Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/315

Rh no more, provoke me no more. Do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise; be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me. Of what importance is your character to mankind? If you were buried just now, or if you had never lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God?" After putting Wesley through the purgatory of a twenty years' experience of her shrewishness, this graceless creature turned her back on his house, taking with her his papers and journals, which latter she never returned. A refreshingly simple entry in Wesley's diary tells the story of her flight, expresses his ignorance of its cause, and thus concludes: "Non eam reliqui, non dimissi, non revocabo—I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her." Ten years afterward Mrs. Wesley died at Camberwell, and now continues to decay beneath a stone, whose inscription says she was "A woman of exemplary virtue, a tender parent, and a sincere friend"—the same being a lie, with circumstance, in its suppressio veri respecting her true character as an unwomanly wife. Fortunate indeed was the great Methodist in possessing a pious placidity of temper, which enabled him to declare, "I feel and grieve, but by the grace of God I fret at nothing." At a recent sale of autographs in London, the catalogue began with a collection of Wesley's letters to his renegade wife. Their character and worth, in the opinions of collectors, were as follows: "A very painfully-written letter, of eight pages, on the differences between him and his wife, brought £6 17s. 6d.; another, relating to Mrs. Wesley's keeping his papers, in which he says, 'Will not even men of the world say, what a wretch is this, first to rob, then to expose her own husband?' £2 2s.; another, presenting a long and pitiful chapter of complaints and dislikes, £2 10s.; another, of grave accusation against Mrs. Wesley for having taken some of his private letters from his bureau, £2 7s.; another, relating to his choosing his own company, which had been a bone of contention between him and his wife for more than seven years, £2 2s.;" and so on. These "Epistles of John," evidently, were not modelled after their Scriptural namesakes!

How much of a shrew she was, in general, we do not know; but the wife of the author of Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary merits such an appellation for having committed to the flames, in a fit of ill-temper, the entire manuscript from the letter A to the letter S of that monumental work of patient erudition. Her pretext was that its compilation occupied too engrossingly her husband's time; and this crowning act of literary murder ended the series of those constant complainings, whereof, we may imagine, the dictionary furnished a pivot for her tongue to revolve upon perpetually. What dismay, akin to despair, must have seized upon poor Ainsworth as he saw the work of years turned to ashes in a trice! No wonder