ページの画像
PDF
ePub

4

?

EDITOR

TO THE

READER.

T

HE POSTHUMOUS WORKS of Mr. THOMAS CHUBB have the advantage of most others, in that they appear to have been deliberately finished; and the reader may be fatisfied they are his genuine remains, transcribed, and, for the most part, corrected for the prefs, by his own hand a little before his death.

THE first fection of his Farewel was publifhed in his life-time, and is now republished, that the whole might appear together.

THE following brief account of himself, and of his commencing Author, he defigned as part of an introduction to a fecond quarto volume of tracts, of which his Farewel was to have been the conclufion. As he did not live to make that publication, it becomes a material article in his remains, and fupplies the place of any further preface.

A

AS

f

A

S the Author,at the conclufion of this collection, takes his leave of the world as a writer; fo, to prevent any falfe account that may be given of him, either whilft he is alive or after he is dead (prefuming it will not be anacceptable to his readers) he gives the following short account of himself,andhow he came to appear in the world as a writer.

THOMAS CHUBB (fon of Henry Chubb, of the hamlet of Eafi-Harnham, near the city of New-Sarum, Malfter) was born the twentyninth of September 1679. Henry Chubb, the father,died in the year 1688. and left a widow and four children, viz. three fons and one daughter, of all which the Author was the youngest. The Author was taught to read English, to write an ordinary hand, and was farther inftructed in the common rules of arithmetick; this education being fuitable to the circumstances of his family and to the time he had to be inftructed in. For as the Author's mother laboured hard, in order to get a maintenance for herself and

fa

At

family, fo the obliged her children to perform their parts towards it. And, accordingly, the Author was very early required to perform fuch work and fervice as was fuitable to his age and capacity; fo that he had neither time nor means for farther inAruction than that above-mentioned. Lady-day 1694. the Author was put apprentice to Mr. Thomas Rawlings, Glover, in Salisbury, where he met with kind usage from his master and the family, and with which family he had a particular friendship the remainder of his life. When the Author had ferved his apprenticeship, he worked a sa journey-man to his mafter,in making gloves, as he had no better, nor indeed no other way to get his livelihood; tho' it was improper for him, on account of his weakness of fight. In, or about the year 1705. the Author removed his dwelling to Mr. John Lawrence's, Tallow-Chandler, in Milford-freet, Sarum; after which he partly worked at making gloves, as before, and partly affifted Mr. Lawrence in his bu

[blocks in formation]

finess, viz. in weighing candles, giving attendance in Mr. Lawrence's fhop, and the like; and thus he got an honest maintenance by his labour; and tho' he did not abound in worldly goods, yet he had no lack, which, as it was equal to his defires, was quite fatisfactory to him. The Author lived a fingle life, he judging it greatly improper to introduce a family into the world, without a prospect of maintaining them, which was his case; fuch adventures being usually attended with great poverty, the parent of much mifery; and that was a ftate of life he did not chufe to rub into. And tho', according to the proverb, God does not fend mouths without fending meat to fill them; yet our Author faw, by daily experience, that meat to fome was not to be obtained but with great difficulty. And as to trusting to providence, in fuch cafes, the Author thought it was rather groundlesly prefuming upon providence, than a proper truft in it; nor did he find that providence interpofed to extricate fuch it's pretended de

pendents

« 前へ次へ »