The poverty of his parents prevented him from receiving many of the advantages of an early education. He however learned to form the letters of the alphabet, previous to his mother’s death, but at eight years of age, he was taken from school, and sent to work at a mill near his father’s cottage, where tinners refined their ore. His wages were at first three halfpence, and were afterward advanced to two pence per day. When rather more than ten years old, his father bound him an apprentice for nine years, to a shoemaker, in an adjoining parish. During his apprenticeship, Drew had occasional access to a little publication called the “Weekly Entertainer,” which was then extensively circulated in the west of England, and contained many tales and narratives which interested him. Into the narratives of adventures connected with the war of the American revolution, he entered with all the zeal of a partisan on the side of the Americans. He felt a strong desire to join himself to a privateer, but having no money and few clothes, the idea and scheme were vain. Besides these periodicals, he read but little, and nearly lost the art of writing. The treatment he received, while an apprentice, being such as his disposition could not brook, he left his master when about seventeen, and refused to return. His father compounded for the residue of the term, and procured him employment, and further instruction in his business, at Millbrook, near Plymouth, in which place and neighborhood he continued about three years. In 1785, when about twenty years of age, he went to St. Austell, to conduct the shoemaking business for a person who was by trade a saddler, and had acquired some knowledge of book-binding. With this employer he continued about two years, and then commenced business as a shoemaker in that town, on his own account. A miller with whom he was acquainted, lent him five pounds, as capital in trade, fourteen shillings being the total of his own cash, his thirst for knowledge having induced him to lay out in books such money as he could save from his earnings as a journeyman. He joined the methodist society in 1785, soon after becoming the subject of religious impressions, under the preaching of the celebrated Adam Clarke, with whom he soon afterward became acquainted; and the friendship and intimacy of that distinguished divine, Mr. Drew continued to enjoy through life. By no one were the peculiar and extraordinary talents developed by Mr. Drew, more fully appreciated than by his friend Doctor Clarke. Soon after joining the methodists, Mr. Drew’s abilities were called into exercise; he was appointed to the charge of a class, and employed as a local preacher. In this field, except as a class-leader, which he resigned into other hands, he continued to labor until a few months before his decease.