“During my literary pursuits I regularly and constantly attended on my business, and I do not recollect that through these one customer was ever disappointed by me. My mode of writing and study may have in them, perhaps, something peculiar. Immersed in the common concerns of life, I endeavor to lift my thoughts to objects more sublime than those with which I am surrounded; and, while attending to my trade, I sometimes catch the fibres of an argument which I endeavor to note, and keep a pen and ink by me for that purpose. In this state what I can collect through the day remains on any paper which I may have at hand till the business of the day is despatched and my shop shut, when, in the midst of my family, I endeavor to analyze such thoughts as had crossed my mind during the day. I have no study, I have no retirement. I write amid the cries and cradles of my children; and frequently when I review what I have written, endeavor to cultivate ‘the art to blot.’ Such are the methods which I have pursued, and such the disadvantages under which I write.”
“His usual seat,” adds his son, “after closing the business of the day, was a low nursing-chair beside the kitchen-fire. Here, with the bellows on his knees for a desk, and the usual culinary and domestic matters in progress around him, his works, prior to 1805, were chiefly written.”
Samuel Drew’s life as a shoemaker came to an end with the year 1805. It will not be possible for us to give in detail the events which fill up the remainder of his honorable career. Nor is it needful; the chief interest of his history lies in that portion of it which shows us the self-taught Cornishman plying his lowly craft while he lays the foundation for his fame as a theologian. His preaching engagements were very numerous from the time when he was first put on the Wesleyan preachers’ “plan,” and they were never suspended until within a few weeks of his death. His status as a local preacher was of the very best, and frequently brought him into the company of the leading men of his denomination. His friendship with Mr., now Dr., Adam Clarke, one of the leading men among the Wesleyans, had been maintained from the time when Clarke was on the St. Austell circuit. The good name acquired by Drew as a literary man, and his high standing among his own religious society, led to his appointment under Dr. Coke, the founder of the Wesleyan Methodist Missions. The shoemaker now abandoned the awl and last for the pen, and devoted himself, as a secretary and joint-editor, entirely to literary work. He assisted Dr. Coke in preparing for the press his “Commentary on the New Testament,” “History of the Bible,” and other works. In 1806, through Dr. Adam Clarke’s influence, Drew began to contribute to the Eclectic Review. Before he had abandoned the shoemaker’s stall the materials for another theological work had been collected and partly prepared for publication. Having treated the question of the Immortality of the Soul, he had wished, and was strongly urged by several clerical friends, to take up the subject of the “Identity and Resurrection of the Human Body.” A work bearing this title appeared in 1809, having been submitted in manuscript to his old friends the Revs. Mr. Whittaker and Mr. Gregor, and to Archdeacon Moore. It was not a little remarkable that men of this class should have been the foremost to patronize and aid the Methodist shoemaker in his literary enterprises, and that one of them should call himself “friend and admirer,“ while another spoke of feeling ”a pride and pleasure in being employed as the scourer of his armor.” The most extensive work Drew ventured to publish was entitled “A Treatise on the Being and Attributes of God.” This was undertaken at the earnest solicitation of Dr. Reid, then Professor of Oriental Languages at the Marischal College, Aberdeen, as a competition for a prize of £1500 offered for the best essay on that subject. Though this work failed to gain the first place in the list, it stood very high, and, certainly, it was no small testimony to its worth that it should have been deemed worthy to rank as a close competitor with the successful works of Dr. A. M. Brown, Principal of Marischal College, and the Rev. J. B. Sumner, afterward Bishop of Chester and Archbishop of Canterbury. Drew’s treatise was not published till 1820, when it came out in two octavo volumes. In 1813 he published a controversial pamphlet on the Divinity of Christ, which had a large sale, and for which, such was the value now set on his writings, his publisher, Mr. Edwards, paid as much as he had previously given for the Essay on the Soul. Under the direction of F. Hitchens, Esq., of St. Ives, Drew now took up a laborious task which had been in that gentleman’s hands for several years, and brought it to completion. This was the publication of a History of Cornwall. It appeared in 1815-17, and consisted of 1500 quarto pages, all of which “was sent to the printer in his,“ Drew’s, ”own manuscript.” At the request of the executors of Dr. Coke, Drew published a memoir of his friend, which appeared in 1817. This task made a visit to London necessary. Here the learned shoemaker met with the Rev. Legh Richmond, author of “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” and with Dr. Mason of New York. He was, of course, asked to preach in several London “circuits,” where his fame as a writer had preceded him. His “uncouth and unclerical appearance,” for he wore top-boots and light-colored breeches, excited no small curiosity; but his excellent preaching and delightful simplicity and modesty of manner awoke universal respect. The preacher was fifty years of age (1815) when he paid this visit to the metropolis, and it was the first time he had travelled more than a few miles from the locality where he was born.
But a journey of more importance still was taken in 1819, when he went down to Liverpool to negotiate for the editorship of a new magazine to be issued from the Caxton Establishment, then in the hands of Mr. Fisher. Drew was finally engaged as permanent editor on this establishment, and the publication of which he had the management, bearing the title, The Imperial Magazine, became a complete success. Though sold at one shilling, it had a circulation of 7000 during the first year. The destruction of the premises by fire compelled the removal of the Caxton Establishment to London, where Drew remained at the post of editor for the rest of his life. In 1824 the degree of A.M. was conferred on him by the Marischal College, Aberdeen. We have alluded to the request made by some members of the Council of the London University, that he would allow himself to be nominated for the Chair of Moral Philosophy. This request was made in 1830; but Samuel Drew, who was now sixty-five years of age, was beginning to feel the effects of his long life of hard work, and to sigh for rest. His chief wish was to end his days in his native county, among the scenes of his boyhood and youth, and amid the associations that clustered round the place where he had first learned to think and write, and make for himself a name in the world of letters. This wish was hardly fulfilled; for, holding on to his daily routine of office work from year to year in the hope of retiring with a competence for himself and his children, he was at length compelled on 2d March, 1833, the last day of his sixty-eighth year, to lay down his pen. His life-work was now over. Within a few days he left London for the home of his daughter at Helston in Cornwall, where on the 29th of March he died. It was his comfort, during the last days of his life, to be surrounded by a circle of deeply attached relatives, and on several occasions, when his head was supported by one of his children, he repeated the lines of his favorite poem, the “Elegy” by Gray:
“On some fond breast the parting soul relies:
Some pious drops the closing eye requires.”
His faith in the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, which he had so ably advocated, afforded him profound consolation in his last hours. On the day before his death he said, with all the eagerness of keen anticipation, “Thank God, to-morrow I shall join the glorious company above!”
Monuments to his memory were erected over the grave in Helston Churchyard, and in the Wesleyan chapel and parish church at St. Austell. On each of these the inhabitants of his native town and county bore strong testimony to the affection and regard felt by all who knew him for the “self-taught Cornish metaphysician.”