Of course, opinions vary respecting Hervey’s peculiar style; but the fact cannot be denied, that he became one of the most widely-read writers of his time. The young still read his “Meditations” with avidity; and many of the old remember the pleasure that his writings afforded them in their early days. With some degree of appropriateness, he has been designated the Melancthon of the Methodist Reformation. It is quite certain that the elaborated polish of Hervey’s works secured them the attention of the upper circles of society, to a far greater extent than that attention was secured for the writings of Whitefield and Wesley. Hervey avowedly wrote for the élite; Whitefield and Wesley for the masses. Hervey’s style is objectionable to those who cultivate a taste for the simple and chaste, in opposition to what is elaborate and grand; but, somehow, in Hervey’s day, his books, as Whitefield said, “suited the taste of the polite.” May it not be added, that, they also helped to refine the taste of Methodists? The polite read them because they were flowery; the Methodists, because they were savoury; and while, through their medium, the former looked at grace with less prejudice; the latter looked at nature with more delight.
The following, from the North British Review, is, perhaps, as just a critique on Hervey’s writings as can be furnished:—
“Last century was the first in which pious people cared for style. The Puritans had apple-trees in their orchards, and savoury herbs in their kitchen-gardens, but kept no greenhouse, nor parterre; and, amongst evangelical authors, Hervey was about the first who made his style a study, and who sought, by planting flowers at the gate, to allure passengers into the garden. It is not, therefore, surprising that his ornaments should be more distinguished for profusion and brilliant hues than for simplicity and grace. Most people admire tulips and peonies and martegon-lilies, before they get on to love store-cups and mosses and ferns. We used to admire them ourselves, and felt that summer was not fully blown till we saw it sure and certain in these ample and exuberant flowers. Yes, and even now we feel that it would make a warmer June could we love peonies and martegons once more. Hervey was a man of taste equal to his age, and of a warmth and venturesomeness beyond it. He introduced the poetical and picturesque into religious literature, and became the Shenstone of theology. And, although he did what none had dared before him, the world was ready, and his success was rapid. The “Meditations” evangelized the natural sciences, and embowered the old divinity. There was philosophy in its right mind, and at the Saviour’s feet; and the Lutheran dogma relieved from the academic gown, and keeping healthful holiday in shady woods and by the mountain stream. The tendency of his writing was to open the believer’s eye in kindness and wonder on the works of God, and their effort was to attract to the Incarnate Mystery the heart surprised or softened by these works. We cannot, at the distance of a century, recall the fascination which surrounded them when newly published,—when no similar attempts had forestalled their freshness, and no imitations had blown their vigour into bombast. But we can trace their mellow influence still. We see, that, they have helped to make men of faith men of feeling, and men of piety men of taste. Over the bald and rugged places of systematic orthodoxy, they have trained the sweetest beauties of creation and softest graces of piety, and over its entire landscape have shed an illumination as genial as it is growthful and clear. If his ‘Meditations’ be not purely classical, they are evangelical, and singularly adapted to the whole of man. Their cadence is in our popular preaching still, and may their spirit never quit our Christianity! It is the spirit of securest faith, and sunniest hope, and most seraphic love. And though it may be dangerous for young divines, like Samuel Parr, to copy their descriptive melody, it were a blessed ambition to emulate their author’s large and lightsome piety,—his heart, ‘open to the whole noon of nature,’ and through all its brightness drinking the smile of a present God.”
Here Hervey’s Memoir ought to end; but, unfortunately, posthumous facts must be added.
Already, it has been stated, that, the last days of the devout Rector of Weston-Favel were employed in writing his “Eleven Letters” in answer to Wesley’s “Remarks on Theron and Aspasio.” It is extremely disagreeable to tag to the end of a life so beautiful as Hervey’s a controversial fracas which ought never to have happened, but fidelity forbids the unpleasant duty to be avoided. For more than a hundred years, partisans, on both sides, have discussed the question; and, on both sides, not a little has been written which both Hervey and Wesley would wish to have blotted out. It would not be difficult to lengthen the unprofitable controversy by an analysis of Hervey’s “Eleven Letters” (next to his “Theron and Aspasio,” his ablest work), but the task is uninviting, and the subject shall be dismissed as briefly as possible.
Six years after Hervey’s death, his “Eleven Letters” were surreptitiously published, 12mo, 288 pp., without the printer’s name attached, and with nothing but a brief Preface, signed “Philolethes,” who acknowledged that the work now “found its way into the world, as it were, by stealth.” A year afterwards, in 1765, an authentic edition was issued, with the following title—“Eleven Letters from the late Rev. Mr. Hervey, to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley; containing An Answer to that Gentleman’s Remarks on Theron and Aspasio, Published from the Author’s Manuscript, left in the possession of his Brother, Mr. Hervey. With a Preface, showing the Reason of their being now printed.” 12mo, 297 pp.[260]
The Preface states, that, Hervey did not commence his reply to Wesley before Wesley published his private letter to Hervey, in his “Preservative against Unsettled Notions in Religion;” in other words, not until after June 23, 1758. This is an error; for, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Ryland, dated “January, 1758, Hervey says he was even then ‘transcribing his intended answer to Mr. Wesley for the press’” (see 315 page preceding).
Hervey’s brother, in the Preface, proceeds to say:—
“When, in December, 1758, I was sent for to Weston, I asked him the evening before he died, ‘what he would have done with the Letters to Mr. Wesley, whether he would have them published after his death?’ He answered, ‘By no means, because he had only transcribed about half of them fair for the press; but, as the corrections and alterations of the latter part were mostly in short-hand, it would be difficult to understand them, especially as some of the short-hand was entirely his own, and others could not make it out; therefore, he said, as it is not a finished piece, I desire you will think no more about it.”