"In lapidary inscriptions," remarked Dr. Johnson, "a man is not upon oath;" and when we read in the epitaph upon the grave of the Rev. Robert Knopwood that he was "ever ready to relieve the distress and to ameliorate the condition of the afflicted" we feel disinclined to allow to the words their full value.

The inscription is quoted by Miss Mabel Hookey in the preface to "Bobby Knopwood and His Times," which she has edited. The book contains much of the text of Knopwood's diaries of 1804-8 and 1814-17, and the entries are explained or supplemented by a running commentary. The text of these diaries was published in "The Australasian" in 1909. The diaries were well worth editing, and the product of Miss Hookey's research is very interesting. The title is too flippant for a serious piece of work; possibly the author, or the publisher (W. E. Fuller, Hobart), imagined that the public would be deterred from reading "The Rev. Robert Knopwood and His Times."

The Rev. Robert Knopwood was a sad rogue. Upon his father's death he inherited estates to the value of £90,000, with which he gambled recklessly. The Prince Regent (later George IV.) 'cleaned up' Knopwood at the gaming table, and, as Miss Hookey puts it, "by way of amends obtained for him a chaplaincy in the navy."

In that day the Church was a profession, and while Rawdon Crawley could laugh boisterously at the incongruity of his wife's suggestion that he should enter the church, the proprieties suffered no violence when Robert Knopwood left the gaming table to be measured for gown and cassock. He still seems to have found time and occasion for gaiety until he was chosen to accompany David Collins to found a new colony in Australia.

Knopwood was a magistrate as well as chaplain in Van Diemen's Land. He did not 'ameliorate the condition of the afflicted' to any appreciable extent. He was a man of his time; and perhaps in a general way the worst thing that can be said against him is negative - that he had not the large humanity that might have put him ahead of his time. He was personally and sociably an agreeable man; but he could tell a prisoner who complained that he had been flogged unjustly that "if he didn't deserve it this time he probably would next."

And he ordered floggings with no apparent feeling of pity and no embarrassing fear that he might be unjust or harsh. He even jested about the gallows; it was, he said, "comfortable for six, but crowded for nine." The death sentence, however, affected him painfully, and he expressed his feelings in his diary when two lads for a trivial offence were to have been hanged. He presented a petition to the Governor, and the prisoners were reprieved. As chaplain Knopwood preached dutifully and briefly, if not effectively. He wrote his sermons, and some of the manuscripts are in existence. While preaching in the church at Rokeby on one occasion he kept watchful eye on the window, and the congregation was startled, in the middle of the sermon, by the ejaculation "D--- that pony of mine; he's loose again!"

In private life the chaplain drank deeply and swore fluently, and he was the characteristic sporting parson of Georgian times. He is more amiable when we find him in his garden at Battery Point planting the seeds of fruit and vegetables and flowers brought from England and elsewhere. His diary is not only a characteristic personal document; it is of some historic importance. We quote from September 27, 1806:-

Not any flour, meal, or maize in store. This day things sold at the following prices:- "Biscuits, 4/- per lb.; meal, 8/6 per lb.; maize, 2/3 per lb.; tobacco (not fit to be made use of), 2/6 per inch . . . Everybody crying out for bread. Sugar, 5/- per lb.; rice, 2/6 per lb.; and kangaroo, 1/- per lb."

The famine continued for several months until a ship brought supplies, and not long after this there was scarcity again, barley being £5 a bushel, and tobacco £2/10/ per lb., and 'very difficult to obtain.' Then the ship "Duchess of York" brought plenty - and plenty of spirits also, so that there was a general rejoicing and a general disturbance (for which sentences up to 200 lashes were ordered), and the genial diarist 'found himself too unwell to go abroad' after the celebration.

An extraordinary incident is recorded towards the end of Knopwood's diary. 'Certain allegations' were made against the chaplain by Michael Howe, the bushranger; and it seems that a formal investigation was made. Knopwood writes:- "My business with what How the Bushranger has said against me to traduce my character was entirely confuted." Governor Sorell gave a dinner in honour of this satisfactory conclusion of the inquiry; but why the Governor should have ordered an official investigation of the allegations of a murderous bushranger (upon whose head at the time there was a price) is a little mysterious. We cannot learn from these pages what the nature of the charge was.

Knopwood seems to have retired from the chaplaincy in the early 'twenties. A law suit resulted in the loss of his home, 'Cottage Green,' and his treasured garden, and he settled in a little dwelling near Kangaroo Point. Certain legacies which might have made old age comfortable arrived too late, and his declining years were passed in straitened circumstances.

Miss Hookey's book, which is suitably illustrated, tells as connected a narrative as is possible with the available material relating to Tasmania. But Collins first attemped to found his colony at Port Phillip, and Knopwood went there with him. The chaplain kept a diary on the voyage from England to Sorrento in 1803, and continued it at Sorrento until the evacuation. It seems unfortunate, as Miss Hookey has first published the diaries in book form, that this important contemporary record should not have been made use of. The curious reader will find extracts from this diary in "Historical Records of Port Phillip," by John J. Shillinglaw.