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HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW. 
By Mr. FRED. J. GRANT, J.P. 
December 3rd, 1907. 
On the rock-bound coast of West Cornwall, against whose 
beetling cliffs the mighty waves rolling direct from Labrador 
dash in all their majesty and power, there stand a church and 
vicarage where lived and ministered for over forty years one 
of the most quaint and eccentric of clerics and withal one 
of the finest and most original writers of the west country. 
In Hawker the spirit of place was a strong and dominant 
angel. His ballads are redolent of the soil. His stories, 
embodying in forcible language accounts of men and women 
truly characteristic of the Cornish folk, and the fragments 
of his sermons and addresses which have been preserved, 
exhibit a singularity at once fascinating and diverting, and 
indicate voluminous and varied reading, especially in patristic 
and ecclesiastical lore — the hive of the world’s honey in all 
ages. R. S. Hawker was born in Plymouth on December 3rd, 
1803 ; he was at Plymouth when the end. came in 1875. 
Hawker ever wore his heart upon his sleeve. One of his 
chief charms was his transparent simplicity. In youth, as 
indeed throughout life, he was an inveterate practical joker. 
While at Cheltenham Grammar School when only eighteen 
he published his first book of poems. As a young man he 
delighted to spend his time in rude huts in a wood or on the 
sea shore, and he confessed that he was never happier or 
more occupied with interest than in those days, when gathering 
inspiration for his striking poems on rock and wreck and 
tempest, and nature in her wildest moods. The restraints 
of the University — he spent some time at Pembroke College, 
Oxford — could not control his high spirits. While under 
twenty he married a comely, amiable and accomplished lady 
of forty-one. On his honeymoon, spent at Tinagel, he became 
deeply interested in the legends of King Arthur. Thirty- 
nine years afterwards he published his longest poem, “ The 
Quest of the Sangraal.” By this name was known the holy 
cup — the chalice in which was celebrated our Lord’s last 
passover of the Jews, and his first Communion. The poem 
deals only with the starting on the quest for the sacred vessel. 
