[Footnote 1:  This letter is not in the “Memoirs of the Wesley Family,” published by Dr. Adam Clarke in 1822; having been recently discovered.]

Epworth, July 6, 1734.

Honored sir,

May I be admitted, while such crowds of our nobility and gentry are pouring in their congratulations, to press with my poor mite of thanks into the presence of one who so well deserves the title of UNIVERSAL BENEFACTOR OF MANKIND.  It is not only your valuable favors on many accounts to my son, late of Westminster, and myself, when I was not a little pressed in the world, nor your more extensive charity to the poor prisoners; it is not these only that so much demand my warmest acknowledgments, as your disinterested and immovable attachment to your country, and your raising a new Colony, or rather a little world of your own in the midst of wild woods and uncultivated deserts, where men may live free and happy, if they are not hindered by their own stupidity and folly, in spite of the unkindness of their brother mortals.

I owe you, sir, besides this, some account of my little affairs since the beginning of your expedition.  Notwithstanding my own and my son’s violent illness, which held me half a year, and him above twelve months, I have made a shift to get more than three parts in four of my Dissertations on Job printed off, and both the paper, printing, and maps, hitherto, paid for.  My son John at Oxford, now that his elder brother has gone to Tiverton, takes care of the remainder of the impression at London, and I have an ingenious artist here with me in my house at Epworth who is graving and working off the remaining maps and figures for me; so that I hope, if the printer does not hinder me, I shall have the whole ready by next spring, and, by God’s leave, I shall be in London myself to deliver the books perfect.  I print five hundred copies, as in my proposals; whereof I have about three hundred already subscribed for; and, among my subscribers, fifteen or sixteen English Bishops, with some of Ireland.

“If you will please herewith to accept the tender of my most sincere respect and gratitude, you will thereby confer one further obligation, honored sir, on

“Your most obedient and humble servant,

“SAMUEL WESLEY.”

“To James Oglethorpe, Esq.”

It appears, from a list of subscriptions annexed to Mr. Wesley’s Dissertations on the Book of Job, that General Oglethorpe took seven copies of the work on large paper, which would amount to at least twenty pounds.

The elder son of the Rector, also, paid a tribute of respect to the General; and this in harmonious and polished verses; in which, however, he indulged, too freely, the poetic license in highly wrought description of the settlement of Georgia, and of the climate and productions of the region.[1]

[Footnote 1:  GEORGIA, a Poem; TOMO CHICHI, an Ode; and a copy of Verses on Mr. Oglethorpe’s Second Voyage to Georgia.  These were beautifully printed, in a large type, on nineteen folio pages.  They were ascribed to SAMUEL WESLEY, as their author, in the tract entitled “True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia,” by P. Telfair and others.  Charlestown, S.C. 1741, page xi. of the Preface.]