From The history of the Old and New Testament attempted in verse and adorn’d with three hundred & thirty sculptures, by Samuel Wesley (1662-1735). A remarkable project, a presentation of the entire Bible in iambic pentameters, a form ideally suited to some of the more lurid and judgmental passages in scripture.
This is indeed a remarkable project. I’m puzzled by (well, everything, but particularly) the dedication to the Queen, since Britain didn’t have a queen in 1716 — Queen Anne having died two years before. But perhaps it just took that long to get the book into print. (I don’t envy the typesetters.)
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Yes, Don, it is a chaotic publishing history, I think typical of the period – not helped by the fact that his NT came first in 1701. There were later reprints, where NT was issued as the third volume of the Bible set, but they didn’t always trouble to change the prelims. The whole thing sold rather better than Paradise Lost. It’s easy to see why. Wesley was a great champion of the Stuart cult of the Royal Martyr. In the course of the verse “translation” he managed to shoehorn in some veiled appropriately caustic remarks about the Puritans.
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