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The latter designation owed its origin to that familiarity which is said to breed contempt," and was far too common, not only among the vast class in Yorkshire who, eighty years ago, did not know any better, but also, it is to be feared, among those whose good sense and education ought to have taught them better. It was a designation his mother never liked. "He was never called Billy at home," said she; "and I cannot conceive why he should be so distinguished abroad." I am afraid it is too late in the day to hope to blot out of use a title which, when sounded in the ears of the sons and daughters of this generation, does a singular injustice to him to whom it is applied; for, immediately on hearing that a preacher of two generations ago was termed "Billy" Dawson, those amongst us who are ignorant of the man forthwith call up the image of an unread, unlettered, uncouth being in whom was more zeal than knowledge, more physical force than spiritual, more rant and noise than thought, and, labelling him as "Billy" Dawson, we think we know the kind of man of whom our fathers and grandfathers speak so admiringly. We could be scarcely further from the truth. It is not pretended that Mr. Dawson was a learned man, using that word in its present common acceptation; but we are far from admitting that he was an uneducated man. He had received a good, sound, solid elementary education in his youth. In early and later manhood he made himself acquainted with works written by such authors as Dr. Owen, Dr. Manton, Dr. Goodwin, Baxter, Alleine, Bishop December, 1885. 45 VOL. LXXXVIII. Butler, Bunyan, Wesley, Watson, Dr. A. Clarke, and other theological writers of his country. And he not only read, but thought; and thought intensely. He left behind him some four hundred manuscript sermons, mostly written out in full; besides essays, speeches, and other public addresses, and an extensive correspondence. For forty years his popularity as a preacher never waned, but rather increased from year to year, and was greatest amongst those he oftenest visited. I make bold to say that it is not of a man of this stamp that we think when we hear for the first time of "Billy" Dawson, but of some "heated pulpiteer" of another kind altogether. For this, the familiar designation of which we speak is largely to blame. Better that it should be dropped by all true admirers of Dawson, for it is likely to work him greater injustice in the future, and among the children of the next generation, than in the past. When I say that William Dawson was born within a year or two of a time when grass might have been seen growing in Briggate, Leeds, some of my readers, who know that fine and busy thoroughfare as it is to-day, and how impossible it would be for grass to grew there now, will think that I am about to speak of a man who must have lived some two or three hundred years ago. Not at all. William Dawson was born little more than one hundred years since -viz., on the 30th of March, 1773-at Garforth, seven miles from Leeds. He was the eldest of ten children, six of whom attained maturity, and four of whom survived him. His father acted as steward to Sir Thomas Gascoigne, and had, in particular, the superintendence of the colliery department. While William was quite a child, his father removed to a farm at Barnbow, near Garforth, where he carried on the work of a farmer in addition to that of a steward. Here the subject of this sketch continued to live up to within three years of his decease. About William's childhood and boyhood there was nothing at all remarkable, save it be this one fact, that for the first six months of his life he cried night and day almost incessantly. To this fact William afterwards attributed that strength of lungs which earned for him the cognomen of "Shouting Billy," by which some of his admirers distinguished him from another William Dawson, who was on the Leeds plan at the same time, and who was designated, by way of distinction, and in the rough and ready manner of the times," Sleepy Billy." When William was about eighteen years of age his father died, and he succeeded him in the stewardship and the farm, becoming, at this early age, as a father to the family. Whilst quite young and under the godly training of his mother, |