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OF THE

VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.

"The Village Blacksmith' is altogether one of the most interesting volumes of its kind, and the best written we have met with. No one can take it up without the certainty of reaping instruction and delight. Mr. E. has exhibited the continued sweetness and playfulness of beautiful imagery which distinguishes his prose, and in every page tells us in spite of himself, it is Prose by a Poet.' Its peculiar feature is graceful simplicity, with poetry oozing through every sentence. His arguments are clear and forcible, expressed in language generally elegant; and we feel that we are perusing the pages not only of a man of genius, but of an ardent, active, and cheerful Christian. And with all, there is a tone of delightful pleasantry, half-concealed in the writings of Mr. E., which is often placed under unnecessary restraint." ECLECTIC REVIEW, Oct. 1831.

"The simplicity of Samuel Hick often bordered on the ridiculous, and it required not only tenderness and experience, but the penetration and judgment of a master of the human heart to discriminate between them. The literary merits of this work are as superior to the maudlin mass of religious memoirs, as the comet-coursed village blacksmith was unlike the amiable, but inanimate personages, of whom they bear witness. We recommend the Village Blacksmith,' as likely to amuse, instruct, and edify-and the volume as containing more pure, manly, and beautiful English, than is to be found in any half-dozen modern novels. A poet's prose,

where it is not inflated, is the best of all prose; and in the work before us, Mr. Everett's aste and judgment have fortunately prevented him from falling into the common error; and he has introduced only so much imagination and metaphor as to elevate the subject, delight the reader, and to throw over the whole the quiet and pure spirit of his own muse."

THE ATHENAUM, Nov. 19, 1831.

"An interesting Memoir was published a few months ago of the life of Samuel Hick, late of Micklefield, Yorkshire, the details of which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they appear more in the character of a romance than real life."

MANCHESTER CHRONICLE, July 30, 1831.

"The volume now lying before us epitomizes the life of a blacksmith, distinguished for his integrity and piety, and who has been very useful in his day and generation. It is written in an easy, graceful style; and it cannot fail to interest those whose hearts can warm to the expressions of sincerity and benevolence, which breathe through every page."

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, April, 1832.

"Perhaps few men, besides Mr. Everett himself, could have constructed, had they been so disposed, such a goodly fabric, or, to pursue the inetaphor, have produced such a dish, ont of such materials; for in the crudity of those very materials is to be seen the skill of the artificer, who makes light shine out of darkness, speaks confusion into order, and throws a eharm around what else had been repulsive to both sight and taste. Yet audid innumerable disadvantages, there was one advantage in the subject alone, which the writer appears to have had prophecy of soul sufficient to foresee would arrest the attention of the reader, like the Gery brilliancy of a comet, exclusive of its erratic course. With the exception of the Vulcan of the heathen, and the knot-tier of Gretna-green, we know of no artificer in brass and iron,' not even Tubal-Cain himself, the secrets of whose history would be more interesting than those of The Village Blacksmith,' and in the life of no one of them will be found such an instructor."" IMPERIAL MAGAZINE, April, 1832.

"This is a singular little work, furnishing another very remarkable history of human cha racter acted upon by ideas of religion, which it were hard to characterize as too enthusiastic when stamped by so much of charity and good works. We have not for a long time seen a volume which we read with more curiosity and pleasure-curiosity in following the developement of the character of the natural and simple man, in his rough but honest and untutored, and often singularly correct views of things, and pleasure at that unwearied pursuit of good, which marked every moment of his life. His dreams, his mental impressions, his self-denials, his sympathy for the poor, his undaunted carriage in respect to what he thought was right, his untutored dialect, his firmness under persecution, and the quaintness of his manners, are all delightful. One thing, however, must be noted by way of detracting from the subject of the memoir, as the whole cause of our satisfaction in perusing it, and that is-the excellence of the composition-the neatness and clearness of the writer's style, and the charming simplicity which prevails throughout. Hick was himself what Coleridge would call a psychological curiosity, and the memoir is not less a curiosity for its purity and elegance.The Life of Hick should be in the hands of every Christian philosopher; it is a most interesting account of a mind deeply impressed with religion, and furnishing a beautiful exemplification of the outpouring of a simple, benevolent, untutored spirit, full of hope and enthusiasm."

THE METROPOLITAN LITERARY JOURNAL, May, 1832.

THE

Village Blacksmith;

OR,

PIETY AND USEFULNESS EXEMPLIFIED.

IN A

MEMOIR

OF THE LIFE OF

SAMUEL HICK,

LATE OF MICKLEFIELD,

Yorkshire.

BY JAMES EVERETT.

"That not only the maxims, but the grounds of a pure morality, the mere fragments of which
the lofty grave tragedians taught in chorus or iambic,' and that the sublime truths of the divine
unity and attributes, which a Plato found most hard to learn and deemed it still more difficult to
reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty,
of the hovel and the workshop; that even to the unlettered they sound as common-place, is a
phenomenon which must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk."

COLERIDGE'S Biographia Literaria, vol. I. p. 226.

THE FOURTH EDITION.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.; AND
J. MASON, 66, PATER-NOSTER-ROW.

1832.

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
GIFT OF THE

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

nov 10.1938

EVERETT AND THOMPSON, PRINTERS, 10, Market street, Manchester

F

CHAPTER I.

b

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