prodigious
Poetical Copia as never any other must expect to enjoy." Like most of the
Augustans Wesley did not care greatly for _Paradise Regained_, but he
partly atoned by his praise for _Paradise Lost_, which was an
"original" and therefore "above the common Rules." Though defective in its
action, it was resplendent with sublime thoughts perhaps superior to any
in Virgil or Homer, and full of incomparable and exquisitely moving
passages. In spite of his belief that Milton's blank verse was a mistake,
making for looseness and incorrectness, he borrowed lines and images from
it, and in Bk. IV of _The Life of Our Blessed Lord_ he incorporated a
whole passage of Milton's blank verse in the midst of his heroic couplets.

Wesley's attitude toward Dryden deserves a moment's pause. In the "Essay
on Heroic Poetry" he observed that a speech of Satan's in _Paradise
Lost_ is nearly equalled in Dryden's _State of Innocence_. Later
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 th