GEORGE TEMPLER OF STOVER 29 



him, as he always started to bury his prey. The foxes never 

 turned the rabbit they caught, but invariably ran up to and 

 seized him ; but if a terrier was first up, the contrary was 

 the case, the rabbit always turned before the dog seized 

 him." 



At last Templer's generosity and unbounded 

 hospitality, combined with unfortunate speculation 

 which included the granite tramway (many parts of 

 which are still extant) constructed from Heytor to 

 the Stover Canal, so crippled the handsome fortune 

 with which he started in life, that he was compelled 

 to sell Stover and to give up his hounds. Rightly 

 or wrongly, he attributed his failure to the dishonesty 

 of a certain lawyer whom he anathematizes in un- 

 measured terms in a well-known poem of his, " The 

 Attorney." As one can forgive the bitterness which 

 prompted that caustic satire, so also can one sym- 

 pathize with the desolation of the man's spirit in 

 his ride to Exeter on taking final leave of his 

 home, as revealed in his hitherto unpublished poem : 

 On looking back from Haldon for the last time on 

 Stover : 



" Stover, farewell ! Still fancy's hand shall trace 

 Thy pleasures past in all their former grace ; 

 And I will wear and cherish, though we part, 

 The dear remembrance ever at my heart. 



" Not as the hare whom hounds and horn pursue 

 In timid constancy I cling to you ; 

 But, like the bolder chase, resolved, I fly. 

 That where I may not live I will not die." 



Stover was purchased by the then Duke of Somer- 

 set, and in February, 1826, Templer parted with his 

 hounds. The big pack went to the Reverend Harry 

 Farr Yeatman of Stock House, Dorsetshire ; the 



