d of an age famous for its great learning, an age whose
most distinguished poet was so much the scholar that he appeared more the
pedant than the gentleman to critics of the succeeding era; Wesley was not
singular for erudition among his seventeenth-century contemporaries.
The "Essay on Heroic Poetry," serving as Preface to _The Life of Our
Blessed Lord and Saviour_, reveals something of its author's erudition.
Among the critics, he was familiar with Aristotle, Horace, Longinus,
Dionysius of Halicarnasseus, Heinsius, Bochart, Balzac, Rapin, Le Bossu,
and Boileau. But this barely hints at the extent of his learning. In the
notes on the poem itself the author displays an interest in classical
scholarship, Biblical commentary, ecclesiastical history, scientific
inquiry, linguistics and philology, British antiquities, and research into
the history, customs, architecture, and geography of the Holy Land; he
shows, an intimate acquaintance with Grotius, Henry Hammond, Joseph Mede,
Spanheim, Sherlock, Lightfoot, and Gregory, with Philo, Josephus, Fuller,
Walker, Camden, and Kircher; and he shows an equal readiness to draw upon
Cudworth's _True Intellectual System_ and Boyle's new theories concerning
the nature of light. In view of such a breadth of knowledge it is somewhat
surprising to find him quoting as extensively as he does in the "Essay"
from Le Bossu and Rapin, and apparently leaning heavily upon them.
The "Essay" was composed at a time when the prestige of Rymer and
neo-Aristotelianism in England was already declining, and though Wesley
expressed some admiration for Rapin and Le Bossu, he is by no means docile
under their authority. Whatever the weight of authority, he says, "I see
no cause why Poetry should not be brought to the Test [of reason], as well
as Divinity...." As to the sacred example of Homer, who based his great
epic on mythology, Wesley remarks, "But this [mythology] being now
antiquated, I cannot think we are oblig'd superstitiously to follow his
Example, any more t
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John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.