It is impossible not to compare Charles Wesley with his great predecessor, Isaac Watts. The day has gone by in which rival camps or choirs seek to exalt the one by disparaging the other. As we have seen, Watts’s _Psalms and Hymns_ were taken by the Wesleys on their mission to Georgia, and it can never be forgotten that, with his dying breath, John Wesley quoted the hymn which, from those early days, had been included in the hymn-books prepared by him for congregational use. Watts was less careful of the technique of his poetry than Charles Wesley. His rhymes are often very bad, and occasionally are altogether forgotten, and this is true of hymns whose intrinsic value is such that they retain, and are likely to retain, their place in our hymn-books. Charles Wesley is not without sin in this regard, but a really bad rhyme is comparatively rare in his best compositions. He has less of poetic imagery than Watts, and has not so keen an eye for the beauties of the natural world. Charles Wesley never wrote a hymn that, in its own way, compares with Eternal Wisdom! Thee we praise; nor do I know any verse of his which equals in its rich, strong monosyllables, Watts’s His every[116] word of grace is strong As that which built the skies; The voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises. Wesley was apt to use long and awkward words, sometimes of his own coining, rarely adding to the force, and always detracting from the practical value of the hymn. It must also be admitted that Charles Wesley wrote some verses the taste of which is dreadful, though he never approaches the execrable coarseness of some Moravian hymns, or of the lines which Walter Shirley transfigured into ‘Sweet the moments rich in blessing.’ Both Watts and Wesley had a quiet rather than a keen sense of humour, but they had little of that appreciation of the comic which is so acute in our own time.[117] Charles Wesley rarely, if ever, reaches the depth of prosaic commonplace which marks many of Watts’s hymns. He had a more sensitive ear and a more cultivated taste, and, what is perhaps more to the point, he had a faithful, though affectionate and admiring, critic in his brother. When John Wesley said of Charles that his least praise was his talent for poetry, he meant, not to disparage his hymns, but to bear the highest testimony possible to the gifts and graces of his mind and character. In considering somewhat in detail the hymns of Charles Wesley, it is convenient to treat of them in the classes into which they may be broadly divided. But even so it is obviously impossible to glance at more than a small number of his poems. 1.—Hymns of the Christian Year