your eyes in Ross without encountering a reminder of its Manhood, its Manliness; and the uninstructed, as they wander hither and thither, naturally become more and more curious as to his identity: how he obtained the definite article and the capital M so definitely—The Man—and what was his association with the place.
I cannot lay claim personally to total uninstruction. I remembered faintly Pope's lines which made the fame of the Man, but I retained only a general impression of them as praising a public benefactor who did astonishing things on a very small income and thus was to put to shame certain men of wealth in Pope's day who did for their fellow creatures nothing at all. But nowhere could I find the lines. The guide-books refer to them lightly as though they were in every consciousness, and pass on. No shop had a copy of Pope; none of the picture post-cards quoted them; they were not on the monument in the church; they were nowhere in the hotel. And this is odd, because it was probably not until the illustrious London poet had set the seal of his approval on their late townsman and benefactor that the people of Ross realised not only how very remarkable had he been, but also that to be associated with such a personage might mean both distinction and profit. For the phrase "The Man of Ross" is now everywhere: he who once fathered orphans and the unfortunate now spreads his cloak over tea-shops, inns, and countless commercial ventures.
Here, however, is the passage, from the third Moral Epistle. P. the poet, it will be recalled, is moralising on riches, in metrical conversation with B.—Lord Bathurst:—
P. Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross:
Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost,
But clear and artless, pouring through the plain
Health to the sick and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose?
Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?
"The Man of Ross," each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!
The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread;
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where Age and Want sit smiling at the gate;
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans, blessed
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
Is any sick? The Man of Ross relieves,
Prescribes, attends, the med'cine makes and gives.
Is there a variance? enter but his door,
Balk'd are the courts, and contest is no more.
Despairing Quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now an useless race.
B. Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
Oh say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines, to swell that boundless charity?
P. Of Debts and Taxes, Wife and Children clear,
This man possest—five hundred pounds a year.
Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud Courts, withdraw your blaze!
Ye, little Stars! hide your diminished rays.
B. And what? no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?
P. Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name:
Go, search it there,[1] where to be born and die, Of rich and poor makes all the history; Enough, that Virtue filled the space between; Prov'd, by the ends of being, to have been.
If the impression conveyed by those lines is that the Man of Ross was more of a saint than a Herefordshire squire, the fault is the poet's and in part his medium's. The Augustan couplet tended to a heightening, dehumanising effect. As a matter of fact, John Kyrle would seem to have soared not at all: the plainest and most direct of men, he took to altruism and municipal improvements very much as his neighbours took to agriculture or cock-fighting. It was his amusement or hobby to make Ross a more livable-in place.
But before the poem is examined more closely, let me give the outline of John Kyrle's life. His father was Walter Kyrle of Ross, a barrister and J.P., and M.P. for Leominster in the Long Parliament. John was born on May 22nd, 1637, and educated at Ross Grammar School and Balliol College. He then passed on to the Middle Temple, but on succeeding to his father's property, worth about £600 a year, he settled down at Ross and commenced philanthropy, and never relaxed his efforts until his death many years later. He lived in the house opposite the very charming Market-hall, unmarried, and cared for by a relation named Miss Judith Bubb. He sat commonly in a huge and very solid chair, established on its stout legs like a rock, which I saw not long since in the window of Mr. Simmonds' old curiosity shop in Monmouth, where it serves as a show and a lure. According to a portrait of the Man of Ross which exists, made surreptitiously (for he would have none of your limners) as he sat at worship, he was tall, broad-shouldered, of sanguine complexion, with a big nose. He wore a brown suit and a short bushy wig, and he had a loud voice. He visited a dame's school once a week, and on hearing of any delinquency would reprimand the infant in these words: "Od's bud, Od's bud, but I will mend you!" A burly man with a red face, big nose, and loud voice speaking thus might, to the young, be a too terrifying object, but we must guess that John Kyrle tempered the wind. "The Dictionary of National Biography" says that although tradition gives Kyrle credit for releasing poor debtors and starting them on new careers, and that although for so long, as Pope tells us, he stood between attorney and litigant, the law was ultimately too much for him, and he too became involved in a suit. He lived to be eighty-seven, dying of sheer old age on November 7th, 1724. His body lay in state in the church of Ross for nine days and was then buried without a head-stone.
For the prose of Kyrle's life and achievements, as distinguished from Pope's poetry, we have to go first to the diary of Thomas Hearn the antiquary. Under the date April 9th, 1732–33, Hearn writes: "He (John Kirle or Kyrle) was a very humble, good-natured man. He was a man of little or no literature. He always studied to do what good charitable offices he could, and was always pleased when an object offered. He was reverenced and respected by all people. He used to drink and entertain with cider, and was a sober discreet man. He would tell people when they dined or supped with him that he could (if they pleased) let them have wine to drink, but that his own drink was cider, and that he found it most agreeable to him, and he did not care to be extravagant with his small fortune. His estate was five hundred pounds per annum, and no more, with which he did wonders. He built and endowed a hospital, and built the spire of Ross. When any litigious suits fell
