which advice he ends, p. 94., with—
"The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve you to his Heavenly Kingdom, my poor child.
"To Elizabeth Peters."
And then, after a poem at p. 97., he commences a short sketch of his life with—
"I shall give you an account of myself and dealings, that (if possible) you may wipe off some dirt, or be the more content to carry it."
That part of his life which would bear upon this subject reads thus, p. 98.:—
"When (at Cambridge) I spent some years vainly enough, being but fourteen years old when thither I came, my tutor died, and I was exposed to my shifts. Coming from thence, at London God struck me with the sense of my sinful estate by a sermon I heard under Paul's."
The wonderful success of his lecture at Sepulchre's caused it to be asserted by his enemies, that his enthusiastic style of preaching was but stage buffoonery. (See p. 100.)
"At this lecture the resort grew so great, that it contracted envie and anger ... There were six or seven thousand hearers ... and I went to Holland:"
thereby leaving his character to be maligned. I do not believe, from the tone of the condemned man's Legacy, that he would purposely avoid any mention of the stage, had he appeared on it, and "usually performed the part of a clown;" in fact it appears, that immediately on his coming into London he was awakened by the "sermon under Paul's, which stuck fast:" he almost directly left for Essex, and was converted by "the love and labours of Mr. Thomas Hooker. I there preacht;" so that he was mostly preaching itinerantly in Essex, when it is asserted that he was "a player in Shakespeare's company." That Legacy in question, and a book autograph of Hugh Peters, are at the service of Dr. Rimbault.
Blowen.