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17463.9.7

B

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
HURD AND HOUGHTON,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District
of New York.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

PREFACE.

THIS volume claims such measure of novelty and merit as may belong to a selection, somewhat thoroughly made, from the entire works of the most voluminous and least-known of British lyrists. The published poems of Charles Wesley occupy above three thousand closely printed pages. Of this mass hardly more than one fifth (and that in an altered and fragmentary shape) is before the world, chiefly in the Methodist hymn-books of England and America. As a hymnist, this author is widely famous, though either beyond or beneath his merit, according to sectarian accidents of creed and name; but as a poet, he is scarce heard of or suspected; for the critical world is yet but half-persuaded that a hymn can be poetry. To remedy this injustice, which lies alike on the faine of him departed, and on the living that are robbed of many a gem of sacred song, is in some degree attempted in this book:

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