long after his death by his grandson, is perhaps not quite what it
ought to be--it is too dismal and conventional. It is very much in the
spirit of the Calvinistic clergyman, James Hervey, who, when curate at
Bideford, was so much impressed by Kilkhampton Church that it prompted
his once famous _Meditations among the Tombs_. The work and others of
its author's, such as _Theron and Aspasio_, may still be met with
occasionally on old-fashioned bookshelves, or on the second-hand
stalls; and they forcibly remind us of the style of second-rate
reflection which, in a different dress, is still dear to the average
sober-minded individual. But Hervey is not at all bad, of his sort,
and our great-grandfathers thought him profound. Probably, however, he
was dearer to their wives; it is chiefly women who support this kind
of moralising. To Hervey Kilkhampton Church was "an ancient Pile,
reared by Hands that ages ago moulded into Dust--the Body spacious,
the Structure lofty, the whole magnificently plain." He was at
Bideford in 1740. Much more lively in its nature was the connection
with this parish of the notorious Cruel Coppinger, smuggler, wrecker,
and desperado.

"Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger?
He came from a foreign land;
He was brought to us by the salt water,
He was carried away by the wind."

Coppinger has become almost mythical, by reason of older traditions of
pirate-smugglers being attributed to him. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould
himself, in his book on the _Vicar of Morwenstow_, has located
Coppinger in the Kilkhampton district; but his novel, _In the Roar of
the Sea_, places its hero, somewhat humanised, at St. Enodoc. The
truth is, there are similar traditions in several parts of the Cornish
coast, and elsewhere. There was a floating mass of legend ready to be
appropriated by any character that might seem to deserve it; and we
may take Coppinger as a kind of generic title, the clustering of
varying Cornish traditions of wrecking and piracy round one name. Such
being the case, he may as well be placed at Kilkhampton as anywhere
else. He is reported sometimes as a Dane, sometimes as an Irishman,
who was thrown on the coast in a tempest, who leaped upon her horse's
back behind a girl who had come to witness the wreck, and who
ultimately married her. He proved to be one of the blackest villains
Cornwall had ever known, but as he had a powerful gang of followers
who aided him in all his misdoings, ther