Those who judge of Hervey by his works might be tempted to think that he was affected and unreal.  In fact, he was quite the reverse.  When writing for the polite world,[800] his style was odiously florid; but his sermons for his simple parishioners were plain and natural both in style and substance.  Personally he was a man of simple habits and genuine piety, a good son and brother, an excellent parish priest, and a patient sufferer under many physical infirmities.  He had no exaggerated opinion of his own intellectual powers.  ‘My friend,’ he said to Mr. Ryland, ’I have not a strong mind; I have not powers fitted for arduous researches; but I think I have a power of writing in somewhat of a striking manner, so far as to please mankind and recommend my dear Redeemer.’[801] This was really the great object of his life, ’to recommend his dear Redeemer;’ and if he effected this object by writing what may appear to us poor stuff, we need not quarrel with him, but may rather be thankful that he did not write in vain.

Grimshaw of Haworth (1708-1763) was another clergyman of the last century who formed a connecting link between the Methodists proper and the later Evangelical school.  On the one hand, he was an intimate friend of the Wesleys and other leaders of the Methodist movement, both lay and clerical; he welcomed them at Haworth and lent them his pulpit; he took part in the work of itinerancy, and, in fact, threw himself heart and soul into the Methodist cause.  On the other hand, he was, from the beginning to the end of his ministerial career, a parochial clergyman; he does not appear to have been indebted to Methodism for his first serious impressions, and he maintained his position as a moderate Calvinist, though he wisely kept quite clear of the controversy and never came into collision with his friend Wesley on this fruitful subject of dispute.  The scenes of his energetic and successful labours were the moors about Haworth, the bleak physical desolation of which was only too true a picture of the moral and spiritual desolation of their population before this good man awakened them to spiritual life.  The eccentricities of ‘mad Grimshaw’ have probably been exaggerated; for one knows how, when a man acquires a reputation of this sort, every ridiculous story which happens to be current is apt to be fathered upon him.  No doubt he was eccentric; he possessed a quaint humour which was not unusual in the early Evangelical school; but he never allowed himself to be so far carried away by this spirit as to bring ridicule upon the cause which he had at heart.

If it were the object of these sketches to make people laugh, Grimshaw’s life would furnish us with a fruitful subject of amusement.  How he dressed himself up as an old woman in order to discover who were the disturbers of his cottage lectures; how he sold his Alderney cow because ‘she would follow him up into the pulpit;’ how a visitor at Haworth looked out of his bedroom window one morning and saw