James Hervey, with great appropriateness, was designated by Charles Wesley, the “Isocrates” of the Oxford Methodists.[141] The old Greek rhetorician was not an orator; the weakness of his voice and his natural timidity prevented that; but the polish of his style in writing and the harmonious construction of his sentences obtained for him a fame which seems to be undying. And so in regard to Hervey. He lacked Whitefield’s eloquence, and Wesley’s constructive faculty; but he had a peculiar mental quality, which invested his productions with an air of gracefulness beyond the power of either of his friends to imitate. Critics, great and small, genuine and pretentious, have condemned Hervey’s style; and yet, notwithstanding this, few books have passed through more editions than his have done; and, after the lapse of a hundred years since their author’s death, few are greater favourites at the present day. Why is this? Perhaps some of his censors can answer the question. James Hervey, like the Wesleys and Gambold, was the son of a country clergyman. He was born at Hardingstone, near Northampton, on the 26th of February, 1714; his father holding the two neighbouring livings of Weston-Favel and Collingtree. His ancestors appear to have been highly respectable. One of them was a judge; another had been member of Parliament for the town of Northampton; and the patronage of the above-mentioned livings had been, for many years, in the possession of the family. Until the age of seven, Hervey was under the tuition of his mother. He then became a day-scholar in the free grammar school at Northampton, where he displayed great dexterity in the usual gymnastic exercises of boys like himself; and where, in the course of ten years, he learned enough of the Latin and Greek languages, to enable him to matriculate at the Oxford University. His progress, however, would probably have been greater than what it was, had it not been for the execrable conduct of his master, who determined that no one in the school should learn faster than his own stupid son. “Hervey himself told me,” says Mr. Ryland, “that his master never made but one remark in reading the Greek Testament, and that was a very foolish one.” When only a boy, seventeen years of age, Hervey, full of youthful frolic, left the quietude of his father’s house for the animated scenes, the high advantages, and peculiar dangers of collegiate life. It was something infinitely more sacred than an accident which led to his admission into Lincoln College, where Wesley was a fellow and a tutor, and where, for the last two years, the Methodists had frequently held their meetings.[142]