in sacred and profane learning; for he interrupts the studies to which I had applied with all my might. Last year, in the midst of our business in the College, he took me off both from study and from school, not only without any benefit, but without calling me to any thing which had even the appearance of either utility or pleasure. To day he is from home, or I should scarcely have leisure to write this letter. He chose me from all the scholars ;-me, who am hoarse and short sighted, to read to him at night. I am glad you enjoy good health, I beg yours and my mother's blessing. mother's blessing. I saw my grandmother* in the last holidays; in those which are approaching I cannot, because I am detained by an unfriendly friend."

He was about eighteen years old when he wrote this letter, and not yet removed from school. We may observe in it marks of a strong mind, wholly devoted to the pursuit of classical knowledge; and considering his age and situation at the time, it shews a progress in learning which does him credit.

His mother's advices had a proper effect on his mind, and were the means of preserving him from vices too common to the youth of the place. He retained his sobriety, his reverence for God, and regard for religion. In December this year he wrote to his mother, and the following extract from his letter gives a pleasing view of his simplicity, and serious attention to the state of his own heart, and the first motions of evil. "I received the sacrament," says he, "the first Sunday of this month-I am unstable as water-I frequently make good resolutions, and keep them for a time, and then grow weary of the restraint. I have one grand failing, which is, that having done my duty, I undervalue others, and think what wretches the rest of the College are compared with me. Sometimes in my relapses I cry out, Can the Ethiopian change his skin, and the leopard his spots, then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil: But I answer again, with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Amen."

The next year, 1711, he was elected to Christ-church, Oxford ;† and here, as well as at Westminster, he acquired the character of an excellent classic scholar. But his mind was too large, and his zeal for religion and the established church too ardent, to be confined within the bounds prescribed by the common exercises of the place, and he took an active part in some of the principal questions agitated among the literati of that time.

When he had taken his Master's degree, or perhaps before he took it, he was sent for to officiate as Usher at Westminster school; and soon afterwards he took orders, under the patronage of Dr. Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, and Dean of Westminster. He became an able, judicious divine: his conduct in discharging the various duties of life, was exemplary, and did honour to his profession as a christian and a minister of the gospel. He was a man who had the nicest sense of honour and integrity; and the utmost abhorrence of

* The widow of Mr John Wesley, of New Inn Hall, Oxford, and niece of Dr. Thomas Fuller. She had now been a widow near forty years.

+ Welch's List, &c. page 95.

duplicity and falsehood. He was humane and charitable; not only administering to the wants of the poor and afflicted, as far as his income would permit, but also using his influence with others to procure them relief. In filial affection and duty to parents, he was remarkable; no man in the same circumstances ever shone brighter than he, in this branch of Christian duty, thro' the whole course of his life. Mr. Samuel Wesley was highly esteemed by Lord Oxford, Bishop Atterbury, Mr. Pope, and several other persons among the first characters in the kingdom, for rank and literary talents. With Lord Oxford and Mr. Pope he held a friendly correspondence: with Bishop Atterbury he was in close habits of friendship. Atterbury was a man of first rate abilities: he had a fine genius improved by study, and a spirit to exert his talents. His notions of Church government were very high, and on this subject there was perfect harmony between them. The Bishop had made himself an object of hatred to Walpole and the rest of the King's ministers, by the opposition which he gave, in the House of Lords, to their measures; being generally among the protestors, and drawing up the reasons of the protests with his own hand. On the 24th of August, 1722, he was apprehended under a suspicion of being concerned in a plot to subvert the government, and bring in the Pretender. Mr. Wesley, by his intimacy with him, became an object of dislike to Walpole; and on this ground only, we believe, has of late years been accused of Jacobitism. But Mr. John Wesley vehemently affirmed that his brother Samuel was not disaffected to the present reigning family. And if we consider, that his father was the first who wrote in defence of the Revolution, and that he mentions this circumstance, apparently with pleasure, it will not appear probable that he was a Jacobite. As Mr. Wesley acted on principle in every part of his conduct, so the banishment of Atterbury made no change in his friendship for him. If he had full conviction of the Bishop's innocence, which is probable, it must have given him great pain, to see his friend persecuted, op、 pressed, and banished by the manœuvres of a Minister of the State. It is no wonder this treatment of his friend should raise his indignation to the highest pitch; which seems to have been the case, and will be some apology for the severity of his satire in some verses which he wrote on this occasion.

His own attachment to Atterbury, and opposition to Walpole, having blocked up his way to preferment at Westminster, he left his situ ation at this place about the year 1732, for the Free Grammar School at Tiverton, in Devon, over which he presided till his death. In 1736, he published a quarto volume of poems, for which he obtained a numerous and respectable list of subscribers. Many of these poems possess a considerable share of excellence; the tales are admirably well told, and highly entertaining; the satire is pointed, and the moral instructive. The following beautiful verses are a paraphrase on these words in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah: All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. They were occasioned by the death of a young lady.

THE morning flow'rs display their sweets,
And gay their silken leaves unfold;
As careless of the noon-day heats,

And fearless of the evening cold.

Nipp'd by the wind's unkindly blast,
Parch'd by the sun's directer ray,
The momentary glories waste,

The short-liv'd beauties die away.

So blooms the human face divine,
When youth its pride of beauty shows;
Fairer than spring the colours shine,
And sweeter than the virgin rose.

Or worn by slowly rolling years,
Or broke by sickness in a day;
The fading glory disappears,

The short-liv'd beauties die away.

Yet these new rising from the tomb,
With lustre brighter far shall shine,
Revive with ever-during bloom;

Safe from diseases and decline.

Let sickness blast and death devour,
If heaven must recompense our pains;
Perish the grass, and fade the flow'r,
If firm the word of God remains.

Mr. Samuel Wesley was a very high Church-man; and it must be owned, that he was extremely rigid in his principles, which is perhaps the greatest blemish in his character. It has been said, that he was prejudiced against some of the highest truths of the gospel, because many of the Dissenters insisted upon them. This is a heavy charge, and if true, would shew him to have been a man almost void of principle; but happily it appears to be without foundation.

As a high Church-man, Mr. Wesley had objections to extempore prayer. In the duodecimo edition of his poems are the following lines on forms of prayer, which, for the sprightly turn of thought they contain, I shall insert:"

Crutches to walk he can refuse,

But uses them to fly.

Mr. Samuel Wesley's principles led him to disapprove of the conduct of his brothers, Mr. John and Charles Wesley, when they became itinerant preachers; being afraid they would make a separation from the Church of England. Several letters passed between him and his brother John Wesley, both on the doctrine which he taught, and on his manner of teaching it. We shall have an opportunity of considering some of these letters when we come to that period of Mr. John Wesley's Life in which he and Mr. Charles became itin

erants.

Mr. Samuel Wesley had a bad state of health some time before he left Westminster, and his removal to Tiverton did not much mend it. On the night of the 5th of November, 1739, he went to bed, seemingly as well as usual; was taken ill about three in the morning, and died at seven, after about four hours illness. But the following letter, written to the late Mr. Charles Wesley, will state the circumstances more minutely,

46

REV. AND DEAR SIR,

TIVERTON, Nov. 14, 1739.

"YOUR brother and my dear friend (for so you are sensible he was to me) on Monday, the 5th of November, went to bed, as he thought, as well as he had been for some time before; was seized about three o'clock in the morning very ill, when your sister immediately sent for Mr. Norman, and ordered the servant to call me. Mr. Norman came as quick as he possibly could, but said, as soon as he saw him, that he could not get over it, but would die in a few hours. He was not able to take any thing, nor able to speak to us, only yes, or no, to a question asked him, and that did not last half an hour. I never went from his bed-side till he expired, which was about seven the same morning. With a great deal of difficulty we persuaded your dear sister to leave the room before he died. I trembled to think how she would bear it, knowing the sincere affection and love she had for him: but, blessed be God, he hath heard and answered prayer on her behalf, and, in a great measure, calmed her spirit, though she has not yet been out of her chamber. Your brother, was buried on Monday last in the afternoon-and is gone to reap the fruit of his labours-I pray God we may imitate him in all his virtues, and be prepared to follow. I should enlarge much more, but have not time; for which reason I hope you will excuse him who is under the greatest obligations to be, and really is, with the greatest sincerity, yours in all things,

AMOS MATTHEWS."

>

In the second edition of his poems in duodecimo, printed at Cambridge in 1743, there is, some account of the author, by a friend, prefixed to it. We know not who the writer of this account was, as it was written soon after his death, and by a person who seems to

but

VOL. I.

have been well acquainted with him, we shall give a short extract from it.

"THE author of these poems, the Rev. Mr. Samuel Wesley, frankly declares in his preface to the edition published by himself, that it was not any opinion of excellence in the verses themselves, that occasioned their present collection and publication, but merely the profit proposed by the subscription. If his modesty had permitted him to have been sensible of his own merit, he might, without this, or any other apology, have safely trusted them to speak for themselves: and perhaps the candid reader, upon an impartial perusal, will hardly think them inferior to the most favoured and celebrated collections of this kind.

"For though it must be owned, that a certain roughness may be observed to run through them, the vehemence and surprising vivacity of his temper not suffering him to revise, or, as he used to call it, to tinker what he had once finished-yet strong, just, manly sentiments every where occur, set off with all the advantage which a most luxuriant fancy, and a very uncommon compass of knowledge could adorn them with; together with a flowing and unaffected pleasantness in the more humoursome parts, beyond what could proceed from, even the happiest talent of wit, unless also accompanied with that innocence and cheerfulness of heart, which to him made life delightful in his laborious station, and endeared his conversation to all, especially his learned and ingenious friends; and many such he had, of all ranks and degrees.

"He was the son of a clergyman in Lincolnshire, from whence he was brought to Westminster-school; where having passed thro' the College as a King's Scholar, he was elected Student of Christ-church in Oxford. In both these places, by the sprightliness of his compositions, and his remarkable industry, he gained a reputation beyond most of his cotemporaries, being thoroughly and critically skilful in the learned languages, and master of the classics to a degree of perfection, perhaps not very common in this last mentioned Society, so justly famous for polite learning.

"It must be observed, in justice to his memory, that his wit and learning were the least part of this worthy man's praise. An open benevolent temper which he had from nature, he so cultivated upon principle, that the number and the continual success of his good offices was astonishing even to his friends. He was an instance how exceedingly serviceable in life, a person of a very inferior station may be, who sets his heart upon it. His own little income was liberally made use of, and as his acquaintance whom he applied to, were always confident of his care and integrity, he never wanted means to carry on his good purposes. One particular must not be omitted: he was one of the first projectors, and a very careful and active promoter, of the first Infirmary set up at Westminster, for the relief of the sick and needy, in 1719, and he had the satisfaction to see it flourish, and propagate by its example, under the prudent management of other good persons, many pious establishments of the same kind in distant parts of the nation."