Wesley Corpus

To the Countess of Huntingdon Date: OXFORD, August 1744. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1744) Author: John Wesley --- MADAM, -- It has been a common remark for many years that poetry, which might answer the noblest purposes, has been prostituted to the vilest, even to confound the distinctions between virtue and vice, good and evil; and that to such a degree that, among the numerous poems now extant in our language, there is an exceeding small proportion which does not more or less fall under this heavy censure. So that a great difficulty lies on those who are not willing, on the one hand, to be deprived of an elegant amusement; nor, on the other, to purchase it at the hazard of innocence or virtue. Hence it is that many have placed a chaste collection of English poems among the chief desiderata of this age. Your mentioning this a year or two ago, and expressing a desire to see such a collection, determined me not to delay the design I had long had of attempting something in this kind. I therefore revised all the English poems I knew, and selected what appeared most valuable in them. Only Spenser’s Works I was constrained to omit, because scarce intelligible to the generality of modern readers. I shall rejoice if the want of which you complained be in some measure supplied by the following collection; of which this at least may be affirmed, --there is nothing therein contrary to virtue, nothing that can any way offend the chastest ear, or give pain to the tenderest heart. And perhaps whatever is really essential to the most sublime divinity, as well as the purest and most refined morality, will be found therein. Nor is it a small circumstance that the most just and important sentiments are here represented with the utmost advantage, with all the ornaments both of wit and language, and in the clearest, fullest strongest light.