This poetical clerk believed the rector, Mr Wesley, to be the greatest man in Epworth parish; and that, as he stood next to him in church services, he was also next in worth and dignity. Among the man’s other emoluments was the privilege of wearing the rector’s cast-off clothes and wigs, for the latter of which his head was far too small. Mr Wesley, finding him particularly vain of one of these wigs, formed the design to mortify him in the presence of the congregation. One morning, before church time, Mr Wesley said, “John, I shall preach on a particular subject to-day; and shall choose my own psalm, of which I shall give out the first line, and you shall proceed as usual.” Accordingly the service went forward as it was wont to do, till the time came for singing, when Mr Wesley gave out the following line—
“Like to an owl in ivy bush”—
This was sung, and then John, peeping out of his large canonical wig, proceeded with the next line, and, in the orthodox twang, drawled out—
“That rueful thing am I!”
The congregation, struck with John’s appearance, saw the ludicrousness of the coincidence, and, to John’s great mortification, burst into a fit of laughter.
Such is Dr Clarke’s version of the story. The reviewer in the magazine objects to it—first, Because it was too trivial to merit a place in such a work; second, Because it reflects upon the good-nature of Mr Wesley, and upon his attention to that uniform dignity and seriousness of demeanour which are justly expected from a Christian minister; and third, Because, in one important particular, the story was untrue, for Mr Wesley took no part in the business whatever; but the whole was the culpable trick of the whimsical clerk, who chose such an opportunity of rendering himself ridiculous, and of making his neighbours laugh.
Mr Watson admits that the anecdote is laughable enough, but says, it “implicates Mr Wesley in an irreverent act in the house of God, of which he was not capable;” and moreover, “Mr Wesley had no hand in selecting the psalm, which appears to have been purely accidental.”
Mr Kirk takes the same view, and further, doubts whether such lines were ever read at all; or, if they were, he suggests that they must have been part of another hymn of the clerk’s “own composing.” Perhaps so; Mr Kirk says neither he nor his friends have been able to find anything like the lines in either Sternhold and Hopkins, or in any other of the “old versions” of the Psalms. This is quite correct, and we believe that the exact lines above recited cannot be found in any “version;” but the following occur in an edition of Sternhold’s, published in 1729, and now before us:—
“And as an owl in desert is,
Lo, I am such an one;