“We have been this morning to hear Rowland Hill. Mrs.
Hughes called at his house last week to know when he would
preach, and was answered by a demure-looking woman, that (the Lord willing) her
master would preach on Sunday morning at half-past ten, and in the evening at
six. So this morning I set off with E.
May, Mrs. and Anne Rickman. We were in good time and got
into the free seats, where there were a few poor people, one of whom told us to
go round to another door and we should be admitted. Another door we found, with
orders that the doorkeepers should take no money for admittance, and a request
that no person would enter in pattens. Doorkeeper there was none, and we
therefore ventured in and took our seats upon a bench beside some decent old
women. One of these, with the help of another and busier old piece of feminity,
desired us to remove to a bench behind us, close to the wall; the seats we had
taken, they said, belonged to particular persons, but if we would sit where she
directed till the service was over, we should then be invited into the pews if
there was room. I did not immediately understand this, nor what we were to do
in the pews when the service was at an end, till I recollected that in most
schism shops the sermon is looked upon as the main thing for which the
congregation assemble. This was so much the case
| Ætat. 48. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 155 |
“I suppose what is properly called the morning service had been performed at an early hour, for we had only the communion service. Rowland Hill’s pulpit is raised very high, and before it at about half the height is the reader’s desk on his right, and the clerk’s on his left, the clerk being a very grand personage with a sonorous voice. The singing was so general and so good that I joined in it, and, doubtless, made it better by the addition of my voice. During the singing, after Rowland had made his prayer before the sermon, we, as respectable strangers, were beckoned from our humble places by a gentleman in one of the pews. Mrs. R—— and her daughter were stationed in one pew between two gentlemen of Rowland’s flock, and E. May and I in another, between a lady and a person corresponding very much in countenance to the character of a tight boy in the old Methodistical magazines. He was very civil, and by finding out the hymns for me, and presenting me with the book, enabled me to sing, which I did to admiration.
“Rowland, a fine
tall old man, with strong features, very like his portrait, began by reading
three verses for his text, stooping to the book in a very peculiar manner.
Having done this, he stood up erect and said, ‘Why the text is a
sermon, and a very weighty one too.’ I could not always follow
his delivery, the loss of his teeth rendering his words
| 156 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 48. |
“One remark I must not omit. I never before understood
the unfitness of our language for music. Whenever there was an s in the word, the sound
| Ætat. 48. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 157 |
“Lane is making a picture which promises to be as good as Phillips’s print is bad, base, vile, vulgar, odious, hateful, detestable, abominable, execrable, and infamous. The rascally mezzotinto scraper has made my face fat, fleshy, silly, and sensual, and given the eyes an expression which I conceive to be more like two oysters in love than anything else. But Lane goes on to the satisfaction of every body, and will neither make me look like an assassin, a Methodist preacher, a sensualist, nor a prig.
“God bless you!
