Born at Wadsworth Lane, near Halifax, 17 Sept. 1770. At Baptist Coll., Bristol, Sept. 1791 to May 1792. Baptist preacher at Newcastle, 1792. In Dublin, 1793–94. Returned to England, 1794. To Dublin again, 1795. Returned to Wadsworth Lane, Feb. 1796. Baptist minister at Chichester, 1797. To Battersea, 1799. Minister at Downend, Bristol, 1800–04; at Sheppard’s Barton, near Frome, 1804–06. Contrib. to “Eclectic Review,” 1806–39. Married Maria Snooke, May 1808; settled at Bourton, Gloucestershire. Minister at Downend again, 1817–21. Removed to Stapylton, Gloucestershire, 1821. Lectured in Broadmead Chapel, Bristol, 1822–23. Wife died, 1832. Contrib. to “Morning Chronicle,” 1834–35. Died, 15 Oct. 1843. Buried in Downend Baptist Chapel burial-ground. Works: “Essays,” 1805 (2nd end. same year); “Discourse on Missions,” 1818; “On the Evils of Popular Ignorance,” 1820; “Introductory Observations on Dr. Marshman’s Statement,” 1828. Posthumous: “Contributions … to the ‘Eclectic Review’” (2 vols.), 1844. He edited: Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress of Religion,” 1825; Hall’s “Works,” 1832. Life: “Life and Correspondence,” by J. E. Ryland, 1846.
Personal
His disposition was unresentful. He felt warmly, and even indignantly, when taking the part which he deemed incumbent upon him in a righteous cause—in defending the injured; in resisting what he deemed unjust; and exposing what to his eye was dishonourable;—but he thus felt and acted for others. In what had relation simply to himself, he felt it beneath him to cherish an unforgiving, revengeful temper. He excited strong attachment, but he encountered little personal enmity, for it was not his habit to indulge it himself. At the same time, he was ready to act as a mediator, and was glad to heal differences, taking sometimes an active part in the exercise of Christian charity.
The sermons of Foster were of a cast quite distinct from what is commonly called oratory, and, indeed, from what many seem to account the highest style of eloquence, namely, a flow of facile thoughts through the smooth channels of uniformly elevated polished diction, graced by the utmost appliances of voice and gesture. But they possessed for me, and for not a few hearers, qualities and attractions much preferable to these. The basis of important thoughts was as much original or underived from other minds, as, perhaps, that of any reading man’s reflections in our age of books could be; still more so the mode and aspect in which they were presented. That unambitious and homely sort of loftiness, which displayed neither phrase nor speaker, but things,—while the brief word and simple tone brought out the sublime conception “in its clearness;” that fund of varied associations and images by which he really illustrated, not painted or gilded his truths; the graphic master-strokes, the frequent hints of profound suggestion for after-meditation, the cogent though calm expostulations and appeals, the shrewd turns of half-latent irony against irreligion and folly, in which, without any descent from seriousness and even solemnity, the speaker moved a smile by his unconscious approaches to the edge of wit, yet effectually quelled it by the unbroken gravity of his tone and purpose,—all these characteristics had for me an attractive power and value, both by novelty and instructiveness, far above the qualities of an oratory, or eloquence more fashioned on received rules and models.
At the latest glimpse that we can get of the distinguished author … we find him an infirm, retired octogenarian, long, gaunt, and ghastly, careless and slovenly in dress, with a countenance deeply furrowed by a life of intense thought, and indicating great mental vigor and rigid inflexibility of character. He was revered and cherished as the last of a constellation of luminaries, that had for half a century or more shed lustre on the previously obscure and overshadowed denomination of Particular or Calvinistic Baptists.
General
We take our leave of this work with sincere reluctance. For the length to which we have extended our review, the subject must be our apology. It has fared with us as with a traveller who passes through an enchanting country, where he meets with so many beautiful views and so many striking objects which he is loath to quit, that he loiters till the shades of evening insensibly fall upon him. We are far, however, from recommending these volumes as faultless. Mr. F’s work is rather an example of the power of genius than a specimen of finished composition: it lies open in many points to the censure of those minor critics, who, by the observation of a few technical rules, may easily avoid its faults, without reaching one of its beauties. The author has paid too little attention to the construction of his sentences. They are for the most part too long, sometimes involved in perplexity, and often loaded with redundances. They have too much of the looseness of an harangue, and too little of the compact elegance of regular composition. An occasional obscurity pervades some parts of the work. The mind of the writer seems at times to struggle with conceptions too mighty for his grasp, and to present confused masses, rather than distinct delineations of thought. This, however, is to be imputed to the originality, not the weakness, of his powers. The scale on which he thinks is so vast, and the excursions of his imagination are so extended, that they frequently carry him into the most unbeaten track, and among objects where a ray of light glances in an angle only, without diffusing itself over the whole.
Mr. Foster’s “Essays” are full of ingenuity and original remark. The style of them is at once terse and elegant.
He has been prevented from preaching by a complaint affecting the throat; but, judging from the quality of his celebrated “Essays,” he could never have figured as a truly splendid rhetorician; for the imagery and ornamental parts of his “Essays” have evidently not grown up in the loom, and concurrently with the texture of the thoughts, but have been separately added afterwards, as so much embroidery or fringe.
Foster was a Calvinist of the old school as to his theological opinions; and his opinions were all theological. He took cognizance, indeed, of a wide diversity of subjects, but viewed them only in their religious aspects and relations. His general knowledge was great, and his learning accurate and profound; but every thing, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, was tried by the unelastic standard of his own creed…. Of course, the moral tone of all his writings is pure and lofty. His ethics are eminently Christian as to their positive side; but they lack the breadth and catholicity of the Christian standard. They omit all the æsthetic aspects of virtue. They give but narrow scope and reluctant tolerance to those innocent amenities of domestic and social life, of literature and art, which grow in the most luxuriant beauty under true Christian culture. His morality would be represented by a rigid code, formed of precise precepts, stated and defined with logical accuracy, and bristling all over with stern penalties, rather than by a pervading, plastic spirit of devotion and humanity, multiform in its manifestations, and blending with all that is graceful and beautiful in nature and in life.
We have in his works the collected thoughts of a powerful mind that has lived “collaterally or aside” to the world—that never flattered a popular prejudice—that never bent to a popular idol—that never deserted in the darkest hour the cause of liberty—that never swore to the Shibboleth of a party—or, at least, never kept its vow, and conspicuous, a mighty and mysterious fragment, the Stonehenge of modern moralists. Shall we inscribe immortality upon the shapeless yet sublime structure? He who reared it seems, from the elevation he has now reached, to answer No. What is the thing you call immortality to me, who have cleft that deep shadow and entered on this greater and brighter state of being?
Perhaps the most successful essayist of his time was the Rev. John Foster, last of Bristol. His “Essays” passed through eighteen editions during his life; and they are still spreading. There is no great precision in the thoughts; but the tone of morality is pure, and the views are original and broad, while the style is eminently interesting. The volume was one which met the wants of the time; and if some of the matter is vague, and the views narrow, they were a welcome escape from the shallow prosings which they superseded.
The miscellaneous production of his pen hold high rank among the most brilliant English classics. All his writings are noted for remarkable comprehensiveness, the interest, strength, and great originality and majesty of conception. His eloquence consisted, not in pompous phrases or brilliant explosions, but the pure force of sense, adorned with the sweetest imagery, and an admirable neatness and compactness of style.
He cultivated originality both in thought and in expression. His command of language and illustration is copious, but his style has a want of flow, an air of labour. He repeats an idea again and again, but the successive repetitions do not, like the varied expression of Chalmers, make the meaning more and more luminous; they often burden rather than illuminate the general reader, and they strike the critic as a laboured exercise in the accumulation of synonyms and similitudes.
Mr. Foster’s essays are excellent models of vigorous thought and expression, uniting metaphysical nicety and acuteness with practical sagacity and common-sense.
Foster is a distinct variety among the professors of literature. He is the impersonation of a somewhat gloomy Dissenter, shut up by circumstances in a small circle, sitting among his little group of intellectual persons with a heartfelt sense of aggrieved superiority, and contemplating most things in heaven and earth as subjects to be discussed by letter or by word of mouth. His essays had, at one time a wide reputation, and they have always been of the kind of literature appreciated by persons of thoughtful minds without much education, to whom the gravity of steady intellectual investigations, not of too scientific an order, is new and delightful. An essay “On decision of Character” does not seem likely to be very original, but yet there is the originality of a mind not too much cultivated or too much pervaded by other men’s thinkings in the conscientious examination of his subject, which Foster gives.
