I watch, and as a sparrow on
The house-top am alone.”
The origin of the doubts respecting the authenticity of the story may be found in the following letter, published in the Wesleyan Times newspaper of March 7, 1864. It was written to Dr Clarke by Miss Sarah Wesley, at the time he published his “Wesley Family:”—
“May 28, 1822.
“My dear Doctor,—I omitted to mention one material circumstance in my last, relative to the clerk and his psalm, as I well remember hearing my good father, ‘(the Rev. Charles Wesley,)’ relate it to us.
“It was not by my grandfather’s appointment he gave it out, but from the clerk’s own sagacity, little suspecting the old Caxon resembled him to an owl.
“Indeed, a pious pastor would not have excited a laugh in a sacred place, or punished a silly blockhead at the expense of interrupting the devotion of a whole congregation; but as anecdotes never lose by tradition, you have heard it was design, not accident. Dean Swift might have done so, but not Samuel Wesley, senior, who had ever inculcated the duty, even in psalmody, of worshipping the Lord with reverence.
“My dear father told me the circumstance when pointing out to us the follies to which vanity exposed a man, and the effects they produced. But my worthy grandfather could not, consistent with his respect to the sacred place, have directed a silly man to divert his audience. Accidentally it was indeed ludicrous, and might have cured him of a little innocent vanity, for all the people saw the resemblance.
“I never recollected, till my last letter went, that I had left out this statement, and hope it will come time enough for the fact to be mentioned as it was; for, otherwise, there is a shade cast on my good old ancestor which no wit can chase away.”
In another letter to Dr Clarke, dated “Jan. 24, 1824,” the same writer says:—