128 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



idea for his cathedral at Exeter, will at once remind us of the 

 connection of Ottery with Normandy, though even on the 

 Continent Le Mans is the only other church with this arrange- 

 ment the quaint schoolroom and uneven roofs of the " King's 

 New Grammar School " hard by, as its founder Henry VIII. 

 designated it the pre-occupied air of the little town, with the 

 mediaeval names still clinging to its streets all this we take in 

 at a glance. Unlike Ilfracombe churchyard, no tablet inscribed 

 with the names of centenarians is seen in the churchyard, 

 though Ottery can boast of many parishioners who have 

 attained the respectable age of ninety. Inside, through the 

 dim religious light, may be discerned some forty painted 

 windows, all aglow with Scriptural imagery, while the eyes travel 

 up fair white columns to a roof blazing with gold and colours, 

 and then descend to the fan tracery of the Dorset aisle, and a 

 certain Captain Coke's statue, in trunk hose, highly painted, 

 concerning whom many legends are told. Sleeping, too, in the 

 soft sunshine, each under a floriated canopy, appear the re- 

 cumbent figures of Sir Otho de Grandisson and his wife 

 Beatrix ; her dogs, to symbolise faithfulness, lying at her feet. 

 Here, too, is an epitaph on a young wife who died in the first 

 week of her marriage. It is said that Southey laid his hand on 

 it when he visited the church, and unhesitatingly pronounced 

 it to be the composition of William Browne, the author of 

 Britannids Pastorals, a Devonshire poet of no mean fame. 

 The reader shall judge for himself whether it has the true ring 

 of poetry, 



f 'If wealth, wit, beautie, youth, or modest mirth 

 Could hire, persuade, entice, prolong, beguile 

 Death's fatal dart, this fading flowre on earth, 



Might, yet unquailed, have flourished awhile ; 

 But mirth, youth, beautie, wit, nor wealth, nor all, 

 Can stay, or once delay, when Death doth call. 



No sooner was she to a loving mate 

 From careful parents solemnly bequeathed, 



