“P.S.—If your ladyship is so good as to spare a minister for three weeks, I shall be glad to wait upon the dear young men and their patroness at the College.”[[174]]
This is an important letter, not only as exhibiting the views of Fletcher, but as containing a curious chapter in the earliest history of Trevecca College. The College, as it was ostentatiously called, had been opened ten months. It had one master; and the author of the “Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon” says Joseph Easterbrook was the person who occupied this position; but adduces no proof in support of his assertion. Another, and a far greater authority, attests that the master of the College was a child. Who was he?
In 1788, there was printed “A Sermon, occasioned by the Death of the celebrated Mr. J. Henderson, B.A., of Pembroke College, Oxford: Preached at St. George’s, Kingswood, November 23; and at Temple Church, Bristol, November 30, 1788. By the Rev. William Agutter, M.A., of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford. Published at the request of the Congregations. Bristol. 1788.” 8vo, pp. 32. The text of the sermon is, “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Mr. Agutter’s eulogy of Henderson cannot here be quoted at full length: the following are brief extracts from it:—
“Mr. Henderson was born, as it were, a thinking being; and was never known to cry, or to express any infantine peevishness. The questions he asked, as soon as he was able to speak, astonished all who heard him.”
“His memory was so strong that he retained all he read; and his judgment so solid that he arranged, examined, and digested all that he remembered, and thus made it his own.”
“At a time that other children were employed in the drudgery of learning words, he was occupied in obtaining the knowledge of things. While but a boy, he was engaged to teach the learned languages. At twelve years of age, he taught Greek and Latin in the College of Trevecca. The Governor of the College at that time was the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, late Vicar of Madeley.”[[175]]
Mr. Agutter proceeds to say, that, when Fletcher was dismissed from Trevecca, Henderson was dismissed with him.
This, then, was the master—the only master of Trevecca College during the first year of its existence—a child, a wonderful child, twelve years old! A further account of this prodigy, or, as the Monthly Review, of 1789, called him, “a second Baratier,”[[176]] may interest the reader.
His father was a native of Ireland, and, from 1759 to 1771, was one of Wesley’s best itinerant preachers,—a man of deep piety, great talent, and amiable disposition; but naturally of a timid and melancholy mind. On relinquishing the itinerancy, he commenced a boarding-school at Hannam, near Bristol; but two of his pupils having been drowned while bathing, his mind was so affected, that he abandoned his school, and opened, at the same place, an asylum for the insane, which Wesley pronounced the best of the kind in the three kingdoms.
John Henderson, his only child, was born at Bellgaran, near Limerick, in 1757, and, as early as possible, was sent to Wesley’s School, at Kingswood. At the age of eight, he had made such proficiency in the Latin language, as to be able to teach it in the school. In his twelfth year, as already stated, he became the Master in Trevecca College. When about fourteen years of age, he left Trevecca, and, probably, spent the next ten years with his father at Hannam. At twenty-four, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford; and, in due time, took the degree of Bachelor of Arts. His thirst after knowledge was unbounded; and his amiable temper and remarkable talents secured him the respect of all who knew him. His learning was deep and multifarious. He was skilled in grammar, rhetoric, history, logic, ethics, metaphysics, and scholastic theology. He studied medicine with great attention, and practised it among the poor, wherever he had a chance, gratuitously. He was well versed in geometry, astronomy, and every branch of natural and experimental philosophy, and also in civil and canon laws. Besides several of the modern languages, he was master of the Greek and Latin tongues; and was intimately acquainted with Persic and Arabic. Scarcely a book could be mentioned, but he could give some account of it; nor any subject started, but he could engage in the discussion of it. His talents for conversation were so attractive, various, and multiform, that he was a companion equally acceptable to the philosopher and the man of the world, to the gay, the learned, and illiterate, the young and the old of both sexes. He attracted the notice of Dr. Johnson, was intimate with Sir William Jones, Miss Hannah More, and other celebrities; and Mr. Wilberforce offered him his patronage and a living, if he would reside in London.