Borlase a Persecutor of the Methodists.

395 genius, or to smile at the mode of his own deliverance; or rather, perhaps, to look out upon the vast wilderness of swelling waters, and breathe a psalm to Him who stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, and the madness of the peoples' But where was the doctor? He had committed himself by a foolish attempt at committing other people; and now, like a fox who runs to his earth for fear of a disagreeable encounter, he probably hid himself in the church, to avoid an open-faced interview with those whom he was afraid or ashamed to meet. The poor doctor was never at home as a 'defender of the faith,' or as an ecclesiastical censor, or as a public regulator of religions thought, and action. Such work was not suited to his genius. He had failed as a farmer, and proved as a persecutor by no means adapted to his business. It is somewhat curious that the leading représentatives of Cornish genius and learning should have arrayed themselves decidedly against early Methodism, full of promise as it evidently was of happy influence over the rude and ungodly masses. And their hostility was the more remarkable as its style and results were in so many instances such as to place their persons and character in a ridiculous light. John Wesley wondered how Dr. Borlase, a person of unquestioned sense and learning, could speak evil of this way," after he had seen such a change in the most abandoned of his parishioners. The doctor, however, was not alone in this. Among others of his class who acted a similar part and followed him in his animosities as well as his line of antiquarian and historical distinction, was R. Polwhele, Vicar of Newlyn and St. Anthony, and author of Histories of Cornwall and Devon, Traditions and Recollections, domestic, clerical, and literary,' with various Reminiscences in Prose and Verse.' Borlase exercised his genius against his Methodist neighbours chiefly in his character of magistrate. Polwhele brought his pen into the same service. Nor can we on the whole regret this as it secured for us the knowledge of the fact, that among the clerical literati of which Cornwall could then boast, there was one whose example formed a pleasing exception to the persecutive spirit and action of his class. This was Polwhele's friend and correspondent, John Whitaker, the antagonist of Macpherson, the vindicator of Mary of Scots, the writer of that interesting embodiment of rich learning, philosophical acumen, and beautiful thought and expression, the History of Manchester and that charming collection of antiquarian lore and quiet humour, the Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall;' in which he hopes particularly to lighten up the dark history of commencing Christianity in this angle of the island; covered as it is with a

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thick fog, raised by that druidical wizzard Borlase, and appearing, whenever it does appear, in a form totally dissimilar from itself.' Whitaker was as keenly alive to the undignified posture of men like Borlase and Polwhele, in their character of foolish intermeddlers with the religious convictions of their neighbours, as he seems to have been to their literary inconsistencies and errors. The rebuke which he administered to the fussy Polwhele, under the colour of criticism, on one of his missives against Methodism, as represented by Dr. Hawker, is worthy of mark. 'When I wrote to you with some hesitation of doubt about the nature of your intended work, I suppose you meant to go into "the follies of Calvinism," to expose them; I never imagined that you meant to attack the very point in Dr. Hawker which has always made him respected and revered in my eyes,-what a world of fools denominates his Methodism. I have lived too long in the world, and felt too much the world's hatred of all vital religiousness, not to know the term as merely the former's nick-name for the latter. I have been through life, and so (I believe) has every man who was seriously bent upon the promises of Christianity, marked with the appellation of Methodist. All my zeal for orthodoxy, all my warmth for the Church,-while you yourself have, at times, apprehended to mount above the cool atmosphere of charity,-have not been able to save me from the appellation. This alone will show satisfactorily to every man, that Methodism has not been, and is not, opposed in general from any zeal, any warmth, for either orthodoxy or the Church, but from a very different principle, from a dislike to the seriousness of spirit, from a hostility to the devoutness of life in the persons branded as Methodists. And I see this to have been also the case with Dr. Hawker; a man whom I know not personally, whom I know as an author only by one work, and whom I have heard repeatedly abused; but have always found abused at the bottom for his Methodism, his sanctity, his hypocrisy, or whatever else irreligion chose to lay upon him. I was, therefore, much hurt, when I found you had joined with the herd of the world's naturals in assaulting his Methodism. You say, "I am assured that Methodism has, from its first rise to its present insolent boasting been alarmingly injurious to the community." This is a most pregnant falsehood. It has been amazingly beneficial. It has turned the wretched heathens in the Forest of Dean, and thousands of heathens as wretched in the collieries all over the kingdom, together with the profligate rabble of all our great towns, into sober, serious, professed, and practical Christians. And I should be happy to see my own parishioners all Methodists at this moment. But I must leave

Whitaker's Defence of Methodism.

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you; only remarking, that I borrowed Ben Mordecai when I answered him; when (as I will say) I refuted his whole work in a single note. I took the two parts of his work, knocked them together, and so demolished both. Just so, likewise, might I serve your pamphlet ; produce all the better parts of your address to Dr. Hawker, and then produce the all-condemning sentence of your own upon them: "Let us no more then interfere with one another in the spirit of contention, but let each individual pursue his course according to his belief and his conscience."' Had Polwhele profited by this expression of Christian spirit and wisdom, he would have saved his own memory from such a tribute as another criticism of Whitaker's continues to offer even to this day. 'Your anecdotes of Methodism,' says the writer, 'I fear, will be exposed to more objections. The lie of the day, the jest of the evening, or some revived tale concerning the Puritans in the last century, will compose (I suspect) the motley mass of scandal; and religion will suffer from all, I apprehend. You say, "as to the cantos on Methodistical jumpers' or on 'jumperism,' I will remand back the MS. from London, where it has been for months, and show it to you. If you think any part of it at all exceptionable, I will commit it to oblivion, in deference to your judgment, and in regard to you. I thank you for the compliment, but I must decline the acceptance of it. The compliment, indeed, is too great, in my opinion, to be paid to any one. You must be the sole judge of what you think fit to publish, especially in a case like this, when confessedly the suppression "will be really a sacrifice of your poems." Who would devote to the cord such a bantling as this? who would wish the father himself so to devote it?'

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If ever a true genius were to be checked in the abuse of his power, and the misappropriation of his time, John Whitaker's virtuous wit and faithful sarcasm would surely tell upon Polwhele; and, it may be, if Borlase had met with a correspondent good and learned, judicious and candid enough to guard him against experimenting upon the Methodists, and to correct his taste for Druidical necromancy, we might have enjoyed the legitimate fruits of his genius and learning, without being required so often to lament his mistakes. The doctor, however, did not always miss his way. His genius fell into the right track at last; nor are we disposed to withhold our gratitude to Pendeen. Place and circumstances had much to do with the ultimate successes of his mind and pen. He must be classed with the happy few who find within the range of their native province a sufficient supply of material for thought, subject for

research, and means of recreation. Some men's genius can find nothing to work upon or to play with at home. Nothing but distant fields, foreign wonders, far-away grandeurs and curiosities, can meet their demands. We confess, however, to our affectionate preference and deepest respect for the mind which finds its most agreeable exercise in immortalizing the distinctive advantages of its birth-place, or whose highest ambition it is to augment its neighbours' pleasure by giving a lasting interest to the scenes with which they are most familiar. And, if we are not mistaken, the growing value attached to good provincial histories, topographical records, and descriptions of local antiquities, indicates a widening prevalence of the feeling which we express. The healthy excitement which turned Dr. Borlase's mind into its proper and ultimately successful career, was produced seemingly by objects which clustered closely around his own dwelling. 'It is the usual observation of foreigners,' says he rather waggishly, and not inappropriately to our own times, that the English travellers are too little acquainted with their own country; and so far this may be true, that Englishmen (otherwise well qualified to appear in the world) go abroad in quest of the rarities of other countries, beforee they know sufficiently what their own contains. It must be likewise acknowledged that, when these foreign tours have been ompleted, and gentlemen return captivated with the medals, statues, pictures, and architectures of Greece and Italy, they have seldom any relish for the ruder products of ancient Britain. Thus what is foreign gets the start of what is at home, and maintains its prepossession. My situation in life (whatever my inclinations might be) confined me to a different track. I saw myself placed in the midst of monuments, the works of the ancient Britons, where there are few Grecian or Roman remains to be met with; my curiosity, therefore, could only be gratified by what was in its reach, and was confined to the study of our own antiquities: and my papers are the fruits of that study. Whether these fruits (if I may carry on the allusion) may suit the taste of all, I much question; but however fond we may be of the superior flavour and beauty of what comes from abroad, it would be very unwise in us to exclude every thing from our entertainments which our own country produces.' Not far from his home at Pendeen,-once enclosed, indeed, within the garden,-is a remarkable cave, the origin of which is wrapt in mystery. It is of artificial construction; and consists of three gallery-like apartments, one of them turning off at right angles just at the point where a narrow aperture forms the passage between the other two; the sides of two of

Borlase an Antiquarian.

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these apartments are walled with uncemented stones, the roof being arched at the entrance and otherwise composed of large flat stones.

Into this vau, as it is called, Borlase used to creep, perhaps, when a boy; and there, it may be, he began his speculations upon the ancient use of caves, aided by his first lesson from Tacitus about the subterranean retreats of the German tribes. His subsequent fondness for the dear old hole which he takes such pains to describe, may suggest that it took a leading part in the direction of his mind, if not in shaping the character of our Pendeen antiquary. In front of his house, too, on several of the wild hills of the coast moorlands, there is, here and there, a gigantic cromlech, looking, as the one at Chun does, like a monstrous fossil mushroom, left for the winds to play with; or like a huge reptile, petrified in the midst of its career across the height, such as the mysterious memorial called in the neighbourhood, Lanyon Quoit;' and 'put up in the giants' days,' as the peasants used to tell us. Familiar as these objects must have been to the eyes of Borlase, they had accumulative power over his soul, and were, we believe, the silent suggesters of those thoughts which became at last embodied in the books which keep his name alive. To the combined influence of these distinguishing features of his home scenery we probably owe his first volume, Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of Cornwall. If it is admitted that he who has mastered the geography of his native province has fairly established his claim as an authority in geographical science, and is most worthy of being trusted as a guide in the more general study of that science, we may confidently recommend those who wish to be happy and successful in the study of Cornish antiquities, or indeed the antiquities of our island at large, to receive Dr. Borlase as one of their first tutors. Nor will it be found that his book, antiquated as it seems to be, fails to make the present condition of Cornwall more interesting to the intelligent observer by reflecting upon it the light of the past. The first volume of the Doctor's is one of those books which supply the sincere student of antiquity with such clues to the past as really help him to discover and realize its life; so that he finds himself pleasantly taught to sympathize with generations of entirely different circumstances to his own. is by no means an easy task to make old times live again for the benefit and pleasure of the modern reader. It requires as much genius as learning. But our author's genius was quite equal to his work. He makes this evident at starting, by indicating his own style of dealing with antiquity. "In subjects of

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