PREFACE.

THERE are some circumstances respecting the succeeding Memoirs which require explanation, and others which need statement.

"If these Memoirs were written by the late Dr. Clarke, how happens it that they speak in the third person, and appear as though composed by an intimate friend?”. The third person was assumed in order to obviate an unpleasant appearance of egotism which Autobiography must always assume, more or less offensive, according to the skill of the Narrator. In this, Dr. Clarke did but follow the example of other great names, and availed himself of a disguise, previously made known to the Readers, that the mere Individual might not be perpetually obtruding himself upon their notice: the attention being fixed upon the passing events and described feelings, the Author temporarily forgotten, the judgment may be thus formed, not from the bias of Dr. Clarke's felt

presence, but from the facts as recorded in the Narrative:a mask which gives courage but conceals no feature.

Various members of his family, as well as some of his most intimate friends, frequently and urgently pressed Dr. Clarke to publish, or prepare for publication, a Memoir of himself; stating that this would be the only effectual mode of preventing false or weak productions being palmed upon the world as faithful Memoirs. To all representations, however, he remained deaf, till one day a friend came and told him, " he had received sure information of a Life of him being even then in preparation; that all his Conversations had been taken down, all his Letters treasured up, all his Observations noted, with the view of being embodied when the anticipated event should take place to call them into public being; that little discretion would be used in selecting; since, the object being gain, all would be published which would sell; and that even were some conscience shown, still there was no judgment to direct; but indiscreet zeal, or the hope of 'ungodly gains,' would slay his fame in the house of his friend."* Dr. Clarke felt the force of such observations,

* It is not one of the least remarkable facts connected with the life of Dr. Clarke, that the individual here alluded to died before the Doctor; and was visited by him and his youngest son during a long and tedious illness. There is a farther notice of this affair in the following Letter to his eldest son.

MY DEAR JOHN,

Liverpool, June 15, 1819.

SOME time ago, you wrote requesting me to set about writing the history of my Life; this is a task which, while I have contemplated,

and the next morning when he came down to breakfast, he said to his friend, "I have been up long before day,

I have feared to attempt; but I have thought more of the subject, since you wrote; and have lately been obliged to think deeply on it too, in consequence of receiving credible information, that my Life is ready for the greedy eye of the public, so soon as my heart shall be cold! I came here yesterday evening, and in a private conversation with my friend Mr.he most solemnly begged, and charged me to begin the work, because he knew some hackneyed, and hunger-bitten scriveners were ready to praise me to death, and to murder me in verse so soon as I ceased to exist among men; and I was led to believe that all the conversations, and anecdotes relative to myself and family for several years past, have been carefully taken down, and as carefully preserved. Mr. Comer took up the same subject, and most earnestly begged me instantly to begin, and defer it no longer. Well, what can I do? the Commentary is still hanging on my hands. True, I am free from the Records, which gives me a measure of leisure, and saves me from much anxiety; laying all these considerations together, with the semel calcanda via, and Mr. Comer being in good earnest, and having provided and laid on his study table ruled paper for the purpose, I sat down yesterday and made a trial! * * * * And thus have I brought myself on in my journey through life, to the ninth year of my age: and unless death stop me, I shall not stop in it till this be finished. I have written it in the third person as to the subject, and in the first person as to the narrator. This form may be altered if necessary. I recollect, when Mr. Thorsby wrote his own life, the pronoun I occurred so often in it, that the printer was obliged to borrow I's from his brother printers, as his I's had run out. Your father has never been in the habit of speaking much of himself; he has never boasted, nor pretended great things; and it would ill become him, when about to pass the great deep, to occupy his time, or that of his Readers, with unreal history, or unceremonious, and, generally speaking, unwelcome pronouns. Now, suggest to me, my dear John, any thing that strikes you-any thing I should not forget, or any thing on which I should lay particular stress, &c. &c.

July 3. I go on but slowly with the Life; and yet I get on. A few pages more might terminate what may be called my initial and religious history, and here I might leave it, for all the purposes of illustrating either God's providence or His grace. My literary life, as it may be called, is another thing; and belongs more to the world, than to the Church of God; and I question if ever I shall attempt it.

and have written several quarto sheets of my very close and small writing as a commencement of the history of my early life." This he continued, at various short intervals, till be brought it down to a period beyond which no inducement or solicitation could persuade him to proceed. "My early life," [much in this manner he would speak,] "no one can know; nor can any one describe my feelings and God's dealings with my soul, some of which are the most important circumstances in my life, and are of most consequence to the religious world :-these I have now secured, and placed in their proper light-what therefore others could neither have known nor described so truly as I, are here prevented from being lost-my public life many have known, and it is before the world; if it be of importance, there will be found some who will transmit its events to posterity; and being passed before the eyes of all men, should there be misrepresentations, there will necessarily be plenty who can correct them:: at any rate, I have done what I feel to be the most important part; for the rest, there are ample materials; and, as the living will, in all probability, write of the dead, let my survivors do their part.-Nothing shall ever induce me to write the history of that portion of my life when I began to acquire fame, and great and learned men saw fit to dignify with their acquaintance, and to bestow honours and distinctions on, a Methodist Preacher." In this resolution he never for a moment wavered, and hence there was no more of his Life written by himself than what is contained in the present volume.

When Dr. Clarke was told of the above intention to publish after his death all that he had either written or spoken in the confidence of private friendship, or in the familiar intercourse of occasional conversations, he was very indignant, expressing his abhorrence of such “ premeditated treachery," as a man's coming into a family to act the part of a spy,-to record mutilated opinions, hand down disjointed conversations, and to proclaim as the result of deliberate judgment what might have been either a hasty expression of feeling, or a merely casual or unimportant remark:-"In conversation or correspondence I never either spoke or wrote for the public; friendly intercourse was my sole object in the one case, and in the other relaxation from severe thought; after I have been writing and studying from five in the morning till halfpast seven at night, it is hardly likely that I should come into the parlour with a disposition or preparation to shine.I write because it is necessary, and I talk because I am cheerful and happy." The strong feeling of Dr. Clarke on this point is thus recorded, that the Public may not hereafter be deluded upon the subject, as if he had au thorized any to take down any of his conversation on any occasion: he had too much respect for the good sense and regard of mankind ever to come before them with inconsideration; and was the last man in the world ever to be himself a party consenting to the wounding of his hard-earned fame by the publication of unprepared documents. Such conduct he always considered as treacherous in a friend, disgraceful to a man, and shameful to a Chris