THE METHODIST NEW CONNEXION MAGAZINE. SAMUEL DREW, M.A., THE SELF-TAUGHT CORNISHMAN. "Honour and shame from no condition rise; "His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up POPE. SHAKESPEARE. DR. ADAM CLARKE, the learned commentator and divine, and the attached and intimate friend of Samuel Drew, shall introduce the subject of this paper to the reader. In the first volume of his autobiography, Dr. Clarke speaks of Mr. Drew as "a man of primitive simplicity of manners, amiableness of disposition, piety towards God, and benevolence to men, seldom to be equalled; and, for reach of thought, keenness of discrimination, purity of language, and manly eloquence, not to be surpassed in any of the common walks of life. In short, his circumstances considered, with the mode of his education, he is one of those prodigies of nature and grace which God rarely exhibits, but which serve to keep up the connecting link between those who are confined to houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, and beings of superior order, in those regions where infirmity cannot enter, and where the sunshine of knowledge suffers neither diminution nor eclipse." These are generous words, and were, perhaps, dictated more by Dr. Clarke's warm love for Drew than by his cool judgment. There may be just a touch of hyperbole in such an utterance, and a tendency to mistake the glamour which love throws around its loved one for the outstreaming and haloing glory of inner excellence; nevertheless, the words we have quoted are, in the main, and with but a fraction of abatement, words which, so far as they attempt to September, 1885. 33 VOL. LXXXVIII. sum up Mr. Drew's characteristics and powers, the present writer would most cordially accept, and put to the forefront of this paper. Pleasantly situated on the Cornish coast, midway between Falmouth and Plymouth, stands the busy little market-town of St. Austell. In a very humble cottage, containing a single groundroom and two bed-rooms, and lying about a mile to the east of this town, Samuel Drew was born, on March 3, 1765. His father had, when eighteen years of age, attended one of the Rev. George Whitefield's outdoor services in a neighbouring village, and there begun a Christian life which, for more than sixty years, exemplified the power of vital religion. His mother was, in some respects, a remarkable woman. Born of parents who were unable to provide more for their children and themselves than the common necessaries of life, her education was greatly neglected, and when, in early womanhood, she became the subject of religious impressions, it is doubtful if she could read; certainly she could not write. She soon mastered both mysteries. Her son describes her as "a woman of strong, masculine understanding; of courage and zeal in the cause of God, which nothing could damp; and ready to brave every hardship that the discharge of duty might render necessary." From her Samuel inherited the same qualities—qualities which he exemplified in a very conspicuous manner. She had, withal, a loving mother's tender and mighty power over her children. As a boy, Samuel was of a boisterous, vivacious disposition. He was also a great dunce, far more disposed to play truant than to attend school, and not in love with books or any form of learning. So much was this the case that, probably, he would not have learnt to read or write in his boyhood, had not his mother, perceiving how futile were the ordinary methods pursued at the school to which Samuel was sent, taken him under her own tuition. To her he owed what little knowledge he acquired during childhood of reading and writing. To her, too, under God, he owed the deepest moral and religious impressions of his early days. All too soon, as it seemed to her sorrowing husband, certainly all too soon as it seemed to Samuel, she was taken hence, leaving her boy of nine tender years to mourn in bitter anguish the loss of her "soft indulgence, and a mother's care." A year before her death, Samuel had to begin work. The ore found in the neighbourhood, after being subjected to the pulverising action of the stamping-mill, is carried off by a small stream of water into shallow pits, called buddles, where the gravity of the mineral causes it to sink, whilst the sand and earth pass off with the stream. As this, however, does not cause sufficient separation children are employed to stir up the deposit in the pits, or buddles, and keep it in agitation until this part of the cleansing process is completed. Samuel Drew found employment as a buddle-boy, at the stipend of three-halfpence a day, a sum which was raised to twopence per day a short time afterwards, but which never exceeded that amount at any time during the two years he remained at that employment. When ten years and a half old, Samuel was apprenticed for nine years to a shoemaker, living at St. Blazey, a sequestered hamlet about three miles from St. Austell. Neither his new abode nor his new employment was at all agreeable to him, and the poor lad had a sad, suffering time of it. Samuel's master had probably not heard of the proverbial piece of wisdom, "Every cobbler should stick to his last," or, if he had, thought it a proverbial piece of folly. At any rate, he carried on the business of a farmer in addition to that of a shoemaker, with the result, for poor Samuel, that, at the end of some years of apprenticeship, he was neither a good cobbler nor a good farmer. This period, too, was one of moral degeneracy for Samuel. Now that he had lost the supreme restraining influence of his boyhoodhis mother's presence and love-it is no wonder he fell into the immoral practices of his associates. Smuggling and poaching were more common in Cornwall then than now. To these practices Samuel gave himself up as often as he dare-once, at a subsequent period, nearly losing his life in a smuggling adventure. If we remember the cruel treatment he received, and the moral degeneracy into which he had sunk, we shall not be surprised to hear that, when seventeen years of age, Samuel ran away from his master, intending to go to Plymouth and obtain a berth on board a king's ship. He was, however, tracked to Liskeard, and brought back to his father at Polpea, where the latter then resided. In after years Samuel was accustomed to trace, with gratitude, the guiding and overruling hand of Providence in this event of his early life. His indenture having been cancelled, Samuel remained at home for some months, either working at his business, or on the farm. Then he obtained employment at Millbrook, on the Cornish side of the estuary of Tamar. Here, though, as he confesses, "a wretched tool at the trade," he remained for a year. Then he removed to Crafthole, a village contiguous to the then noted smuggling spot called Port Wrinkle. Into the usages of the village and its pursuits Samuel flung himself. Hearing of all this, and also of a recent narrow escape of his son from an untimely death, Samuel's father procured him a situation at St. Austell, that there, at least, he |