When Mr Wesley removed to Epworth he turned farmer, and took the management of his tithes into his own hands. The rector’s domestic necessities were increasing every year, and it was natural that he should wish to make his glebe as profitable as he could. To commence farming, however, was a serious mistake. First of all, Mr Wesley was without capital to begin; and to attempt to farm without capital, or to borrow capital and pay large interest for it, is not the way for a poor man’s prospects to be made better; and then, in the second place, the great and the good-hearted rector, notwithstanding his genius, his learning, and his diligence, seems to have had no aptitude for business, “He is not fit for worldly business,” wrote his brother-in-law, Samuelbrother-in-law, Samuel Annesley, who had employed him to transact some of his affairs in England, whilst he was absent in India; to which his wife, Susannah Wesley, answered:—“This I assent to, and must own I was mistaken when I thought him fit for business. My own experience hath since convinced me that he is one of those who, our Saviour saith, are not so wise in their generation as the children of this world.”

The good man had no knowledge of the farming business; he had no money to begin it; and, to say the least, his ardent love of books, and his long-established literary habits, were not friendly to it. It was a great mistake for the learned and studious rector to turn farmer, and no wonder that such a step led to debt and serious embarrassment. Perhaps this is the most fitting place to introduce the letters following, all of which were written to Archbishop Sharpe:—

This is a painfully interesting letter. A few explanations may be acceptable. He had been put to considerable expense “for the Broad Seal,” the meaning of which is, that, as the Epworth living belonged to the Crown, his title to the gift of it required the affixing of the “Broad Seal,” for which, of course, he had to pay the official fees. Then, he had to pay £28 for “first-fruits;” £3 for “tenths,” and other £3 to “John of Jerusalem.” The “first-fruits” were a sort of fine levied on a clergyman’s first year’s income, when he had the good fortune to be promoted, the money being paid to the Government. The “tenths” were a tax paid to the Crown every year. The £3 paid to John of Jerusalem was an impost of the same description. Down to a certain period, a number of churches in England were obliged to pay toll to the Priory of St John of Jerusalem; but, at the suppression of the monasteries, all the emoluments of this priory were given to the king, and, as the rectory of Epworth had been accustomed to pay to the value of £3 per annum to that house, this was the sum which the kings of England continued to receive from Epworth rectory.

He had been obliged to take a parish apprentice. At that period, and for a long time after, it was customary for parochial officers to relieve themselves, of the burden of maintaining the children of their paupers, by compelling the parishioners, in rotation, to take such childrenchildren as apprentices, and to teach them their respective trades. One of these youngsters had been forced upon the poor rector, and, as he had no trade to teach him, he playfully proposes to instruct him in the unprofitable business of making poetry, to which he himself had been so long addicted.

His aged mother was still living, but was crushed with poverty, and had been in danger of imprisonment for debt. For about thirty years she had been a lonely widow, and seems to have been dependent upon her son Samuel’s £10 per annum for her daily bread. The question naturally occurs, Was the poor rector the only one willing to assist his mother? Was nothing done for her by her son Matthew? Matthew rose to considerable eminence in the medical profession, and had an extensive and profitable practice in London. Thirty years after the period of which we are now writing, when he visited the Epworth family, he is represented as a man of wealth, and yet where is the evidence that he helped to support his mother? Matthew Wesley is described by his niece Mehetabel as one of the gentlest of human beings, and as rescuing thousands from the grave by his healing skill. He was of sufficient eminence to have his death celebrated in the poetical department of the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1737; but, excepting a little kindness shown to one or two of his brother’s children, we are left without evidence that he possessed any of that nobility of heart, which prompted the embarrassed rector to squeeze out of his scanty income the pittance which he yearly gave to his much-loved mother.

Samuel Wesley’s attachment to the Established Church was conscientious and strong; otherwise there was enough in his mother’s history to have made him its enemy for ever. By the relentless and intolerant bigotry of that Church, her husband had been deprived of the means of sustaining his family, and had been persecuted and driven from place to place, and not allowed the opportunity of providing for either his wife or his children. By the same Church’s intolerance, he had been brought to an untimely grave; and his widow, for long, long years, had been struggling with abject poverty. Her son Samuel knew all this; and yet, notwithstanding his having been trained for the Dissenting ministry, he entered the very Church which had inflicted so much misery upon his father, and which, to the day of her death, made Dr Thomas Fuller’s niece, Samuel Wesley’s mother, a needy object of charity and alms. Nothing but conscientious conviction of duty, could have induced such a man to attach himself to such a Church.

Samuel Wesley was most distressingly embarrassed; but his embarrassments were not the results of wasteful or extravagant living. For about eleven years he had been a married minister of the Church of England. His professional income, for that entire period—after deducting the payments mentioned in the foregoing letter, for furniture, the Broad Seal, his first-fruits, his tenths and other taxes, the poor, his mother’s debt, and also including the £50 borrowed for farming purposes—did not amount to more than £600, which gives an average of £54, 10s. a-year, or twenty shillings and ninepence per week. Out of that amount of money, he had to maintain house, to find food and clothes for himself and for his wife; he had to meet the expenses connected with the birth of ten children, and the burial of five; and he had now a family to support, consisting of himself, his wife, five children, a maid-servant, and a parish apprentice-nine persons altogether. Samuel Wesley, after eleven years of hard struggling, was £300 in debt. No wonder! Let the reader look at the preceding figures and facts, and his surprise will be, not that the debt was so great, but that it was not greater. Many Methodists have a vague idea that the rector of Epworth was careless and improvident in the management of his pecuniary matters, and that this was the cause of his embarrassments; but to entertain such a thought is a cruel injustice done to the character of that distinguished man, and also an undeserved stigma cast upon the reputation of his invaluable wife. Let any one think of a clergyman of the Church of England having to maintain a large, and often an afflicted family, for eleven years, at the rate of two shillings and elevenpence-halfpenny per day, and we challenge him to deny that Samuel Wesley, now £300 in debt, was deserving not of censure, but of sympathy.

Archbishop Sharpe, to whom Wesley’s letter was addressed, was an exceedingly kind and faithful friend. He submitted the painful circumstances of the poor rector to a number of his noble friends, some of whom generously responded, the Countess of Northampton sending him £20. The archbishop also wished to make an application to the House of Lords for what was technically called a “Brief;” in other words, a “letter patent, granting a licence for collecting money to rebuild churches, to restore loss by fire,” &c. These “briefs,” or letters patent were read in churches, and the sums collected were endorsed on them, with the signatures of the minister and churchwarden; after which the briefs and the money collected were delivered to the person or persons obtaining the briefs, who in their turn had to give an account, within two months, of the moneys received, before a master in Chancery appointed by the Lord Chancellor.

The proposal, then, of the Archbishop of York was, to obtain from Parliament one of these letters patent, authorising and commanding collections to be made in certain churches, for the purpose of relieving the distresses of the rector of Epworth. The feeling which prompted this was unquestionably kind, but perhaps it was scarce considerate. To a high-minded and sensitive man like Samuel Wesley, it could not be otherwise than disagreeable to have his domestic troubles and financial embarrassments paraded, first before Parliament, and afterwards in parish churches, for the purpose of obtaining collections to pay some £300 of debt, and perhaps to furnish a trifling surplus to repair Epworth parsonage, and to improve Epworth parish church. At the present day, such a mode of raising money for such purposes would be universally denounced; and in the case of Samuel Wesley, one hundred and sixty-five years ago, such a plan ought never to have been propounded. It was doubtless a duty to assist the impoverished parson, but the assistance ought to have been, not public, but private. Dr Clarke asserts that the archbishop actually applied to the Upper House of Parliament for such a brief. Be that as it may, we find Samuel Wesley disapproving of the proposal in the following letter, which was written four months and a half after his former one:—

He then proceeds to mention the great kindness of the Countess of Northampton, and says he must divide what she has given him,—“half to my poor mother, with whom I am now above a year behindhand; the other £10 for my own family. My mother will wait on your Grace for her £10: she knows not the particulars of my circumstances, which I keep from her as much as I can, that they may not trouble her.”

Very beautiful are sentiments like these; and great must have been the anguish of that sensitive and noble heart that had to struggle with such adversities.

Four days after the foregoing letter was written, it was followed by another and shorter one, strikingly characteristic of the playfulness as well as gratitude of the writer’s nature:—

Archbishop Sharpe, to whom these three letters were addressed, was born at Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1644. He was educated at Christ College, Cambridge, and for five years was private tutor to the four sons of Sir Heneage Finch, who afterwards became Lord Chancellor. In 1677, Sharpe became rector of St Giles’s, and had among his parishioners the celebrated Richard Baxter, who was a constant hearer of the rector every Sunday morning, and was consulted about his marriage. These two excellent men, notwithstanding their minor differences, lived together on the most friendly terms. In 1681, Sharpe was promoted to the deanery of Norwich. On the accession of King James, he preached so much against Popery, that he excited the royal displeasure, was obliged to leave St Giles’s, and to reside altogether at his deanery. In 1689, he succeeded Tillotson as Dean of Canterbury, and was nominated one of the commissioners for revising the liturgy. In 1691, he was consecrated Archbishop of York, and discharged the duties of his high office with great fidelity until his death, which occurred at Bath in 1714. He preached repeatedly before King William and Queen Mary. Some of these sermons are now before us, and display great ability and earnest piety. He delivered the sermon preached at the coronation of Queen Anne. His favourite studies, in his youthful days, were botany and chemistry. He was chaplain to King Charles and to King James. He was greatly esteemed by King William, and, in the reign of Queen Anne, the greatest attention was always paid to his advices. Dr Sharpe, says Bishop Burnet, was a very pious man, and one of the most popular preachers of the age. Sharpe left behind him seven volumes of sermons.^[149] He was the grandfather of the celebrated Granville Sharpe, the distinguished philanthropist and the friend of slaves. A remarkable anecdote of the archbishop was inserted by John Wesley in the Arminian Magazine for 1785.

In the midst of all his pecuniary struggles, Samuel Wesley continued to write and to publish books. In 1700, he issued a small volume, entitled, “The Pious Communicant Rightly Prepared; or, A Discourse concerning the Blessed Sacrament: wherein the nature of it is described, our obligation to frequent communion enforced, and directions given for due preparation for it, behaviour at and after it, and profiting by it. With Prayers and Hymns suited to the several parts of that Holy Office. To which is added, A Short Discourse of Baptism. By Samuel Wesley, A.M., Chaplain to the Most Honourable John, Lord Marquis of Normanby, and Rector of Epworth, in the diocese of Lincoln. London: Printed for Charles Harper. 1700.”

This long title almost renders a description of the book unnecessary. The book, however, besides what is described in the title-page, contains as an appendix the “Letter concerning the Religious Societies,” from which quotations have been already made, and altogether consists of two hundred and ninety-three pages 12mo. A few extracts may be useful, as illustrating the writer’s opinions, and his mode of expressing them.

Speaking of the doctrine of transubstantiation, he says:—“It overthrows the very nature of a sacrament, and leaves nothing for an outward sign; it introduces the most monstrous absurdities, which, if granted, would render the Christian religion the most absurd and most unreasonable in the world; it involves the most horrid, as well as most ridiculous consequences, such as that our Saviour did eat His own body, and gave it to His disciples to eat; it makes Christians the worst cannibals to eat their God a thousand times over; and it contradicts the very nature of a body, which cannot be in two places at the same time, much less in earth and in heaven,” (p. 19 and 20.)

On the subject of baptism, he writes:—“In baptism, we are so far regenerate as to be grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, and to partake of its privileges by the operation of His Holy Spirit within us, who will never be wanting to us or forsake us, unless we ourselves put a bar to the divine assistance by confirmed evil habits, and by a wicked life. But since the divine image, which we there recovered, is very often obscured again by the temptations of the world and the devil, and the remains of sin within us, there is need enough for our being renewed again by repentance; nor has God here left us without hope or comfort, but has appointed a remedy even for those who sin after baptism, and that is this other sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, wherein we renew our covenant with Him, and receive new strength to obey His commands,” (p. 37.)

In another place he writes:—“We say not that regeneration is always completed in baptism, but that it is begun in it; a principle of grace is infused, which we lost by the fall, which shall never be wholly withdrawn, unless we quench God’s Holy Spirit by obstinate habits of wickedness. There are babes as well as strong men in Christ,” (p. 205.)

The same view of baptism was substantially held by his son John. The latter, in his sermon on the New Birth, observes:—“It is certain our Church supposes that all who are baptized in their infancy are, at the same time, born again; and it is allowed that the whole office for the baptism of infants proceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an objection of any weight against this, that we cannot comprehend how this work can be wrought in infants. For neither can we comprehend how it is wrought in a person of riper years.”^[150]

It is no part of our task either to justify or condemn these opinions; but, perhaps, the following extract from an article, probably written by Samuel Wesley, and inserted in the Athenian Oracle, (vol. i., p. 457,) may with some find more favour, though there is nothing in it antagonistic to the other opinions of Samuel Wesley already given.

“Baptism is called by the apostle ‘the laver of regeneration,’ and accordingly our Church, not only lawfully, but commendably, uses the word regeneration for baptism; and, in the offices for that sacrament, more than once mentions the child’s being regenerate, which it explains by its being grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, and so admitted into the communion of saints. Children have then a federal holiness as children of believing parents; and, as the first-born among the Jews were dedicate, devoted, or holy in the Lord, so in that sense children of believing parents are holy—in that sense they are regenerate.”

It is a remarkable fact, not generally known, that John Wesley’s “Treatise on Baptism,” published in the tenth volume of his collected works, and dated November 11, 1756, is nothing less or more than his father’s “Short Discourse of Baptism,” published fifty-six years before. It is true that the son has very slightly abridged and verbally altered his father’s essay, but that is all. He thus makes all the opinions of his father, on baptism, his own; but it is somewhat strange that he should republish the treatise without the least reference to its original author. It is hardly fair that the treatise should be published as his own. In more respects than one, John Wesley was a courageous man.

In the same year in which Samuel Wesley published his “Pious Communicant,” he also gave to the public a poem, entitled, “An Epistle to a Friend concerning Poetry, by Samuel Wesley. London: Printed for Charles Harper, 1700.” The poem is a folio of thirty pages, and consists of 1083 lines.

The preface is an earnest—almost furious—production, stating his design, and dwelling on the strong tendency to infidel principles evinced by some of the chief literary men then living. He writes:—“The direct design of a great part of this poem is to serve the cause of religion and virtue. My quarrel is with those that rank themselves among atheists, and impudently defend and propagate the ridiculous opinion of the eternity of the world, and of that fatal, invincible chain of things which is now made use of to destroy the faith, as our lewd plays are to corrupt the morals, of the nation;—an opinion big with more absurdities than transubstantiation itself, and of far more fatal consequences. Besides weakening, if not destroying, the belief of the being and providence of God, it utterly takes away freedom in human actions, reduces mankind beneath the brute creation, perfectly excuses the greatest villainies, and entirely vacates all retribution hereafter. One would wonder with what face or conscience such a set of men should hope to be treated by the rules of civility, when they themselves break through those of common humanity. How can they expect any fairer quarter than wolves or tigers; or, what reason can they give why a price should not be set upon their heads as well as on the others; or, at least, why they should not be securely hampered and muzzled, and led about for a sight like other monsters? It is the fatal and spreading poison of these men’s principles and example which has extorted these warm expressions from me. I cannot with patience see my country ruined by the prodigious increase of infidelity and immorality, nor forbear crying out, with some vehemence, when it is in greater and more imminent danger than it would have been formerly if the Spanish Armada had made a descent among us. If things go on as they now are, we are in a fair way to become a nation of atheists. It is now no difficult matter to meet with those who pretend to be lewd on principle. They attack religion in form, and batter it from every quarter; they would turn the very Scriptures against themselves, and labour hard to remove a Supreme Being out of the world; or, if they do vouchsafe Him any room in it, it is only that they may find fault with His works, which they think, with that blasphemer of old, might have been much better ordered had they themselves stood by and directed the architect.

“What would these men have? Why cannot they be content to sink single into the bottomless pit without dragging so much company with them? Can they grapple with Omnipotence? Can they thunder with a voice like God, and cast abroad the rage of their wrath? Could they annihilate hell they might be tolerably happy, more quietly rake through the world, and sink into nothing.

“There is too great reason to apprehend that this infection is spread among persons of almost all ranks, though some may think it decent still to keep on a religious masque. This is hypocrisy with a witness, the basest and meanest of vices. The cowards will not believe a God, because they dare not; for woe be to them if there be one, and consequently any future punishment! From such as these I desire no favour, but that of their ill word; as their crimes must expect none from me. If I could be ambitious of a name in the world, it should be that I might sacrifice it in so glorious a cause as that of religion and virtue. If none but generals must fight in this sacred war, when there are such infernal hosts on the other side, they could never prevail without one of the ancient miracles. If little people can but discharge the place of a private sentinel, it is all that is expected from us. I hope I shall never let the enemies of God and my country come on without firing, though it serve but to give the alarm; and, if I die without quitting my post, I desire no greater glory. I have no personal pique against any whose characters I may have given in this poem, nor think the worse of them for their thoughts of me. I hope I have everywhere done them justice, and have given them commendation where they merit it.”

This is strong language respecting the chief writers of the day; but it was not unneeded. It is true, that, there were honourable exceptions—such as Addison, who was now enjoying his pension of £300 a year for his complimentary poem on one of the campaigns of King William; Sir Richard Steele, who was writing his “Christian Hero;” Dean Swift, who, having published his poetical essays, was now pondering his “Tale of a Tub;” Pope, who, as a boy twelve years old, was writing, in Windsor Forest, his “Ode on Solitude;” Parnell, who was just made M.A., and ordained a deacon; and Edward Young, who was now completing the first part of his education at Winchester. Of these and others we say nothing; but contemporaneous with them were William Wycherley, who attacked vice, it is true, but attacked it with the severity of a cynic, and the language of a libertine; Matthew Prior, who, notwithstanding his poetic fame, cohabited with a despicable drab of the lowest kind; William Congreve, “the ultimate effect of whose plays,” says Dr Johnson, “is to represent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated;” Lord Bolingbroke, whom Johnson designated “a scoundrel, who charged a pop-gun against Christianity; and a coward, who left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman (David Mallet) to fire it off;” Anthony Collins, the infidel, who, notwithstanding his abilities as a writer, was detected in so many instances of false quotations, and other unfair modes of controversy, that he must ever be regarded as one of the most flagrant instances of literary disingenuousness; Matthew Tindall, some of whose infidel productions were, by a vote of the House of Commons, ordered to be burned by the common hangman; John Toland, the “miserable sophist,” as Swift calls him, whose sceptical writings were ordered to be burned by the Irish Parliament, and who discussed the mysteries of Christianity in coffee-houses and other public places, until at last he wanted a meal of meat, and fell to borrowing a few pence from any one that would lend to him; and John Dryden, with his sometimes Popish, and sometimes latitudinarian creed—a man of splendid talents, but whose writings, while flashing with the highest genius, are often soaked and loathsome with the foulest vice.

Macaulay, in reference to a period a few years earlier, writes:—“The profligacy of the English plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. From the Reformation to the civil war, almost every writer had taken some opportunity of assailing the straight-haired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in the spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to taste plum-porridge on Christmas-day. At length a time came when the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers. At the Restoration the old fight recommenced, and the war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit and morality. Whatever the canting Roundhead had regarded with reverence was insulted; whatever he had proscribed, was favoured. As he never opened his mouth except in Scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened theirs without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed. It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it revived with the old civil and ecclesiastical polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men, who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt from the general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous generation. Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters, raised his voice courageously against the immorality which disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the lips of those etherial virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. But these were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to D’Urfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman.”

Samuel Wesley’s “Epistle concerning Poetry” is ingenious and able. The editor of Dr Adam Clarke’s Miscellaneous Works observes: “Such a poem as this may be supposed to have suggested Lord Byron’s ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’” We would add, that perhaps it suggested a much earlier work, the “Dunciad” of Alexander Pope, which was first published in 1727, twenty-seven years after the publication of Wesley’s “Epistle.” At all events, both Pope and Byron would have acted better if, like Samuel Wesley, they had been guided by justice, instead of being goaded by spleen, and if their works, like his, had contained more of criticism and less of spite.

It is difficult, without giving extracts, to furnish a just idea of Mr Wesley’s poem. The following are some of the topics that are taken up and sketched—viz., Genius, Wit, Judgment, Invention, Memory, Learning, Conversation, Style, Reading, Measure, Numbers, Pauses, Quantity, Rhyme, Epic poetry, Tragedy, the Ode, and Satire. In dwelling on these points, Wesley takes the opportunity of referring to the most popular writers of poetry to illustrate his meaning. Chaucer’s lines are so rough and so unequal in their flow, that to describe their measure is impossible. Spencer, with his “vast genius” and “noble thoughts,” is a master of English quantity; but his stanzas are cramped, and his rhymes affected by antique words. Dryden, with his “matchless skill,” is highly praised; but, at the same time, Wesley charges him with having “made vice pleasing, and damnation shine;” and entreats him, after “sixty years of lewdness,” to repent and seek God’s forgiveness. Blackmore is eulogised by Wesley, at the time when all the wits were treating him with ridicule; for few excelled him in writing poetic fables, and each of his pages is “big with Virgil’s manly thought.” But, instead of giving quotations descriptive of men, we give the following, which, to say the least, is thoughtful and ingenious. The reader will perceive that the lines are intended to be a description of the human head:—

No sooner was the “Epistle concerning Poetry” out of hand, than Samuel Wesley devoted himself to a much larger poetic work, entitled “The History of the Old and New Testament, attempted in Verse, and adorned with three hundred and thirty Sculptures. Written by S. Wesley, A.M.; the Cuts done by J. Sturt. London: Printed for C. Harper.”

Dr Clarke says the first edition of this work was published in 1701; but the earliest edition with which the writer is acquainted was published in 1704, and is in three volumes, of about three hundred and fifty pages each. Another edition was published in 1717, and was dedicated to “the Most Honourable the Lady Marchioness of Normanby;”—a lady “ennobled by birth, beauty, and fortune, but more by piety and virtue.”

In his preface to the reader, he says: “I have but little to say concerning this small present which I here make thee. It is some account of the intervals of my time, which I wish had never been worse employed. There are some passages here represented which are so barren of circumstances, that it was not easy to make them shine in verse; though they could not be well omitted without breaking the thread of the history. But there are others where I have more liberty, wherein it is my own fault if I have not succeeded better. On the whole, if aught that is here may be useful to any good Christian, and tend to promote piety, I shall be better pleased than if I could have composed a book on any other subject worthy to be dedicated in the Vatican; for I hope I am got on the right side of the world, and am as indifferent to it as it can be to me.”

The engravings, or “Sculptures,” as the rector calls them, are small, but full of genius. John Sturt, the artist, was born in 1658, and died in 1730. He is celebrated principally for the extraordinary minuteness and beauty of his engraved writing. He engraved the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, and an Elegy on Queen Mary in so small a size that it might be set in a ring or locket. His most curious work, however, is the “Book of Common Prayer,” which he engraved with marvellous neatness on one hundred and eighty-eight silver plates, in double columns. Prefixed is a portrait of King George I., the lines on the king’s face being made by an inscription of the Lord’s Prayer, the Decalogue, the Creed, the Prayers for the Royal Family, and the 21st Psalm, all in writing so minute as scarcely to be read with the aid of a microscope. This remarkable work was published by subscription in 1717; and about the same time another of his productions was similarly issued, “A Companion to the Altar,” executed in the same ingenious manner. The poor artist, like the poor rector, was beset with poverty all his days. In his old age, he was offered an asylum in the Charter-House, but respectfully declined accepting it. Such was the man who engraved the “three hundred and thirty sculptures” which adorn and illustrate Samuel Wesley’s “History of the Old and New Testaments.”

This work of Wesley, like his Life of Christ, is permanently injured by the hastiness in which it was evidently written, and by the unfinished state of many of its lines; but, at the same time, it contains scores of passages worthy of Wesley’s great genius. To enable the reader to form an opinion of the book’s excellencies and faults, we subjoin a few random extracts, taking four from the Old Testament and four from the New.

After describing Moses and his flock at Horeb, Wesley writes:—

The lines following refer to the giving of the ten commandments:—

The next extract is taken from the piece describing the pestilence, which was sent on account of David numbering the people. David having laid aside his crown, clothes himself in sackcloth, puts ashes on his head, falls prostrate on the ground and begins to pray:—

The next lines are descriptive of the angel destroying the one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians:—

The following is Wesley’s description of Christ rebuking the tempest on the Lake of Gennesaret:—