Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old;
See, thine hairs are falling all,
Poor Anacreon, how they fall.
Whether I grow old or no,
By these signs I do not know,
By this I need not to be told,
"Tis time to live if I grow old."'
In 1790 he gave up keeping his accounts; his last entry—exceedingly difficult to decipher—is characteristic: 'For upwards of eighty-six years (meaning, of course, rather, sixty-eight, i. e., since he came to have money of his own) I have kept my accounts exactly. I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can, and give all I can; that is, all I have. July 16, 1790.' His benevolence indeed was excessive; and Samuel Bradburn says, 'He never relieved poor people in the street but he either took off or removed his hat to them when they thanked him.'
The story of the old man's approach towards the gates of the celestial city is very beautiful, and has often been told. His last sermons are certainly among his best; the last sermon he printed, on 'Faith the evidence of things not seen,' was the last he ever wrote, and was finished only six weeks before his death. It shows how his mind sustained the altitude of highest power when bordering upon ninety years of age; it shows also how the dear old man was preening his wings for a speedy flight. We suppose the last letter he wrote was to William Wilberforce, on the abolition of slavery—short, but full of strength—giving to the apostle of freedom his benediction. 'If God be for you,' he writes, 'who can be against, you? O! be not weary in well doing! Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His might!'
It was in the City-road that exhausted nature gave way, unable to bear any more. And what a death it was! He was, indeed, several days in dying, but there was no pain, only exhaustion; in his wanderings he was preaching or attending classes, and singing snatches from some of his brother's, and from Watts's hymns; but he was half in heaven before he left the earth. His last strain of song was—