“He is deeply sensible of your very kind offer, and most cordially embraces it. He has desired me to express the warmth of his gratitude in the strongest terms, and says he most cheerfully yields the volumes you mention, to your superior judgment, to prune, erase, and alter as you please. He only wishes, they could have had your eye before they appeared in public. But it is not yet too late. A second edition will appear with great advantage, when they have undergone so kind a revisal. But he is apprehensive, your time is so precious, that it may be too great an intrusion upon it, unless made a work of leisure and opportunity. Yet, as you have proffered it, he will not give up the privilege; but hopes leisure may be found for so friendly and generous a work. “I am, reverend sir, your most affectionate friend and brother, “H. BROOKE.”[214] Perhaps there have been published as many portraits of Wesley as of any man that ever lived. The year 1774 was, in this respect, remarkable. At its commencement, Wesley writes: “I was desired by Mrs. Wright, of New York, to let her take my effigy in waxwork. She has that of Mr. Whitefield and many others; but none of them, I think, comes up to a well drawn picture.” Query, what has become of this waxwork effigy? Besides the waxwork figure, there were others. From the manuscript letters of Samuel Bardsley, we learn that, already, the potters of Staffordshire had printed his likeness on their crockery; and Mr. Voyes of Corbridge had had it engraved on the seals he sold. These are little facts; but they indicate Wesley’s growing popularity. The people ask for the portraits of public men only. A man must be notorious before the masses wish to see him. Thus it was in the case of Wesley. For five-and-thirty years, he had been before the public. No man had been more bitterly persecuted by his enemies; and no man was more ardently beloved by his friends. His fame had spread throughout the three kingdoms; and all sorts of artists began to use him for their own advantage.