(This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1866 edition by Bell & Daldy, London.
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He was born in a small farmhouse near Halifax, Yorkshire, on the 17th of September 1770. Partly from constitutional causes, but partly also from the want of proper companions, as well as from the grave and severe habits of his parents, his earlier years were enshrouded in a somewhat gloomy and sombre atmosphere, which was never afterwards wholly dissipated.
The small income accruing to Foster's parents from their farm they supplemented by weaving, and at an early age he began to assist them by spinning wool by the hand wheel, and from his fourteenth year by weaving double stuffs. Even "when a child", however, he had the "feelings of a foreigner in the place"; and though he performed his monotonous task with conscientious diligence, he succeeded so indifferently in fixing his wandering thoughts upon it that his work never without difficulty passed the ordeal of inspection. He had acquired a great taste for reading, to gratify which he sometimes shut himself up alone in a barn, afterwards working at his loom "like a horse", to make up for lost time. He had also at this period "a passion for making pictures with a pen". Shortly after completing his seventeenth year he became a member of the Baptist church at Hebden Bridge, with which his parents were connected; and with the view of preparing himself for the ministerial office he began about the same time to attend a seminary at Brearley Hall conducted by his pastor Dr Fawcett. After remaining three years at Brearley Hall he was admitted to the Baptist College, Bristol, and on finishing his course of study at this institution he obtained an engagement at Newcastle- on-Tyne, where he preached to an audience of less than a hundred persons, in a small and dingy room situated near the river at the top of a flight of steps called Tuthill Stairs. At Newcastle he remained only three months. In the beginning of 1793 he proceeded to Dublin, where, after failing as a preacher, he attempted to revive a classical and mathematical school, but with so little success that he did not prosecute the experiment for more than eight or nine months. From 1797 to 1799 he was minister of a Baptist church at Chichester, but though he applied himself with more earnestness and perseverance than formerly to the discharge of his ministerial duties, his efforts produced little apparent impression, and the gradual diminution of his hearers necessitated his resignation. After employing himself for a few months at Battersea in the instruction of twenty African youths brought to England by Zachary Macaulay, with the view of having them trained to aid as missionaries to their fellow-countrymen, he in 1800 accepted the charge of a small congregation at Downend, Bristol, where he continued about four years. In 1804, chiefly through the recommendation of Robert Hall, he became pastor of a congregation at Frome, but a swelling in the thyroid gland compelled him in 1806 to resign his charge. He now became a regular contributor to the ‘Eclectic Review, ’ his first article, a review of Carr's ‘Stranger in Ireland, ’ appearing in November 1806, and he continued to write for it till 1839, his last paper being published in July of that year. Altogether he contributed to it 184 articles, a number of which have been republished in his ‘Contributions, Biographical, Literary, and Philosophical, to the “Eclectic Review”’ (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1844). He has left a vivid description of ‘the long garret’ in his house here, ‘crowded and loaded with papers and books, ’ with a gangway between them in which he walked while composing. About a year after his marriage his throat so far recovered as to allow him to resume occasional preaching, and towards the end of 1817 he again took charge of the congregation at Downend. In 1821 he gave it up and went to live at Stapleton, Gloucestershire. In 1818, while at Downend, he had published his ‘Discourse on Missions. ’ In 1822 he began to lecture fortnightly in Broadmead Chapel, Bristol, ‘to a congregation quite miscellaneous, and, in the most perfect sense of the word, voluntary’ (letter, 3 July 1822). At the end of two years bad health forced him to make the lectures monthly, and in 1825, on Robert Hall's commencing his ministry in Bristol, he felt himself eclipsed, and ceased them altogether. Two volumes of these lectures were published. Meanwhile, in 1820, he had published his essay ‘On the Evils of Popular Ignorance, ’ the germ of which was a sermon preached on behalf of the British and Foreign School Society in 1818. It speedily went into a second edition, being revised with merciless particularity. In 1825 he completed his introductory essay to Doddridge's ‘Rise and Progress of Religion’ for the series of ‘Select Christian Authors’ published by William Collins of Glasgow. On 24 September 1843 he took to his room, and on Sunday morning, 15 October, he was found dead in bed.
In 1806 he published the volume of Essays on which his literary fame most largely if not mainly rests. They were written in the form of letters addressed to the lady whom he afterwards married, and consist of four papers, "On a Man writing Memoirs of himself"; "On Decision of Character"; " On the Application of the Epithet Romantic"; and "On some Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been rendered unacceptable to Men of Cultivated Taste. " The success of this work was immediate, and was so considerable that on resigning his charge he determined to adopt literature as his profession.
(This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)
Politically, he was a republican in early life, but though he ‘never ceased to regard royalty and all its gaudy paraphernalia as a sad satire on human nature’, his attachment to republicanism became less ardent in his later years.
Foster held not a few peculiar opinions. He believed that ‘churches are useless and mischievous institutions, and the sooner they are dissolved the better, ’ his wish being that ‘religion might be set free as a grand spiritual and moral element, no longer clogged, perverted, and prostituted by corporation forms and principles’. Ordination he regarded as a lingering superstition. Though a baptist minister, he never once administered baptism, and was believed to entertain doubts regarding its perpetuity.
His youthful energy, finding no proper outlet, developed within him a tendency to morbid intensity of thought and feeling; and, according to his own testimony, before he was twelve years old he was possessed of a "painful sense of an awkward but entire individuality".
Foster married Maria Snooke in 1808. His only son died, after a lingering illness, in 1826. His wife fell into consumption, and after years of declining health died in 1832.
