Note 102 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY
Reading edition
The career of young John Trusler, afterwards the Rev. Dr. Trusler, is interesting. Without a collegiate training, he took Holy Orders, and officiated as a curate in London. His eye for business revealed to him the possibilities of sermon-mongering, and he was soon making a respectable income by supplying clergymen all over the country with sermons in script characters. His operations became something of a scandal, and Cowper scourged him in “The Task”—
“He grinds divinity of other days Down into modern use, transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts. Are there who purchase of the doctor’s ware? Oh, name it not in Gath! It cannot be That grave and learned clerks should need such aid. He doubtless is in sport, and does but droll, Assuming thus a rank unknown before— Grand caterer and dry-nurse of the Church!”
Trusler also issued the morning and evening services so printed and punctuated as to indicate to incompetent readers how they should be delivered. Cowper writes—
“He teaches those to read, whom schools dismiss’d, And colleges, untaught; sells accent, tone, And emphasis in score, and gives to prayer The adagio and andante it demands.”
Prospering at this business, Trusler set up a publishing establishment in Wardour Street, from which he issued manuals of all kinds, including his most respectable work, Hogarth Moralised, in which Mrs. Hogarth became a partner and collaborator. At the age of 85 he died in his villa at Englefield Green, Middlesex.