One word you cannot take away;
Complete as Virgil’s, his majestic sense;
To twenty ages of the world, shall stay,
The standard he of English eloquence.”
Dr Adam Clarke properly observes, that “great and good as both the queen and archbishop were, both their characters are sadly overdrawn, and their praises are extended even beyond poetic licence. These, and some other of Mr Wesley’s early productions excited the ridicule of the wits, and made him the subject of such an occasional squib as the following, written by John Dunton:—
“Poor harmless Wesley, let him write again;
Be pitied in his old heroic strain;
Let him in reams proclaim himself a dunce,
And break a dozen stationers at once.”
Mr Wesley, as we have seen, was an enthusiastic, an almost idolatrous, admirer of Queen Mary and of Archbishop Tillotson; and some writers have been pleased to intimate that this arose from special favours which her Majesty and the archbishop had shown him. This is an unwarranted and unworthy insinuation. It cannot be denied that Wesley received kindness from the queen; but there is no evidence to show that he was indebted to Tillotson for any favour whatever. Wesley himself declares, in a letter to be given hereafter, that because he dedicated his “Life of Christ” to Queen Mary, the queen gave him the Epworth living. He never asked for it. “It was proffered and given without his ever having solicited any person, and without his ever expecting, or even once thinking of such a favour.” He adds, “The favours which our blessed queen was pleased to bestow on me, after she had read my book, were as far beyond my expectation as my desert.”[[98]]