SOURCE: Herbert, Thomas Walter. “John Wesley as Poet.” In John Wesley as Editor and Author, pp. 46-60. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940.

[In the following essay, Herbert examines Wesley's transition from the translation of secular works to his adaptations of George Herbert's verse and translations of German hymns, and then to the composition of original devotional works.]

John Wesley very early gave evidence that he shared the strain of poetry which ran in his family. A capable student in every department of study, he was particularly distinguished at the Charterhouse for his excellent translations from the Latin. The source of pleasure thus discovered continued during the period of residence at Oxford, finding expression in exercises of translation and paraphrase.

“Mr. Wesley's natural temper in his youth,” as Dr. Whitehead said, “was gay and sprightly, with a turn for wit and humor.”¹ For instance, an hour or so spent in concocting a poem to send to his convalescent brother brought forth the following choice morsel of ridicule taken “From the Latin:”

As o'er fair Cloe's rosy cheek,
          Careless, a little vagrant passed,
With artful hand around his neck
          A slender chain the virgin cast.
As Juno near her throne above
          Her spangled bird delights to see,
As Venus has her fav'rite dove,
          Cloe shall have her fav'rite flea.
Pleased at his chains, with nimble steps
          He o'er her snowy bosom strayed:
Now on her panting breast he leaps,
          Now hides between his little head.
Leaving at length his old abode,
          He found, by thirst or fortune led,
Her swelling lips, that brighter glowed
          Than roses in their native bed.
Cloe, your artful bands undo,
          Nor for your captive's safety fear;
No artful bands are needful now
          To keep the willing vagrant here.
Whilst on that heav'n 'tis given to stay,
          (Who would not wish to be so blest?)
No force can draw him once away,
          Till Death shall seize his destined breast.

Wesley's comment on his stanzas is terse: “There is one, and I am afraid but one, good thing in them—that is, they are short.”²

It was from his favorite Horace that Wesley translated most of the early, secular verse which remains to us. One such piece the biographies have prudently and with one accord neglected to notice: the nineteenth ode of Horace's first book. The only fault the youthful future leader of Methodism could find in his verses was their need of careful revision and correction. Here are the last three stanzas:

No more the wand'ring Scythian's might
          From softer themes my lyre shall move;
No more the Parthian's wily flight:
          My lyre shall sing of naught but Love.
Haste, grassy altars let us rear;
          Haste, wreaths of fragrant myrtle twine;
With Arab sweets perfume the air,
          And crown the whole with gen'rous wine.
While we the sacred rites prepare,
          The cruel Queen of fierce desires
Will pierce, propitious to my prayer,
          The obdurate maid with equal fires.(3)

Since, however, Wesley was never thoroughly at home except where his speech could be positive and emphatic on a moral question, Horace's famous “Integer Vitae” gave him material more nearly suited to the decisiveness of his natural temperament. “Integrity needs no defense,” he began; and, despite their tautology, the last two stanzas achieve at least something of the resonance and force of his later religious verse:

Place me where no revolving sun
Does e'er his radiant circles run,
Where clouds and damps alone appear
And poison the unwholesome year:
Place me in that effulgent day
Beneath the sun's directer ray;
No change from its fixed place shall move
The basis of my lasting love.(4)

Secular themes were well enough for making profitable an idle hour, but Wesley, even now convinced that the deepest and purest source of human inspiration lay in the Holy Scriptures, based his most ambitious single flight on the first eighteen sonorous verses of the 104th Psalm. His mother saw the result and wisely advised him: “I would not have you leave off making verses; rather make poetry sometimes your diversion, though never your business.”⁵

When Wesley was free to expand his text and introduce original elements for poetic ornamentation, he was prone to rely too much on the conventional idioms which were to become the laughing stock of later criticism. The first two stanzas are a fair sample of the whole (if, indeed, they are not easily the best):

Upborne aloft on vent'rous wing
While, spurning earthly themes, I soar,
Through paths untrod before,
What God, what seraph shall I sing?
Whom but thee should I proclaim,
Author of this wond'rous frame?
Eternal, uncreated Lord,
Enshrin'd in glory's radiant blaze!
At whose prolific voice, whose potent word,
Commanded, nothing swift retir'd, and worlds began their race.
Thou, brooding o'er the realms of night,
Th' unbottom'd infinite abyss,
Bad'st the deep her rage surcease,
And said'st let there be light!
Aethereal light thy call obey'd,
Glad she left her native shade,
Through the wide void her living waters past;
Darkness turn'd his murmuring head,
Resign'd the reins, and trembling fled;
The crystal waves roll'd on, and filled the ambient waste.(6)

Nothing could be said about the poem in its entirety that would be quite so devastating as an acceptance of its implied invitation to comparison with the Psalm. Wesley's miscarriage in this instance is highly significant: he beflowers his original and adds new material for no good purpose except decoration. Fortunately, by the time he came to write the adaptations and translations which were to furnish new blood to English hymnody he had found his proper talent. In his best work he cut away superfluous ornament instead of adding new frills: he condensed and simplified, and when his own words replaced the phrasing of his original, it was always for a better purpose than merely spinning out rhythmical, high-sounding sentences.

Of the foreign hymns Wesley turned into English, by far the most important and numerous are those from the German. His first study of that language was stimulated by the presence, on the ship which bore him to America, of twenty-six Moravians whose religious zeal made him eager for their conversation.⁷ Before the Simmonds touched the shores of the New World he was at home with them. Not content with a mere speaking knowledge, he spent much time in Georgia systematically and thoroughly performing his self-imposed task: he talked and sang in German; read German books; wrote in German; mastered and reviewed a German grammar and a German dictionary, then transcribed them to fix their contents in his memory; and, finally, he wrote a German grammar and compiled a German dictionary of his own.⁸

From this time until 1740, when he drew his Methodists away from the Fetter Lane Society of Moravians in London, he was almost continuously in contact and communication with German-speaking people. Many important results ensued. He fell heir to the long tradition of German religious devotion which had its well-spring in the days of Martin Luther, and he appropriated for the English language the rich sentiment which that tradition had developed. Not since the days of Miles Coverdale, two centuries before, had this vein been tapped. It was John Wesley who independently recognized the excellence of German hymnody and who effectively stimulated Englishmen's interest in its beauty.⁹

Heretofore the English Church had had nothing which could properly be called a hymn-book. What congregational singing there was depended upon two metrical versions of the Psalms: that containing what Wesley termed “the miserable, scandalous doggerel” of Sternhold and Hopkins, and the New Version by Tate and Brady.¹⁰ But in 1736 in the remote colony of Georgia a busybody young high-church clergyman with a literary conscience was tempering the wedge of a minor revolution. He was collecting hymns which had proved their excellence among the Dissenters, and casting devotional material from several sources into a form that could be sung by congregations. While the collection existed only in his manuscript, the poems underwent the test of use at numerous religious meetings. Those which survived, he polished and tested again. Next year, taking the finished manuscript to Charlestown, South Carolina, he published A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, which was the first hymnbook ever prepared for use in the services of the English Established Church.¹¹

Here appeared the first few of those pieces he spoke of in later years when, recalling his early contact with the Moravians, he said, “I translated many of their hymns for the use of our own congregations. Indeed, as I durst not implicitly follow any man, I did not take all that lay before me; but selected those which I judged to be most scriptural and most suitable to sound experience.”¹²

Not even when he had chosen the hymns to be translated did he “implicitly follow” any author. To be sure, he always shows a highly accurate apprehension of the meaning of his text; so that his divergences from the original cannot be accounted for on the ground of a misreading.¹³ But in most cases he freely adapted the German to accord with his own purposes, and rephrased it to suit his own taste and judgment.

When his near agreement with the original permitted a close translation, Wesley was peculiarly fortunate in finding accurate poetic phrases.¹⁴ He was no more able to retain the timbre of foreign verse than any other translator has been, but he supplied in its place a certain forthright manner of his own, quite in keeping with the genius of English poetry.

Statements or implications to which he had definite objections, he calmly omitted. Although some such omissions can be accounted for on the ground that the passages had to do with unacceptable theological attitudes, more frequently his objections proceeded from what is best described as a sense of good taste. It frequently happens that the figurative language of intense religious devotionalism becomes offensive if not indecent. Wesley himself employed that violent Scriptural metaphor of self-abasement so dear to eighteenth century pietism. Quite consistent, however, with his willingness to hear worshippers call themselves worms, was his emphatic denunciation of a familiar or sensuous approach to Deity. His preachers received many a rebuke for bold, irreverent, improper expressions in prayer, especially for the “armorous” manner of supplication.¹⁵ So also in his translations of hymns he avoided following the original into irreverently sensuous imagery. The Germans had carried beyond all bounds of decorum their elaboration of the conception of Christ as the lover or bridegroom of the human soul. According to his own statement, Wesley “particularly endeavoured, in all the hymns which are addressed to our blessed Lord, to avoid every fondling expression, and to speak as to the most high God; to him that is ‘in glory equal with the Father, in majesty co-eternal.’”¹⁶ Many a kiss and fond embrace failed to appear in his English versions.¹⁷

“Perhaps some may be afraid,” said Wesley, “lest the refraining from these warm expressions, or even gently checking them, should check the fervor of our devotions. It is very possible it may check, or even prevent, some kind of fervor which has passed for devotion. Possibly it may prevent loud shouting, horrid, unnatural screaming, repeating the same words twenty or thirty times, jumping two or three feet high, and throwing about the arms or legs, both of men and women, in a manner shocking not only to religion, but to common decency:—But it will never check, much less prevent, true, scriptural devotion. It will even enliven the prayer that is properly addressed to Him, who, though he was very man, yet was very God: who, though he was born of a woman, to redeem man; yet was God from everlasting, and world without end.”¹⁸

In matters of form Wesley's guiding principles were brevity and simplicity. With but one exception (the stately hymn “High on His Everlasting Throne,” from Spangenberg's “Der König ruht, und schauet doch”), the translations are appreciably shorter than the originals.¹⁹ And the German hymns, with their complicated metrical schemes, their acrostics, and their alternation of masculine and feminine rimes, fall into the regular, familiar, masculine patterns of the English hymn tradition.²⁰

Wesley packed as much meaning into line and stanza as simplicity and clearness would allow. For example, in Gerhardt's hymn “O Jesu Christ, mein schönstes Licht” there occurs the line

so lauff ich mit den füssen.

Recognizing how absurd a literal rending would sound to English ears, Wesley wrote

So shall I run and never tire,

thereby introducing not only a fresh idea but also an allusion to Scripture.

Love of Milton and the Hebrew poetry gave him a touch of that grand, sweeping majesty which is so rare and excellent a trait in hymn writers. Many seek a majestic tone; but the resulting lines are usually mere sound and fury. Wesley's best claim to poetic honors is based on the fact that what he said of the Methodist hymns as a whole can truly be applied to his own translations: “In these hymns there is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives. Here is nothing turgid or bombastic on the one hand, or low and creeping on the other. Here are no cant expressions, no words without meaning. … Here are … both the purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English language, and, at the same time, the utmost simplicity and plainness.”²¹

It is possible in some measure to indicate the traits which distinguish Wesley's hymns for their grandeur. As Professor Hatfield has pointed out,²² Wesley was fond of employing balanced phrases that build emphatic climaxes of thought. For example, he translates

alles was da lebet in dir webet

as

All things in Earth, and Air, and Sea,
Exist, and live, and move in Thee.(23)

Sometimes Wesley's lofty tone is the result of a felicitous employment of words which inevitably imply dramatic action or which call striking pictures before the mind's eye.

Du einiger und wahrer Gott,
du herrscher aller himmels-scharren

becomes

Thou, true and only God, lead'st forth
Th' immortal Armies of the Sky.

A forceful verb may give power to a line, as when

Dass er die Seelen drum verliert
Und sie der Heiland mit sich führt

is rendered

To tear the Prey out of Thy Teeth;
To spoil the Realms of Hell and Death.(24)

Wesley translated only one German hymn after his separation from the Moravians; by 1743 his work of this kind was done. But he had accomplished a good deal. English hymnody was left with a number of poems which are intrinsically at least as excellent as their distinguished German originals; he had opened a field which, by the end of the next century, had yielded a large and splendid body of translated sacred poetry to English-speaking congregations; and he had widened and deepened a channel which was to have a great, if not altogether measurable effect upon the whole range of English poetry.

Wesley's translations of the German hymns constitute what is permanent in his poetic work. Of a more exclusively historic importance, but no less indicative of a desire to supply the devotional needs of his congregation with as much good poetry as he could find, was his series of adaptations from George Herbert's religious verse.

In preparing an effective body of such literature for his parishoners he was at the same time laboring to meet his own wants. During the sojourn in Georgia, whither he had gone for the express purpose of saving his own soul, the young clergyman yet lacked that personal assurance of the presence of God which he expected would be his salvation. Consequently, George Herbert, who, as Richard Baxter remarked,²⁵ “speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in this world is most with God,” appealed to him with peculiar force. Izaak Walton²⁶ had called The Temple “a book, by the frequent reading whereof, and the assistance of that spirit that seemed to inspire the author, the reader may attain habits of peace and piety, and all the gifts of the Holy Ghost and heaven, and may by still reading still keep those sacred fires burning upon the altar of so pure a heart, as shall free it from the anxieties of the world, and keep it fixed upon things that are above.” Such a consummation was devoutly to be wished.

Perhaps communal meditation upon the thoughts of the poet would be even more effectual than solitary reading. So he began that study which is traceable in the Savannah diaries through the frequent mention of “Herbert”. Wesley was selecting short pieces from The Temple and re-versifying them for congregational singing. A few specimens of his work appeared in the Charlestown Collection of Psalms and Hymns, but his love for Herbert continued until in subsequent editions of hymnals the number of paraphrases from this source reached forty-two.²⁷

A comparison of the new versions with Herbert's poems shows that Wesley followed a procedure in many respects similar to his treatment of the German hymns.

First of all, he recast Herbert's irregular lines of various lengths into more normal stanzas. When the original adhered to a sufficiently simple metrical design, as was the case with “The Elixir”, he accepted its form; but Herbert's fondness for variety, expressing itself frequently for example, by a shift from eight syllables to four per line within a stanza, usually rendered a change necessary. Wesley's favorite verse was the tetrameter, with the trimeter running a not too distant second. He apparently felt that dimeter and pentameter lines did not suit the genius of the hymn-tune, for he consistently avoided them.

Simplicity and complete clarity of meaning were necessary if the poems were to be useful outside the leisurely, thoughtful atmosphere of the study. Accordingly, the slight obscurity of this stanza from “The Elixir”,

          All may of thee partake:
          Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
          Will not grow bright and clean,

disappears when Wesley interprets the meaning and renders the corresponding stanza:

          All may of Thee partake:
          Nothing so small can be,
But draws, when acted for Thy sake,
          Greatness and worth from Thee.

For a like reason, the “metaphysical” conceits, with their tendency to make the reader pause and reflect upon the full import of passing allusions, were hardly consonant with the primarily emotional impact of congregational singing. Herbert writes, in his exquisite “Virtue”,

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
                                                                      Then chiefly lives.

Figurative language is just as much an acceptable part of hymns as it is of other types of poetry. But if the singer's attention is to be kept centered in the dominant theme, and if his emotional response is to be prevented from dissipating itself in the intellectual pursuit of an auxiliary idea, the figures must immediately present the full content of their meaning, an end only to be achieved through the use of either familiar or very general terms. Hence, when Wesley adapted the stanza from “Virtue” he wrote:

Only a sweet and virtuous mind,
          When Nature all in ruin lies,
When earth and heaven a period find,
          Begins a life that never dies.

The same principles find illustration in the two versions of “Vanity”. In the original the third stanza runs thus:

          The subtle Chymic can divest
And strip the creature naked, till he find
          The callow principles within their nest;
          There he imparts to them his mind,
Admitted to their bedchamber, before
                                        They appear trim and drest
To ordinary suitors at the door.

By conventionalization Wesley not only avoided calling the mind to dwell on the implications of a metaphysical conceit, but unprudishly eliminated the slightest hint of sensuality from the image:

The subtle Chemist can divest
          Gay Nature of her various hue;
Stript of her thousand forms, confest
          She stands, and naked to his view;
At distance other suitors stand;
Her inmost stores wait his command.

This stanza from “Vanity” also exemplifies another invariable practice of Wesley's. Archaic words he modernized, as he did “Chymic”; and hard or unusual words, like “callow”, he either displaced with easy ones or evaded in some other way.

Wesley was meticulously careful lest any production of his, whether translation or adaptation, contain the merest shadow of irreverence to God. Thus, when he was paraphrasing “The Reprisal” he omitted an entire stanza for no other apparent reason than that in the original it implied the possibility of a sort of equality between man on the one hand and Christ as God on the other:

          Ah! was it not enough that thou
By thy eternal glory didst outgo me?
Could'st thou not grief's sad conquest me allow,
                    But in all victories overthrow me?

There are further differences between Herbert's verse and Wesley's which cannot be fully exemplified by a few stanzas. To an appreciable degree, Wesley was influenced by the poetic fashions of which Pope and Watts, respectively, stand as leaders. But much of what is new in his paraphrases proceeded from elements which had become so thoroughly assimilated as to be characteristically his own.

Whereas Herbert, in common with other poets of the metaphysical school, consciously shunned loftiness of metrical tone, Wesley's verse possesses a resonance and an exulting strength which may be supposed to have a sort of appropriateness to his conception of God's majesty. This trait is partially susceptible of analysis: we can notice Wesley's unhesitating use of the superlative (as in “Her inmost stores”), and terms which are beyond the need of the superlative (such as “a life that never dies”); but in general we may content ourselves with observing that his poetic style is in accord with his own personality. It is emphatic, reverent, inclined to action rather than reflection, and shot through with a sense of the overpowering greatness of God.

The adaptations from George Herbert were not so permanently successful as the translations from the German. The test of time has proved them ill adapted to congregational singing. Perhaps the principal reason for their unpopularity lies in the fact that by their very nature the poems were incapable of being wrought into instruments of that predominantly emotional, almost dramatic appeal which the really great hymn exercises. They were not written as songs; their thoughts required too many lines to come to a comprehensible point. And in spite of Wesley's skill in producing versions whose meter would technically fit a tune, the singing quality simply did not exist in them.

It is hard to tell whether even during Wesley's lifetime these poems were often sung in Methodist meetings. It is possible, of course, that the momentum of the revival carried them along, caught in the surge and flow of Watts' and Charles Wesley's ecstatic voices. But it seems much more probable that in public services they gave way to other hymns: that they were reserved for solitary use in private devotions. Most of the Wesleyan hymnbooks of the eighteenth century were simply books of religious poems, without musical notation. They served the same purposes as any other book of religious verse, except that they had an additional value because of their capacity for guiding congregational singing. Not all the hymns of even Charles Wesley were expected to be sung; doubtless many that he wrote as well as a large fraction of those by other men which were printed along with his in The Arminian Magazine were never so much as fitted to a tune. The adaptations from Herbert, therefore, could have been, and it seems reasonable to believe that they actually were, eventually relegated to the single function of providing poetry for the Methodists.

Besides the translations from the German and the adaptations from George Herbert, which were undoubtedly John Wesley's, there were three contributions to the Methodist hymnal which can be attributed to him with a confidence only just short of certainty. One was a paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer in three parts; one was a translation from an unknown Spanish author, the hymn beginning “O God, my God, my all thou art;” and one was a translation from a hymn by the French mystic, Madame Bourignon: “Come, Saviour, Jesus, from above.”

If one may judge from the diary entries made while he was in Georgia, John Wesley composed there some verse which was strictly original. But inasmuch as the Wesley hymns were usually published conjointly under the names of Charles and John, without any notation to indicate specifically the authors of the separate poems, we are at a loss to separate the work of the one from that of the other.²⁸ Unless some as yet undiscovered evidence is brought to light, we must refrain from ascribing to John Wesley any of the poetry except pieces such as those we have been reviewing, which can be definitely proved to have been his.²⁹

With one exception, all the verse we know Wesley wrote after he left Oxford to take up the work of the Christian ministry was designed to be used in religious worship. The exception was the result of a major emotional crisis in his life. When Grace Murray, whom he loved, had broken her engagement with him in favor of one John Bennett, he was more profoundly stirred than he would permit his outward appearance to indicate. One day in 1749, while riding from Leeds to Newcastle, he gave vent to his feelings in the matter by drawing up “A short Account of the whole” in verse.³⁰

Characteristically, he began by appealing to God:

O Lord, I bow my sinful Head!
          Righteous are all thy ways with Man!
Yet suffer me with Thee to plead,
          With lowly reverence to complain;
With deep, unutter'd Grief to groan,
O what is this that Thou hast done!

After a short review of his own early experiences of love, he entered into a narration of Grace Murray's career, beginning with her childhood.

In early Dawn of Life, Serene,
          Mild, sweet, and tender was her Mood:
Her pleasing Form spoke all within
          Soft and compassionately good:
Listening to every Wretch's Care,
Mixing with each her friendly Tear.
At Dawn of Life, to feed the Poor
          Glad she her little All bestow'd:
Wise to lay up a better Store,
          And hast'ning to be rich in God;
God whom she sought with early Care,
With reverence and with lowly Fear.

The narration continued through the betrothal. Recalling his happiness in the knowledge of her love, Wesley thought again of her vows:

Oft (tho' as yet the Nuptial Tie
          Was not), clasping her Hand in mine,
What Force, she said, beneath the Sky,
          Can now our well-knit Souls disjoin?
With Thee I'd go to India's Coast,
To Worlds in distant Ocean lost!

The blow fell, and Wesley turned again to God, who, he trusted, was agent in all these things, with a prayer in which he achieves for once the heights of true poetry.

What Thou hast done I know not now!
          Suffice I shall hereafter know!
Beneath Thy chastening Hand I bow:
          That still I live to Thee I owe.
G teach Thy deeply-humbled Son
To say, “Father, thy Will be done!”
Teach me, from every pleasing Snare
          To keep the Issues of my Heart:
Be Thou my Love, my Joy, my Fear!
          Thou my eternal Portion art.
Be Thou my never-failing Friend,
And love, O love me to the End!

At Oxford Wesley had followed Horace in the vow, “My lyre shall sing of naught but Love.” But somehow “The cruel Queen of fierce desires” had failed to pierce “The obdurate maid with equal fires” in every instance wherein this was Wesley's prayer. It is a significant fact that on the only occasion we can be sure he was playing on a lyre of his own, Wesley ended by singing the real master passion of his life, the divine love of God.

Notes

1. Whitehead, I, 235.

2. Letters, I, 8-9.

3. Ibid., I, 27-28.

4. Ibid., I, 28.

5. Whitehead, I, 251.

6. Ibid., I, 249. The paraphrase was first published in The Arminian Magazine, volume I.

7. Journal, I, 110.

8. Ibid., I, 112; and passim through volume I.

9. Hatfield, James Taft, “John Wesley's Translations of German Hymns,” P M L A, XI, 180. I am heavily indebted to this article, which runs from page 171 to page 199 in the Publications for 1896. Because I have not, as Wesley would say, followed him for better, for worse, I do not shift responsibility to him for aught but the statements of fact which he has certified. Professor Hatfield identified twenty-nine translations with their originals, and drew sound conclusions from a very careful comparison.

   In 1798 the Wesley Historical Society Proceedings, I, 48-49, contained a list of the German translations, compiled by C. D. Hardcastle. One hymn mentioned by Professor Hatfield does not appear; but the list contains two hymns, first printed in Psalms and Hymns, 1741, (see Green's Bibliography, p. 20) which Professor Hatfield did not have in his enumeration. It is possible that Professor Hatfield was not able to have access to the 1741 publication, for he does not mention it at all.

   The results of an exhaustive count of the German translations is to be found in a little book by Henry Bett, The Hymns of Methodism, 1920, pp. 110-12. According to this list, there are extant thirty-three such hymns by John Wesley, one of which was never published in his lifetime. Bett makes the interesting point that the sources for all but one of the published hymns were in Das Gesangbuch der Gemeinde in Herrnhuth, published in 1735, which was the Moravian hynmal used in Georgia while Wesley was there.

   There is enough fresh material on the German hymns to make Bett's book a valuable and interesting supplement to Professor Hatfield's article.

10. Journal, I, 229, Curnock's note.

11. Ibid., I, 425.

12. From Sermon on “Knowing Christ after the Flesh,” Works, II, 443.

13. However, see Hatfield, pp. 185-86. Professor Hatfield emphasizes Wesley's correctness: “Considering the fact that German studies hardly existed in England at the time, it is remarkable that we can say of Wesley (what perhaps could not be said of Scott or Coleridge) that he never shows a flagrant misunderstanding of the text.” But, continues Professor Hatfield, “In sparse cases mistakes seem to have occurred;” and he proceeds to list the possible errors. It seems to me that Wesley's free use of the original renders it quite probable that even in these cases he was deliberately changing the sense.

    For example, Hatfield notices that

    und lass biss in den tod
    uns allzeit deiner pflege
    und treu empfohlen seyn—

    appears in Wesley's translation as

    Let us in Life, in Death,
    Thy steadfast truth declare,
    And publish with our latest Breath
    Thy Love and Guardian Care!

    It is impossible absolutely to deny that Wesley misunderstood the meaning of empfehlen. Nevertheless I am inclined to believe that he transformed the stanza consciously. It is a minor point, no doubt; but I shall give my reasons.

    1. Wesley had absolutely no scruple against making any change he saw fit.

    2. Evangelist of evangelists, he was convinced of the duty of a Christian to bear witness to the grace of God.

    3. He was particularly fond of having the testimony of dying Christians. I have already called attention to his boast, “Our people die well.” Witness the numerous accounts in The Arminian Magazine which tell of Methodists publishing with their latest breath God's love and guardian care. Witness, finally, his own desire that his last words should be words of praise, and his insistence as he died that “The best of all is, God is with us.”

    In the light, therefore, of the strong probability that Wesley had a definite purpose in rendering the hymn as he did, and in view of the fact that empfehlen is a common, easy word, used in a perfectly normal, easy construction, it seems only natural to conclude that this is a case, not of error, but of deliberate change.

    I believe a similar course of argument could be successfully brought to bear upon the other instances of possible error which Professor Hatfield lists. It is enough, however, to enter a caveat against the assumption that where Wesley differs from his original he does so simply through error.

14. Professor Hatfield gives the following illustration to show that “Wesley can be extremely literal.”

    See his article, p. 185.

    In hoffnung kan ich frölich sagen:
    Gott hat der Höllen macht geschlagen,
    Gott führt mich aus dem kampf und streit
    In seine ruh und sicherheit.

    Already springing Hope I feel;
    God will destroy the Power of Hell;
    God from the Land of Wars and Pain
    Leads me where Peace and Safety reign.

15. See, for example, Letters, IV, 194.

16. From Sermon on “Knowing Christ after the Flesh,” Works, II, 443.

17. It was partially because of his contempt for their indecent imagery that Wesley published his stinging rebuke of Count Zinzendorf's hymns. He simply collected a group of the Moravian leader's worst effusions, and printed them with an ironic preface in a pamphlet having this title-page: “Hymns Composed for the use of the Brethren. By the Right Reverend and Most Illustrious C. Z. Published for the Benefit of all Mankind, in the year 1749.” See Green's Bibliography, pp. 65-66; and cf. Journal, III, 389.

18. From Sermon on “Knowing Christ after the Flesh,” Works, II, 444.

19. This statement applies to the hymns which were translated from a single original. Some of Wesley's German hymns are centos. One, for instance, derives from four sources. For all such detailed information Professor Hatfield's article is a reliable guide.

20. Professor Hatfield (see his article, p. 181) has made a classification of Wesley's stanza forms. It is significant that twenty-four out of the twenty-nine hymns he deals with are in stanzas of four iambic tetrameter lines, or, as the pattern is usually called, long meter.

21. A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People called Methodists, 1780, preface.

22. Hatfield, p. 186.

23. See Hatfield, p. 187, for numerous other examples. In this connection I find myself impelled to make one other adverse criticism of a detail in Professor Hatfield's excellent paper. He says (p. 184-85), “Of mixed metaphors Wesley has a decided dislike, as in the stanza … where the believer is likened both to a lamb and a lion, or [in the line]:

    da solst du mein lamm, mein licht und tempel seyn.”

    But a little later (p. 187) it is pointed out in another connection that the German

    mir, dem schatten,

    is rendered in Wesley's English version thus:

    In Sin conceiv'd, of Woman born,
    A Worm, a Leaf, a Blast, a Shade.

    Wherein “mein lamm, mein licht und tempel” is rhetorically different from “A Worm, a Leaf, a Blast, a Shade” does not easily appear.

24. For these two and other examples of Wesley's bold manner for the heightening of his effects, see Hatfield, pp. 188-91.

25. In the preface to his Poetical Fragments, London, 1681; quoted in the introduction to The Works of George Herbert, London, 1859, II, vi.

26. In his Life of Dr. John Donne; Walton's Lives, London, 1845, p. 63.

27. I have followed Curnock's count. See his footnote: Journal, I, 242.

28. G. Osborn, in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Advertisement, VIII, xv, says that “the two brothers … agreed not to distinguish their hymns,” and that “Mr. Bradburn received this statement from Mr. J. Wesley.” Osborn continues: “any distinction now attempted must be to a great extent, if not wholly, conjectural. But [the editor] hopes to be excused for observing that his own inquiries have led him to think it likely that Mr. John Wesley contributed more largely to these joint publications than is commonly supposed; and that the habit of attributing almost everything found in them to his brother is scarcely consistent with a due regard to accuracy.”

    In some cases the possibility of John's authorship can be definitely eliminated, as when a volume was published under Charles's name alone.

29. Proof is readily available. There has been no doubt about the translations from the Latin, or the paraphrase of the 104th Psalm.

    Conclusive proof that the German translations are John Wesley's is assembled in Professor Hatfield's article in P M L A, q. v.

    The Rev. Nehemiah Curnock, in his edition of John Wesley's Journal, has given the facts that irresistibly point to John as the adapter of George Herbert's poetry.

    The Rev. John Telford made the determination in regard to the paraphrase of the Lord's prayer; see his Life of John Wesley, p. 222.

    Telford is also among those who have shown John Wesley to be the translator of the Spanish hymn; see his Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated, p. 269.

    The translation from the French is the only poem about which the proof is at all doubtful. For a careful and cautious review of the evidence see Henry Bett, The Hymns of Methodism, pp. 62-64. There is a possibility that the hymn may have been translated by Dr. Byrom and merely revised by Wesley. A majority of those who have studied the question ascribe the translation solely to the latter.

    The most ambitious attempt to separate the original hymns of John Wesley from those of his brother will be found in Bett's Hymns of Methodism, Appendix IV, pp. 129-35. He names nine hymns which he thinks are certainly John's, and lays down a series of test-principles which may be applied to a suspected hymn. All his principles are based on internal evidence. It is unnecessary here to point out how peculiarly inadequate such evidence must be in the case of a man almost all of whose positively identifiable poetry is translation. Bett's discussion, however, is suggestive and sympathetic, and may be valuable to those who do not require conclusive proof of authorship.

    A letter from the Rev. John Telford written some months before his lamented death assured me that he believed, as I do, that the only entirely original poem definitely attributable to John Wesley is that on Grace Murray. See immediately below.

30. The whole poem is printed in Dr. Augustine Leger's interesting book, Wesley's Last Love, pp. 98-105, and also in Henry Moore's Life of Wesley, II, 171. Wesley, of course, never published the piece. It lay practically unknown until Dr. Leger reproduced it, verbatim et literatim, in 1910, from a diary of Wesley's which he found in the British Museum.

Works Cited

Bibliography

Bett, Henry, The Hymns of Methodism in Their Literary Relations, London: The Epworth Press, New Edition, 1920.

Emory, John, (Editor) The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., New York: Carlton and Porter, 1856.

Green, Richard, The Works of John and Charles Wesley: A Bibliography, London: Methodist Publishing House, 1906.

Hatfield, James Taft, “John Wesley's Translations of German Hymns” Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. XI.

Leger, Augustin, Wesley's Last Love, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1910.

Moore, Henry, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., in two volumes, New York: N. Bangs and J. Emory, 1824.

Osborn, G., (Editor), The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, in thirteen volumes, London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868.

Telford, John, The Life of John Wesley, revised, London: The Epworth Press, 1924.

Whitehead, John, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M. A., Philadelphia: William S. Stockton, 1845.

Books By John Wesley

A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, The sixth edition, London: The New Chapel, 1788.

(Note: The foregoing publication contains the Preface of 1780. I have not seen a first edition.)

The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., Standard Edition, eight volumes, Nehemiah Curnock, editor, London: Robert Culley, 1909-16.

The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., Standard Edition, eight volumes, John Telford, editor, London: The Epworth Press, 1931.