good man. 



THE AUTHOR OF "DARTMOOR'S^' LAST WORK, 

 "MY NATIVE VILLAGE.''* 



In the short prefatory note which is affixed to this 

 volume, Carrington lays his head on the bosom of Cri- 

 ticism with so much confiding resignation and pathetic 

 trust that the act would almost disarm the sternest pro- 

 fessor of the craft of Zoilus — would transform the 

 malice of a Lockhart into honesty, and the sparkling 

 satire of a Jeffrey into candour ; happily, however, for 

 the poet's future fame, this work contains but little for 

 animadversion, so that the tender mercies of a reviewer 

 would not have been much overstrained in pronouncing 

 judgment upon it according to the strictest canons : 

 but how much more happily was it for the author's 

 individual feelings that he had but little solicitude for 

 earthly fame from the period when his book was pub- 

 lished to that of his death, which followed so shortly 

 afterwards ; he could hardly have experienced much 



*My Native Village and other Poems, 8vo. p.p. 160. London: 

 J. Murray, 1830. 



