“I beg, I entreat you, if you value the honour of the Gospel,
that, you will dissuade those polite persons you mention,
from coming to hear me to-morrow. My spirits sink more and
more, I am visited with some returns of my hacking cough;
perhaps I shall not be able to speak at all. Such disagreeable
circumstances will only expose me, and create in them very
unpleasing ideas of what I shall deliver. My imagination
is gone. I am sensible my sermons are flat, and my voice
spiritless. The poor country people love me tenderly, and,
therefore, bear with my infirmities; else, I should no longer
attempt to preach, even before them. I am now unfit to appear
in the pulpit.”
In the midst of all this, Hervey commenced the rebuilding of his
parsonage; and, besides the vexations usually connected with such
undertakings, he had to suffer the annoyance of the builder, with
which he had contracted, decamping, before the erection was completed,
and exposing poor Hervey to the worry of being dunned by the rogue’s
disappointed creditors.[251]
Hervey was more sensitive than he thought he was; and the combined
circumstances just mentioned painfully affected him. In the excitement of
his feelings, he began to prepare a shilling pamphlet, in reply to the
_Critical Review_, which had designated Jenks’s Meditations “ridiculous
and enthusiastic.” With greater vulgarity than refinement, they had been
described “like hairs on the greasy coat of a groom, or like dish-water
thrown down the kennel.” Malevolence like this was too contemptible to be
noticed; and, yet, Hervey put himself to considerable inconvenience in
writing, “Ned Dry’s Apology for the Critical Reviewers,”—a pamphlet which
he intended to be a satirical castigation of his nameless opponents,
as well as a vindication of Mr. Jenks and of himself. It was a mistake
to notice anonymous revilers at all; and it was an additional mistake
for Hervey to attempt to compose a satire. His mind was too exquisitely
refined, and his soul too loving, to succeed in literary flagellation. He
was himself in doubt respecting this, and wrote to Mr. Ryland as follows:—
“I have not had the pleasure of seeing the _Critical Review_
for December; but, I find, from the advertisements in the
public papers, that they take Mr. Jenks and his recommender to
task. I am not disappointed; I expected no quarter from them.
“You would smile, and be a little surprised, if you were to
see what employed my spare hours almost all last week. I never
had such an inclination for buffoonery in all my life. It
was occasioned by the unworthy and abusive treatment which
the Reviewers bestow upon all the most valuable writers that
appear in public; and, I verily think, if their insolence can
be curbed, it must be done in obedience to that command of
unerring wisdom, ‘Answer a fool according to his folly.’”