In 1814 Samuel Drew undertook his most voluminous work, the _History of Cornwall_, one which he was wholly unqualified to undertake, as he had no familiarity with the MS. material on which that history should be based; and it was a mere compilation from already printed matter. In 1819 Samuel Drew removed to Liverpool, where he acted as local preacher in the Methodist meeting-houses. To this period belongs the epigram written on him by Dr. Clarke:-- Long was the man, and long was his hair, And long was the coat which this long man did wear. He became editor of the _Imperial Magazine_, and after a short while in Liverpool, migrated to London. In 1828 he lost his wife. "When my wife died," he was wont to say, "my earthly sun set for ever." In 1833 he returned to Cornwall, and died at Helston on March 29th, at the age of sixty-eight. Slender in form, with a head remarkably small for the length of his limbs, his stature exceeded the common height. He had a searching and intelligent eye, was somewhat uncouth in his movements, but was full of energy of mind and body. He sometimes wrote verses, which only a very partial biographer would call poetry. But what he prided himself on being was not a poet, but a metaphysician. The story goes that S. Augustine was walking one day by the seashore, musing on the attributes of God and on the demonstration of the Divine nature, when he saw a child digging a hole in the sand, and then with a fan-shell ladling the sea-water into the hole it had made. S. Augustine paused and asked, "My child, what are you about?" "I am going to empty the sea into this hole," replied the child. Then S. Augustine entered into himself and thought: "Can a man with the limited capacity of his brain embrace the infinity of the Divine nature and perfections? Is it not like emptying the sea into a tiny hole to try to effect this?" Drew's life labours were just doing this. There was a certain amount of intellectual ingenuity in his arguments, but that was all. Not a leaf that he wrote is of any permanent value, but that it was of value at the time when he wrote I should be the last to deny. There is abundant material for a life of Samuel Drew. Not only may it be found in the life by his son mentioned at the head of this article, and in his own biographical memoir given by R. Polwhele, but his son J. H. Drew also published a second memoir, under the title _Samuel Drew, M. A., the Self-Taught Cornishman; A Life Lesson_, published in 1861; also in _Lives of the Illustrious_, by J. P. Edwards, 1852; and Mr. Smiles has devoted some pages to him in _Self-Help_, 1866. The portrait of Samuel Drew is given as frontispiece to the first volume of _The Imperial Magazine_, 1819, and also to the _Life_ by his son. FOOTNOTE: [25] Samuel Drew says at the age of five, but this was a slip of his pen or a mistake of the printer; his mother died in 1774. THE SIEGE OF SKEWIS