Dr Coke, who published a “corrected and abridged” edition of Samuel Wesley’s “Life of Christ” more than a hundred years after the first edition was issued, says in his preface:—“I found the poet had carefully collected the richest materials, with a sedulity that surpassed my expectation, and had arranged them with a degree of art that nothing but the hand of a master could have reached. In surveying the character of Christ as here delineated, no remarkable incident in His life, from the cradle to His cross, has been omitted; nay, if we even take a wider range, every event of moment is noted, from the espousals of His mother to His resurrection from the dead, and His final ascension to glory. Indeed, the life of Christ, being closely connected with both time and eternity, presented to the poet an occasion to draw aside the curtain which divides the visible from the invisible world. Both heaven and hell are permitted to burst upon us; the former to ravish us with its glories, and the latter to alarm us with its terrors. Hence angels and devils pass in review before our eyes; relate what is past, discover their condition, perform their respective actions, and retire.”
Wesley’s poem is far from perfect. In many places it flashes with the highest kind of genius, and throughout it breathes with piety. The reader will find hundreds of lines full of poetic beauty; but then he will find others that are extremely tame, and literally limp for want of poetic feet. There can be no doubt that Samuel Wesley wrote too much for his writings to be faultless. “He wrote very much for me,” says Dunton, “both in verse and prose.” How much he wrote no one living has the means of knowing. Dunton says, “he wrote two hundred couplets a day.” He might do that when composing pieces for the Athenian Gazette, but it is incredible to think that this was done when he was composing “The Life of Christ;” for, in that case, the whole of that large folio poem would have been begun and finished in about three weeks.
The “Life of Christ” was first published in 1693. With all its faults, the edition was soon sold; and in 1697 the author issued a “revised and improved” edition, with “a large map of the Holy Land, and a table of the principal contents.”
The plates used in this second edition are said to have been engraved “by the celebrated hand of William Fairthorn;” but if so, they must have been engraved long before the first edition was published, inasmuch as Fairthorn died as early as 1691. Fairthorn was an ingenious artist; but lived a chequered life. As a royalist, he was taken prisoner at the breaking out of the civil wars, and for a length of time was confined in Aldersgate. His place of business was near Temple Bar, where he sold not only his own engravings, but those of other English artists, and imported a considerable number of prints from Holland, France, and Italy. About 1680 he left his shop, and went to reside in Printing House Yard, where he continued to work for booksellers, until a lingering consumption put an end to his life in 1691. Such was Samuel Wesley’s engraver.
From the preface of the book, we learn that the poem was begun in Anglesea and the Isle of Man, and afterwards “completed in several parts of England.” Wesley says the subject was first proposed to him by certain of his friends, and that he greedily embraced it; though, at the time, he knew nothing of the rules propounded by the masters of epic poetry. In reference to his object in publishing the book, he writes, “I desire to recommend the whole of the Christian religion; all the articles of faith; all that system of theology and morality contained in the gospel of the blessed Jesus; and to vindicate His mission, His satisfaction, and His divinity, against all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics.”
Perhaps enough has been said respecting this folio “Life of Christ.” Let the curious reader, when he has the chance, purchase it for himself. The sentiments and the spirit of the book cannot fail to be of service to every one who gives it a fair perusal; whilst many of its lines will be found to be ponderous with thought, and full of genius. As a proof of this, we conclude the chapter with four quotations. The first is Wesley’s description of the glorious scene witnessed on Mount Tabor, and is, in fact, the first piece of the poem:—
“To Tabor’s mount He beckon’d from the sky,
Two glorious saints who reign’d enthroned on high;
Moses, the leader of God’s chosen band,
Who nature’s laws inverted with his wand;