A friend one day remarked to him, "Mr. Drew, more than once I have heard you quote the line—
'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.'
How do you make that out?"
"I will tell you by my own experience," replied Drew. "When I began business I was a great politician. For the first year I had too much to think about to indulge my propensity for politics; but, getting a little ahead in the world, I began to dip into these matters again, and entered into newspaper argument as if my livelihood depended on it; my shop was filled with loungers, who came to canvass public measures. This encroached on my time, and I found it necessary sometimes to work till midnight to make up for the hours I lost. One night, after my shutters were closed, and I was busily employed, some little urchin who was passing put his mouth to the keyhole of the door, and with a shrill pipe called out, 'Shoemaker! Shoemaker! Work by night and run about by day!' Had a pistol been fired off at my ear I could not have been more confounded. From that time I turned over a new leaf. I ceased to venture on the restless sea of politics, or trouble myself about matters which did not concern me. The bliss of ignorance on political topics I often experienced in after life—the folly of being wise my early history shows."
His sister kept house for him. One market-day a country-woman entered his shop, and having completed her purchases, remarked that she thought he would be more comfortable if he had a wife. Drew assented, but said, "I don't know any one who would have me." "Oh! that's easily settled," said the woman, and left. Next market-day she returned, bringing her buxom, apple-cheeked daughter with her. "There, Mr. Drew," said she; "I brought this maid, who will make 'ee a good wife."
Samuel demurred; he neither knew the family nor the qualities and character of the wench.
"Lor' bless 'ee!" said the woman, when he made these objections, "take her. The trial of the pudding is in the eating."
He declined the proposal, however; but this incident turned his mind to matrimony, and on April 17th, 1791, when in his twenty-seventh year, he married Honor Halls, and by her had five sons and three daughters. His wife's immediate fortune was £10, a sum of great importance at that time to him. Three years after it was increased by a legacy of £50.
Having made a certain amount of success with his Essay on the Immortality of the Soul, Drew next undertook one on The Identity and Resurrection of the Human Body, and this was published in 1809.
Into a controversy he was engaged in with Mr. Polwhele in 1800 on Methodism we need not enter, but it made no breach of friendly feeling between Mr. Polwhele and him, and it was at the request of the former that Drew wrote the little account of his life that appeared in Polwhele's Literary Characters, 1803.