His frame was slender and feeble; his forehead lofty and ample; his nose curved like the beak of an eagle; his eye bright and keen; his brow thoughtful and somewhat sullen; his mouth firm and somewhat peevish; and his cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. He possessed strong natural sense and rare force of will. Long before he reached manhood, he knew how to keep secrets. Meanwhile, however, he made but little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. His manners were altogether Dutch, and even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners, he often seemed churlish. He was entirely destitute of sociability. He seldom came forth from his closet; and when he appeared in the public rooms, he stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing look, his taciturnity, the dry and concise answers which he uttered when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen and gentlemen, who had been accustomed to be slapped on the back by their royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups, or rallied about actresses. The women also missed the homage due to their sex. They observed that the king spoke in a somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he owed so much, and whom he sincerely loved. Another thing, which was regarded as one of his misfortunes, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign, his diction was inelegant, and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was necessary for the transaction of business. English literature he was incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once, during his whole reign, showed himself at the theatre. Next to hunting, his favourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He had some talent for sarcasm, and frequently employed a natural rhetoric, quaint indeed, but vigorous, and original. From a child, he listened with interest when questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish; and spoke and wrote, with more or less correctness, English, French, and German. The Dutch was his own tongue. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion. His theological opinions were loose, but were more decided than those of his ancestors; and predestination was the keystone of his religion. Since Octavius, the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. He died at the age of fifty-two.

[This chapter is compiled from the Histories of Wesley, of Knight, and of Macaulay, Calamy’s Life and Times, and other works of a kindred character.]

CHAPTER X.
LAST DAYS AT SOUTH ORMSBY—1694–1696.

We must return for a little while to South Ormsby, small, but neat and picturesque, and the first home of Samuel and Susannah Wesley. Here they lived about five years. Here the rector’s wife brought him one child additional every year, and did her best to make £50 per annum go as far as possible. Here he plied his pen with unceasing diligence, and wrote many of his articles for the Athenian Gazette, and also his contributions to the “Young Student’s Library,” and “The Complete Library, or News for the Ingenious;” here he finished his “Life of Christ,” and here he composed two other poems, which must now be noticed.

Queen Mary died at the end of the year 1694; and her confidential friend and adviser, Dr Tillotson, died two months afterwards. In 1695, Samuel Wesley published, in a sort of folio pamphlet of twenty-nine pages, his “Elegies on the Queen and Archbishop.” The title of the first is as follows:—“On the Death of her late sacred Majesty, Mary, Queen of England, a Pindarique Poem.” The title of the second is—“A Poem on the Death of his Grace, John, late Archbishop of Canterbury.” The Elegy on the Queen consists of twenty-five verses of from twenty to thirty lines each; and that on the archbishop of sixty-two verses of four lines to a verse.

Both the poems are written in the highest style of eulogy. The following are the first lines of the Elegy on the Queen. The death of Mary is represented as a judgment inflicted on account of the sins of the nation, and is also considered as the harbinger of other judgments to follow. The reference to the Shechinah is in bad taste, and almost profane:—

“Ah, sinful nation! Ah, ungrateful Isle!

See what thy crimes at last have done!

At last thy Shechinah is gone;

Thy beauteous sun no more must on thee smile,