morals; he admires Blackmore, as ‘big with Virgil's manly thought.’ 4. ‘The History of the Old and New Testament, attempted in Verse,’ 1704, 3 vols. 12mo; engravings by John Sturt [q. v.]; dedicated to Queen Anne; 2nd edit. 1717, 12mo. 5. ‘Marlborough, or the Fate of Europe,’ 1705, fol. Posthumous was 6. ‘Eupolis's Hymn to the Creator,’ first published in the ‘Arminian Magazine,’ 1778; the manuscript is partly in the hand of his daughter, Mehetabel; this circumstance, and the superiority of the poem to Wesley's other verse, suggest joint authorship; John Wesley always claimed the whole for his father.
Also (in prose) 7. ‘Sermon … [Ps. xciv. 16] before the Society for the Reformation of Manners,’ 1698, 8vo; noteworthy as exhibiting his sympathy with efforts of kindred type to those of the early methodist societies. 8. ‘The Pious Communicant Rightly Prepared. … With Prayers and Hymns … added a short Discourse of Baptism,’ 1700, 12mo; appended is ‘A Letter concerning the Religious Societies.’ John Wesley's ‘Treatise on Baptism,’ dated 11 Nov. 1756, is an unacknowledged reprint of his father's ‘Short Discourse,’ slightly retouched. Posthumous was 9. ‘A Letter to a Curate,’ 1735, 8vo; a very able summary of clerical duties and studies. Wesley also compiled for Dunton ‘The Young Student's Library,’ 1692, fol.; workmanlike synopses of eighty-nine works in divinity, history, and science.
Wesley's verse will not lift him high among poets (he was pilloried in the first edition of the ‘Dunciad,’ 1728, i. 115), nor has his ‘Job’ given him his expected rank among scholars. He was an able, busy, and honest man, with much impulsive energy, easily misconstrued; his fame is that of being the father of John and Charles Wesley.
Samuel Wesley the younger (1691–1739), poet, eldest child of the above, was born in Spitalfields on 10 Feb. 1690–1. It is said that he could not speak till he was more than four, and then began with intelligible sentences, but the story is not very credible; nor is the story (Armin. Mag. v. 547) of the mulberry on his neck, which every spring was ‘small and white,’ and then turned green, red, purple, as it grew in size. He entered Westminster school in 1704, and was elected king's scholar in 1707. His bent was for classics; he thought it an irksome break in his studies when Sprat, dean of Westminster, as well as bishop of Rochester, who had ordained his father, took him out to Bromley and used his services as a reader. As a Westminster student he entered Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 9 June 1711 (when his age is wrongly given as eighteen). His letter (3 June 1713) to Robert Nelson [q. v.] shows intelligent study of the problem of the Ignatian Epistles. He graduated B.A. in 1715, and M.A. in 1718, and became head usher in Westminster school (his appointment seems to have dated from 1713), and took orders, on the advice of Francis Atterbury [q. v.], who had succeeded Sprat in both offices. His attachment to Atterbury, with whom he corresponded in his exile, and in whose cause he wrote fierce epigrams on Sir Robert Walpole [q. v.], was the real ground for refusing him the post of under-master at Westminster, though the reason assigned was his marriage. To the education of his brothers, ‘both before and since they entered the university,’ he contributed ‘great sums,’ and was ‘very liberal to his parents and sisters’ (letter of his father, 28 Feb. 1733). He was active in promoting (1719) the first infirmary at Westminster, now St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iii. 353). In 1733 (Foster) he accepted the offer of the mastership of Tiverton grammar school, Devonshire, founded by Peter Blundell [q. v.] He never held any cure; his father in February 1733 was anxious to resign Epworth in his favour, but he declined the proposal. With his brothers John and Charles, while in Georgia, he corresponded in full sympathy (he was interested in the prospects of this colony, and his muse had prophesied its future greatness; he was probably the ‘Rev. Samuel Wesley’ who as early as 1731 gave donations to the Georgia mission, including ‘a pewter chalice and paten,’ Stevenson, p. 254); the opening of their subsequent career he viewed with strong disfavour as the beginning of schism, and he remonstrated with his mother on her countenance of ‘a spreading delusion;’ the members of the family wrote frankly to each other, and Samuel did not spare his sarcasm; but there was no breach of good feeling. Atterbury's patronage, and his own vein of satire and humorous verse, made Wesley known in London literary circles. Edward Harley, second earl of Oxford [q. v.], writes (7 Aug. 1734) that he does not ‘know one so capable’ of annotating Hudibras. Pope obtained subscribers for Wesley's volume of verse, ‘Poems on several Occasions,’ 1736, 4to; enlarged edition 1743, 4to; also Cambridge 1743, 12mo (with prefixed ‘Account of the Author’); reprinted 1808 and 1862. Besides humorous pieces, this contains several hymns of great beauty; five of them are included in the present Wesleyan hymn-book. A previous
