Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers
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Title: Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers
Author: W. E. Winks
Release date: September 6, 2012 [eBook #40677]
Most recently updated: November 27, 2024
Language: English
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LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS SHOEMAKERS.
BY
WILLIAM EDWARD WINKS.
NEW YORK:
FUNK & WAGNALLS, PUBLISHERS,
10 AND 12 DEY STREET.
PREFACE.
Time out of mind _The Gentle Craft_ has been invested with an air of
romance. This honorable title, given to no other occupation but that of
shoemakers, is an indication of the high esteem in which the Craft is
held. It is by no means an easy thing to account for a sentiment of this
kind, or to trace such a title to its original source. Whether the
traditionary stories which have clustered round the lives of Saints
Anianus, Crispin and Crispianus, or Hugh and Winifred, gave rise to the
sentiment, or the sentiment itself is to be regarded as accounting for
the traditions, one cannot tell. Probably there is some truth in both
theories, for sentiment and tradition act and react on each other.
Certain it is, that among all our craftsmen none appear to enjoy a
popularity comparable with that of "the old Cobbler" or "Shoemaker."
Most men have a good word to say for him, a joke to crack about him, or
a story to tell of his ability and "learning," his skill in argument, or
his prominence and influence in political or religious affairs. Both in
ancient times and in modern, in the Old World and in the New, a rare
interest has been felt in Shoemakers, as a class, on account of their
remarkable intelligence and the large number of eminent men who have
risen from their ranks.
These facts, and especially the last--which has been the subject of
frequent remark--may be deemed sufficient justification for the
existence of such a work as this.
Another reason might be given for the issue of such a book as this just
now. A change has come over the craft of boot and shoe making. The use
of machinery has effected nothing short of a _revolution_ in the trade.
The old-fashioned Shoemaker, with his leathern apron and hands redolent
of wax, has almost disappeared from the workrooms and streets of such
towns as Northampton and Stafford in Old England, or Lynn in New
England. His place and function are now, for the most part, occupied by
the "cutter" and the "clicker," the "riveter" and the "machine-girl."
The old Cobbler, like the ancient spinster and handloom weaver, is
retiring into the shade of the boot and shoe factory. Whether or no he
will disappear entirely may be questionable; but there can be no doubt
that the Cobbler, sitting at his stall and working with awl and hammer
and last, will never again be the conspicuous figure in social life that
he was wont to be in times gone by. Before we bid him a final farewell,
and forget the traditions of his humble yet honorable craft, it may be
of some service to bring under one review the names and histories of
some of the more illustrious members of his order.
Long as is the list of these worthy "Sons of Crispin," it cannot be said
to be complete. Only a few examples are taken from Germany, France, and
the United States, where, in all probability, as many illustrious
Shoemakers might have been met with as in Great Britain itself. And even
the British muster-roll is not fully made up. With only a few
exceptions, _living men_ are not included in the list. Very gladly would
the writer have added to these exceptions so remarkable a man as Thomas
Edward, the shoemaker of Banff, one of the best self-taught naturalists
of our time, and, for the last sixteen years, an Associate of the
Linnæan Society. But for the Life of this eminent Scotchman the reader
must be referred to the interesting biography written by his friend Dr.
Smiles.
In writing the longer sketches, free and ample use has been made of
biographies already in existence. But this has not been done without the
kind consent of the owners of copyrights. To these the writer tenders
his grateful acknowledgments. To the widow of the Rev. T. W. Blanshard
he is indebted for permission to draw upon the pages of her late
husband's valuable biography of "The Wesleyan Demosthenes," _Samuel
Bradburn_; to Jacob Halls Drew, Esq., Bath, for his courtesy in allowing
a liberal use to be made of the facts given in his biography of his
father, _Samuel Drew_, "The Self-Taught Cornishman;" and to the
venerable _Thomas Cooper_, as well as to his publishers, Messrs. Hodder
& Stoughton, for their kind favor in regard to the lengthy and detailed
sketch of the author of "The Purgatory of Suicides." This sketch, the
longest in the book, is inserted by special permission of Messrs. Hodder
& Stoughton.
The minor sketches have been drawn from a variety of sources. One or two
of these require special mention. In preparing the notice of John
O'Neill, the Poet of Temperance, the writer has received kind help from
_Mr. Richard Gooch_ of Brighton, himself a poet of temperance. Messrs.
_J. & J. H. Rutherford_ of Kelso have also been good enough to place at
the writer's service--but, unfortunately, too late to be of much use--a
copy of their recently published autobiography of John Younger, the
Shoemaker of St. Boswells. In the all-too-brief section devoted to
American worthies, valuable aid has been given to the author by Henry
Phillips, Esq., jun., A.M., Ph.D., Corresponding Member of the
Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, U.S.A.
In all probability the reader has never been introduced to so large a
company of illustrious Sons of Crispin before. It is sincerely hoped
that he will derive both pleasure and profit from their society.
WILLIAM EDWARD WINKS.
CARDIFF, 1882.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
CHAPTER I.
Sir Cloudesley Shovel: The Cobbler's Boy who became an Admiral
CHAPTER II.
James Lackington: Shoemaker and Bookseller
CHAPTER III.
Samuel Bradburn: The Shoemaker who became President of the Wesleyan
Conference
CHAPTER IV.
William Gifford: From the Shoemaker's Stool to the Editor's Chair
CHAPTER V.
Robert Bloomfield: The Shoemaker who wrote "The Farmer's Boy"
CHAPTER VI.
Samuel Drew: The Metaphysical Shoemaker
CHAPTER VII.
William Carey: The Shoemaker who Translated the Bible into Bengali
and Hindostani
CHAPTER VIII.
John Pounds: The Philanthropic Shoemaker
CHAPTER IX.
Thomas Cooper: The Self-educated Shoemaker who "Reared his own
Monument"
CHAPTER X.
A Constellation of Celebrated Cobblers
ANCIENT EXAMPLES.
The Cobbler and the Artist Apelles
The Shoemaker Bishops: Annianas, Bishop of Alexandria, and
Alexander, Bishop of Comana
The Pious Cobbler of Alexandria
"Rabbi Jochanan, The Shoemaker"
EUROPEAN EXAMPLES: _France_.
SS. Crispin and Crispianus: The Patron Saints of Shoemakers
"The Learned Baudouin"
Henry Michael Buch: "Good Henry"
_Germany._
Hans Sachs: "The Nightingale of the Reformation"
Jacob Boehmen: The Mystic
_Italy._
Gabriel Cappellini: "il Caligarino"
Francesco Brizzio: The Artist
_Holland._
Ludolph de Jong: The Portrait-Painter
Sons of Shoemakers
GREAT BRITAIN.
"Ye Cocke of Westminster"
Timothy Bennett: The Hero of Hampton-Wick
_Military and Naval Heroes._
The Souters of Selkirk
Watt Tinlinn
Colonel Hewson: The "Cerdon" of Hudibras
Sir Christopher Myngs, Admiral
_Astrologers and others._
Dr. Partridge
Dr. Ebenezer Sibly, F.R.C.P. 222
Manoah Sibly, Short-hand Writer, Preacher, etc
Mackey, "the Learned Shoemaker" of Norwich, and two other Learned
Shoemakers
Anthony Purver, Bible Revisionist
_The Poets of the Cobbler's Stall._
James Woodhouse, the Friend of Shenstone
John Bennet, Parish Clerk and Poet
Richard Savage, the Friend of Pope
Thomas Olivers, Hymn-Writer
Thomas Holcroft, Dramatist, Novelist
Joseph Blacket, "The Son of Sorrow"
David Service and other Songsters of the Shoemaker's Stall
John Struthers, Poet and Editor
John O'Neill, the Poet of Temperance
John Younger, Fly-Fisher and Corn-Law Rhymer
Charles Crocker, "The Poor Cobbler of Chichester"
_Preachers and Theologians._
George Fox, Founder of the Society of Friends
Thomas Shillitoe, the Shoemaker who stood before Kings
John Thorp, Founder of the Independent Church at Masboro'
William Huntingdon, S.S.
Robert Morrison, D.D., Chinese Scholar and Missionary
Rev. John Burnet, Preacher and Philanthropist
John Kitto, D.D., Biblical Scholar
_Science._
William Sturgeon, the Electrician
_Politicians._
Thomas Hardy, of "The State Trials"
George Odger, Political Orator
AMERICAN EXAMPLES.
Noah Worcester, D.D., "The Apostle of Peace"
Roger Sherman, the Patriot
Henry Wilson, the Natick Cobbler
John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Quaker Poet"
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
SIR CLOUDSLEY SHOVEL,
JAMES LACKINGTON,
REV. S. BRADBURN,
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD,
SAMUEL DREW, M.A.,
WILLIAM CAREY,
THOMAS COOPER,
JOSEPH BLACKET,
J. G. WHITTIER
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration: SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL]
Sir Cloudesley Shovel,
THE COBBLER'S BOY WHO BECAME AN ADMIRAL.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one nutters in brocade;
The cobbler aproned and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
"What differ more' (you cry) 'than crown and cowl?'
I'll tell you, friend,--a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk;
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella."
--POPE, _Essay on Man_.
SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL.
On the south side of the choir of Westminster Abbey may be seen a very
handsome and costly monument, on which reclines a life-sized figure in
marble, representing a naval commander. The grotesque uniform and
elaborate wig are of the style of Queen Anne's time. The commander
himself has all the look of a well-bred gentleman and a brave officer.
He is a capital type of the old school of naval heroes, stout in person,
jolly in temper, but terrible in action, by whom our shores were
defended, our colonies secured to us, and the power and stability of the
British Empire were established for centuries to come. These men had, in
many instances, risen from the lowest social status, and had been
compelled to begin their nautical career in the humblest fashion,
accepting the most menial position the naval service could offer them.
When they came to hold positions of command, they had, perhaps, no
culture nor general education; the little knowledge they possessed was
confined to the arts of navigation and warfare, and this they had picked
up in actual service. Such knowledge served them well, and made them
equal to any emergency. It made them capable of deeds of valor and
enterprise, that brought renown to their own name and honor to their
country. They could sail round the world; they could, by their
discoveries, add new territories to the British crown, and open up
splendid fields for commercial enterprise; they could keep their vessels
afloat in a gale of wind, get to windward of the enemy if they wanted,
pour a broadside into him, board and capture his vessels or blow up his
forts; and, very often fighting against fearful odds, beat him by dint
of superior skill in seamanship and greater courage in action. Such a
commander was "old Benbow," whose name appears so often in the nautical
songs of the last century; and such a commander was his contemporary,
Sir Cloudesley Shovel, to whose memory the handsome monument just
referred to is erected. Let us pause for a moment to read the
inscription. It runs thus:
"Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Knt., Rear-Admiral of Great Britain,
Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet: The just reward
of long and faithful services. He was deservedly beloved of
his country, and esteemed though dreaded by the enemy, who had
often experienced his conduct and courage. Being shipwrecked on
the rocks of Scilly, in his voyage from Toulon, the 22d of
October 1707, at night, in the fifty-seventh year of his age,
his fate was lamented by all, but especially by the seafaring
part of the nation, to whom he was a worthy example. His body
was flung on the shore, and buried with others in the sands;
but being soon after taken up, was placed under this monument,
which his royal mistress has caused to be erected to
commemorate his steady loyalty and extraordinary virtues."
If a stranger to Sir Cloudesley Shovel's history were to stand looking
at this fine monument, admiring the fine figure which adorns it and
reading the glowing epitaph, he would no doubt be greatly amazed if the
intelligent verger by his side were to whisper in his ear, "That man was
once a cobbler's boy; the first weapons he ever used in fighting the
battle of life were the awl and hammer and last."
Yet such was really the case. It is true he did not remain long at his
humble craft. He left it, indeed, sooner than any of the notable men
whose life-story we have to tell in this book; yet he wore the leathern
apron long enough to entitle him to a place in the category of
_Illustrious Shoemakers_.
Cloudesley Shovel was born in the county of Norfolk in the year 1650, at
a village called Clay, lying on the coast between Wells and Cromer. His
parents are said to have been in but "middling circumstances;" but it is
to be feared that even this modest term describes a better position than
they actually held. They were evidently of the humblest class, and had
no means of giving their boy either a good education or a good start in
the way of business. Cloudesley came by his rather singular name as no
doubt thousands had done before his time, and have done since. It was
given him in honor of a relative who was in good circumstances, and in
the hope that it might probably be a "means of recommending him to this
relative's notice." But fortunately, as it proved for him, and proves
also for many others, no fortune was left him. His parents were glad to
send him to the village shoemaker to learn the art and mystery of making
and mending boots and shoes.
Finding the drudgery of a sedentary occupation and the flatness and
quietude of village life irksome to his active temperament and aspiring
spirit, after a few years' work at shoemaking, he made off to sea. His
taste lying in the direction of the royal naval service, he went and
joined himself to a man-of-war. Here he had the good fortune to come
under the care and command of Sir John Narborough. This distinguished
officer had once been in Cloudesley's position as a man-of-war's
cabin-boy, and having shown himself a smart sailor and an industrious
student of navigation, had been rapidly promoted by his generous
captain, Sir Christopher Myngs. Sir John Narborough was therefore well
disposed, by his kindly disposition and his own early experience, to
favor any youth of promise placed in similar circumstances to those
through which he himself had passed. In young Cloudesley the gallant
captain seems to have seen his own character portrayed and his own
career enacted over again. The lad was smart at seamanship, and
uncommonly diligent when off watch in the study of any nautical books he
could lay hands on. He seems to have found out very early in his course
that the secret of success in life lies in being _ready_, when the time
comes, to seize and use the great opportunities of fortune which sooner
or later come in every one's way; that fortune waits on diligence and
courage; and that the future is pretty secure to the man who, whatever
be his position, works hard and does his plain duty every day.
The first incident in his naval career is an illustration of this. He
was on board the flag-ship commanded by Admiral Sir John Narborough in
one of the most hotly contested battles fought between the English and
the Dutch. The masts of the flag-ship were shot away early in the
engagement. The admiral saw that his case was hopeless, however bravely
his men might fight, unless the English reserve, which lay some distance
off to the right, could be brought round to his aid. The thing wanted
was to get a message conveyed to the captain of the reserve. Signalling
was out of the question, of course; the message must be _carried_ to the
ships somehow. Yet he saw plainly that in such a hurricane of shot and
shell, and with so many of the enemy's vessels close at hand, no boat
could hope to reach the English ships. But a man might _swim_ to them!
Acting on this thought, Sir John wrote an order and called aloud for
volunteers to swim with it, under the fire of the enemy, to the
neighboring ships. Among the able-bodied sailors who presented
themselves for the terrible duty young Cloudesley stood forth. Looking
at him with admiration mingled with something like pity, the admiral
exclaimed, "Why, what can you do, my fearless lad?" "I can swim, sir,"
said young Cloudesley, and added in the spirit of a patriot and a hero,
"If I be shot, I can be easier spared than any one else." After a
moment's hesitation on the part of the tender-hearted admiral, the paper
was handed to the boy, who placed it between his teeth and plunged into
the water. Cheered by his comrades, he swam on through a perfect hail of
shot, bearing, as it seemed, a charmed life, until at length the smoke
of battle concealed him from their view. The gallant Sir John and his
brave crew held on in the most determined manner until it seemed that no
hope was left that the brave lad had reached the friendly vessels in
safety and delivered the message. They were beginning to think of him
and of themselves as lost, when a sudden and terrific roar of cannon on
their right announced that the English vessels were bearing down on the
Dutch. In a few hours the enemy was flying in all directions. The
cabin-boy was not forgotten when the honors and rewards of victory came
to crown the events of that terrible day, for all agreed that he had
done a deed that deserved well of his country. When the sun was setting
on the sad scene of wreck and ruin, the courageous yet modest youth came
and stood once more on the deck of the flag-ship. As soon as the old
admiral saw him he spoke to him a few words of generous appreciation and
sincere thanks, finishing with the significant remark, "I shall live to
see you have a flag-ship of your own." The prediction came true, as we
shall presently see.
Not very long afterward Cloudesley Shovel was made lieutenant of His
Majesty's navy. The first opportunity he had of distinguishing himself
in this capacity was on an expedition sent out by the British to punish
the corsairs of Tripoli. These lawless and daring rogues had long
infested the Mediterranean, doing immense mischief to commerce and
committing sad depredations all along the coast, wherever they found it
possible to land with safety. No vessel or port, from the Levant to the
Straits of Gibraltar, was safe from their attack. Sir John Narborough
was therefore commissioned to bring them to terms or effectually punish
them. Arriving before Tripoli, their headquarters, in the spring of
1674, he found the enemy in great strength under the shelter of their
formidable forts, and decided, first of all, according to his
instructions, to try the effect of negotiations. Lieutenant Shovel, then
only twenty-four years of age, a tall thin young man, with little on his
face to indicate that he had come to manhood, was sent with a message
for the Dey of Tripoli, asking for satisfaction for the past and
security for the future. This message was delivered in a spirit becoming
a British sailor acting on behalf of the interests of his country; but
the Dey, a haughty and imperious man, refused to treat with such a
youth, and one, too, who held so subordinate a position, and after
treating him with insolence, sent him back to his admiral with an
indefinite answer. The wily ex-cobbler, however, had kept his eyes open
while on land, and on returning to Sir John, gave him so good an account
of the character of the fortifications and the disposition of the pirate
fleet, that he was sent back to the Dey with a second message, and
instructed to make further observations. He was treated on his second
visit with even greater insolence, but took all quietly, not caring how
much he was detained by the Dey's abuse, so long as he could look round
him and obtain a good view of the enemy's strength and position. Coming
back once more to his vessel, he explained the whole situation, and
described a plan of attack which he felt confident would be successful
in destroying the vessels lying at anchor in the bay. The admiral was so
much pleased with his lieutenant's smartness, and so satisfied that his
plan was practicable if conducted with skill and courage, that he
decided to intrust the execution of it to "his boy Shovel." On the night
of the 4th of March the young lieutenant took command of all the boats
of the fleet, which had been filled with combustible material, rowed
quietly into the harbor under cover of the darkness, made straight for
the guard-ship, which he set on fire and thoroughly disabled, thus
preventing it from giving orders to the other ships, and, before the
enemy could prepare for action, fired and blew up his vessels one after
another, and then leaving them in a state of the utmost confusion and
distress, brought all his boats back to the British fleet without the
loss of a single man. It was a brave exploit, cleverly conceived and
brilliantly executed. As a wholesome castigation of these impudent
pirates it was of the utmost value; and more than this, it crippled
their power for mischief for a long time to come.
The generous Sir John Narborough fully appreciated the courage and skill
of his youthful subordinate, and gave him the most honorable mention in
the official letters sent to the authorities at home. He was at once
promoted to the rank of captain. This office he held for eleven years,
until the death of Charles II. in 1685. During the three years of James
II.'s reign, Captain Shovel is said to have been in every naval
engagement that occurred. He had therefore ample opportunity of
distinguishing himself and obtaining still further promotion. Soon after
the accession of William III., Captain Shovel was conspicuous by his
daring and clever manoeuvring at the battle of Bantry Bay. He was then
in command of the ship "Edgar," and the favorable notices he had
received from Admiral Hobart brought his gallantry before the attention
of his monarch, who conferred upon the brave captain the honor of
knighthood. Captain, now Sir Cloudesley Shovel, was held in high esteem
by King William III., who intrusted him with the difficult and
responsible duty of conveying the troops to Ireland in 1690, on the
occasion of the Irish rebellion which terminated in the bloody battle of
the Boyne. This duty was discharged with so much ability that the King
decided to promote Sir Cloudesley to the rank of "_rear-admiral of the
blue_." In conferring this reward upon the gallant commander, the
grateful monarch marked his sense of the value of the service rendered
by delivering the commission with his own hands. Before the year came to
a close Sir Cloudesley added one more item to the long list of his
services by giving timely assistance to General Kirke at the siege of
Waterford. This town was held by the adherents of James II., and had
long defied all attempts of General Kirke to take it. The chief strength
of the town lay in Duncannon Castle, on which an attack was made by Sir
Cloudesley's ships and men. A surrender was speedily negotiated, and the
influential town of Waterford fell into the hands of the English. Two
years after this the King declared him "_rear-admiral of the red_,"
giving him at the same time the command of the squadron which was to
convey the King to Holland.
Soon after his return from Holland he was ordered to join the fleet then
under the command of Admiral Russell, and bore a very important part in
the brilliant naval victory known as the battle of La Hogue. His last
services during the reign of William III. were rendered in connection
with the bombardment of Dunkirk, which he undertook at the King's
express command. The author of the "Lives of British Admirals,"[1]
referring to the esteem in which Sir Cloudesley Shovel was held by his
king and country at the close of this reign, says, "He was always
consulted by His Majesty whenever maritime affairs were under
consideration."
[1] See Campbell's "Lives," etc., vol. iv. p. 247.
His first service in the reign of Queen Anne was performed as "_admiral
of the white_." The town of Vigo in Spain had been captured by Sir
George Rooke, and Sir Cloudesley was ordered to go out and bring home
the spoils of the united Spanish and French fleets, which lay disabled
in the harbor. This difficult task was accomplished with a rapidity and
dash which made so favorable an impression on the court, that on his
return "it was immediately resolved to employ him in affairs of the
greatest consequence for the future." In 1703 he was put in command of
the grand fleet, and protected the interests of England from the hostile
attempts of the French and allied powers in the Mediterranean. At the
battle of Malaga in 1704, Sir Cloudesley's division of nine ships led
the van, and had to bear the brunt of the enemy's attack to such an
extent, that at the beginning of the engagement he was almost entirely
surrounded by the French, and more than 400 of his men were either
killed or wounded. On his return home he was presented to the Queen by
Prince George, and shortly afterward received the appointment of
commander-in-chief and rear-admiral of the English fleet. As Admiral
Shovel he won great credit for the part he took in the capture of the
important city of Barcelona in 1705.
In the month of October, 1707, after bearing an honorable part in the
expedition under Prince Eugene against Toulon, he set sail with ten
ships of the line, five frigates, and other war vessels for the shores
of England. But he was destined never to see again the country he had
served so nobly and loved so well. By some strange mischance, which has
never been fully accounted for, his own vessel and several others, on
the night of the 22d of October, struck on the rocks of the Scilly
islands and perished. The brave admiral and his three sons-in-law, who
were on board his vessel, besides a large number of officers and seamen,
were drowned. The body of Sir Cloudesley Shovel was washed on shore, and
having been found by a number of smugglers, was stripped of an emerald
ring and other valuables, and buried in the sand. On attempting to sell
their booty, the miscreants found that the ring they prized so much
betrayed their guilty secret. They were compelled to point out the spot
where the body had been concealed. England, of course, could not allow
one of her noblest sons to lie in so ignominious a grave. The body was
at once removed to London by express order of Her Majesty Queen Anne,
and laid in the most honorable grave the nation had to give--
"In the great minster transept,
Where the lights like glories fall,
And the organ rings and the sweet choir sings
Along the emblazoned wall."[2]
[2] Sir Cloudesley Shovel sat for several years as
member of Parliament for the city of Rochester. In the
Guildhall of that city there is an interesting portrait,
representing the gallant sailor as Rear-Admiral. A tablet
states that the hall was painted and decorated by his desire
and at his expense, 1695-6. The portrait from which our
engraving is taken is by Michael Dahl, and was originally at
Hampton Court. It was presented by George IV. in 1824 to
Greenwich Hospital. Sir C. Shovel at the time of his death was
one of the governors of Greenwich Hospital.
CHAPTER II.
[Illustration: JAMES LACKINGTON]
JAMES LACKINGTON
SHOEMAKER AND BOOKSELLER.
Sutor Ultra Crepidam Feliciter Ausus.
--_Latin Motto, Quoted on Frontispiece to
"Lackington's Memoirs."_
I. LACKINGTON,
Who a few years since began Business with five Pounds,
Now sells one Hundred Thousand Volumes Annually.
--_From Frontispiece to First Edition of "Memoirs
and Confessions," 1791-92._
"I will therefore conclude with a wish, that my readers may
enjoy the feast with the same good humor with which I have
prepared it.... Those with keen appetites will partake of each
dish, while others, more delicate, may select such dishes as
are more light and better adapted to their palates; they are
all genuine British fare; but lest they should be at a loss to
know what the entertainment consists of, I beg leave to inform
them that it contains forty-seven dishes of various sizes,
which (if they calculate the expense of their _admission
tickets_) they will find does not amount to twopence per dish;
and what I hope they will consider as _immensely_ valuable (in
compliance with the precedent set by Mr. Farley, a gentleman
eminent in the culinary science), a striking likeness of their
_Cook_ into the Bargain.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, pray be seated; you are heartily
welcome, and much good may it do you."--_From Preface to
Lackington's "Memoirs and Confessions," published 1826._
JAMES LACKINGTON.
One of the most successful booksellers of the last century was James
Lackington, whose enormous place of business at the corner of Finsbury
Square, London, was styled somewhat grandiloquently "The Temple of the
Muses." A flag floated proudly over the top of the building, and above
the principal doorway stood the announcement, no less true than
sensational, "The Cheapest Bookshop in the World." Lackington was an
innovator in the trade, and had introduced methods and principles of
doing business which at first awaked the ire of the bookselling
fraternity, but were at length generally adopted, thus inaugurating a
new era in the history of this important business. His name cannot be
omitted from any complete history of booksellers, and it is none the
less deserving of a place in the category of illustrious shoemakers; for
Lackington commenced life as a shoemaker, and for some time after he had
entered on bookselling speculations continued to work at the humble
trade to which he had served an apprenticeship.
When Lackington was about forty-five years of age, and had made a
considerable fortune in the bookselling trade, he wrote and published a
singular book, in which he narrated the principal events in his life,
under the form of "Letters to a Friend." This book bears the title
"Memoirs and Confessions," and is certainly one of the most remarkable
autobiographies ever presented to the world. What portion of its
contents may be referred to by the term "memoirs" as distinguished from
"confessions" it is impossible to say, but certain it is that there are
many things in the book which its author would have done well to blot as
soon as they were written, and of which he was no doubt heartily sorry
and ashamed in after-life. Among the worst of these were his strictures
and reflections on the Wesleyan Methodists, to whom he had belonged in
early life, and from whom he had received no small benefit, temporal as
well as spiritual. When the second edition of his memoirs came to be
printed in 1803, his character had undergone a happy change. He then
saw things in a different light, and made full and complete
acknowledgment of the faults which marked the first edition; expressed
in very decided albeit very conventional terms his faith in Christian
truth, and his debt of obligation to the religious people whom he had so
sadly maligned. But words were not enough to satisfy his ardent,
thorough-going nature. His benefactions to the Wesleyan Society were
very considerable, and he seemed toward the close of his life to have
found great satisfaction in making the best use of the ample means at
his disposal. With all his faults he was an estimable man, honest,
truthful, and generous. He was never ashamed of his lowly birth and
humble apprenticeship, nor turned his back on his poor relations, but
ever sought them out and helped them when he had the power to do so. His
success in business was owing to his shrewd common-sense, his rare
insight into character, his good judgment as to the public taste and
requirements, his capital method of assorting and classifying his stock
and strict keeping of accounts, his courageous yet prudent purchases,
and his strict adherence to a few sound maxims of economy and thrift.
None but a man of original and uncommon powers of mind could have
launched out on new speculations and adventures as Lackington did with
the same uniform and certain success, and none but a man of good sense
and lofty feeling would have been proof against the ill effects which so
often attend on success. There is a touch of vanity in his memoirs, it
is true, but it is not the vanity of a man who is vain and does not know
it; he is quite conscious of his egotism, and indulges in it with
thorough good-humor as a hearty joke. He was rather fond of display,
kept a town-house and a country-house when he could afford it, and set
up a "chariot," as the phrase went in those days, and liveried servants.
Yet it was not many men in his position who would have taken for a motto
to be painted on the doors of his carriage the plain English words which
express the principle on which his business had been made to bear such
wonderful results. "But," he remarks, "as the first king of Bohemia kept
his country shoes by him to remind him from whence he was taken, I have
put a motto on the doors of my carriage constantly to remind me to what
I am indebted for my prosperity, viz.,
"SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS."
The Lackington family had been farmers in the parish of Langford, near
Wellington, in Somersetshire. They were members of the Society of
Friends, and held a respectable position in the locality. For some
cause, not fully explained in the memoirs, James Lackington's father was
apprenticed to a shoemaker at Wellington. He made an imprudent marriage,
and for a time forfeited his father's approval and favor; but when the
good-wife proved herself to be a very worthy and industrious woman, the
old man relented and set his son up in business. This, however, was of
no advantage to him; in fact, it proved his ruin. He might have remained
a steady and hard-working man, bringing up his children honorably, if he
had remained a journeyman. The position of a master presented
temptations that were too much for his weak disposition. Lackington's
own words will best describe his unhappy circumstances in youth and the
character of his father. "I was born at Wellington, in Somersetshire, on
the 31st of August (old style), 1746. My father, George Lackington, was
a journeyman shoemaker, who had incurred the displeasure of my
grandfather for marrying my mother, whose maiden name was Joan Trott....
About the year 1750, my father having several children, and my mother
proving an excellent wife, my grandfather's resentment had nearly
subsided, so that he supplied him with money to open shop for himself.
But that which was intended to be of very great service to him and his
family eventually proved extremely unfortunate to himself and them; for
as soon as he found he was more at ease in his circumstances he
contracted a fatal habit of drinking, and of course his business was
neglected; that after several fruitless attempts of my grandfather to
keep him in trade, he was, partly by a very large family, but more by
his habitual drunkenness, reduced to his old state of a journeyman
shoemaker. Yet so infatuated was he with the love of liquor, that the
endearing ties of husband and father could not restrain him: by which
baneful habit himself and family were involved in the extremest poverty;
so that neither myself, my brothers, nor sisters, are indebted to a
father scarcely for anything that can endear his memory, or cause us to
reflect on him with pleasure."
James, as the oldest child in the family, fared for a time rather better
than the rest. He was sent to a dame-school and began to learn to read;
but before he could learn anything worth knowing, his mother, who was
obliged to maintain her children as best she could, found it impossible
to pay the twopence per week for his schooling. For several years his
time was divided between nursing his younger brothers and sisters and
running about the streets and getting into mischief. At the age of ten
he began to feel a desire to do something to earn a living. His first
venture in this way showed his ability and gave some promise of his
success as a man of business. Having noticed an old pieman in the
streets whose method of selling pies struck the boy as very defective,
the boy was convinced that he could do the work much better. He made
known his thoughts to a baker in the town, who was so pleased with the
lad's spirit that he at once agreed to take the little fellow into the
house and employ him in vending pies in the streets, if his father would
grant permission. This was soon obtained. In this queer enterprise young
Lackington met with remarkable success. He says: "My manner of crying
pies, and my activity in selling them, soon made me the favorite of all
such as purchased halfpenny apple-pies and halfpenny plum-puddings, so
that in a few weeks the old pie merchant shut up his shop. I lived with
this baker about twelve or fifteen months, in which time I sold such
large quantities of pies, puddings, cakes, etc., that he often declared
to his friends in my hearing that I had been the means of extricating
him from the embarrassing circumstances in which he was known to be
involved prior to my entering his service."
Such a story is a sufficient indication of character. It exhibits the
two qualities which distinguished him as a man--good sense and courage.
Another story of his boyhood is worth telling for the same reason. He
was about twelve years of age when he went one day to a village about
two miles off, and returning late at night with his father, who had been
drinking hard as usual, they met a group of women who had turned back
from a place called Rogue Green because they had seen a dreadful
apparition in a hollow part of the road where some person had been
murdered years before. Of course the place had been _haunted_ ever
since! The women dared not go by the spot after what they had seen, and
were returning to the village to spend the night. Lackington and his
father laughed at the tale, and the dauntless boy engaged to walk on in
front and go up to the object when they came near it in order to
discover what it was. He did so, keeping about fifty yards ahead of the
company and calling to them to come on. Having walked about a quarter of
a mile, the object came in sight. "Here it is!" said he. "Lord have
mercy on us!" cried they, and were preparing to run, "but shame
prevented them." Making a long file behind him, the order of procedure
of course being according to the degree of each person's courage, they
moved on with trembling steps toward the _ghost_. Although the boy's
"hat was lifted off his head by his hair standing on end," and his teeth
chattered in his mouth, he was pledged in honor and must go on. Coming
close to the dreaded spectre, he saw its true character--"a very short
tree, whose limbs had been newly cut off, the doing of which had made it
much resemble a giant." The boy's pluck was the talk of the town, and he
"was mentioned as a hero."
His merits as a pie vender had made him a reputation, and now an
application was made to his father to allow James to sell almanacs about
the time of Christmas and the New Year. He rejoiced immensely in this
occupation and drove a splendid trade, exciting the envy and ire of the
itinerant venders of Moore, Wing, and Poor Robin to such a degree that
he speaks of his father's fear lest these poor hawkers, who found their
occupation almost gone, should do the daring young interloper some
grievous bodily harm. "But," he says, "I had not the least concern; and
as I had a light pair of heels, I always kept at a proper distance."
At the age of fourteen he was bound for seven years to Mr. Bowden of
Taunton, a shoemaker. The indentures made Lackington the servant of both
Mr. and Mrs. Bowden, so that, in case of the death of the former, the
latter might claim the service of the apprentice. The Bowdens were
steady, religious people who attended what Lackington calls "an
Anabaptist meeting," _i.e._, we presume, a _Baptist_ chapel, for the
Baptists long bore the opprobrious epithet which was first given to them
in Germany and Holland at the time of the Reformation. The Baptists of
Taunton in 1760 seem to have been a dull, lifeless class of people, if
we may judge from the type presented in the family of the quiet
shoemaker with whom James Lackington went to live. Yet they were on a
par with the vast majority of churches, established or non-established,
in that age of religious apathy in England. The boy accompanied the
family twice on the Sabbath to the "meeting," and heard, yet not heard,
sermons full of sound morality, but devoid of anything like vigorous,
soul-searching, and soul-converting gospel truth, and delivered, withal,
in the flattest and most spiritless manner. The ideas of the family were
as circumscribed as their library, and that was small and meagre enough,
in all conscience. It may be worth while to give an inventory of its
contents. It will cover only a line or two of our space, and will be of
some use to those, perhaps, who are apt to mourn their own poverty as
regards books, and their small advantages, though, perchance, they may
have access to free libraries or cheap subscription libraries, or may be
able to buy or borrow all they could find time to peruse if only they
had the wish to read. Imagine a youth with any taste for literature
living in a sleepy town like Taunton in 1760, and looking over his
master's bookshelves and finding there a school-size Bible, "Watts'
Psalms and Hymns," Foot's "Tract on Baptism," Culpepper's "Herbal," the
"History of the Gentle Craft," an old imperfect volume of receipts on
Physic, Surgery, etc., and the "Ready Reckoner." Bowden was an odd
character, evidently. One of his strange customs is thus described:
"Every morning, at all seasons of the year and in all weathers, he rose
about three o'clock, took a walk by the river's side round Trenchware
fields, stopped at some place or other to drink half a pint of ale, came
back before six o'clock and called up his people to work, and went to
bed again about seven."
"Thus," says Lackington, "was the good man's family jogging easily and
quietly on, no one doubting but he should go to heaven when he died, and
every one hoping it would be a good while first."
The visit of "one of Mr. Wesley's preachers" led to the conversion of
the two sons of Lackington's employer, and set the young apprentice on a
train of thought and inquiry which eventually led him also to cast in
his lot with the Methodists. He was then about sixteen years of age, and
had so little knowledge of reading that he gladly paid the three
halfpence per week which his mother allowed him as pocket-money to one
of the young Bowdens for instruction. Yet he had at this time no
literary taste, and no thought beyond the limited round of devotional
reading, which consisted chiefly of the Bible, and the tracts, sermons,
and hymns of the Wesleys. His desire to hear the Methodist preachers was
so great at this time, that one Sunday morning, when his mistress had
locked the door to prevent his going out for this purpose, he jumped out
of the bedroom window, fondly imagining that the words of the
ninety-first Psalm, the eleventh and twelfth verses, which he had just
been reading, would be sufficient guarantee of his safety in
perpetrating such an act of rashness and folly. The last three years of
his apprenticeship were spent in the service of his master's widow, Mr.
Bowden having died when Lackington had served about four years. When he
was just twenty-one, and about six months before the expiration of his
time, a severe contest for the representation of Taunton in Parliament
took place, and the friends of two of the candidates purchased his
freedom from Mrs. Bowden's service in order to secure both his vote and
his services. The scenes of excitement and dissipation into which he was
thrown at this time unsettled his mind, and for a time entirely ruined
his religious character. The election over, he went to live at Bristol,
and lodged in a street called Castle Ditch, with a young man named John
Jones, a maker of stuff shoes, who led him into dissipation. Jones,
however, had been pretty well educated, and managed to awaken in
Lackington's mind a desire for more knowledge than he then possessed. He
was, indeed, wofully ignorant, had no idea of writing, and when he began
to feel a thirst for general reading, confesses that he dared not enter
a bookseller's shop because he did not know the name of any book to ask
for. His friend Jones picked up at a bookstall a copy of Walker's
"Paraphrase of Epictetus," which seems to have charmed the young
shoemaker immensely, and to have turned him for a time into a regular
stoic.
The taste for reading once awakened, he soon grew weary of a life of sin
and folly. One evening he turned into a chapel in Broadmead to hear Mr.
Wesley, who was preaching there. The old fire of religious enthusiasm
was once more enkindled, and burned as fiercely as ever. His companions
were soon brought to join the Wesleyan Society, and for a time the
little knot of shoemakers working together lived a life of intense
religious devotion, working hard and singing hymns or holding religious
conversation all day, reading the works of leading evangelical divines
during the greater part of the night, and seldom allowing themselves
more than three hours' sleep.
The religious was combined with the philosophic mind. He bought copies
of such books as Plato on the "Immortality of the Soul," Plutarch's
"Lives," the "Morals of Confucius," etc.; and, speaking of this time, he
says: "The pleasures of eating and drinking I entirely despised, and for
some time carried the disposition to an extreme. The account of Epicurus
living in his garden, at the expense of about a halfpenny per day, and
that when he added a little cheese to his bread on particular occasions
he considered it as a luxury, filled me with raptures. From that moment
I began to live on bread and tea, and for a considerable time did not
partake of any other viand, but in that I indulged myself three or four
times a day. My reasons for living in this abstemious manner were in
order to save money to purchase books, to wean myself from the gross
pleasures of eating, drinking, etc., and to purge my mind and make it
more susceptible of intellectual pleasures."
Leaving Bristol in 1769, he lived for a year at Kingsbridge, Devonshire,
where he worked as a maker of stuff and silk shoes. In 1770 he went back
to Bristol, and lodged once more with his old friends, the Joneses. At
the end of that year he married Nancy Smith, an old sweetheart, whom he
had fallen in love with _seven_ years previously, "being at Farmer
Gamlin's at Charlton, four miles from Taunton, to hear a Methodist
sermon." Nancy was dairymaid then, and was accounted handsome; she was a
devout Methodist, and an amiable, industrious, thrifty woman. But they
were wretchedly poor at the time of their marriage, and had to go and
live in lodgings at half a crown a week. "Our finances," he remarks,
"were but just sufficient to pay the expenses of the (wedding) day, for
in searching our pockets (which we did not do in a careless manner), we
discovered that we had but one halfpenny to begin the world with. 'Tis
true we had laid in eatables sufficient for a day or two, in which time
we knew we could by our work procure more, which we very cheerfully set
about, singing together the following strains of Dr. Cotton:
'Our portion is not large indeed,
But then how little do we need!
For Nature's calls are few.
In this the art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,
And make that little do.'
"The above, and the following ode by Mr. Samuel Wesley, we did scores of
times repeat, even with raptures:
'No glory I covet, no riches I want,
Ambition is nothing to me:
The one thing I beg of kind Heaven to grant
Is a mind independent and free.
'By passion unruffled, untainted by pride,
By reason my life let me square;
The wants of my nature are cheaply supplied,
And the rest are but folly and care.
'Those blessings which Providence kindly has lent
I'll justly and gratefully prize;
While sweet meditation and cheerful content
Shall make me both healthy and wise.
'How vainly through infinite trouble and strife
The many their labors employ;
When all that is truly delightful in life
Is what all, if they will, may enjoy.'"
Sound sense and true philosophy this; and sorely did the young shoemaker
and his much-enduring wife feel the need of such philosophy to hearten
and console them when four and sixpence a week was all they had to spend
on eating and drinking, and when, as he states, "strong beer we had
none, nor any other liquor (the pure element excepted); and instead of
tea, or rather coffee, we toasted a piece of bread, at other times we
fried some wheat, which, when boiled in water, made a tolerable
substitute for coffee; and as to animal food, we made use of but little,
and that little we boiled and made broth of." That the cheerful
sentiments with which they set out in life did not fail them under the
stress of such hardships as these is sufficiently shown by the statement
with which he closes the chapter which deals with this part of his
history: "During the whole of this time we never once wished for
anything that we had not got, but were quite contented, and with a good
grace in reality made a virtue of necessity."
After three years Lackington resolved to go to London in the hope of
meeting with better work and pay. It was indeed dire necessity that
drove him to take this step. Incessant suffering and semi-starvation
seemed inevitable if he remained in Bristol. His wife had been extremely
ill almost from the beginning of their residence in the city, probably
owing to the change from country air and active employment to the close
atmosphere and sedentary occupation to which she was now accustomed. Her
continued illness and his own hopeless state of poverty drove him to
make the venture. Accordingly, having given her all the money he could
spare, he set off for the metropolis, and arrived there in August, 1774,
with half a crown in his pocket.
Once in London, the tide of his fortune turned. He soon found plenty of
work and got good wages. In a month his wife was sent for, and the two
worked so industriously and lived so economically, that before long
Nancy changed her cloth cloak for one of silk, and her worthy husband
indulged in the luxury of a _greatcoat_, the first he had ever worn.
When he had been in London about four months he received tidings of the
death of his grandfather, who had left ten pounds apiece to each of his
grandchildren. He was so ignorant of money matters that he had no
notion of obtaining the money except by going down to Somersetshire to
fetch it, and the sum was accounted so prodigious, that he at once set
off to claim his property; "so that," he says, "it cost me about half
the money in going down for it and in returning to town again." "With
the remainder of the money," he adds, "we purchased household goods; but
as we then had not sufficient to furnish a room, we worked hard and
lived hard, so that in a short time we had a room furnished with our own
goods; and I believe that Alexander the Great never reflected on his
immense acquisitions with half the heart-felt enjoyment which we
experienced on this capital attainment." Now and then he visited the old
bookshops and added a few books to his small library. One Christmas Eve
he went out with half a crown in his pocket to purchase the Christmas
dinner. Passing by an old bookshop, he could not resist the inducement
to turn in and look over the stock. He intended to spend only a few
pence on some book; but a copy of Young's "Night Thoughts," which he
very much coveted, was so tempting a prize, that, without hesitation, he
laid down his half-crown for the purchase of it. On returning home, he
had no slight difficulty to persuade his wife of "the superiority of
intellectual pleasures over sensual gratifications." "I think," said he
to his patient spouse, "that I have acted wisely; for had I bought _a
dinner_, we should have eaten it to-morrow, and the pleasure would have
been soon over; but should we live fifty years longer, we shall have the
'Night Thoughts' to feast upon."
In June, 1775, one of his Wesleyan friends looked in on Lackington and
his wife as they sat at work making boots and shoes, and told them of a
"shop and parlor" which were then to let in Featherstone Street, where
it was suggested Lackington might obtain work as a master-shoemaker. He
at once fell in with the proposal, and added that "he would sell books
also." He does not seem to have formed any intention of bookselling
previous to this interview, but the prospect of having a shop of his own
led him to think how easy and pleasant it would be to combine the two
kinds of business. He says in his own _naïve_ manner: "When he proposed
my taking the shop, it instantly occurred to my mind that for several
months past I had observed a great increase in a certain old bookshop,
and that I was persuaded I knew as much of old books as the person who
kept it. I further observed that I loved books, and that if I could but
be a bookseller, I should then have plenty of books to read, which was
the greatest motive I could conceive to induce me to make the attempt."
His friend engaged to procure the shop, and Lackington bought "a bag
full of old books, chiefly divinity, for a guinea," which, together with
his own little library and some scraps of old leather, were worth five
pounds. With this stock he "opened shop on Midsummer Day, 1775, in
Featherstone Street, in the parish of St. Luke."
He borrowed five pounds from a fund which Wesley's people had raised for
the purpose of lending out on a short term to men of good character who
were in need of help in business or domestic difficulties. No interest
appears to have been required, and he states that the money was of great
service to him. At this time they lived in the most economical and
sparing manner, "often dining on potatoes, and quenching their thirst
with water," for they could not forget the trials through which they had
passed, and, haunted by the dread of their recurrence, were determined,
if possible, to provide against them.
After six months his stock had increased to £25. "This stock I deemed
too great to be buried in Featherstone Street; and a shop and parlor
being to let in Chiswell Street, No. 46, I took them." His business in
the sale of books proved so prosperous, that, in a few weeks after
removing to Chiswell Street, he disposed of his little stock of leather
and altogether abandoned the _gentle craft_. At this time his stock
consisted almost entirely of divinity, and for a year or two he
"conscientiously destroyed such books as fell into his hands as were
written by free-thinkers: he would neither read them himself, nor sell
them to others." He makes some curious and sagacious remarks on
bargain-hunters who frequented his shop at this time, while his stock
was low and poor, and who in their craze after "bargains" often paid him
double the price for dirty old books that he afterward charged when he
had a larger stock, and had adopted the principle of selling every book
at its lowest paying price. These people, he observed, forsook his shop
as soon as he began to introduce better order and to appear
"respectable!"[3] He had not been long in Chiswell Street, before both
his wife and himself were seized with fever. She died and was buried
without his having once seen her after her illness. The shop was left in
the care of a boy, his house was put in charge of nurses, who robbed him
of his linen and other articles, kept themselves drunk with gin, and
would have left him to perish. The timely presence of his sister saved
his life, and several Wesleyan friends saved him from ruin by locking up
his shop, which the nurses and boy together would soon have emptied.
Although he wrote the whole story in after-years in a vein of flippant
sarcasm and irreverence for religion, he was constrained to acknowledge
his great obligation to the friends whose religion prompted them thus to
act the good Samaritan to him in his dire extremity. "The above
gentlemen," he says, "not only took care of my shop, but also advanced
money to pay such expenses as occurred; and as my wife was dead, they
assisted in making my will in favor of my mother." "These worthy
gentlemen," he adds, "belong to Mr. Wesley's Society (and
notwithstanding they have imbibed many enthusiastic whims), yet would
they be an honor to any society, and are a credit to human nature."
[3] "Bibliomaniacs" will be interested to learn the
price of certain books at this date, 1775. Lackington says:
"Martyn's 'Dictionary of Natural History' sold for £15 15s.,
which then stood in my catalogue at £4 15s.; Pilkington's
'Dictionary of Painters,' £7 7s., usually sold at three;
Francis's 'Horace,' £2 11s. At Sir George Colebrook's sale the
8vo edition of the 'Tatler' sold for _two guineas and a half_.
At a sale a few weeks since, Rapin's History in folio, the two
first vols. only, sold for upward of £5."
In 1776 he married Miss Dorcas Turton, a friend of his first wife. It
seems to have been her influence, to a large extent, that drew him away
from Wesleyanism and religion. She was a woman of considerable
education, and a great reader, kindly and affectionate in her
disposition, a dutiful daughter to her aged and dependent father, whom
she had supported after his failure in business by keeping a school. But
she seems to have had no thought of religious truth as a basis for
character and an impulse to right conduct, and her absolute indifference
to religion soon told on the mind of a sensitive and impulsive man like
Lackington. "I did not long remain in Mr. Wesley's Society," he writes,
referring to this same year 1776, "and, what is remarkable, I well
remember that, some years before, Mr. Wesley told his society in
Broadmead, Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller
six months in his flock."
Two years afterward Lackington entered into partnership for three years
with Mr. Denis, an _honest man_, as he is emphatically styled, who
brought a considerable sum of money into the business, by means of which
the stock was at once doubled, and the sales vastly increased.
Lackington now proposed the issue of a sale catalogue, to which his
partner reluctantly consented. Both partners were employed in writing
it, but the larger share fell to Lackington, whose name alone appeared
on the title-page. It was issued in 1779, and the first week after its
publication the partners took, what they regarded as the "large sum" of
twenty pounds. Denis, finding his money pay better in business than in
the Funds, invested a larger sum in stock, but when Lackington, who
according to the terms of the agreement was sole purchaser, began to
buy, as his partner thought, too largely, they had a dispute over the
matter and dissolved partnership on friendly terms a year before the
term of partnership had expired. Denis, to the end of his life, remained
friendly with Lackington, and used to call in every day on passing his
shop to inquire what purchases and sales he had effected, and now and
then the _honest man_ lent his old partner money to help in paying
bills.
In 1780 he resolved to give _no credit_ to any one, and to sell all his
books at the lowest price bearing a working profit. The effect of this
new method of doing business was remarkable in many ways. Long credit
seems to have been common in the trade in those days, most bills were
not paid within six months, many not within a twelvemonth, and some not
within two years. "Indeed," he adds, "many tradesmen have accounts of
seven years' standing; and some bills are never paid"(!) After
recounting the disadvantages of the credit system, he says: "When I
communicated my ideas on this subject to some of my acquaintances, I was
much laughed at and ridiculed; and it was thought that I might as well
attempt to rebuild the Tower of Babel as to establish a large business
without giving credit." The offence given to some old customers was very
great, and for a time he lost them, but they soon returned on learning
how much lower his books were now marked than those of other
booksellers. As to others who would only deal on credit, he cared little
when he observed their anger, very wisely remarking that "some of them
would have been as much enraged when their bills were sent in had credit
been given them." The booksellers themselves were not a little annoyed
by the innovations of the dauntless trader, and appear to have said some
bitter things about him and his stock. Some of them were "mean enough to
assert that all my books were bound in _sheep_," and he adds, in
language that does him credit, "As every envious transaction was to me
an additional spur to exertion, I am therefore not a little indebted to
Messrs. Envy, Detraction & Co. for my present prosperity, though, I
assure you, this is the only debt I am determined not to pay."
This adoption of the "no credit" system was the first decided step
toward Lackington's wonderful success in business. In five years his
catalogues contained the names of thirty thousand books, and these were
generally of a much better description.
The most startling innovation he made in the trade of bookselling, and
the one which led to the largest amount of opposition on the part of his
fellow-tradesmen, was in regard to the way of dealing with what are
called "_remainders_." When a bookseller found a book did not sell well,
it was his custom to put what remained into a private sale, "where only
booksellers were admitted, and of them only such as were invited by
having a catalogue sent them." "When first invited to these
trade-sales," he says, "I was very much surprised to learn that it was
common for such as purchased remainders to destroy one half or three
fourths of such books, and to charge the full publication price, or
nearly that, for such as they kept on hand. For a short time I
cautiously complied with this custom." But he soon became convinced of
the folly of this practice, and resolved to keep the whole stock of
books and sell them off at low prices. By this means he disposed of
hundreds of thousands of volumes at a small profit, which amounted to a
larger sum in the end than if he had destroyed three out of four and
sold the rest at the original retail price. This course made him many
enemies in the trade, who tried to injure him, and even did their best
to keep him out of the sale-rooms. It was, however, of no avail: his
business increased enormously, his customers appreciating his method,
whether the booksellers did or not. He often bought enormously; "West
says he sat next to Lackington at a sale when he spent upward of £12,000
in an afternoon."[4] It was no uncommon thing for him to buy several
thousand copies of one book, and at one time he had _ten thousand_
copies of Watts' Psalms and the same number of his Hymns in stock. Of
course he found it necessary to sell out rapidly, or business would soon
have come to a dead-lock; for, as he justly observes, "no one that has
not a quick sale can possibly succeed with large numbers." "So that I
often look back," he remarks, "with astonishment at my courage (or
temerity, if you please) in purchasing, and my wonderful success in
taking money sufficient to pay the extensive demands that were
perpetually made upon me, as there is not another instance of success
so rapid and constant under such circumstances." It is interesting to
notice how trifling a circumstance it was which led him to adopt the
plan of selling every article at the lowest remunerative price. "Mrs.
Lackington had bought a piece of linen; when the linen-draper's man
brought it into my shop three ladies were present, and on seeing the
cloth opened asked Mrs. L. what it cost per yard. On being told the
price, they all said it was very cheap, and each lady went and purchased
the same quantity; those pieces were again displayed to their
acquaintance, so that the linen-draper got a deal of custom from that
circumstance; and I resolved to do likewise." He admits that he often
sold a "great number of articles much lower than he ought, even on his
own plan of selling cheap, yet that gave him no concern," "but if he
found out that he had sold any articles too dear," he declares that "it
gave him much uneasiness." He reflects in his own simple fashion: "If I
sell a book too dear, I perhaps lose that customer and his friends
forever, but if I sell articles considerably under their real value the
purchaser will come again and recommend my shop to his acquaintances, so
that from the principles of self-interest I would sell cheap."
[4] "History of Booksellers," by H. Curwen, p. 73.
Chatto & Windus.
The following observations of a shrewd observer are worth quoting as a
testimony to the change which had begun to come over the minds of the
people of this country in regard to reading, about a hundred years ago:
"I cannot help observing that the sale of books in general has increased
prodigiously within the last twenty years [1791]. According to the best
estimation I have been able to make, I suppose that more than four times
the number of books are sold now than were sold twenty years since. The
poorer sort of farmers, and even the poor country people in general, who
before that period spent their winter evenings in relating stories of
witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, etc., now shorten the nights by hearing
their sons and daughters read tales, romances, etc.; and on entering
their houses, you may see 'Tom Jones,' 'Roderick Random,' and other
entertaining books stuck up on their bacon-racks, etc.; and if John goes
to town with a load of hay, he is charged to be sure not to forget to
bring home 'Peregrine Pickle's Adventures;' and when Dolly is sent to
the market to sell her eggs she is commissioned to purchase 'The History
of Pamela Andrews.' In short, all ranks and degrees now READ. But the
most rapid increase of the sale of books has been since the termination
of the late war."[5]
[5] Articles of Peace with the United States were
signed Nov. 30th, 1782; and the Peace of Versailles, between
France, Spain, and England, was made Jan. 20th, 1783. It is to
this, no doubt, that Lackington refers.
He tells the story of his going to reside in the country and set up a
carriage, horses, and liveried servants in his own quaint and
self-complacent style. "My country _lodging_ by regular gradation was
transformed into a country _house_, and the inconveniences attending a
_stage-coach_ were remedied by a _chariot_." This house was taken at
Merton in Surrey. Referring to the captious remarks of his neighbors, he
says: "When by the advice of that eminent physician, Dr. Lettsom, I
purchased a horse and saved my life by the exercise it afforded me, the
old adage, '_Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil_,'
was deemed fully verified; they were very sorry to see people so young
in business run on at so great a rate!" The occasional relaxation
enjoyed in the country was censured as an abominable piece of pride; but
when the carriage and servants in livery appeared, "they would not be
the first to hurt a foolish tradesman's character, but if (as was but
too probable) the _docket_ was not already struck, the Gazette would
soon settle that point." It appears that some of these wiseacres
speculated as to the means by which the fortunate bookseller had made
his large fortune. Some spoke of a _lottery_ ticket, and others were
sure that he must have found a number of "banknotes in an old book to
the amount of many thousand pounds, and if they please can even tell you
the title of the old book that contained the treasure." "But," he
jocosely remarks, "you shall receive it from me, which you will deem
authority to the full as unexceptionable. I found the whole of what I am
possessed of, in--SMALL PROFITS, _bound_ by INDUSTRY, and _clasped_ by
ECONOMY."
It is curious to notice the frank and simple manner in which he speaks
of his profits, and of the way in which he did his business. "The
profits of my business the present year [1791] will amount to four
thousand pounds," he writes, and goes on to say that "the cost and
selling price of every book was marked in it, whether the price is
sixpence or sixty pounds, is entered in a day-book as they are sold,
with the price it cost and the money it sold for; and each night the
profits of the day are cast up by one of my shopmen, as every one of
them understands my private marks. Every Saturday night the profits of
the week are declared before all my shopmen, etc., the week's profits,
and also the expenses of the week, then entered one opposite another;
the whole sum taken in the week is also set down, and the sum that has
been paid for books bought. These accounts are kept publicly in my shop,
and ever have been so, as I never saw any reason for concealing them."
He speaks in the same letter of selling more than one hundred thousand
volumes annually, and adds, in his own complacent manner, "I believe it
is universally allowed that no man ever promoted the sale of books in an
equal degree!"
Lackington at length quitted Chiswell Street, and took the enormous
building at the corner of Finsbury Square, which was styled "The Temple
of the Muses," and to which the public were invited as the cheapest
bookshop in the world. He declared in his catalogue that he had half a
million of books constantly on sale, "and these were arranged in
galleries and rooms rising in tiers--the more expensive books at the
bottom, and the prices diminishing with every floor, but all numbered
according to a catalogue which Lackington compiled by himself."[6] His
profits on the first year's trade at "The Temple of the Muses" amounted
to £5000. He retired from business in 1798, having made a large fortune.
[6] "History of Booksellers," see above, p. 74.
His capacity for business was remarkable. Until he was nearly thirty
years of age he had no opportunity of exercising it. But once having
given up the gentle craft, in which he was no great proficient, he
proved himself one of the smartest and cleverest business men in London.
We can readily pardon the simple vanity of the self-made and self-taught
merchant prince who writes about his recently acquired _chariot_ in the
following strain: "And I assure you, sir, that reflecting on the means
by which the carriage was procured adds not a little to the pleasure of
riding in it. I believe I may, without being deemed censorious, assert
that there are some who ride in their carriages who cannot reflect on
the means by which they were acquired with an equal degree of
satisfaction." For several years, both before and after he retired from
business, he made a journey through different parts of England and
Scotland, calling at the chief towns, such as York, Leeds, Edinburgh,
Glasgow, Carlisle, Lancaster, Manchester, Bristol, and inspecting the
bookshops. His observations are of the most quaint and out-of-the-way
character. At Newcastle he found nothing more remarkable to record than
"the celebrated _crow's nest_ affixed above the weather-cock on the
upper extremity of the steeple in the market-place," and the famous
_brank_, an iron instrument, shown in the town-hall, and used in olden
time to punish notorious scolds. At Glasgow the most notable spectacle,
and one that calls forth a considerable amount of remark, is that of the
washerwomen, whose practice of getting into their tubs, placed by the
river-side, and dollying the linen with their bare feet, awoke his
profound astonishment. Of his visits to Bristol and the west of England,
the scene of his early life, he gives the following curious and
interesting account: "In Bristol, Exbridge, Bridgewater, Taunton,
Wellington, and other places, I amused myself in calling on some of my
masters, with whom I had, about twenty years before, worked as a
journeyman shoemaker. I addressed each with, '_Pray, sir, have you got
any occasion?_' which is the term made use of by journeymen in that
useful occupation when seeking employment. Most of those honest men had
quite forgot my person, as many of them had not seen me since I worked
for them, so that it is not easy for you to conceive with what surprise
and astonishment they gazed on me. For you must know that I had the
vanity (I call it _humor_) to do this in my chariot, attended by my
servants; and on telling them who I was, all appeared to be very happy
to see me. And I assure you, my friend, it afforded me much real
pleasure to see my old acquaintances alive and well." Coming to
Wellington, his birthplace and home during boyhood, he says: "The bells
rang merrily all the day of my arrival. I was also honored with the
attention of many of the most respectable people in and near Wellington
and other parts, some of whom were pleased to inform me that the reason
of their paying a particular attention to me was their having heard, and
now having themselves an opportunity of observing, that I did not so far
forget myself as many proud upstarts had done; and that the notice I
took of my poor relations and old acquaintance merited the respect and
approbation of every real gentleman."
Lackington's kindness to his own relatives, and to the poor, was one of
his best qualities. In fact, he declares in 1791 that he would have
retired from business five years previously if it had not been for the
thought of his poor relations, many of whom were helpless, and whom he
felt bound to relieve and protect. Besides supporting his "good old
mother" for many years, he says, "I have two aged men and one aged
woman whom I support: and I have also four children to maintain and
educate; ... many others of my relations are in similar circumstances
and stand in need of my assistance." He also made provision for the
support of the very aged parents of his first wife, Nancy.
On abandoning business he left his third cousin George Lackington at the
head of the firm, while he and his wife went to live at Thornbury in
Gloucestershire, in order to be in the neighborhood of the Turtons, his
wife's relations. He bought two estates in Alvestone, on one of which
was a genteel house, where he lived in good style for several years.
Here he employed his time in visiting the sick and poor, and sometimes
in _preaching_. For he had now returned to the faith of a Christian, and
threw himself with his accustomed ardor into all kinds of religious
work. His contrition for the severe and ungracious things he had said of
the Wesleyans in the first editions of his "Memoirs" was evidently very
deep. He acknowledges in plain terms that he owed to them all his early
advantages, and the moral and mental awakening which opened before him a
new path in life. He says, in the introduction to his last edition of
his book, "If I had never heard the Methodists preach, in all
probability I should have been at this time a poor, ragged, dirty
cobbler.... It was also through them that I got the shop in which I
first set up for a bookseller."
He built a small chapel at Thornbury on his own estate, where the
Wesleyan ministers regularly officiated. In 1806 he removed to Taunton,
where he resided for about six years, built a chapel at a cost of £3000,
adding £150 a year for the minister.
On the decline of his health in 1812, he went to live by the seaside at
Budleigh Sulterton, in Devonshire. Here also he erected a chapel which
cost £2000, and endowed it with a minister's stipend of £150 per annum.
James Lackington died of paralysis in the seventieth year of his age, on
the 22d of November, 1815, and was buried in the Budleigh Churchyard.
None will deny the successful bookseller the right to the Latin motto
with which he has adorned the frontispiece to the first edition of
"Memoirs and Confessions," viz., _Sutor ultra crepidam feliciter
ausus_.[7]
[7] "The shoemaker happily abandoned his last." It may
be interesting to note that the writer's copy of this curious
book once belonged to Henry Thomas Buckle, author of "The
History of Civilization." On the fly-leaf are memoranda of
Wesleyan and Jonsonian anecdotes which Buckle had evidently
made for his own use.
CHAPTER III.
[Illustration: REV. S. BRADBURN]
Samuel Bradburn,
THE SHOEMAKER WHO BECAME THE PRESIDENT OF THE WESLEYAN CONFERENCE.
"I was a poor ignorant cobbler."--_Samuel Bradburn, Life of Samuel
Bradburn_, p. 227.
"During forty years Samuel Bradburn was esteemed the Demosthenes of
Methodism."--_Abel Stevens, LL.D., quoted on title-page of Life of S.
B._
"I have never heard his equal; I can furnish you with no adequate idea
of his powers as an orator; we have not a man among us that will support
anything like a comparison with him.... I never knew one with so great a
command of language."--_Dr. Adam Clarke._
"The generous and noble-minded Samuel Bradburn, whose ability as a
public speaker was all but unrivalled."--_Rev. Thomas Jackson, President
of the Wesleyan Conference._
SAMUEL BRADBURN.
In the winter of 1740 the press-gang men were busy at their abominable
work in most of the maritime and inland towns of England, and, among
other places, Chester seems to have sent certain unwilling recruits to
make up the rank and file of the army, and replenish the navy of His
Majesty King George II. Many are the tales of cruelty which belong to
this miserable period in the history of our army and navy. Thousands of
able-bodied men were carried away by main force from their peaceful
occupations, from home and friends, and everything that was dear to
them, and compelled to do duty for their country in foreign climes.
Sons, husbands, fathers of families, steady, honest, industrious,
law-abiding citizens, or worthless waifs and strays, it mattered
not--all who might be of service, and could be easily caught, were
seized and hurried off to the nearest military or naval depot, and were
soon lost sight of by their distressed relations, and were, perhaps,
never heard of again until their names were reported in the list of
killed and wounded in battle. Now and then the life of enforced military
or naval service was tolerable and even pleasant from a soldier's or
sailor's point of view and ended happily enough with an honorable
discharge and pension. A wretched beginning had not always a wretched
course and a miserable ending, for the Briton of those days was a
much-enduring creature, and had strong notions about "serving his
country," and soon learned to tolerate and even enjoy a condition of
things which, to say the least, was unjustifiable and tyrannical.
An incident connected with the life-story of the subject of this sketch
will illustrate some of the worst features of the system referred to,
and show the sort of hardship and injustice to which "the free and noble
sons" of Britain were exposed up to a time almost within the memory of
men still living. Two men sat drinking and chatting in a friendly manner
in an ale-house in Chester one night early in the year 1740. It does not
seem that either of them was the worse for liquor, or that anything
unpleasant had passed between them to spoil the pleasure of their
intercourse. In fact, the two men had known each other years before,
and both seemed glad to renew their acquaintance. The younger of the two
was only twenty-one years of age, and had been married but a few days
previously to a young woman of nineteen summers, to whom he was deeply
attached. After staying as long as he deemed expedient he rose to go
home, when to his amazement the pretended "friend" and old acquaintance
turned upon him with the words, "You shall not leave this room to-night;
you have now no master but the king, and you must serve him, as you have
taken his money." Guessing what was meant, the poor fellow felt in his
pocket and found that his companion had secretly slipped three guineas
into it as king's bounty. It was vain for the enraged and distracted
young man to throw the money on the floor, and declare he would none of
it nor the king's service, that he was but just married, and had no wish
to be a soldier, for armed men stood round the door and prevented
escape. It was vain also to appeal to the magistrates of that day, for
though they must have been perfectly well acquainted with the nefarious
tricks of pressmen and recruiting officers, they accepted the evidence
of the officer against the recruit, and adjudged him a legal soldier,
because, forsooth, he had received the king's bounty and so enlisted.
Such was the experience of Samuel Bradburn's father, and in two days
after the event just narrated he was hurried off to his regiment,
without a chance of saying good-by to his friends or making any further
efforts for his own release. Their grief, and the agony of mind endured
by the young bride, may be imagined. She had no choice but to part from
him, perhaps forever; or to get permission to attach herself to the
regiment, and follow her husband's fortunes as a soldier. No true woman
and worthy wife would hesitate long, and the noble-hearted Welsh girl[8]
soon resolved not to leave her husband. The regiment was ordered to
Flanders, and took part in several battles, in one of which Bradburn was
severely wounded, and on the conclusion of the war in 1748 ordered to
Gibraltar, where Samuel was born, 5th October, 1751, and where he spent
the first twelve years of his life.
[8] Mrs. Bradburn was the daughter of Samuel Jones, of
Wrexham.
The soldier's family numbered thirteen children, and as his pay was but
scanty, it may be supposed that the education of each of its members
could not have been a very important or costly affair. In short, we have
_another_ story to add to those already told of a life of singular
devotedness and usefulness which had no fair foundation of sound and
thorough education. Bradburn himself declares that he went to school for
only a fortnight during his twelve years' life at Gibraltar. The fee was
a penny a week, and on its being raised to three halfpence the boy was
removed, for the father's poor pittance would not allow of the extra
strain upon it of a halfpenny per week. And so, says the biographer,
almost with an air of triumph, "the education of one of the greatest
modern pulpit orators cost only _twopence_!"
Bradburn's father appears to have been a remarkably thoughtful and
exemplary sort of man for a soldier, in those days. Though he never
united with the Methodists, he was much attached to them, and had
derived great profit from their preaching at the camp in Flanders. His
children were brought up in a strictly religious manner, always going to
service on Sunday, and being compelled to read a daily portion of
Scripture, and repeat a Scripture lesson from week to week. According to
his light, he did his best to bring his children up well; and one of
them, at all events, profited by his training, for Samuel became very
thoughtful and serious, and was accounted, by his neighbors, one of the
best boys in the town.
On his discharge from the army Bradburn went to live in the old city
from which he had been so cruelly carried away about twenty-three years
before. Samuel was then nearly thirteen years of age, and a situation
was soon found for him as an out-door apprentice to a shoemaker, to whom
he was bound for eight years. Brought up under the influences of
Methodism, and accustomed to listen to a class of preachers who had done
more than any others to awaken and keep alive the flames of religious
revival and zeal, young Bradburn's mind was always more or less under
the influence of deep religious conviction. His history, as a youth,
presents the most astonishing contrasts of religious fervor and sinful
excess. Yet his worst moods did not last long, and, however far he went
in the way of transgression, his consciousness of the evil of sin never
left him, and he had always sufficient moral sensibility left to make
him profoundly miserable when he dared to reflect. Acts of daring
wickedness, and defiant or profane language, only served as a cover to a
troubled heart and a restless conscience. The story of his early life,
with its alternate seriousness and folly, anxiety about his soul's
welfare and mad recklessness, reads wonderfully like that of John
Bunyan. How like the records of the life of the Bedford tinker are
these entries in the diary of the Chester shoemaker: "One evening, being
exceedingly cast down, and finding an uncommon weight upon my spirits, I
went to preaching, and while Mr. Guilford was describing the happiness
of the righteous in glory, my heart melted like wax before the fire. In
a moment all that heaviness was removed, and the love of God was so
abundantly shed abroad in my heart, that I could scarcely refrain from
crying out in the preaching-house." ... "When preaching was over, I went
into a place near St. Martin's Churchyard, which adjoined the
preaching-house, and there I poured out my soul before the Lord in
prayer and praise, and continued rejoicing in God my Saviour most of the
night." He was then less than fourteen years of age; his companions at
the work-room were of a godless sort, and after a few months' enjoyment
of mental peace and joy, their injurious influence began to tell upon
him. By degrees he abandoned his prayerful habits, and surrendered
himself to the power of evil, until at length he "became acquainted with
the vilest of the vile," and imbibed their spirit and followed their
example. To what depths he sank the following sentences from his diary
will show: "It is impossible to express the feelings of my mind, on some
occasions during this apostasy from God; especially once, when one of
the greatest reprobates I ever knew was constrained to own that he was
shocked to hear me swear such oaths as I often did.[9] ... For a moment
I felt a degree of compunction, but gave away to despair and drowned the
conviction." The reproof which Bunyan received under similar
circumstances led him to drop the practice of swearing; but Bradburn
went on in his evil ways as resolutely as ever. For several years he
seems to have led a reckless life, joining in vicious company, indulging
a passion for "gaming," or gambling, to such an extent that he would
even go to bed and rise and dress again when the rest of the household
were asleep, in order to go out through the window and join his gambling
and betting companions. At last he became so enamoured of sinful follies
that he snatched the opportunity, which a few words of complaint from
his father afforded, to take offence and leave home, "in order to go and
lodge with some abandoned young men, in order to have his full swing
without being curbed by any one." His wages were but small, and as he
took half of them home he had but a small pittance to live upon: yet
such was his craze at this time for bad company and "gaming," that he
lived often for two days on a penny loaf, and went in rags rather than
confess his error to his parents and ask their aid. One good quality
kept him from utter ruin at this time, and it seems to have been the
only one that remained in a lively state. He speaks of "the affection he
had for his mother, whom he still loved as his own soul." He could not
endure her tears and tender reproofs, and left his home in order that he
might not have to suffer the constant reproach of her good character and
loving entreaties. To such lengths will a passion for sinful amusements
drive even a youth of sensitive nature and generous disposition. Nothing
can be more deplorable than the account he gives of his sinful
infatuation at this the worst period of his youthful career. "I spent
almost a twelvemonth in this truly pitiable way of life, and during that
time do not remember enjoying one satisfactory moment. My clothes were
now almost worn out, and my wages were not sufficient to supply me with
more; yet, such was my folly, I still persisted in the same way,
glorying even in my shame, till my life seemed nearly finished, and the
measure of my iniquity almost full; and, to all appearance, there was
but a step betwixt me and everlasting death."
[9] This incident will remind readers of the following
account given by Bunyan of a similar incident in his early
life: "One day, as I was standing at my neighbor's shop-window,
and there cursing and swearing, after my wonted manner, there
sate within the woman of the house and heard me, who, though
she was a loose and ungodly wretch, protested that I cursed and
swore at such a rate that she trembled to hear me.... At this
reproof I was silenced and put to secret shame, and that too,
as I thought, before the God of heaven."
At eighteen years of age this miserable course of sin came to an end.
Bradburn was led "by the hand of Providence to work in the house of a
Methodist." He had about this time, also, become so weak and ailing in
health, as the result of his pernicious habits, that he was compelled to
yield to his parents' entreaties to go and live at home. Good example,
kind words, and wise counsel, combined with the beneficial effects of
separation from his old companions, soon began to tell upon his
conscience. As might be expected, the sense of sin, when once it was
awakened in him, was most intense. It was no wonder that such a youth as
Samuel Bradburn should have "experiences" which men of a milder
temperament are strangers to, and cannot perhaps appreciate. After he
had mused for a time, and thought upon his ways, he became suddenly,
and, as it seemed then, most unaccountably convinced of sin, and led to
cherish the most anxious concern to find peace with God. "One evening,"
he writes in his diary, "at the close of the year 1769, while I was
making a few cursory remarks on the season, and looking at some decayed
flowers in a garden adjoining the house I worked in, I was suddenly
carried, as it were, out of myself with the thought of death and
eternity.... My sins were set as in battle array before me, particularly
that of ingratitude to a good and gracious God. This caused my very
bones to tremble, and my soul to be horribly afraid. Hell from beneath
seemed moved to meet me.... The effects of those convictions were such
that I could scarcely reach home, though but a little way off. I went to
bed, but found no rest. I sunk under the weight of my distress, gave
myself up to despair, and for some time lost the use of my reason." For
several days the poor sin-stricken youth lay as if in a high fever, and
raved of judgment and perdition. It was three months ere he entered into
a state of quiet, firm, intelligent, Christian faith, bringing peace and
rest to his mind. His excellent and godly master helped him somewhat
during this long and terrible struggle in the "slough of despond."
Several "evangelists," in the character of gospel ministers, pointed out
the way of life to him, but they were not of so much service as might
have been expected. A "roll which he carried in his hand," on which was
written, "The Door of Salvation Opened by the Key of Regeneration," was
of great value in showing the way to the blessedness he sought. In fact,
it was during the reading of this little treatise on the life of faith
that his spirit first seemed to hear the divine words, "_Peace, be
still_." There could be no mistake about the young shoemaker's
conversion. Account for it as men might, the change was marvellous, and
infinitely beneficial, as we shall see, no less to his neighbors than to
himself; for Samuel Bradburn was intensely social, and bound to
influence his friends in one way or another, as well as to be influenced
by them. It was impossible for him to remain inactive when a great
impulse moved within him. The desire to go out and speak of the joy he
had found, and the means by which he had found it, soon became a ruling
passion. It is the desire which makes the philanthropist, the preacher,
the missionary. The language in which he attempts to describe that
indescribable joy of the renewed heart is but another reading of the old
gospel truth: "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things
are passed away; behold, all things are become new."[10] Alluding to
the reading of the little book above mentioned, he says: "Such an
unspeakable power accompanied the words to my soul, that, being unable
to control myself, I rose from my seat and went into the garden, where I
had spent many a melancholy hour; but, oh, how changed now! Instead of
terror and despair I felt my heart overflowing with joy, and my eyes
with grateful tears. My soul was in such an ecstasy that my poor
emaciated body was as strong and active as I ever remember it, and not
at that time only, for the strength and activity remained. I had now no
fear of death, but rather longed to die, knowing that the blessed Jesus
was _my_ Saviour; that God was reconciled to _me_ through Him; that
nothing but the thread of life kept me from His glorious presence. Now
the whole creation wore a different aspect. The stars which shone
exceeding bright appeared more glorious than before. Such was my happy
frame that I imagined myself in the company of the holy angels, who, I
believed, were made more happy on my account, and doubtless those
ministering spirits did feel new degrees of joy on seeing so vile a
sinner, so wretched a prodigal, come home to the arms of his heavenly
Father.[11] O Thou eternal God!" he exclaims, "Thou transporting delight
of my soul! preserve and support, me through life, that I may at last
enjoy the heaven of love which I then felt overpowering my spirit."
[10] 2 Cor. 5:17.
[11] There was surely a Scriptural reason for this
feeling. See Luke 15:7, 10, and Heb. 1:15.
Bradburn at once joined the Methodist Society at Chester. His master's
son, a boy of twelve, and many other young people, began to attend the
"class-meetings" about the same time. Among his work-fellows, also,
there were some who rejoiced in the light which now filled young
Bradburn's soul, and their conversation and hymn-singing while at work,
and their union in prayer before quitting the workroom at the close of
the day, made the new time a perpetual Sabbath, and the shoemaker's room
"a perfect paradise." In March, 1770, after the usual period of
probation, he was admitted to full membership, and received what the
Methodists call "his first ticket." He was not long in discovering, as
every one else has done in similar circumstances, that the change,
though genuine, was not complete. An outburst of passion, and a growing
desire after disputation on theological matters, in which he found
himself contending for mastery rather than truth, gave him to see that a
sound and secure religious character is a matter of growth and culture
and can only be maintained by watchfulness and prayer, and the careful
formation of habits of piety. And as Thomas à Kempis finely says,
"Custom is overcome by custom," so Bradburn found it, and in order to
put a bar between his spirit and possible temptations, changed his way
of _living_, his _companions_, and his _books_. One day, when John
Wesley was administering the Lord's Supper in the little chapel at
Chester, Bradburn was seized with the idea that he must become a
preacher. For a long time he strove hard to drive it from his mind. But
the more he did so the more it seemed to possess him. His sense of
unfitness for so great an office as that of the preacher, his exalted
notions of the sacredness and responsibility attaching to the office,
and his own deepening conviction, which nothing could resist, that it
was his duty before God to devote himself to the work, made him for a
time positively wretched. He tried the effect of change of residence
upon his feelings in the matter. He was now twenty years of age, and out
of his time. But on visiting his relations at Wrexham, he found that
they and their friends of the Wesleyan Society, to whom he was
introduced, had a common feeling that such a young man ought surely to
exercise his gifts as a speaker. In answer to their entreaties he spoke
several times in their meetings, and thus made his first start in public
speaking. Still the question of preaching was left unsettled, and
disturbed his mind night and day. It became a positive burden to
him--"the burden of the Lord," indeed, and no power of his own could
remove it. Six months after this brief visit to Wrexham, he obtained a
situation, and went to reside in Liverpool, where he fell in with people
much to his mind, who were exceedingly kind to him. They, however, no
sooner came to know him than their opinion was strongly expressed to the
same purport as that of his friends in Chester and Wrexham. In four
months he left Liverpool and returned home, the great life-question
still upon his mind. He dare not settle it, in one way or the other; all
he could do was to resolve to live as near to God as possible, commit
his way unto Him, and submissively wait for the direction of Divine
providence. In this condition of mind he passed the rest of the year
1772. At the beginning of the following year he found employment at
Wrexham, and there took up his abode in the congenial society of his
relations and religious friends. Soon after this the event occurred
which decided the severe and agonizing mental struggle to which he had
been subjected for the last twelve months, and determined the whole
course of his life, and the employment of his rare gifts as a preacher
of the Gospel. On Sunday, February 7th, 1773, the preacher for the day
failed to appear. Young Bradburn was invited by the leaders of the
congregation to take the service. Trembling from head to foot, almost
blind with fear and excitement, and casting himself on divine aid, he
mounts the pulpit stairs. The opening part of the service gives him
confidence, and when the time for preaching comes, he is able to speak
with much freedom and fervor to an appreciative and thankful audience.
In the evening he is once more asked to occupy the pulpit, and this time
he delivers a discourse which is not too long for the hearers, though it
lasts for more than two hours. The next week he preaches to the same
people three times; and now the question is settled, and settled, as he
and his friends are fain to believe, in a providential way: Samuel
Bradburn is _called to be a preacher_, and a preacher of no ordinary
power. He has not waited all these long months for nothing. He has not
run before he was sent. He has not tarried in the desert like Moses,
like Elijah, like Saul of Tarsus, to learn the truth and will of God,
with no beneficial results. He has been called of the Holy Spirit to the
work, and to the work of preaching he must now give himself and his very
best powers, or a woe will rest upon him. He and his Methodist friends
would not trouble themselves for one moment about the question of his
being a shoemaker, or _remaining_ a shoemaker, if he is to become a
preacher. One apostolic precedent was as good as twelve to them in a
matter of this kind, and Paul did not cease to be a tent-maker when the
Holy Ghost said to the church at Antioch, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul
to the work whereunto I have called them."[12]
[12] Acts 13:2.
Soon after the events just referred to, Bradburn resolved to go and see
the Rev. John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley in Shropshire, the friend of
Lady Huntingdon, and Benson, and John Wesley. Fletcher had a reputation
for piety and usefulness which few men in his day could equal and none
surpass. He was a great favorite with the followers of John Wesley, not
alone because of his friendship with their leader, but on account of his
saintly life, his evangelistic zeal, and his rare catholicity of spirit.
None worked more faithfully and diligently than he at the College of
Trevecca in Wales, of which he was for several years the president. Yet
he received no emolument for his labors. "Fletcher was no pluralist, for
he did his work at Trevecca without fee or reward, from the sole motive
of being useful."[13] It is said of his apostolic work at Madeley, that
"the parish, containing a degraded, ignorant, and vicious population
employed in mines and iron works, became, under his diligent Christian
culture, a thoroughly different place. His public discourses, his
pastoral conversations, his catechising of the young, his reproofs to
the wicked, his encouragements to the penitent, his accessibility at all
hours, his readiness to go out in the coldest night and the deepest snow
to see the sick or the sorrowing, his establishment of schools, and his
personal efforts in promoting their prosperity--in short, his almost
unrivalled efforts in all kinds of ministerial activity, have thrown
around Madeley beautiful associations not to be matched by the hills and
hanging woods which adorn that hive of industry."[14] Bradburn was
lovingly received at the Madeley vicarage, stayed for several days with
the family, and preached in one of the rooms of the house to a
congregation of villagers. If Fletcher could not ask his shoemaker
friend to officiate in the church, seeing that he had taken no holy
orders, the good vicar had no difficulty or scruple in regard to his
guest's preaching the Gospel in the house. On leaving, young Bradburn
carried away, as a precious treasure of the heart, a deep sense of
Fletcher's holy character, and never forgot the good man's
characteristic remark, "If you should live to preach the gospel forty
years, and be the instrument of saving only one soul, it will be worth
all your labor." Returning home, he went on with his work as a
shoemaker, preaching on Sundays in the chapels at Flint, Mold, Wrexham,
etc., until the beginning of the following year, when he went to reside
with friends at Liverpool. Here his preaching was so much enjoyed by the
congregations of the "circuit" that he was pressed to stay and minister
to them till July, when it was hoped that some arrangement might be made
by the Conference in London by which he would be permanently and
officially appointed to labor among them. Although he had become
somewhat popular by this time, and was warmly welcomed wherever he went
on account of his earnestness and rough eloquence, he was sometimes
regarded with distrust because of his youthful and unclerical appearance
and manner. One good man, who generally entertained the preacher on his
visits, was so annoyed at the sight of "a mere lad" "travelling the
circuit, that he sent young Bradburn to take his meals and sleep in the
garret with the apprentices." After the morning sermon, however, which
surprised and delighted all who heard it, "he was judged worthy to sit
in the preacher's chair" at the table of his host, and at night was
allowed to sleep in the "prophet's chamber." In September of that year
he was not a little surprised to find himself appointed by the
Conference as a regular "travelling preacher on the Liverpool circuit."
It was about this time he had his first interview with John Wesley. The
veteran evangelist's simple and kindly manner affected the young
preacher deeply, and his advice was wonderfully like him: "Beware," said
Wesley, holding young Bradburn by the hand, "beware of the fear of man;
and be sure you speak flat and plain in preaching."
[13] See Benson's "Life of Fletcher."
[14] "Religion in England under Queen Anne and the
Georges." By John Stoughton, D.D., vol. ii. pp. 158, 159.
Hodder & Stoughton.
In these early days of Methodism, when the denomination was undergoing
the process of rapid growth, it was impossible to wait for men, to meet
the urgent need of the churches, who had gone through a regular process
of ministerial education and training. Such as had the requisite
character and the gift of speech were "called out" and placed over
churches in a manner that would not have been tolerated in later times,
when colleges had come to be established. Yet the work done by men of
Bradburn's stamp was genuinely apostolic, and served, under the divine
blessing, to lay broad and deep the foundations of that Wesleyan
denomination which, in the present day, yields to none of the so-called
"sects" in the culture and moral power of its ministry. It is not to be
supposed that the fluent young shoemaker was insensible to his need of
education. The first year's work in Lancashire taxed his mental
resources severely, and set him wondering many times whether he should
be able to go on preparing new sermons in order to preach repeatedly to
the same congregation. It was consequently an immense relief to him when
the year came to an end, and he found that the Conference at Leeds had
set him down for an entirely new field of labor, at Pembroke, in South
Wales.[15]
[15] Bradburn's mother died during his first year's
ministry. In connection with this event he mentions a
circumstance which enabled him to be resigned to the
bereavement, and which many readers will regard with unusual
interest. "God spared her life, nearly _twelve years_, in
answer to a prayer which I offered up when she seemed to be
dying, in which I begged that she might live twelve years
exactly. I was then very young, and could not bear the thought
of losing her, but imagined I should be able to part with her
after those years."
Bradburn felt his poverty in more ways than one. Wesleyan ministers were
then but poorly paid, and men of his generous character, who found it
easier to give to the needy than to economize and save, were often in
great straits for funds. On his way down to Pembroke he was reduced to
his last shilling, and, but for this meeting with Wesley at Brecon,
might have found it an awkward matter to reach his destination. "Apply
to me when you want help," said Wesley to his friend, and very soon
proved his sincerity by prompt assistance when the young pastor made
known his straitened circumstances. The following story is too good to
be omitted. In reply to Bradburn's appeal Wesley sent the following
short letter, inclosing several five-pound notes:
"DEAR SAMMY: Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.--Yours
affectionately, JOHN WESLEY."
To which Bradburn replied:
"REV. AND DEAR SIR: I have often been struck with the beauty of
the passage of Scripture quoted in your letter, but I must
confess that I never saw such useful expository notes upon it
before.--I am, Rev. and dear Sir, your obedient and grateful
servant, S. BRADBURN."
The year spent in South Wales was happy and prosperous, and the churches
at Pembroke, Haverfordwest, and Carmarthen were greatly increased and
well organized under the care of Bradburn and his colleague. By the
Conference in 1776 he was sent to Limerick, and from thence, in four
months, such was the severity of the strain upon his health, he was
removed to Dublin. Here he had met, on first landing in Ireland, with
the young lady who was afterward to become his wife. It was a case of
"mutual admiration" and "love at first sight." Bradburn was a passionate
lover, and could ill brook the delay of two years which had to pass away
before he took the beautiful Miss Nangle to his own home. In one of his
anxious moods, when sick of love and hope deferred, he rose from his
sleepless bed to pray for divine guidance and favor in regard to the
serious business of courtship. It was his custom to pray aloud, and
supposing his colleague, who occupied the same bed, to be fast asleep,
he did not balk his prayer in this instance, finishing a fervent appeal
for divine direction with the simple words, "But, Lord, let it be
Betsey." His bedfellow humorously responded, "Amen," and broke out into
a hearty laugh at poor Bradburn's expense. John Wesley, who favored the
match, and generously interceded in his friend's behalf, both with a
much-dreaded stepmother and the fair one herself, conducted the marriage
ceremony in the house of a friend. He had invited the bride and
bridegroom-elect, and Mrs. Karr the stepmother, "to breakfast with him
at Mrs. King's,[16] the morning after his arrival, being his birthday;
as soon as she (Mrs. Karr) entered he began the ceremony and married us
in the parlor. Pride would not let her affront Mr. Wesley, and she was
forced to appear satisfied." "Wesley," says Bradburn's biographer,[17]
"more than once took up cudgels for his preachers when in difficulties
of this kind, but not in such a summary manner."
[16] Bradburn's lodgings.
[17] "Life of Samuel Bradburn." By T. W. Blanshard. P.
68. Elliot Stock, 1870. A most interesting biography of the
famous Wesleyan preacher.
Relegated to the Cork and Bandon circuit, he had a very trying time of
it for about a year. One of his memoranda made at this time gives us a
glimpse of his acquirements from his own common-sense point of view, for
Bradburn was a thoroughly sensible and humble man, who never yielded to
ignorant flattery of his pulpit eloquence, nor gave way, as some
self-made men and popular preachers have done, to vanity and conceit.
Self-examination was with him a genuine business, conducted in a
reverent spirit and an honest and altogether healthy fashion. By this
means he came to know himself and act accordingly. Not many men in his
position would have written so sensibly as this: "_Cork, March 31st_
(1779).--I have read and written much this month, but sadly feel the
want of a friend to direct my studies. All with whom I have any
intimacy, know nothing of my meaning when I speak of my ignorance. They
praise my sermons, and consider me a prodigy of learning; and yet what
do I know? a little Latin, a little philosophy, history, divinity, and a
little of many things, all of which serves to convince me of my own
ignorance!" At this time, and for many years after, he preached forty
sermons a month, and sometimes fifty. Even if they were _all_ old
sermons, which would not often be the case, how could a man so employed
find time or energy for close and continuous study? The next four years
are spent at Keighley, Bradford, and Leeds in Yorkshire. When at
Keighley he "travelled" for a time with Wesley, and had an opportunity
of observing the way in which that sainted man wholly devoted his gifts,
his time, and his money to the service of God and his fellow-men.
Wesley's stipend from the Society in London was £30 a year, but the sale
of books, the generosity of the friends at Bristol, and occasional
preaching fees and sundry legacies, brought his yearly income up to
£1000 or £1200; yet he rarely spent more for himself than his meagre
stipend, and regularly gave away _all the rest_. "Thus literally having
nothing, he possessed all things; and though poor, he made many
rich."[18] At Leeds, Bradburn was offered the pastorate of an
Independent Church with a greatly increased salary, but the loyal
Methodist refused the tempting offer. His next appointment was to
Bristol, where he had the misfortune to lose his darling Betsey, who
died of decline in her twenty-ninth year. His colleague had suffered a
similar bereavement, and the stern yet tender-hearted Wesley, then in
his eighty-third year, actually set off from London "in the driven snow"
to go down to Bristol and comfort the two sorrowing preachers. Bradburn
did not long remain a widower. At Gloucester he met Sophia Cooke, "the
pious and godly" Methodist to whom Robert Raikes of Sunday-school fame
had spoken about the poor children in the streets, and asked her, "What
can we do for them?" Miss Cooke replied, "Let us teach them, and take
them to church!" The hint was acted upon, and Raikes and Miss Cooke
"conducted the first company of Sunday scholars to the church, exposed
to the comments and laughter of the populace, as they passed along with
their ragged procession." A better wife for the earnest Methodist
preacher could not have been found than the woman who thus showed her
good sense, her piety, and her courage, in starting the Sunday-school
movement. In 1786 Wesley showed his appreciation of Bradburn's excellent
qualities by getting him appointed to the London Circuit in order to
have his assistance in superintending the affairs of the Connection.
Here he met with Charles Wesley, and, at the time of his death in 1788,
Bradburn stood by the dying man's bed offering up earnest prayer for
him, and calling to his mind the truths of that Gospel which he had done
so much to spread throughout the world by his unrivalled hymns. John
Wesley himself died three years afterward, 2d March, 1791, and Bradburn,
then at Manchester, published a pamphlet entitled, "A Sketch of Mr.
Wesley's Character," in which he gave a most interesting epitome of the
chief points in the history and labors of his father in the Gospel.
Bradburn, now looked upon as one of the foremost men in the Connection,
united with eight others in issuing a circular giving an outline of
policy for the guidance of the Conference at its next session. The
utmost care and wisdom were needed in order to keep the various elements
of Methodism together; and few men in those days were more conspicuous
and useful than Bradburn in guiding the counsels of the assembled
ministers. He was elected to preach before the Conference at its next
session in Manchester, and so moved his audience by his impassioned
appeal for unity and loyalty to the good cause that had now lost its
earthly leader, that all in the chapel rose to their feet in response to
his stimulating words. In 1796, when stationed at Bath, he was made
secretary of the Conference, and held the office three years in
succession. In 1799 his brethren showed their esteem for him by choosing
him as _President_, and thus giving him the highest honor which they had
it in their power to bestow.
[18] Bradburn's Life, see above, pp. 85, 86.
Among Methodists Bradburn is regarded as one of the most eloquent and
powerful preachers the denomination has produced. He had all the natural
gifts of a great orator, and these, combined with fervent piety and a
single and lofty purpose in preaching, invested his discourses with a
charm and an influence rarely wielded by public speakers. "Possessed of
a commanding figure, dignified carriage, graceful action, mellow voice,
ready utterance, correct ear, exuberant imagination, an astonishing
memory, and an extensive acquaintance with his mother tongue, he could
move an assembly as the summer breeze stirs the standing corn."[19] This
elocutionary power was not gained without much care and diligent labor.
He was a hard reader, and a most painstaking sermonizer, for though he
never used the manuscript in the pulpit but preached extempore, after
the fashion of the times, he nevertheless prepared his discourses with
great skill and labor. The following sentences from his biography will
sufficiently illustrate this point.[20] "His own bold, easy, and correct
English was such as no man acquires without perseverance in a right use
of means. His diligence may be inferred from one of his reported sayings
on leaving Manchester--that he had twelve hundred outlines of sermons
untouched (not used in preaching in the circuit) at the end of three
years' ministrations. The result of such endowments, improved, with such
assiduity, amid all the hindrances and discouragements of a laborious
and harassing vocation, was, that to be comprehensive and lucid in
arrangement; beautifully clear in statement or exposition; weighty,
nervous, and acute in argumentation; copious, various, and interesting
in illustration; overwhelming in pathos; to wield at will the ludicrous
or the tender, the animating, the sublime, or the terrible--seems to
have been habitually in his power." The Rev. Richard Watson, author of
the "Institutes," "walked twenty miles to hear the far-famed Mr.
Bradburn preach; and he never lost the impression which that
distinguished orator produced." Watson thus describes his impressions:
"I am not a very excitable subject, but Mr. Bradburn's preaching
affected my whole frame. I felt a thrill to the very extremity of my
fingers, and my hair actually seemed to stand on end." The biographer of
the Rev. Jabez Bunting says of Bradburn: "His career was brilliant and
useful; and perhaps more men longed, but durst not try, to preach like
him than like any other preacher of his time.... Bradburn was without
exception the most consummate orator we ever heard." And the author of
Bradburn's life concludes the citation of a number of testimonies with
the following strongly expressed opinion of his merits as a pulpit
orator: "Methodism has produced a host of preachers renowned for pulpit
eloquence. The names of Benson, Lessey, Watson, Newton, Beaumont, and
others, stand out in bold relief on the page of her history, but the
highest niche in her temple of fame belongs, most unquestionably, to
SAMUEL BRADBURN."
[19] Bradburn's Life, pp. 177, 178.
[20] Ibid., pp. 183, 184.
Like most men of genius he had a strong sense of humor, enjoyed a joke
most heartily, was ready and pithy in repartee, and seldom at a loss for
spirit and tact in extricating himself from difficulties. Many a good
story might be told, did space allow, in illustration of this feature of
his character. One or two must suffice. Perhaps the smartest thing he
ever did in outwitting the early opponents of Methodism was done in a
certain small town, in one of his own circuits, where, in the early days
of the movement, the preacher and his friends had often "been driven off
the field by a mob, headed by the clergyman." Bradburn understood the
state of affairs thoroughly, and resolved to go down to the parish and
preach in the open air. Notice of his coming was duly forwarded, and
the clergyman ordered constables and others to be in attendance at the
time and place appointed for the service. Meanwhile Bradburn having
"provided himself with a new suit of clothes, borrowed a new wig of a
Methodist barber," and "went to the place, put his horse up at the inn,
attended the morning service at church, placed himself in a conspicuous
situation so as to attract the notice of the clergyman, and, when the
service was closed, he went up to him on his way out, accosted him as a
brother, and thanked him for his sermon. The clergyman, judging from his
appearance and address that he was a minister of some note, gave him an
invitation to his house. Bradburn respectfully declined, on the ground
that he had ordered dinner, and expressed a hope that the clergyman
would dine with him at the inn. He did so, and Bradburn having
entertained him until dinner was over with his extraordinary powers of
conversation, managed to refer to the open-air service which was to be
held, and the clergyman stated his intention to arrest the preacher and
disperse the congregation, and asked Bradburn to accompany him, which he
did. On arriving at the appointed place they found a large company
assembled; and as no preacher had made his appearance, the clergyman
concluded that fear had kept him away, and was about to order the people
to their homes when Bradburn remarked that it would "be highly improper
to neglect so favorable an opportunity of doing good, and urged him to
preach to them. He excused himself by saying that he had no sermon in
his pocket, and asked Bradburn to address them, which, of course, he
readily consented to do, and commenced the service by singing part of
the hymn beginning--
'Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer's praise,'
and, after praying, delivered an impressive discourse from Acts 5:38,
39, 'And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone;
for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but
if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to
fight against God.' This not only deeply affected the people, but so
delighted the clergyman, that although he knew, as the service
proceeded, that he had been duped, he heartily thanked Bradburn for the
deception he had practised on him, and ever afterward, to the day of his
death, showed a friendly disposition toward Methodism."[21]
[21] Bradburn's Life, pp. 233-235.
The same readiness of resource and good humor were shown in the
management of the affairs of the society in his capacity as a pastor. On
one occasion, when he resided in Manchester, two ladies, district
visitors, went to the house of an old woman, a member of the society,
who was a laundress, and finding her hard at work accosted her with the
remark: "Betty, you are busy." "Yes, mum," said Betty, "as busy as the
devil in a whirlwind!" Shocked by such an indecorous speech, the
visitors threatened to report it to Mr. Bradburn. Afraid of what she had
done, and the consequence, if it should come to the preacher's ears,
Betty, as soon as the ladies had gone away, set off by the quickest
route to see Mr. Bradburn and relate the whole affair, and thus
anticipate the report from the ladies themselves. She found Bradburn
"engaged in his vocation as cobbler for his family." "He listened to
Betty's simple story, and engaged to put the matter right, if she would
try to be more guarded in the future. She had scarcely got clear away
when the two ladies arrived with their melancholy story of Betty's
irreverence. They were asked into the room, and seeing him at his
somewhat unclerical employment, one of them observed quite unthinkingly,
'Mr. Bradburn, you are busy!' 'Yes,' returned Bradburn, with great
gravity, 'as busy as the devil in a whirlwind!' This remark from Betty
was sufficiently startling, but from Bradburn it was horrifying. Seeing
their consternation, he explained how busy the devil was in Job's days,
when he raised the whirlwind which 'smote the four corners of the
house,' where the patriarch's children were feasting, and slew them. It
is, perhaps, needless to add that the two ladies left without mentioning
the object of their visit."[22]
[22] Bradburn's Life, pp. 228, 229.
Hating the false pride which leads a man to forget his humble origin,
and the canting way in which some men talk of their sacrifices in
entering the ministry, he once severely rebuked two young men who made a
parade in company of having "given up _all_ for the ministry." "Yes,
dear brethren," said he, "some of you have had to sacrifice your all for
the itinerancy; but we old men have had our share of these trials. As
for myself, I made a double sacrifice, for I gave up for the ministry
two of the best _awls_ in the kingdom--a great sacrifice, truly, to
become an ambassador of God in the church, and a gentleman in society!"
His ready wit was sometimes displayed like that of Hugh Latimer, Dean
Swift, and Sydney Smith, in the selections of texts for sermons on
special occasions. Preaching at the opening of a chapel entirely built
with borrowed money, he took as a text the words of the young man to
Elisha the prophet:[23] "Alas, master, for it was borrowed." On a snowy
winter's day, when the congregation was very small, he selected the
words which describe the character of the virtuous woman,[24] "She is
not afraid of the snow."
[23] 2 Kings 6:5.
[24] Proverbs 31:21.
That Samuel Bradburn was not perfect none will need to be told, yet it
will surprise and pain every one to read that so great and good a man,
honored and beloved of his brethren for many years, and useful beyond
computation as a preacher, should have been "overtaken in a fault," for
which the Conference, in the exercise of a rigorous discipline, saw fit
to suspend him for a year. After the lapse of this time he came back
again to his old position, penitent and humble, like David or Peter, and
like them fully restored to the Divine favor. This singular and
melancholy event appears to have been due as much to _mental_ as _moral_
derangement, and in a short while, such was the sincerity of his sorrow
and the blameless character of his after-life, his brethren were
thankful to forget it, and to place him once more in positions of high
trust and honor in the Connection. The last ten years of his life were
spent in the important circuits of Bolton, Bath, Wakefield, Bristol,
Liverpool, and East London. He died in London, July 26th, 1816, in the
sixty-sixth year of his age. At the time of his decease the Conference
was sitting in London. As a token of esteem and affection all its
members joined in the funeral service at the New Chapel, City Road. He
was buried in Old Methodist graveyard, City Road, by the side of his
friend John Wesley, in the last resting-place of many of the fathers and
founders of the Wesleyan Connection.
CHAPTER IV.
William Gifford,
FROM THE SHOEMAKER'S STOOL TO THE EDITOR'S CHAIR.
"Not mine the soul that pants not after fame--
Ambitious of a poet's envied name,
I haunt the sacred fount, athirst to prove
The grateful influence of the stream I love."
--_The Baviad; William Gifford._
"It is on all hands conceded, that the success which attended the
'Quarterly' from the outset was due, in no small degree, to the ability
and tact with which Gifford discharged his editorial
duties."--_Encyclopædia Britannica._
"I am not more certain of many conjectures than I am that he never
propagated a dishonest opinion, nor did a dishonest act."--_Writer in
the Literary Gazette._
WILLIAM GIFFORD.
The field of literature seems always to have had a special charm for
shoemakers. If the reader will glance for a moment at the list of names
given at the end of this book, this fact will be at once apparent. Half,
or more than half, the names given in that list are in some way or other
connected with literature. The connection is but slight in many
instances, perhaps, and the reputation it conferred only local and
temporary. Few of our shoemakers, even though we have thought well to
style them "illustrious," can be said to have made a great and lasting
name in the world of letters; and none of them it must be confessed have
attained to first rank as prose or poetical writers. But there are
worthies in our list, associated alike with the humble craft of
shoemaking and the higher walks of literature, whose names the world
will not willingly let die, and we venture to think that the subject of
this sketch is one of the number.
William Gifford was the first editor of the _London Quarterly Review_.
The high and influential position held by this journal was mainly due in
the first instance to Gifford's talent and excellent management. The
_London Quarterly_ was started in opposition to the famous _Edinburgh
Quarterly_; George Canning, the celebrated statesman, and Sir Walter
Scott, the great novelist, being the prime movers and early patrons of
the enterprise, for the _Edinburgh_, under the clever management of
Jeffrey, and supported by such writers as Sydney Smith and Brougham, was
then too liberal in its tone to suit the taste of the brilliant Foreign
Secretary and his Tory friends. It was no slight testimony to the
abilities of the man who was chosen as the first editor of the new
_Quarterly_ that his election should have been cordially approved by the
first of Scottish novelists, and one of the most influential of English
statesmen.
Gifford was the author of two satirical poems, the "Baviad" and
"Maeviad," directed against the tawdry and sentimental rhymesters of a
certain school which flourished in his day.[25] His scathing satire
succeeded in putting an end to their trash. Gifford published also a
translation of the Latin poets, Juvenal and Persius. To the latter he
prefixed the story of his own early life as a poor cobbler's apprentice.
From this interesting autobiography the materials for the following
sketch have been chiefly selected. William Gifford's best title to fame
was, no doubt, his edition of the "Early English Dramatists"--Ford,
Massinger, Shirley, and Ben Jonson. His generous and able vindication of
Jonson reflects credit both upon the critic and the poet. It should be
added that Gifford's editorship of the _Quarterly_ extended over fifteen
years, and that during the whole of this period he was the writer of a
large number of its most able articles.
[25] The "Della Cruscan school." See below.
Having taken a glimpse of the work accomplished by William Gifford as a
critic, a scholar, and an editor in the latter years of his life, let us
turn to look at his circumstances in boyhood and youth, when, as a
miserable cobbler's apprentice, he began to yearn after knowledge and to
cherish ambitious dreams. The contrast between the first and last scenes
in the drama of life could hardly be more wonderful than that which is
presented in the history of the man who passed from the cobbler's stool
to the editor's chair.
William Gifford was born at the small town of Ashburton, in South Devon,
in 1757. His father, who was a man of spendthrift and profligate habits,
died of the effects of his evil conduct before he had attained the age
of forty. In twelve months afterward Gifford's mother died, leaving
William, and a little brother two years old, orphans, and, it would
seem, penniless. As no home could be found for the infant, he was sent
to the workhouse. William, then thirteen years of age, fell into the
hands of a man named Carlisle, who had stood as his godfather, a
worthless fellow, who had appropriated the few things left by the
mother, on pretence of claiming them for debt. This man put William to
school, where he began to show signs of ability; but he was allowed no
chance of making progress; for, at the end of three months, grudging the
slight cost of his tuition, Carlisle took the boy from his books and
playmates, and put him to the plough. It was soon found that he was too
weak for such heavy work. His guardian now tried to get the boy out of
hand altogether, by sending him off to Newfoundland as an errand-boy in
a grocery store. This unkind project, however, being doomed to failure,
it was resolved that the troublesome charge should be got rid of by
making him a sailor.
We give the account of what happened at this period in his own words:
"My godfather had now humbler views for me, and I had no heart to resist
anything. He proposed to send me on board one of the Torbay
fishing-boats. I ventured, however, to remonstrate against this, and the
matter was compromised by my consenting to go on board a coaster. A
coaster was speedily found for me at Brixham, and thither I went when
little more than thirteen years of age. It will easily be conceived that
my life was a life of hardship. I was not only a ship-boy on the high
and giddy mast, but also in the cabin, where every menial office fell to
my lot. Yet if I was restless and discontented it was not so much on
account of this as of my being prevented reading, as my master did not
possess a single book of any description, excepting a Coasting Pilot."
Gifford was on board this vessel for about twelve months, a time of
untold suffering and degradation. In fact, his position was so
deplorable that some women from Ashburton, who went down to Brixham to
buy fish, shocked to see the boy running about the beach in ragged
clothes, spoke so plainly on their return home about the hardship of his
lot, that his godfather was compelled for very shame to send for him
home again. He was once more put to school, and now made such rapid
strides in arithmetic that on an emergency he was invited to assist the
school-master. He goes on in his own narrative to say that these
encouragements led him to entertain the idea that he might be able to
get his own living by teaching, and as his first master "was now grown
old and infirm, it seemed unlikely that he should hold out above three
or four years, and I fondly flattered myself," he adds, "that
notwithstanding my youth I might possibly be appointed to succeed him."
It is worth while to notice that he was but a boy in his teens when he
first began to feel the noble spirit of ambition stir within him, and to
cherish the laudable desire to rely upon his own efforts for his
maintenance. It was this lofty and self-reliant spirit which carried him
past all his difficulties; and, truth to tell, no one has ever done
anything remarkable in the world without it. The youth who is altogether
destitute of ambition, and is ever on the look-out for the help of
friends, lacks the first elements of success in life. But Gifford's
bravery and persistence of mind had to be severely tested before meeting
with their due reward.
Proceeding with his pathetic story, he says: "I was about fifteen years
of age when I built these castles in the air. A storm, however, was
collecting, which unexpectedly burst upon me and swept them all away. On
mentioning my plan to my guardian, he treated it with the utmost
contempt, and told me he had been negotiating with his cousin, a
shoemaker of some respectability, who had liberally consented to take
me, without fee, as an apprentice. I was so shocked at this intelligence
that I did not venture to remonstrate, but went in sullenness and
silence to my new master, to whom I was bound till I should attain the
age of twenty-one. At this period I had read nothing but a romance
called 'Parismus,' a few loose magazines--the Bible, indeed, I was well
acquainted with; these, with the 'Imitation of Thomas à Kempis,' which I
used to read to my mother on her death-bed, constituted the whole of my
literary acquisitions."
The account which follows has few things to equal it in the records of
struggling genius. It will serve to show how abject and apparently
hopeless was his condition as a student at this time of his life, and
will show also, what it may be hoped no youth who reads these pages will
fail to learn, how marvellous is the power of energy and perseverance to
triumph over apparently insuperable obstacles.
"I possessed," Gifford writes, "at this time but one book in-the world;
it was a treatise on algebra given to me by a young woman who had found
it in a lodging-house. I considered it a treasure; but it was a treasure
locked up, for it supposed the reader to be acquainted with simple
equations, and I knew nothing of the matter." He then speaks of meeting
with a book called Fenning's "Introduction" belonging to his master's
son, who, by the way, was discovered afterward to have been all through
this time a secret rival for the head-mastership. This "Introduction"
gave Gifford just the information required to carry him forward into the
study of algebra. But he was compelled to study it by stealth, lest it
should be taken from him, and he goes on to say: "I sat up for the
greater part of several nights successively and completely mastered it.
I could now enter upon my own, and that carried me pretty far into the
science. This was not done without difficulty. I had not a farthing on
earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, were
for the most part as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre.
There was, indeed, a resource, but the utmost caution and secrecy were
necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as
possible and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the
rest my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a
great extent."
Strange to say, although he displayed so much ability and zeal in the
study of mathematics, he was not destined to achieve distinction in that
department of study. A very trifling incident led to the exercise of new
gifts, and turned the tide of his evil fortune. A shopmate had made a
few verses on the blunder of a painter in the village who was engaged to
paint a lion for a sign-board, and had produced a dog instead. Gifford
thought he could beat the verses of his shopmate, and accordingly tried
his hand at rhyme. His associates all agreed in pronouncing young
Gifford's verses the better of the two. This encouraged him to try
again, and in the course of a short time he had composed about a dozen
pieces. He says: "They were talked of in my little circle, and I was
sometimes invited to repeat them out of it. I never committed a line to
paper--first, because I had no paper; and, second, because I was afraid,
for my master had already threatened me for inadvertently hitching the
name of one of his customers into a rhyme." The rest of this account of
his poetical adventures would be amusing if it were not for the pathos
which underlies it, and the fact that it is the prelude to one of the
most painful incidents in the sad story of Gifford's early life.
Referring to these recitals of his poetical pieces he says: "These
repetitions were always attended by applause, and sometimes by favors
more substantial; little collections were now and then made, and I have
received sixpence in an evening(!). To one who had long lived in the
absolute want of money such a resource seemed a Peruvian mine. I
furnished myself by degrees with paper, etc., and, what was of more
importance, with books of geometry and of the higher branches of
algebra, which I cautiously concealed. Poetry even at this time was no
amusement of mine. I only had recourse to it when I wanted money for my
mathematical pursuits. But the clouds were gathering fast. My master's
anger was raised to a terrible pitch by my indifference to his concerns,
and still more by my presumptuous attempts at versification. I was
required to give up my papers, and when I refused, was searched, my
little hoard of books discovered and removed, and all future repetitions
prohibited in the strictest manner. This was a severe stroke, I felt it
most sensibly, and it was followed by another, severer still, a stroke
which crushed the hopes I had so long and fondly cherished, and
resigned me at once to despair. Mr. Hugh, Smerdon, the master of the
school on whose succession I had calculated, died and was succeeded by a
person not much older than myself, and certainly not so well qualified
for the situation."
Poor Gifford! hard, indeed, was thy lot; an orphan without friends,
helpers, or sympathizers, having no proper leisure or means for study or
recreation, and even the little pleasure and profit wrung from a few
ciphering books and doggerel verses snatched away by cruel hands;
trodden down like a worm in the mire, and every particle of talent and
ambition threatened with extinction! For six long years this misery
lasted in one form or another, while he strove to hope on against hope,
and found himself compelled to labor at a trade which he declares he
hated from the first with a perfect hatred, and never, consequently,
made any progress in. What could be more miserable and disheartening?
But to the industrious and patient, as "to the upright, _there ariseth
light in the darkness_." No darker hour occurred in all Gifford's
miserable boyhood and youth than that which is described in the
sentences just quoted. And now the light is about to appear. A friend
comes upon the scene, to whose generous interference the unhappy cobbler
owed the educational advantages he afterward enjoyed. His obligations to
this benefactor were always most readily and warmly expressed; for
whatever faults Gifford might have, he was never charged with the
meanness of forgetting his lowly origin, and the generous friend by whom
he had been rescued from a wretched condition and introduced to a
happier state of life. He speaks of his benefactor as bearing "a name
never to be pronounced by him without veneration." This gentleman, Mr.
Cooksley, was a surgeon in the neighborhood. He had accidentally heard
of the young cobbler's poetry, and sought an interview with him. Gifford
went down to the surgeon's house, and, encouraged by the kindness he
received, told the story of his attempts at self-culture, and of the
hardships he had undergone. Deeply moved by the touching story, and
convinced of the young man's natural abilities and desert of
encouragement, Mr. Cooksley resolved, there and then, on liberating the
youth from the thraldom of his situation. The first thing was to free
him from the bonds of his apprenticeship, and the next to give him the
advantages of regular instruction. He was then twenty years of age, and
he says, "My handwriting was bad, and my language very incorrect."
Accordingly, a subscription was started to furnish funds for this
twofold purpose. It read as follows: "A subscription for purchasing the
remainder of the time of William Gifford, and for enabling him to
improve himself in writing and English grammar." The kindness of
Cooksley and a few other friends, whose sympathies were enlisted by his
generous zeal for the youth, enabled him to receive two years'
instruction from a clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Smerdon, who resided in
the locality. Such was the progress made by Gifford, that at the end of
that time his instructor pronounced him quite prepared for the
university. Again Mr. Cooksley proved a friend. By his efforts and
promises of support Gifford was entered at Exeter College, Oxford.
Unfortunately his noble patron died before Gifford could take his
degree. But he was not suffered to leave Oxford on account of Mr.
Cooksley's death. He found a second patron in Lord Grosvenor, by whose
aid the grateful undergraduate was enabled to finish his term. The
culture which he received in the university must have been very thorough
and complete, evincing itself in refinement of manner as well as
scholarship of no ordinary degree, for in the course of a few years
after leaving Ashburton, we learn that the late shoemaker was taken into
the family of Lord Grosvenor as private tutor and travelling companion
to his son Lord Belgrave. The circumstance which led to Lord Grosvenor's
patronage of Gifford was remarkable, and deserves to be recorded as an
illustration of the fact that an accident may lead to the most important
events in our history. But we must premise, first of all, as a safeguard
against a false inference or false hopes, that _such_ accidents are sure
to come in the way of _industrious, clever_ and _deserving_ men. If they
occur to men of a different stamp they are of no avail. If William
Gifford had not been a hard-working student, such a circumstance as the
accidental perusal of one of his letters by a person for whom it was not
intended could not have helped his fortunes in the least. It appears
that he had been in the habit of corresponding with a friend in London
on literary matters. His letters to this friend were sent under covers,
and in order to save postage were left at Lord Grosvenor's. One day the
address of the literary friend was omitted, and his lordship, supposing
the letter to be for himself, opened and read it. The contents excited
his admiration, and awakened his curiosity to know who the author could
be. He was sent for, and after an interview, in which, for the second
time in his life, he told the story of his early struggles to willing
and sympathizing ears, he was invited by Lord Grosvenor to come and
reside with him.
It is deeply gratifying to record instances of disinterested generosity
of this kind, and to read the glowing language in which the thankful
young student refers to the kindness of his noble patron. Referring to
the invitation to live with Lord Grosvenor, and his promise of honorable
maintenance, Gifford says, "These were not words of course, they were
more than fulfilled in every point. I did go and reside with him, and I
experienced a warm and cordial reception, and a kind and affectionate
esteem that has known neither diminution nor interruption, from that
hour to this, a period of twenty years."
In 1794, his "Baviad" was published, in imitation of the satires of
Persius, and in the following year the "Mæviad," after the style of
Horace. These names were taken from the third Eclogue of Virgil--
"He may with foxes plough and milk he-goats,
Who praises _Bavius_ or on _Mævius_ dotes."
These terribly virulent satires, like those of Boileau and Pope, were
aimed at contemporary poets of an inferior order, and like them, too,
were most crushing in their effect. The _Della Cruscan School_[26] never
smiled, or rather smirked, again after the issue of the Baviad and
Mæviad. But it is a rare thing to meet with a critic or a satirist who
escapes the danger of committing a fault in condemning one. Gifford did
not escape this danger. His lines certainly did not answer to the
epigram--
"Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen."
[26] The name Cruscan was taken from the Florentine
Academy, by Robert Merry, the founder of this school of mawkish
and affected poetasters.
His unhappy victims were hacked and hewed in pieces in a merciless and
barbarous manner; while the spectators enjoyed the savage sport, and
accorded the cruel executioner a wreath of laurel for the vigor and
talent displayed in his unenviable task. These satires first made
Gifford's name in the world of letters. But his fame as a scholar was
established chiefly on his translations of Persius and Juvenal, and his
excellent editions, with valuable notes, of the early "English
Dramatists." Speaking of Gifford's edition of Ben Jonson's dramatic and
other works, John Kemble, the most accomplished actor of his day, says,
"It is the best edition, by the ablest of modern commentators, through
whose learned and generous labors old Ben's forgotten works and injured
character are restored to the merited admiration and esteem of the
world."
The celebrity thus obtained, along with the friendship of the leading
Tory politicians of the day, secured for Gifford the position of editor
of the _London Quarterly_. It ought to be stated that when Mr. Channing
started the _Anti-Jacobin_ in 1797, Gifford was entrusted with the
conduct of that journal, and had thus acquired a little experience of
journalism. His connection with this paper, which came out weekly,
lasted only for a year. But he managed the _Quarterly_, as we have said,
for fifteen years, that is, from 1809, the date of its commencement, to
1824, when ill-health compelled him to lay his pen aside.
The plan of this new journal had originated with John Murray, the famous
publisher, and had received the hearty support of Walter Scott, Egbert
Southey, Canning, Rose, Disraeli, and Hookham Frere. The first number,
containing three articles by Walter Scott, was published on the 1st
February, 1809, and was immediately sold out, a second edition being
called for. Canning wrote for the second number, and Southey became a
constant and most prolific contributor. "For the first hundred and
twenty-six numbers he wrote ninety-four articles, many of them of great
permanent value."[27] At John Murray's "drawing-rooms," where the
leading literary men of the day were wont to assemble at four o'clock,
Gifford met with a brilliant assemblage of poets, novelists, historians,
artists, and others. Murray the publisher delighted "to gather together
such men as Byron, Scott, Moore, Campbell, Southey, Gifford, Hallam,
Lockhart, Washington Irving, and Mrs. Somerville; and, more than this,
he invited such artists as Lawrence, Wilkie, Phillips, Newton, and
Pickersgill, to meet them and paint them, that they might hang forever
on his walls."[28] It was in reference to one of Murray's "publishers'
dinners" Byron wrote the lines in which occurs the following allusion to
Gifford:
"A party dines with me to-day,
All clever men who make their way;
Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton, and Chantrey
Are all partakers of my pantry.
My room's so full--we've Gifford here,
Reading MS. with Hookham Frere,
Pronouncing on the nouns and particles
Of some of our forthcoming articles."
[27] "History of Booksellers." H. Curwen. Chatto &
Windus. P. 175.
[28] Ibid., pp. 180, 181.
A writer in the _Literary Gazette_,[29] who had the pleasure of
Gifford's personal acquaintance, has made the following interesting
notes upon his private character, and his conduct as an editor. "He
never stipulated for any salary as editor; at first he received £200,
and at last £900 per annum, but never engaged for a particular sum. He
several times returned money to Murray, saying 'he had been too
liberal.' Perhaps he was the only man on this side the Tweed who thought
so! He was perfectly indifferent about wealth, I do not know a better
proof of this than the fact that he was richer, by a very considerable
sum, at the time of his death than he was at all aware of. In unison
with his contempt of money was his disregard of any external
distinction; he had a strong natural aversion to anything like pomp or
parade. Yet he was by no means insensible to an honorable distinction,
and when the University of Oxford, about two years before his death,
offered to give him a doctor's degree, he observed, 'Twenty years ago it
would have been gratifying, but now it would only be written on my
coffin.'
[29] Quoted in "The Lives of Eminent Englishmen."
Fullarton _&_ Co., Glasgow, 1838. Vol. viii. pp. 317, 318.
"His disregard for external show was the more remarkable, as a contrary
feeling is generally observable in persons who have risen from penury to
wealth. But Gifford was a gentleman in feeling and in conduct, and you
were never led to suspect he was sprung from an obscure origin except
when he reminded you of it by an anecdote relative to it. And this
recalls one of the stories he used to tell with irresistible drollery,
the merit of which entirely depended on his manner. It was simply this:
At the cobblers' board, of which Gifford had been a member, there was
but one candle allowed for the whole coterie of operatives; it was, of
course, a matter of importance that this candle should give as much
light as possible. This was only to be done by repeated snuffings; but
snuffers being a piece of fantastic coxcombry they were not pampered
with: the members of the board took it in turn to perform the office of
the forbidden luxury with their finger and thumb. The candle was handed,
therefore, to each in succession, with the word '_sneaf_' (Anglice,
snuff) bellowed in his ears. Gifford used to pronounce this word in the
legitimate broad Devonshire dialect, and accompanied his story with
expressive gestures. Now on paper this is absolutely nothing, but in
Gifford's mouth it was exquisitely humorous. I should not, however, have
mentioned it, were it not that it appears to me one of the best
instances I could give of his humility in recurring to his former
condition.... He was a man of very deep and warm affections. If I were
desired to point out the distinguishing excellence of his private
character, I should refer to his fervent sincerity of heart. He was
particularly kind to children and fond of their society. My sister, when
young, used sometimes to spend a month with him, on which occasions he
would hire a pianoforte, and once he actually had a juvenile ball at his
house for her amusement."
Speaking of the spirit he displayed as editor of the _Quarterly_, the
same writer says: "He disliked incurring an obligation which might in
any degree shackle the expression of his free opinion. Agreeably to
this, he laid down a rule, from which he never departed, that every
writer in the _Quarterly_ would receive at least so much per sheet. On
one occasion, a gentleman holding office under Government sent him an
article, which, after undergoing some serious mutilations at his hands
preparatory to being ushered into the world, was accepted. But the usual
sum being sent to the author, he rejected it with disdain, conceiving it
a high dishonor to be paid for anything--the independent placeman!
Gifford, in answer, informed him of the invariable rule of the _Review_
adding, that he could send the money to any charitable institution, or
dispose of it in any manner he should direct, but that the money must be
paid. The doughty official, convinced that the virtue of his article
would force it into the _Review_ at all events, stood firm in his
refusal; greatly to his dismay the article was returned. He revenged
himself by never sending another."
Speaking of his relation to the Tory Government of the day, the writer
says: "It is true his independence of opinion might seem to be
interfered with by the situations he held, but they were bestowed on him
unsolicited, and from motives of personal regard. I am sure every one
acquainted with him will admit that he would have rejected with scorn
any kindness which could be considered as fettering the freedom of his
conduct in the smallest degree. I am not more certain of many
conjectures than I am that he never propagated a dishonest opinion nor
did a dishonest act.... If the united influence of the _Anti-Jacobin_
and the _Quarterly_ be considered, we may probably be justified in
assigning to Gifford's literary support of Government a rank second only
to Burke."
William Gifford died worth a considerable fortune, which he left, as a
token of undying gratitude, to Mr. William Cooksley, the son of his
first generous patron and benefactor.
We append a few selections from Gifford's poetical works, as samples of
his style and quality as a writer. The first is from the "Baviad," and
represents him in the character of a satirist exposing the vanities of
the "Delia Cruscan" school of poets; and the second, taken from the
"Mæviad," exhibits him in the more genial light of a faithful friend,
commemorating his early intercourse with his companion and
fellow-student, Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster:
"For I was born
To brand obtrusive ignorance with scorn;
On bloated pedantry to pour my rage,
And hiss preposterous fustian from the stage.
Lo, Delia Crusca! In his closet pent,
He toils to give the crude conception vent.
Abortive thoughts that right and wrong confound,
Truth sacrificed to letters, sense to sound,
False glare, incongruous images combine;
And noise and nonsense clatter through the line,
'Tis done. Her house the generous Piozzi lends,
And thither summons her blue-stocking friends;
The summons her blue-stocking friends obey,
Lured by the love of poetry--and tea.
The bard steps forth in birthday splendor drest,
His right hand graceful waving o' er his breast,
His left extending, so that all may see
A roll inscribed, 'The Wreath of Liberty.'
So forth he steps, and with complacent air,
Bows round the circle, and assumes the chair;
With lemonade he gargles first his throat,
Then sweetly preludes to the liquid note:
And now 'tis silence all. 'Genius or muse'--
Thus while the flowery subject he pursues,
A wild delirium round th' assembly flies;
Unusual lustre shoots from Emma's eyes;
Luxurious Arno drivels as he stands;
And Anna frisks, and Laura claps her hands.
* * * * *
Hear now our guests:--'The critics, sir, they cry,
Merit like yours the critics may defy;'
But this indeed they say, 'Your varied rhymes,
At once the boast and envy of the times,
In every page, song, sonnet, what you will,
Show boundless genius and unrivalled skill.'
* * * * *
Thus fooled, the moon-struck tribe, whose best essays
Sunk in acrostics and in roundelays,
To loftier labors now pretend a call,
And bustle in heroics one and all.
E'en Bertie burns of gods and chiefs to sing--
Bertie who lately twittered to the string
His namby pamby madrigals of love,
In the dark dingles of a glittering grove,
Where airy lays, wove by the hand of morn,
Were hung to dry upon a cobweb thorn!
Happy the soil where bards like mushrooms rise,
And ask no culture but what Byshe supplies!
Happier the bards who, write whate'er they will,
Find gentle readers to admire them still!
* * * * *
Oh for the good old times! when all was new,
And every hour brought prodigies to view,
Our sires in unaffected language told
Of streams of amber, and of rocks of gold;
Full of their theme, they spurned all idle art;
And the plain tale was trusted to the heart.
Now all is changed! We fume and fret, poor elves;
Less to display our subject than ourselves:
Whate'er we paint--a grot, a flower, a bird,
Heavens! how we sweat, laboriously absurd!
Words of gigantic bulk, and uncouth sound,
In rattling triads the long sentence bound;
While points with points, with periods periods jar,
And the whole work seems one continued war!"
Not less poetical, and certainly much more pleasant in its tone, is this
reminiscence of his early friendship with Dr. Ireland:
'Chief thou, my friend! who from my earliest years
Hast shared my joys, and more than shared my cares,
Sure, if our fates hang on some hidden power,
And take their color from the natal hour,
Then, Ireland, the same planet on us rose,
Such the strong sympathies our lives disclose!
Thou knowest how soon we felt this influence bland,
And sought the brook and coppice, hand in hand,
And shaped rude bows, and uncouth whistles blew,
And paper kites--a last great effort--flew:
And when the day was done, retired to rest,
Sleep on our eyes, and sunshine in our breast.
In riper years, again together thrown,
Our studies, as our sports before, were one.
Together we explored the stoic page
Of the Ligurian, stern though bearless sage!
Or traced the Aquinian through the Latine road,
And trembled at the lashes he bestowed.
Together, too, when Greece unlocked her stores,
We roved in thought o'er Troy's devoted shores,
Or followed, while he sought his native soil,
'That old man eloquent' from toil to toil;
Lingering, with good Alcinous o'er the tale,
Till the east reddened and the stars grew pale."
The tenderness of his nature is also shown in the lines he wrote for the
tombstone of his faithful servant Ann Davies:
"Though here unknown, dear Ann, thy ashes rest,
Still lives thy memory in one grateful breast,
That traced thy course through many a painful year,
And marked thy humble hope, thy pious fear.
Oh! when this frame which yet while life remained,
Thy duteous love with trembling hand sustained,
Dissolves--as soon it must--may that blest Power
Who beamed on thine, illume my parting hour!
So shall I greet thee where no ills annoy,
And what was sown in grief is reaped in joy;
Where worth, obscured below, bursts into day,
And those are paid whom earth could never pay."
CHAPTER V.
[Illustration: ROBERT BLOOMFIELD]
Robert Bloomfield,
THE SHOEMAKER WHO WROTE "THE FARMER'S BOY."
"Crispin's sons
Have from uncounted time, with ale and buns,
Cherished the gift of song, which sorrow quells;
And, working single in their low-built cells,
Oft cheat the tedium of a winter's night
With anthems."
--CHARLES LAMB: _Album Verses_, 1830, p. 57.
"I have received many honorable testimonies of esteem from strangers;
letters without a name, but filled with the most cordial advice, and
almost parental anxiety for my safety under so great a share of public
applause. I beg to refer such friends to the great teacher, Time; and
hope that he will hereafter give me my deserts, and no more."--_Robert
Bloomfield, Preface to "Rural Tales_," Sept. 29, 1801.
"No pompous learning--no parade
Of pedantry and cumbrous lore,
On thy elastic bosom weigh'd;
Instead, were thine, a mazy store
Of feelings delicately wrought,
And treasures gleaned by silent thought.
"Obscurity, and low-born care,
Labor, and want--all adverse things,
Combined to bow thee to despair;
And of her young untutor'd wings
To rob thy Genius.--'Twas in vain:
With one proud soar she burst her chain!"
--_Blackwood's Magazine, Sept. 1823._
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.
We have now to speak of a shoemaker-poet. The name of Robert Bloomfield,
the author of the "Farmer's Boy," is known and held in honor wherever
the English language is spoken. All classes of readers admire his
poetry, although it is not of the highest order of merit. It has,
however, a genuine quality which no one possessed of poetical taste can
fail to recognize. Its chief features are delightful rustic simplicity
and naturalness, faithful reflection of the beauties of nature, and the
charms which belong to rural occupations. The romantic side of the life
of a _farmer's boy_ is given in the poem bearing that name, as we have
it nowhere else in all our poetic or prose literature.
Bloomfield, though surrounded by the most unfavorable conditions, as a
writer of poetry seems to have experienced no difficulty in executing
his task. His was indeed a case in which the adage is well
illustrated--_poeta nascitur non fit_--a poet is born, not made. He was
born with the gift of song. It would have been difficult for him to
restrain its exercise. He made poetry, as the song-birds sing, by
instinct and irresistible impulse. For him the words are quite as true
as they are of the greater poet who wrote them,[30]
"I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing."
[30] Tennyson, "In Memoriam," stanza xxi.
Robert Bloomfield was born and brought up in the lovely neighborhood of
Honington, Ixworth and Sapiston, in the northern part of the county of
Suffolk. An idea of the quiet beauty of the woodland scenery of Suffolk
may be obtained from the paintings of Gainsborough, another notable man
whom this county has produced. Gainsborough, as a boy full of yearnings
after art, loved to spend his time in the woods and pastures round
Sudbury, sketching trees, brooks, meadow-landscapes, cattle, shepherds,
or ploughmen at their work in the fields. He was at the height of his
fame as a painter when Bloomfield was a farmer's boy at Sapiston, on the
Grafton estate. It is interesting to know that these two Suffolk men
were contemporary, "the first truly original English painter," who took
his lessons direct from nature, and the first genuine poet of the
English farm and field.
Bloomfield's father was a tailor at Honington, near Bury St. Edmund's.
Robert was born in 1766. His father died at the end of the following
year, leaving Robert and five other children to the care of their
mother. She was a worthy, estimable woman, who managed by her own
unaided efforts not only to maintain her little family, but to give each
of her children the rudiments of an education. This she accomplished by
opening a school, and teaching her own children along with the rest.
With the exception of a few months' instruction in writing from a
schoolmaster at Ixworth, the future poet learned from his mother all he
knew when he left his home to earn his own living. This he did at the
age of eleven, his mother, who had married again, being no longer able
to keep him at home, or put him to a good school. His maternal uncle, a
Mr. Austin of Sapiston, agreed to take him as a boy about the farm, and
allow him to live in the house with the rest of the family. He appears
to have received no wages, his "board" being the only allowance made for
the work he did as a farmer's boy; and this could hardly be much at such
an age. He remained in this situation four years, until he was fifteen.
It was during these four years of boyhood he picked up the knowledge of
farm-life, and made the observations on the varied phases of nature and
the seasons which are delightfully interwoven in the four books of his
well-known poem, "The Farmer's Boy." How observant he must have been,
how eagerly he must have entered into the pleasures of rural life, how
keen must have been his boyish sense of the beautiful and romantic, may
be imagined by those who consider the circumstances in the midst of
which, in after-years, he composed that charming poem.
His mother had undertaken to provide him with clothing while with his
uncle at the farm; but this small expense was found to be too much for
her scanty means. Robert at that time had two brothers, George and
Nathaniel, living in London, and working, the one as a journeyman
shoemaker, and the other as a tailor. To them the anxious mother applied
for help in her difficulties, stating in her letter that Mr. Austin had
said Robert was so small and weakly, it was to be feared he would never
be able to obtain his living by hard out-door labor. The brothers at
once agreed to take him under their care, find him in food and clothing,
and teach him the craft of shoemaking until he should be able to obtain
his own livelihood. Full of solicitude for his safety and well-being,
the good woman took him up to London herself, and handed him over to the
guardianship of her two eldest sons, begging them, "as they valued a
mother's blessing, to watch over him, to set good examples for him, and
never to forget that he had lost his father."
George Bloomfield and his brother were then living at No. 7 Pitcher's
Court, Bell Alley, Coleman Street, in a garret which served both as
workshop and bedroom. The place was dingy and gloomy, and presented to
the bright, thoughtful Suffolk lad a mournful contrast to the pleasant
surroundings in the old farm-house at Sapiston. Nor could it have been a
very healthy abode, for _five_ workmen occupied the room during the day,
"clubbing together," after the fashion of such workmen in those days, to
lighten the burden of rent.
At first the new-comer was chiefly employed by the older men as their
errand-boy, being rewarded for his trouble by receiving lessons from the
workmen in the art of shoemaking. These men, like so many of their
craft, were of a thoughtful turn of mind, and very eager for the news of
the day. It had been their custom to have the yesterday's paper brought
in with their dinner by the pot-boy from a neighboring public-house.
Until Robert came they had been in the habit of reading it by turns, but
now, as his time was less valuable than theirs, the office of reader was
permanently handed over to him. This duty was of much service to him,
for the information he gained by reading disciplined his young mind to
close and continuous thought, and enlarged his knowledge of his own
language. The simple account, given by his brother George, of these
social readings in the cobblers' workroom, and other means of
instruction of which Robert availed himself, is full of interest. George
Bloomfield says: "He frequently met with words that he was unacquainted
with; of this he often complained. I one day happened at a book-stall to
see a small dictionary which had been very ill-used. I bought it for him
for fourpence. By the help of this he in a little time could read and
comprehend the long and beautiful speeches of Burke, Fox, or North." And
again: "One Sunday, after a whole day's stroll in the country, we by
accident went into a Dissenting meeting-house in the Old Jewry, where a
gentleman was lecturing. This man filled Robert with astonishment. The
house was amazingly crowded with the most genteel people; and though we
were forced to stand in the aisle, and were much pressed, yet Robert
always quickened his steps to get into the town on a Sunday evening soon
enough to attend this lecture. The preacher's name was Fawcet. His
language was just such as the 'Rambler' is written in.... Of him Robert
learned to accent what he called hard words, and otherwise to improve
himself, and gained the most enlarged notions of Providence."
Bloomfield's reading was not very extensive nor diversified during these
early years of his London life, yet it was sufficient to whet his
appetite for mental improvement, and give him no small degree of
literary taste and skill. The brothers took, in sixpenny numbers, such
works as a "History of England," "The British Traveller," and a
"Treatise on Geography." These were read aloud to the little company of
busy listeners, several hours of the day being occupied with the task.
His first poetic impulse was awakened by the perusal of the _London
Magazine_, which found its way at this time into the cobblers' garret.
Robert always read it with zest, carefully scanning the reviews of
books, and never failing to look into the "Poets' Corner." One day he
surprised his brother by repeating a song which he had composed after
the manner of Burns and so many other graceful songsters, "to an old
tune." George was as much delighted as surprised at his young brother's
smooth and easy verses, and encouraged him to try the experiment of
sending them to the editor. This he did with many fears and hopes, and
nervously awaited the issue of the next number. To his intense delight,
and the pardonable pride of the whole company, the verses appeared in
print. As a specimen of his first literary attempt, every youth will
deem them worth recording, and will read them with pleasure. They bear
the modest title "A Village Girl," and are signed with the letters R. B.
"Hail May! lovely May! how replenished my pails,
The young dawn o'erspreads the broad east streaked with gold!
My glad heart beats time to the laugh of the vales,
And Colin's voice rings through the wood from the fold,
The wood to the mountain submissively bends,
Whose blue misty summit first glows with the sun;
See! thence a gay train by the wild rill descends
To join the mixed sports:--Hark! the tumult's begun.
Be cloudless, ye skies! and be Colin but there;
Not dew-spangled bents on the wide level dale,
Nor morning's first smile can more lovely appear,
Than his looks,--since my wishes I cannot conceal.
Swift down the mad dance, whilst blest health prompts to move,
We'll count joys to come, and exchange vows of truth;
And haply, when age cools the transports of love,
Decry, like good folks, the vain follies of youth."
Another piece called "The Sailor's Return" found a place in the "Poets'
Corner." These efforts were enough to prove his taste and gifts as a
versifier. The poetic power was latent in his mind, and only needed
sufficient stimulus to bring it into full exercise. This stimulus came,
as was natural, from the reading of poetry itself. A copy of Thomson's
"Seasons" and Milton's "Paradise Lost" fell into his hands when he was
about seventeen years of age. They belonged to a Scotchman who lived and
worked at a house in Bell Alley, to which the shoemakers removed about
this time. The eager youth read them with the passion of a born poet;
and, as he read, the fire burned within. His imagination was now fairly
awakened, and it was plain to all who watched him intelligently at this
time, that melodies were being awakened in his heart that sooner or
later must find their expression in song. The "Seasons" was his favorite
poem. He read and re-read its glowing descriptions of nature, committed
favorite portions to memory, and never tired of recounting its beauties
in the hearing of his sympathetic friends. The "Seasons" struck the
key-note of the "Farmer's Boy," though Bloomfield was no imitator of
Thomson, nor of any one else, in either matter or manner. The thought
and style of these two poets of nature are as unlike as their kindred
subjects would allow them to be. Thomson's music is that of a majestic
and stately oratorio, while Bloomfield sings a sweet and simple pastoral
symphony.
But the young poet was not yet to enter on his great task. Fourteen
years passed away before his first and best published poem, the
"Farmer's Boy," saw the light. During this time several important events
in his history occurred. In his eighteenth year, in consequence of
certain disputes in the shoe-makers' trade about the legality of
employing boys who had not been bound as apprentices, he went back again
to Suffolk for a short time, and was taken into the home of his uncle
and former master, Mr. Austin of Sapiston. Here for two months of happy
leisure he roamed the fields where he spent so much of his time as a
boy, reviving old impressions, and deepening in his mind that keen sense
of the beautiful which city life and the imprisonment of a shoemaker's
occupation had not been sufficient to destroy. His companion at this
time was still the favorite "Seasons," from which, in the presence of
the very charms which Thomson describes, the ardent youth derived new
pleasure and inspiration.
The trade difficulty was got over by his becoming an apprentice for the
remaining three years of his minority to a Mr. Duddridge, brother to
George's former landlord. At the age of twenty he was left alone in
London, George having removed to Bury St. Edmund's in his own county,
and Nathaniel having married and gone into housekeeping. Robert now took
to the study of music, and became an expert player on the violin. At the
age of twenty-four he married the daughter of a boat-builder at Woolwich
named Church. "I have sold my fiddle and got a wife," he humorously
writes to his brother. At first his home was in furnished lodgings, but
by dint of hard work and strict economy he managed in a short time to
furnish _one_ room on the first floor of a house in Bell Alley, Coleman
Street, the old quarters to which he had come fresh from the country on
his first becoming a shoemaker. His landlord kindly allowed him the free
use of a garret to work in during the day. "In this garret," says his
brother, "amid six or seven other workmen, his active mind employed
itself in composing the 'Farmer's Boy.'" How long his mind was occupied
in this task we cannot tell. One could hardly wonder if the process of
composition was slow in the midst of such distracting and unfavorable
circumstances. The marvel is that it should have been composed at all
under such uncongenial and difficult conditions. So hard pressed for
time was the poor poet-shoemaker, and so unable to find the proper
materials for writing, that he is said to have made up and kept in his
mind no less than 600 lines, that is, about the _half_ of his poem,
before he could manage to write it down. And when he did this, he was
glad to lay hold of any odd scrap of paper for the purpose; the back of
a letter or a printed bill, the margin of newspapers, pieces of
pattern-paper, were seized as they came to hand and covered with
writing, and then hidden away in cupboards, and occasionally even in
some chink in the wall, until they could be collected and arranged for a
fair copy, suitable to go into the hands of the printer. It was indeed a
wonderful exhibition of mental abstraction and retentive memory. Few,
even among poets, could have wrought to any purpose amid the din and
conversation of a shoemakers' workroom, and still fewer, even if the
excitement of poetic thought had enabled them to compose, could have
treasured up their productions in the memory until they amounted to 600
lines. A friend of Bloomfield named Swan, writing to Mr. Capel Lofft,
says, "Bloomfield, either from the contracted state of his pecuniary
resources to purchase paper, or for other reasons, composed the latter
part of 'Autumn' and the whole of 'Winter' in his head, without
committing one line to paper! This cannot fail to surprise the literary
world, who are well acquainted with the treacherousness of memory, and
how soon the most happy ideas, for want of sufficient quickness in
writing down, are lost in the rapidity of thought. But this is not
all--he went a step further; he not only composed and committed that
part of his work to his faithful and retentive memory; but he
_corrected_ it all in his head!!!--and, as he said, when it was thus
prepared, 'I had nothing to do but to write it down.' By this new and
wonderful mode of composition, he studied and completed his 'Farmer's
Boy,' in a garret, among six or seven of his fellow-workmen, without
their ever once suspecting or knowing anything of the matter!"[31]
[31] "Lives of Eminent Englishmen." Fullarton & Co.,
1838. Vol. viii. p. 245. See also "Views Illustrative of Works
of Robert Bloomfield," by E. W. Brayley. London: 1806, p. 17.
Bloomfield was thirty-two years of age when his poem was complete and
attempts were being made to find a printer and publisher. These attempts
were for a time fruitless. One after another the publishers rejected the
"copy" of the unknown writer. At length, it was sent by George
Bloomfield, who always had full confidence in Robert's powers, to a
gentleman of literary tastes living at Troston Hall, near Bury, in
Suffolk--Mr. Capel Lofft. This gentleman had the good sense at once to
perceive the genuine merits of the poem submitted to his judgment, and
to recommend its publication. By his kind influence and aid a publisher
was soon found. Messrs. Vernon & Hood paid the poet £50 for his copy,
and afterward, when the poem proved a success, honorably advanced an
additional £200, besides giving the author an interest in his copyright.
The success of the poem was immediate and complete. It was warmly
received by the public, and praised in all quarters as a masterpiece of
natural poetic simplicity and beauty. Twenty-six thousand copies were
sold in the first three years of its issue, seven editions having been
called for. The position secured by the "Farmer's Boy" on its first
publication has been held until the present day. All lovers of poetry
read it with delight. It is natural and graceful as the song of a bird
"warbling his native woodnotes wild." When the English song-bird sings
in captivity there seems to be a touch of pathos in his note; and one
can hardly resist the same impression in reading these sweet rustic
melodies in verse which came from the lips of the shoemaker-poet
imprisoned in a London garret. Yet there is something much more
stimulating in Bloomfield's lines than this. They are sweet and joyous,
and full of that glowing enthusiasm for beauty which all fine natures
feel. Besides the editions sent forth in this country, the "Farmer's
Boy" was printed at Leipsic, and was translated into French, Italian,
and Latin.
Bloomfield now had many friends as well as admirers. The Duke of
Grafton, on whose estate he had been employed as a boy, settled upon him
a small annuity, and used his influence to obtain for him a post at the
seal-office at 1s. per day. In addition to this, Bloomfield received
frequent presents from the nobility, and even from members of the royal
family. To the poor shoemaker, accustomed to the utmost obscurity, all
this success, and popularity, and patronage "appeared," to use his own
language, "like a dream."
In after-years he issued a number of small volumes of poetry, in which
are found several shorter pieces of great merit, such as the two
descriptive or ballad pieces "Richard and Kate," "The Fakenham Ghost,"
or the exquisitely simple piece called "The Soldier's Return." The first
of these is one of the best modern ballads in the language, as it is
certainly among the most, if it be not the most, spirited and original
of his compositions. Of the last of the three just mentioned, Professor
Wilson says: "The topic is trite, but in Mr. Bloomfield's hands it
almost assumes a character of novelty. Burns' 'Soldier's Return' is not,
to our taste, one whit superior."
The titles of the volumes that followed that by which his fame was
established are "Rural Tales," published in 1801; "The Banks of the
Wye," 1811; "Wild Flowers," and "May Day with the Muses," 1822.
"Hazelwood Hall, a Village Drama, in Three Acts," was published 1823,
the year of his death. All these poems have since been issued in one
volume, to which is attached a short sketch of the poet's life, and the
circumstances which attended the publication of "The Farmer's Boy." This
account, given by Mr. Capel Lofft, Bloomfield's kind friend and patron,
is full of interest. It serves to show the value of a judicious friend
to a young aspirant for literary fame, whose talents deserve
recognition, but whose position in life prevents him taking the
necessary steps to become known to the world.
The last twenty years of Bloomfield's life were embittered by affliction
and misfortunes in business. He did not long retain his position at the
Seal Office, being obliged to abandon it through continual ill-health.
After resuming the trade of a shoemaker for a short time, he was induced
to open a shop as a bookseller, but this speculation brought him only
disappointment and loss. His son, who was a printer, states that about
this time the poets Rogers and Southey took a deep interest in the
welfare of their poor suffering brother poet. Rogers, it seems, tried to
obtain him a government pension, but without success. At length he
removed from London to try the effect of the fresh air and quietude of
country life. His last years were spent as a shoemaker at
Shefford-cum-Campton, Bed's. Toward the close of his life he was in
great want and distress, having reaped little permanent gain from his
numerous and popular poems. So intense was the strain of mind he endured
from overwork, ill-health, and anxiety, that his friends entertained
grave fears of his becoming insane. Death was preferable to such a life
the death which is for men of Christian faith and character, like
Bloomfield, the gate to a higher and happier life. Providentially for
him, that gate was opened when life here had become a burden too
grievous to be borne. He died at Shefford, in the fifty-seventh year of
his age, August 19th, 1823, and was buried in the Campton churchyard.
Bloomfield's character, unlike that of many of the more celebrated poets
of his own day, exhibited a fair and lovely type of moral excellence. He
was genuinely modest, affectionate, industrious, and pious. None
regarded him with more respect and love than those who knew him most
intimately. This fact speaks strongly for his real worth. His own
brothers held him in the greatest esteem, and felt the most generous and
hearty pleasure in his literary success. His generosity to his needy
relatives, who were very numerous, often crippled his resources, and,
indeed, left him at times as poor as those he had befriended. We have
noticed how much he owed in early life to the loving care and good sense
of an excellent mother. Bloomfield never lost sight of this fact. Like
all good men, men whose lives are worth study and imitation, he was
deeply attached to his mother; and it is well deserving of record that,
like Buckle, the eminent philosophical writer, the young poet felt a
more exquisite pleasure in placing his first published work in the hands
of his mother than in the anticipation of any fame or advantage it might
secure for himself as the author. When the first edition was issued a
copy of it was sent to his mother, accompanied by these simple lines,
which faithfully reflect at once the character of the true mother and
the devoted son:
"' To peace and virtue still be true,'
An anxious mother ever cries,
Who needs no _present_ to renew
Parental love--which never dies."
Many tributes of esteem, both in prose and verse, were paid to
Bloomfield during his life and after his death. None of these was of
more value than the brief sentence written by his constant friend and
first literary patron, Mr. Capel Lofft, who says, "It is much to be a
poet, such as he will be found: it is much more to be such a man." The
lines which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_, the month after
Bloomfield's death, exactly describe the chief features of the poet's
life and work:
"No pompous learning--no parade
Of pedantry, and cumbrous lore,
On thy elastic bosom weighed;
Instead, were thine a mazy store
Of feelings delicately wrought,
And treasures gleaned by silent thought.
Obscurity, and low born care,
Labor, and want--all adverse things,
Combined to bow thee to despair;
And of her young untutored wings
To rob thy genius. 'Twas in vain:
With one proud soar she burst her chain!
The beauties of the building spring;
The glories of the summer's reign;
The russet autumn triumphing
In ripened fruits and golden grain;
Winter with storms around his shrine,
Each, in their turn, were themes of thine.
And lowly life, the peasant's lot,
Its humble hopes and simple joys;
By mountain-stream the shepherd's cot,
And what the rustic hour employs;
White flocks on Nature's carpet spread;
Birds blithely carolling o'erhead;
These were thy themes, and thou wert blessed--
Yes, blessed beyond the wealth of kings.
Calm joy is seated in the breast
Of the rapt poet as he sings,
And all that Truth or Hope can bring
Of Beauty, gilds the muse's wing.
And, Bloomfield, thine were blissful days,
(If flowers of bliss may thrive on earth);
Thine were the glory and the praise
Of genius linked with modest worth;
To wisdom wed, remote from strife,
Calmly passed o'er thy stormless life."
During the lifetime of Bloomfield, another young and obscure poet, Henry
Kirke White of Nottingham, was indebted to Bloomfield's patrons, Mr.
Lofft and Robert Southey, for his introduction to the public. After
reading "The Farmer's Boy" and "Rural Tales," White wrote the following
clever epigram, the sentiment of which all admirers of the
shoemaker-poet will heartily indorse:
"Bloomfield, thy happy omened name
Ensures continuance to thy fame;
Both sense and truth this verdict give,
While fields shall bloom, thy name shall live."
CHAPTER VI.
[Illustration: SAMUEL DREW, M.A.]
Samuel Drew,
THE METAPHYSICAL SHOEMAKER.
"Secure to yourself a livelihood independent of literary success, and
put into this lottery only the overplus of time. Woe to him who depends
wholly on his pen! Nothing is more casual. The man who makes shoes is
sure of his wages: the man who writes a book is never sure of
anything.--_Marmontel_.
"Hereafter, I believe, some metaphysical Columbus will arise, traverse
vast oceans of thought, and explore regions now undiscovered, to which
our little minds and weak ideas do not enable us to soar."--_Samuel
Drew._
SAMUEL DREW.
The life of Samuel Drew, the author of a once famous book, "The
Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul," is in some respects as
remarkable as that of William Gifford,[32] and in others even more so.
For Drew, unlike Gifford, received no collegiate training, nor was he
ever favored with the rudiments of education in an ordinary boys'
school. In his childhood he was sent to a school along with his
brothers, but his childish indifference to learning and his removal
before he was eight years of age prevented his making any progress worth
speaking of. His life, published by his son, speaks of him, with perfect
truth, as the "Self-Taught Cornishman."
[32] See Chapter IV., _William Gifford_.
His reply to Paine's "Age of Reason," and his book on the "Immortality
of the Soul," both of which were written and issued from the press
during his life as a shoemaker, brought him into notoriety, and obtained
for him a name as an acute thinker and able controversialist. He
afterward published several theological works of great merit, edited and
wrote the chief portion of a history of Cornwall, and finally became an
editor on the staff of the Caxton press in Liverpool and London. His
contributions to the literature of his own religious denomination, the
Wesleyan Methodists, were very numerous; and for many years he was a
constant writer in the _Eclectic Review_. From the beginning to the
close of his public life he was held in high esteem as a preacher in the
"circuits" of Cornwall, Liverpool, and London. The two universities of
Aberdeen and London paid him a valuable compliment; the one conferring
on him the degree of A.M., and the other, through certain members of the
council, requesting him to be put in competition for the Chair of _Moral
Philosophy_.
But before all these things he was an earnest, high-souled, useful
Christian man, who found his principal delight in diffusing around him
the influence of a good example and a benevolent Christ-like spirit. His
best memorials were inscribed on the hearts of the people among whom he
spent his valuable life. His writings may now be but little read, and
his name but little known outside the Christian community to which he
was attached, yet he made a record as a faithful servant of God that
will never perish, and obtained a memorial for his name that is safe
against all the influence of time and change.
The subject of this sketch was born at St. Anstell, in Cornwall, on the
3d March, 1765. His parents were both members of families long resident
in Cornwall. They were in but poor circumstances, the father being
employed chiefly as a farm-laborer. Now and then he worked in connection
with the tin mines of the neighborhood. Hard work, scant fare, and great
economy were necessary to enable the parents to bring up their young
family respectably. We may judge of their circumstances by the fact that
the father found it not at all an easy thing to carry out a worthy
determination he had formed to send his three children to school, where
the fee for each scholar was only one penny per week. Little Sammy's
progress hardly compensated for this small outlay, for he was dull and
careless and shockingly fond of playing truant. However, his school life
did not last long. He was removed at the age of eight, as already
stated, and put to work as a _buddle-boy_. The pits in which the tin-ore
is washed after being broken up are called _buddles_, and it was the
business of the buddle-boy to stir up the sediment of ore and metal at
the bottom of the pit, in order that the stream of water which passed
through it might carry off the sandy particles and leave the mineral
behind. For this work Samuel was to receive three halfpence a week. But
the poor little fellow was early taught the meaning of the terms "bad
debt" and "failure in business." His master kept the wages back,
intending to pay them, as was customary, to the father. At the end of
eight weeks the employer failed, and Samuel never received his first
instalment of wages. When another man took the business, shortly after,
the boys were paid twopence per week, and for the two years in which he
continued at this work, the little buddle-boy never received more than
this miserable pittance. It must be confessed that Samuel was a wilful,
headstrong fellow. The circumstances which led to his removal from home
were hardly to his credit. His own mother died when he was nine years
old. She was a good woman, and took great pains to save her boy from the
bad influence of low company at the tin-works. Samuel, though young and
reckless, cherished a deep regard for his mother. About a year and a
half after her death the father married again, and Samuel, not liking
the idea of having a "new mother," made himself as obnoxious to her as
he could. This improper conduct could not be permitted, and it was
especially wrong in this instance, as the "new mother" was very
attentive and kind to the children.
"At the age of ten and a half," says his biographer, Samuel "was
apprenticed for nine years to a shoemaker, living in a sequestered
hamlet about three miles from St. Austell. His father and family at this
time were not far distant, but removing soon after to Polpea, in
Tywardreath, the poor lad's intercourse with his relatives was, in a
great measure, suspended, and he felt the loneliness of his situation."
Drew's apprenticeship life was well-nigh as miserable and unprofitable
as it could be. In an account of the hardships he endured at this time
he himself says: "My new abode at St. Blazey and new engagements were
far from being agreeable. To any of the comforts and conveniences of
life I was an entire stranger, and by every member of the family was
viewed as an underling, come thither to subserve their wishes, or obey
their mandates. To his trade of shoemaker my master added that of
farmer. He had a few acres of ground under his care, and was a sober,
industrious man; but, unfortunately for me, nearly one half of my time
was taken up in agricultural pursuits. On this account I made no
proficiency in my business, and felt no solicitude to rise above the
farmers' boys with whom I daily associated. While in this place I
suffered many hardships. When, after having been in the fields all day,
I came home with cold feet, and damp and dirty stockings, I was
permitted, if the oven had been heated during the day, to throw them
into it, that they might dry against the following morning; but
frequently have I had to put them on in precisely the same state in
which I had left them the preceding evening. To mend my stockings I had
no one, and frequently have I wept at the holes which I could not
conceal; though, when fortunate enough to procure a needle and some
worsted, I have drawn the outlines of the holes together, and made, what
I thought, a tolerable job."
"During my apprenticeship," he continues, "many bickerings and
unpleasant occurrences took place. Some of these preyed so much on my
mind, that several times I had determined to run away and enlist on
board a privateer or man-of-war." He seems to have had little
inclination for reading during these unhappy days; and if he had been
disposed for study there were but few books within his reach. Accident
put into his hands a few odd numbers of a publication circulated in
the West of England called _The Weekly Entertainer_. He read and
re-read the histories of "Paul Jones," "The Serapis," and "Bon Homme
Richard," until his imagination was inflamed with the thought of
joining a pirate, and leading the jolly abandoned life of a sea-rover.
Such reading as this did very little good for him. The only other book
he seems to have met with during these days of servitude was "an odd
number of the 'History of England' about the time of the
Commonwealth." But this spell of reading lasted only a short time. The
odd volume of history, which charmed him at first, soon grew
monotonous and wearisome, and was thrown aside. "With this," he says,
"I lost not only a _disposition_ for reading, but almost the _ability_
to read. The clamor of my companions and others engrossed nearly the
whole of my attention, and, so far as my slender means would allow,
carried me onward toward the vortex of dissipation."
Much of his time was occupied with wild companions, among whom he was
foremost in daring and mischief. Bird-nesting, orchard-robbing, and even
poaching and smuggling were resorted to for amusement and profit. On one
occasion he nearly lost his life by following sea-birds to their haunt
on the edge of a lofty cliff overhanging the sea. At another time, in
the dead of the night, when he and a number of men and boys were out on
a poaching expedition, he and his companions were nearly scared out of
their wits by some apparition, which confronted them with large fiery
eyes, and suddenly disappeared.
Spite of these doubtful amusements his life at St. Blazey was becoming
intolerable. He compares his position to that of "a toad under a
harrow;" and declares that his master and mistress seemed bent on
degrading him. At last, when he could brook his degradation no longer,
he resolved to abscond, and accordingly, at the age of seventeen, after
enduring six and a half years of bondage and cruelty, he ran off,
intending to go to sea. But his plans were happily frustrated. On his
way from St. Blazey to Plymouth he called at his old home, and as his
father was absent his stepmother refused to give him money to assist him
in his mad project. He then made off for Plymouth with only a few pence
in his pocket. Passing through Liskeard he chanced to meet with a
good-natured shoemaker, and entered into an engagement as a journeyman.
In a short time he was discovered in his retreat, and persuaded to
return to his father's roof. He agreed on condition that he should not
be sent back to his old master. This being arranged, a situation was
found for Drew at Millbrook and afterward at Kingsand and Crafthole.
It was during his stay at the last place that the event occurred which
led to the most important change in his life. He had often engaged in
smuggling expeditions during the time of his apprenticeship, these
unlawful practices not being regarded as disgraceful in out-of-the-way
places on the coast a century ago. The rough villagers were rather
disposed to make a boast of their success in evading the law; and few,
if any, of their neighbors offered any opposition or remonstrance. One
dark night in December, 1784, when Samuel Drew was about nineteen years
of age, a vessel laden with contraband goods made signals to have her
cargo fetched on shore; and the daring youth agreed to form one of the
boat's crew for this purpose. The night was so stormy and dark that the
captain of the vessel had been obliged to stand off a considerable
distance from the shore. The smugglers were two miles out at sea when
one of their number, in attempting to catch his hat, upset the boat.
Three men were immediately drowned; Drew, who was a first-rate swimmer,
managed by dint of the most violent effort to reach the rocks, and was
picked up by some of his companions 'more dead than alive,' and carried
to a farm-house, whose occupants were compelled, much against their
will, to allow the half-drowned youth to be brought i
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