"  '  Ethelbert !  I  think  thou  walkest  but  little  ;
otherwise  I  should  take  thee  with  me,  some
fine  fresh  morning,  as  far  as  unto  the  first
hamlet  on  the  Cherwell.  There  lies  young
Wellerby,  who,  the  year  before,  was  wont  to
pass  many  hours  of  the  day  poetising  amid  the
ruins  of  Godstow  nunnery.  It  is  said  that  he
bore  a  fondness  toward  a  young  maiden  in  that


172  Examination  of

place,  formerly  a  village,  now  containing  but
two  old  farm-houses.  In  my  memory  there
were  still  extant  several  dormitories.  Some
love-sick  girl  had  recollected  an  ancient  name,
and  had  engraven  on  a  stone  with  a  garden-nail,
which  lay  in  rust  near  it,  —

"  POORE    ROSAMUND."'

I  entered  these  precincts,  and  beheld  a  youth
of  manly  form  and  countenance,  washing  and
wiping  a  stone  with  a  handful  of  wet  grass  ;  and
on  my  going  up  to  him,  and  asking  what  he  had
found,  he  shewed  it  to  me.  The  next  time  I
saw  him  was  near  the  banks  of  the  Cherwell.
He  had  tried,  it  appears,  to  forget  or  overcome
his  foolish  passion,  and  had  applied  his  whole
mind  unto  study.  He  was  foiled  by  his  com-
petitor ;  and  now  he  sought  consolation  in
poetry.  Whether  this  opened  the  wounds  that
had  closed  in  his  youthful  breast,  and  malignant
Love,  in  his  revenge,  poisoned  it ;  or  whether
the  disappointment  he  had  experienced  in  finding
others  preferred  to  him,  first  in  the  paths  of  for-
tune, then  in  those  of  the  muses,  —  he  was
thought  to  have  died  broken-hearted.
