Having experienced his own great difficulties in acquiring the principles of the English grammar, in 1804 he gave a course of lectures on that subject. These lectures, which occupied about two hours, were delivered on four evenings of the week, two being allotted to each sex separately. A year completed the course of instruction, and for this each pupil paid thirty shillings. He was able to illustrate his lectures very happily with anecdote and from his own experience, so as to render the barren study of grammar interesting and entertaining. Though never able to write first-class English, and often clumsy in diction, yet he was studiously correct in grammar, if often awkward in construction of a sentence.
In the year 1805 he gave up his cobbling business and devoted himself entirely to his pen. Seeing his value as a polemic writer in favour of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, several of the clergy of Cornwall were anxious that he should join the Church; but his early association with Dissent, and his ignorance of Catholic doctrine, induced him to remain where he was in the Methodist Connection.
He next wrote an Essay on the Being and Attributes of the Deity, and a reply to Thomas Prout, On the Divinity of Christ and the Eternal Sonship. All this was very well in its way at the time, but is now so much waste paper, used only for covering jampots.
In 1814 Samuel Drew undertook his most voluminous work, the History of Cornwall, one which he was wholly unqualified to undertake, as he had no familiarity with the MS. material on which that history should be based; and it was a mere compilation from already printed matter.
In 1819 Samuel Drew removed to Liverpool, where he acted as local preacher in the Methodist meeting-houses. To this period belongs the epigram written on him by Dr. Clarke:—
Long was the man, and long was his hair,
And long was the coat which this long man did wear.
He became editor of the Imperial Magazine, and after a short while in Liverpool, migrated to London.
In 1828 he lost his wife. "When my wife died," he was wont to say, "my earthly sun set for ever."
In 1833 he returned to Cornwall, and died at Helston on March 29th, at the age of sixty-eight.