"Love in thine eyes for ever dwells," "Take, O take those lips away, "and "Time hath not thinned my flowing hair," are still not quite dead. His "Te Deum in F" rang through every village church in England.
He made many visits to London, and returned each time more dissatisfied with Exeter, to which he was bound by his occupation as organist of the cathedral, and by his family.
The Literary Society of Exeter and its environs was not inconsiderable in number. Several of the resident clergy, some physicians and other gentlemen, had instituted what they called "The Exeter Society." They proposed to rival, by volumes of their own, the Transactions of the Manchester Society, whose occasional appearance had attracted some notice. But a committee sitting judicially on the contributions of their neighbours and of each other nearly broke up their friendly intercourse.
In this "Exeter Society" from the first Jackson had declined to enrol himself as a member. He kept aloof; he took no interest in their enterprise. He kept on good terms with the members, not entering into friendship with any, but also keeping free from their rivalries and contentions.
He was known throughout England as "Jackson of Exeter." This was because, on the publication of his first set of songs, he had described himself as "William Jackson of Exeter" to distinguish himself from another Jackson who was a musician at Oxford. The last twenty years of his life were passed in a voluntary seclusion. A good many regretted this; he supposed that his talents made him an object of jealousy in the petty world of a cathedral city. He was not made as much of there as he deemed that he deserved. Few strangers, however, visited Exeter without seeking an
