“Samuel Wesley.”[[187]]
Before proceeding to give further extracts from Mr Wesley’s letters, there are two facts in the foregoing which demand attention.
The first is, that the rector was a passionate admirer of sacred music. Of this there can be no doubt. In one of his articles, in the Athenian Oracle, (vol. i. p. 393,) be strongly advocates the duty of singing psalms in private families, and attributes the neglect of this to the general decay of piety, though he admits that the faultiness of the metrical versions of the psalms, and the ill choice of tunes, may have had some influence in leading to such neglect. In another article, in the same volume, (p. 440,) he says—“Nothing but a stock is proof against the charms of music, and especially when good sense, good poetry, good tunes, and a good voice meet together.” In another article on the same subject, in vol. iii. p. 95, he strongly complains of Sternhold’s version, and adds, in reference to the tunes, that most of them are so vile that even Orpheus himself could not make good music out of them. “This, and the reading them at such a lame rate, tearing them limb from limb, and leaving sense, cadency, and all at the mercy of the clerk’s nose, may be part of the reason why the Reformed Churches are yet most remiss in psalmody.”
Is it too much to say that the marvellous musical genius of his two grandsons, Charles and Samuel Wesley, was inherited from himself? So remarkable was this talent for music that Charles surprised his father, by playing, with correctness, a tune on the harpsichord before he was three years old; while Samuel taught himself to read from Handel’s oratorios; had all the airs, recitations, and choruses of “Samson” and the “Messiah,” both words and notes, by heart before he was six years old; and, when he was eight, composed and wrote his own oratorio of “Ruth.”
The other fact, in the preceding letter, which deserves to be noticed is, that Samuel Wesley recommends his son, as a Sabbath exercise, to make “translations of the Bible into verse.” He was as fond of sacred song as he was of sacred music. Besides his poetical “Life of Christ,” he had already done what he recommends to his son Samuel, for, in three volumes, he had turned the whole of the histories of the Old and New Testaments into verse; and, though his eldest son did not adopt his suggestion, it was substantially adopted by his youngest son Charles, who, fifty-six years afterwards, published in two volumes his “Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures;” the hymns being two thousand and thirty in number, all founded upon particular texts, beginning with Genesis and ending with the Revelation of St John.
At the risk of being tedious, we cannot deny ourselves the gratification of inserting the substance of two other letters, written by Mr Wesley to his son Samuel, at Westminster School, in the same year as the above were written, 1706:—
“Epworth, September 1706.
“Dear Child,—The second part of piety regards your duty towards your parents, towards whom I hope you will behave yourself as you ought to the last moment of their lives.
“Some people, who are either fond of paradoxes, or have imbibed ill principles from our modern plays and such like authors, may, for aught I know, be in earnest when they defend that most erroneous and unnatural principle that ‘we owe nothing to our parents on account that they are the immediate authors of our being.’ But these seem to forget that God himself, the common Father of the universe, urges this as an argument against the ingratitude of his people, ‘Is he not thy Father?’ &c. And again, in Malachi, ‘If I be a father, where is my honour?’ Perhaps you will think I am pleading my own cause, and so indeed I am, in some measure; but it is the cause of my mother also, and even your own cause, if ever you should have children, and, indeed, that of nature and civil society, which would be dissolved or exceedingly weakened if this great foundation-stone should be removed.
“You know what you owe to one of the best of mothers. Perhaps you may have read of one of the Ptolemies, who chose the name of Philometer, as a more glorious title than if he had assumed that of his predecessor, Alexander. And it would be an honest and virtuous ambition in you to attempt to imitate him, for which you have so much reason. Often reflect on the tender and peculiar love which your dear mother has always expressed towards you; the deep affliction of both body and mind which she underwent for you, both before and after your birth; the particular care she took of your education when she struggled with so many pains and infirmities; and, above all, the wholesome and sweet motherly advice and counsel which she has often given you to fear God, to take care of your soul as well as of your learning, and to shun all vicious and bad examples. You will, I verily believe, remember that these obligations of gratitude, love, and obedience, and the expressions of them are not confined to your tender years, but must last to the very close of life, and, even after that, render her memory most dear and precious to you.