80

No. VI.

MR. SAMUEL DREW, A.M.

LATE EDITOR OF THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE."

INDIVIDUALS who have raised themselves from obscurity to distinction, always attract our notice; but when that distinction has been attained in spite of obstacles apparently insurmountable, they become the especial objects of our curiosity. This feeling is not only laudable, but beneficial. Curiosity leads to knowledge; knowledge begets admiration; and admiration becomes an incentive to honourable effort.

Mr. Samuel Drew was born on the 3d of March, 1765, in an obscure cottage in the parish, and about a mile and a half from the town, of St. Austell, in the county of Cornwall; he was the second son of four children, of whom one died in childhood, one at maturity, and one, a sister, still survives. His parents were poor, but pious. His father, who earned a bare subsistence for himself and family by his daily labour as a husbandman, was a convert of Mr. John Wesley, whose society he joined in early life. His mother, whom he had the misfortune to lose before he was seven years old, was a decidedly religious woman, and of strong intellectual powers. Of her memory he always spoke with the deepest reverence and affection; and the pious lessons, which in his infancy he learnt from her, were never forgotten.

Such was the poverty of his parents, that, though they were fully aware of the importance of education, they could send their children to school for only a very short period. During his mother's life-time, and with her assistance, he was able to read easy words; and with the instruction of his elder brother, who had been a little while with a writing-master, he learnt

to form the letters of the alphabet. This was the extent of his education. On his mother's death, he was taken from school, and sent to work at a mill near his father's cottage, where tinners refine their ore. His wages were at first threehalfpence, and were afterwards advanced to two-pence per diem. This was left in the hands of the proprietor of the works, to accumulate; but, when it had amounted to six shillings, he became insolvent, and the poor labouring boy was thus unjustly deprived of his first earnings. When rather more than ten years old, his father bound him an apprentice for nine years to a shoemaker, in the adjoining parish of St. Blazey.

During his apprenticeship, Mr. Drew had occasional access to a little publication which was then popular in the western counties, called the " Weekly Entertainer." The narratives and anecdotes which it contained interested him; and their perusal prevented him from losing the little ability to read which he had acquired in his infancy; but the art of writing he appears at this time to have nearly lost. The treatment he received while an apprentice being such as his disposition could not brook, he left his master when about seventeen, and refused to return. His father compounded for the residue of the term, and procured him employment, and further instruction in his business, at Millbrook, near Plymouth, in which place and neighbourhood he continued about three years. At the close of the year 1784, or commencement of 1785, when about twenty years of age, he came to St. Austell, to conduct the shoe-making business for a person who was occasionally a bookbinder. With this employer he remained above three years; and then commenced business in that town on his own

account.

It was shortly after Mr. Drew had taken up his residence in St. Austell, that he was the subject of those religious impressions, which induced him to become a decided and a devout Christian; and the same gracious influence which first led him to self-examination, appears to have been the means of forming those studious habits, and that resolution to

grapple with the difficulties of his situation, which were the foundation of his future celebrity. Previously to his entering on his twenty-first year he had evinced no serious feeling. He had gained a reputation among his shopmates and acquaintance for keenness of argument, and quickness at repartee; but to the important matters of personal piety he had shown a degree of repugnance. His buoyant spirits, jocose manner, and vivacious disposition, led him, while his judgment was immature, to reject the solemn truths of religion, and even to ridicule those of his acquaintance who chose to embrace them. But the powerful current of his mind was now about to flow in a more suitable channel; and the period had nearly arrived when, having a clear perception of their truth, his awakened energies would lead him to adopt and defend those doctrines of vital and practical godliness, to which he had hitherto expressed an aversion.

In the year 1784-5, the late Dr. (then Mr.) Adam Clarke was appointed to the East Cornwall Circuit, of which St. Austell was the central station, and the residence of the preachers. The preaching of Mr. Clarke and his colleagues aroused Mr. Drew's attention to the weighty subject of personal religion; and the conviction thus begun in his mind was deepened and rendered effectual to his conversion by the illness and death of his elder brother, who was then twenty-two years of age. This young man had joined the Methodist society before his sickness; but it was only upon his death-bed, and after great mental agony, that he found that "peace which passeth all understanding." To the circumstances connected with his brother's decease Mr. Drew was a witness and the effect was so powerful, that in a very few weeks he had united himself with the Methodists, and engaged with his accustomed energy in their public labours for the welfare of mankind. His abilities being appreciated by Mr. Clarke and his coadjutors, they were soon called into exercise; and, within a brief period, he was appointed to the charge of a class, and employed as a local preacher. He had now entered upon an extensive field of usefulness; and in this field (except as a class-leader, which

office he resigned into other hands) he continued to labour until a few months before his decease.

The occasional perusal of books which were brought to the shop of his employer to be bound, awakened Mr. Drew to a consciousness of his own ignorance, and induced him (according to his own expression) "to form a resolution to abandon the grovelling views which he had been accustomed to entertain of things, and to quit the practices of his old associates." He had determined to acquire knowledge; and every moment he could snatch from sleep and labour was now devoted to the reading of such books as his limited finances placed within his reach. One of the difficulties which he had to encounter at this outset of his literary career, arose from his ignorance of the import of words. To overcome this, he found it necessary, while reading, to keep a dictionary constantly at hand. The process was tedious, but it was unavoidable; and the difficulty lessened at every step.

A new world was now opened before him. All its paths were untried; and in what direction to push his enquiries, he was yet undecided. Astronomy first attracted his attention; but to the pursuit of this, his ignorance of arithmetic and geometry was an insuperable obstacle. In history, to which his views were next directed, no proficiency could be made without extensive reading; and he had too little command of time and money for such a purpose. The religious bias which he had received tended, however, to give a theological direction to his studies; and from the apparently accidental inspection of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, he acquired a predilection for the higher exercises of the mind.

In April, 1791, Mr. Drew married *, being then in a creditable way of business. He was not yet an author, but had obtained a name for skill and integrity as a tradesman, and was held in respect by his neighbours.

Mr. Drew had seven children, who were the objects of his most affectionate regard. One died in infancy; the youngest son and daughter reside in London; the eldest daughter and three sons, in Cornwall. Their father lived to see them

all married.

In the year 1798, he first laid the foundation of his Essay on the Human Soul; and it was while this essay was in its infant state, that a young gentleman put into his hands the first part of Paine's "Age of Reason," thinking to bring him over to the principles of infidelity. The sophistry of Paine's book Mr. Drew readily detected; and, committing his thoughts to writing, he published them in 1799. The little work was favourably received by the public; and it procured for its author the steady friendship of the Rev. John Whitaker, a clergyman of high literary reputation.

Upon the Remarks on Paine's "Age of Reason," which first brought Mr. Drew before the public as an author, a writer in the "Anti-Jacobin" Review of April, 1801, observes, "We here see a shoemaker of St. Austell, encountering a staymaker of Deal, with the same weapons of unlettered reason, tempered, indeed, from the armoury of God, yet deriving their principal power from the native vigour of the arm that wields them. Samuel Drew, however, is greatly superior to Thomas Paine, in the justness of his remarks, in the forcibleness of his arguments, and in the pointedness of his refutations." Mr. Drew had the satisfaction of knowing, that his "Remarks" were the means of leading the young gentleman who put the Age of Reason into his hands to renounce those deistical principles to which he had hoped to proselyte Mr. Drew, and to embrace, with full conviction, the doctrines of Christianity. The Remarks on Paine having been several years out of print, were republished, in duodecimo, with the author's corrections and additions, in 1820.

Soon after the publication of the "Remarks," he sent to the press an Elegy on the Death of a respectable Tradesman of St. Austell, who was drowned at Wadebridge, in Cornwall. This was a piece of mere local and temporary interest, and it was his only metrical publication. It exhibited some tokens of poetic fancy; but it convinced the author, and his more judicious friends, that poetry was not his forte.

About the same period, Mr. Drew appeared as a controversial writer. The Rev. Mr. Polwhele had just then published