in the same essay he credited a passage in Dryden's _King Arthur_
with showing an improvement upon Tasso. There is no doubt as to his vast
respect for the greatest living poet, but his remarks do not indicate that
he ranked Dryden with Virgil, Tasso, or Milton; for he recognized as well
as we that the power to embellish and to imitate successfully does not
constitute the highest excellence in poetry. In the _Epistle to a
Friend_ he affirmed his admiration for Dryden's matchless style, his
harmony, his lofty strains, his youthful fire, and even his wit--in the
main, qualities of style and expression. But by 1700 Wesley had absorbed
enough of the new puritanism that was rising in England to qualify his
praise; now he deprecated the looseness and indecency of the poetry, and
called upon the poet to repent. One other point calls for comment.
Wesley's scheme for Christian machinery in the epic, as described in the
"Essay on Heroic Poetry," is remarkably similar to Dryden's. Dryden's had
appeared in the essay on satire prefaced to his translation of Juvenal,
published late in October, 1692; Wesley's scheme appeared soon after June,
1693.

The _Epistle to a Friend concerning Poetry_ is neither startling nor
contemptible; it has, in fact, much more to say than the rhymed treatises
on verse by Roscommon and Buckinghamshire. Its remarks on Genius are
fresh, though tantalizing in their brevity, and it defends the Moderns
with both neatness and energy. Much of its advice is cautious and
commonplace--but such was the tradition of the poetical treatise on verse.
Appearing within two years of Collier's first attack upon the stage, it
reinforces some of that worthy's contentions, but we are not aware of its
having had much effect.

The _Epistle to a Friend concerning Poetry_ is here reproduced, with
permission, from the copy at Harvard. The "Essay on Heroic Poetry" is