THOMAS OLIVERS, HYMN-WRITER, FRIEND AND COWORKER WITH JOHN WESLEY.
It is a relief to turn from the thought of Savage to Thomas Olivers, one of John Wesley’s most intimate friends and zealous coworkers. We have seen already how prominent a part another shoemaker played in the Methodist revival;[138] but Olivers is perhaps better known to the general public than Samuel Bradburn, for the latter has left no mark on our literature, while the former has made a name among hymn-writers as the author of several excellent hymns, and of one, in particular, which holds a place of first rank in Christian hymnology. Olivers’ fame outside Methodism rests chiefly on the fine hymn beginning—
“The God of Abram praise,
Who reigns enthroned above,
Ancient of everlasting days,
And God of love.
Jehovah great, I Am,
By earth and heaven confest;
I bow and bless the sacred name,
Forever blest.”
One hymn may seem to be a very narrow basis on which to build a reputation, yet the name of Olivers will as surely be handed down to future generations, on account of this fine sacred lyric, as it would have been if he had written a whole volume of hymns of merely average merit. A dozen instances might be cited in which a single brief poem of rare excellence has won an undying fame for the writer. Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,“ and Michael Bruce’s ”Elegy Written in Spring,“ Wolfe’s ”Burial of Sir John Moore,” and Blanco White’s single sonnet, “Night and Death,” and, in an inferior degree, poor Herbert Knowles’ “Lines Written in the Churchyard of Richmond, Yorkshire,” are cases in point.
Thomas Olivers in his autobiography[139] tells us that he was born at Tregonon in Montgomeryshire in 1725. After the death of his father and uncle, Thomas was left in charge of another relative named Tudor, who sent him to school and afterward bound him apprentice to a shoemaker. He was, by his own account, idle, dissolute, and profane—“the worst boy seen in those parts for the last twenty or thirty years.” His evil conduct compelled him to fly from the scene of his early dissipation as soon as he could; and, after living a wild life at Shrewsbury and Wrexham, he came to Bristol. This city was his spiritual birthplace; for, under a sermon by George Whitfield, the sinful, reckless young Welshman was converted, and became as noted for piety and earnest Christian work as he had once been for blasphemy and opposition to all religion. Shortly after his conversion he removed to Bradford in Wilts, where he joined the Methodists. On recovering from a terrible attack of small-pox he went back to visit the scenes of his early life. In this expedition he had a double object—to obtain a sum of money left him by his uncle, and then to go round to all his creditors and pay his debts. This most Christian conduct won him golden opinions and formed a capital introduction to the preaching of the Gospel; for Olivers had now begun to exercise his rare gifts in that direction. Returning to Bradford, he was soon appointed by John Wesley as a travelling preacher. After preaching in many parts of England and enduring the usual amount of hardship and risk to life and limb incident to the field-preacher’s work in those days, he finally settled in London as John Wesley’s editor, having charge of the Arminian Magazine, and other publications, for which Wesley was responsible. This office he held for twelve years; but he was never quite fit for it, and his chief was reluctantly compelled at last to put a more scholarly man in his place.
In the controversy between Wesley and Toplady on Predestination, etc., a controversy marked by the worst features of the time, the fiery Welshman was put forward to take the leading part on the Arminian side. Nothing could exceed the severity of Toplady’s remarks and the fierceness of his attacks, both on the character and teaching of the veteran preacher, John Wesley, whom all the world now agrees to honor as one of the most devout, unselfish, and useful men who have adorned the Christian Church in any age. Right manfully did the “Welsh Cobbler,” as Olivers was contemptuously styled, stand up for the doctrine of free grace. In his hands Wesley was quite content to leave the work of reply to Toplady’s Zanchius, quietly remarking, “I can only make a few strictures, and leave the young man Toplady to be further corrected by one that is fully his match, Thomas Olivers.”
Tyerman[140] speaks of Olivers as a man of high intellectual power; but “laments that the fiery Welshman undertook to meet the furious Predestinarian with the not too respectable weapons of his own choosing.” What this means may be imagined by the following sample of Toplady’s personalities in this strife of tongues. He says, “Mr. Wesley skulks for shelter under a cobbler’s apron;“ and again, ”Has Tom the Cobbler more learning and integrity than John the Priest?” It must be confessed that Cobbler Tom hit hard in reply. But an end has now come to the discreditable and useless strife; and, happily, it is in no danger of revival; while the hymns written by the pious Calvinist[141] and the zealous Arminian are both alike sung with devout emotion wherever the Saviour’s name is known and adored.
Besides several controversial tracts, Olivers wrote a number of hymns, and is known as the composer of a number of Psalm-tunes.[142] He continued his ministry in London till March, 1799, when he died at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in John Wesley’s tomb, in the City Road Chapel Yard, London, as a token of the esteem in which he was held by Wesley and his friends.
THOMAS HOLCROFT, DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, ETC.[143]
Thomas Holcroft was a much more noteworthy man. At the time of the State Trials he had made a considerable name as a writer of political novels. In his “Anna St. Ives” and “Hugh Trevor” he had exposed the follies and vices of society around him, and had set forth his own political views in a manner well calculated to captivate the fancy of young and ardent reformers. When the trial of Hardy began, Holcroft surrendered himself in court, deeming it base and unmanly to refuse to share the fate of those whose political views he had warmly espoused. Both friends and foes honored him for his chivalrous conduct in the affair. On the acquittal of his friends he was discharged without a trial.
The life of Holcroft is as full of romance as any of those depicted in his novels. He was born in London in 1745. During the first six years of the boy’s life, his father was a shoemaker. Giving up this occupation in 1751, Holcroft, senior, “took to the road” as a hawker and peddler, and his poor child led a vagrant, gypsy-like life, and passed through privations which he could never afterward think of without shame and sorrow. And yet he managed to turn this worst period of his life to some account. The first-hand knowledge it afforded him of nature and human affairs gave freshness and power to the comedies and dramas written in later years. During these early years his father taught him to read out of the Bible, and such was his progress, that in a little while the daily task consisted of eleven chapters. These, he tells us, he could often have missed by telling a falsehood, which his conscience never would allow; and, besides this, he had no wish to evade the task, for the stories of the Old Testament were so full of interest to his boyish mind, that he was eager to go on to the end. While his father and mother were engaged as hawkers, young Holcroft was sent out to beg. In this miserable employment he became quite an expert; and, like many another unfortunate beggar, he was led to draw on his imagination for tales to answer his purpose. On returning home he would recount his adventures, and repeat the marvellous stories he had invented, until his father, who at first admired the lad’s gift as a romancer, came to be ashamed of allowing him to lead such an idle and mischievous life, and put a stop to his escapades.
After this he was employed as a stable-boy and jockey at Newmarket. The change in his circumstances thus brought about was a very happy one, for he had now good fare, a comfortable bed to sleep on, decent or rather smart clothes, of which he was not a little proud; and, added to all this, a certain position in respectable society! His father had a friend at Newmarket who had a taste for reading, and followed the “profession” of feeder and trainer of gamecocks for the pit. This man was struck with Thomas Holcroft’s natural ability, and lent him books to read, such as the “Spectator” and “Gulliver’s Travels.” While at Newmarket he was one day passing a church, and stopped to listen to the music of the choir, then engaged in practice. He ventured to enter the church, and feeling a strong desire to learn to sing, spoke to the leader. Mr. Langham, who, finding the stable-boy had a good voice, admitted him into the choir. He threw himself so heartily into this new and fascinating study, that it was not long before he could read music and sing in good style.
At the age of sixteen, he again went to live with his father, who had once more returned to the shoemaker’s stall, and lived in London. Here he learned enough of the trade to earn a livelihood, but he involved himself in premature cares by an imprudent marriage when only twenty years of age.
And now the passion for a roving life got the better of him, and quitting the monotony of a cobbler’s room, he betook himself to the stage. For seven years he led the life of a strolling player, “and sounded all the depths and shoals” of misery incident to such a precarious existence.
It was not till after his thirtieth year that he began to acquire settled habits of study, to learn the languages—French, German, and Italian—in which he afterward became a ready translator, and to set about any kind of literary work. The first products of his pen appeared in the Whitehall Evening Post. He was in his thirty-fifth year when his first novel, “Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian,” appeared. The year after this saw the issue of his earliest comedy, Duplicity, which was put on the stage at Covent Garden Theatre, and had a good run of success. This was followed by some thirty dramatic pieces of one kind or other, in poetry or prose, comedies and comic operas, dramas and melodramas, which last he had the credit of introducing into England. The Road to Ruin is accounted, by some judges of note, the best of his dramas. Holcroft was a man of versatile powers and great industry. His natural gifts were remarkable, and his extensive knowledge was almost entirely self-acquired. As already indicated, he was a very prolific author. Besides the three novels and the plays referred to above, he issued translations from the French of Toucher d’Obsonville and Pierre de Long; from the German, Goethe’s “Herman and Dorothea;” and from the Italian. He spent much of his time in Germany and France, and his interesting work, “Travels into France,” is one of his most valued productions. Thomas Holcroft died 23d March, 1809, at the age of sixty-four, having crowded as much work into his eventful life as most of the leading men of his time.