Charles Wesley as poet is a problematic figure. Exalted to the heavens by his advocates, credited with supreme genius, the man and his immense work find scant mention in standard eighteenth-century literary history. Scholarly advocates tend to be sympathetic to Methodism and inappreciative of canonical authors of the day. True believers look to the forthcoming relief of Romanticism and tout Wesley as its herald. Wesley's detractors have simply dismissed him without much interest or consideration, presumably as an enthusiastic historical aberration. The immense quantity of his poetry, its uneven quality, and its doctrinaire conviction and evangelical purpose compound the difficulty of editing, evaluating, and interpreting Wesley's work. Wesley's poetry nevertheless provides invaluable insight into the important international phenomenon of the eighteenth-century Christian revival, its theology, psychology, and understanding of the efficacy of useful verse.

Wesley was the eighteenth of Samuel and Susanna Wesley's nineteen children, ten of whom...