_James L. Clifford_, Columbia University; _Benjamin Boyce_,
University of Nebraska; _Cleanth Brooks_, Louisiana State University;
_Arthur Friedman_, University of Chicago; _James R. Sutherland_,
Queen Mary College, University of London; _Emmett L. Avery_, State
College of Washington; _Samuel Monk_, Southwestern University.

Lithoprinted from Author's Typescript
EDWARDS BROTHERS, INC.
_Lithoprinters_
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
1947




INTRODUCTION

We remember Samuel Wesley (1662-1735), if at all, as the father of a great
religious leader. In his own time he was known to many as a poet and a
writer of controversial prose. His poetic career began in 1685 with the
publication of _Maggots_, a collection of juvenile verses on trivial
subjects, the preface to which, a frothy concoction, apologizes to the
reader because the book is neither grave nor gay. The first poem, "On a
Maggot," is composed in hudibrastics, with a diction obviously Butlerian,
and it is followed by facetious poetic dialogues and by Pindarics of the
Cowleian sort but on such subjects as "On the Grunting of a Hog." In 1688
Wesley took his B.A. at Exeter College, Oxford, following which he became
a naval chaplain and, in 1690, rector of South Ormsby; he became rector of
Epworth in 1695. During the run of the _Athenian Gazette_ (1691-1697)
he joined with Richard Sault and John Norris in assisting John Dunton, the