Ovid, Ariosto, and Spenser "for the sake of a fancied Regularity." He had
set out to defend the Biblical epic, the Christian epic, and the propriety
of Christian machines in epic, and no rules or authority could deter him.
As good an example as any of his independence of mind can be seen in a
note on Bk. I, apropos of the poet's use of obsolete words (_Life of Our
Blessed Lord_, 1697, p. 27): it may be in vicious imitation of Milton and
Spenser, he says in effect, but I have a fondness for old words, they
please my ear, and that is all the reason I can give for employing them.

Wesley's resistance to a strict application of authority and the rules
grew partly out of the rationalistic and empirical temper of Englishmen in
his age, but it also sprang from his learning. From various sources he
drew the theory that Greek and Latin were but corrupted forms of ancient
Phoenician, and that the degeneracy of Greek and Latin in turn had
produced all, or most, of the present European tongues (_ibid._, p. 354).
In addition, he believed that the Greeks had derived some of their
thought from older civilizations, and specifically that Plato had received
many of his notions from the Jews (_ibid._, p. 230)--an idea which recalls
the argument that Dryden in _Religio Laici_ had employed against the
deists. Furthermore, he had, like many of his learned contemporaries, a
profound respect for Hebrew culture and the sublimity of the Hebrew
scriptures, going so far as to remark in the "Essay on Heroic Poetry" that
"most, even of [the heathen poets'] best Fancies and Images, as well as
Names, were borrow'd from the Antient Hebrew Poetry and Divinity." In
short, however faulty his particular conclusions, he had arrived at an
historical viewpoint, from which it was no longer possible to regard the
classical standards--much less the standards of French critics--as having
the holy sanction of Nature herself.

Some light is shed on the literary tastes of his period by Wesley's two