“I cannot, with any patience, reflect, that, out of so short a time as human life, consisting, it may be, of fifty or sixty years, nineteen or twenty shall be spent in hammering out a little Latin and Greek, and in learning a company of poetical fictions and fantastic stories. If one were to judge of the life of man by the proportion of it spent at school, one would think the antediluvian mark were not yet out. Besides, the things taught in seminaries are often frivolous. How many excellent and useful things might be learnt, while boys are thumbing and murdering Hesiod and Homer? Of what signification is such stuff as this, to the accomplishment of a reasonable soul? What improvement can it be to my understanding, to know the amours of _Pyramus_ and _Thisbe_, or of _Hero_ and _Leander_? Let any man but consider human nature, and tell me whether he thinks a boy is fit to be trusted with Ovid? And yet, to books such as these our youth is dedicated, and in these some of us employ our riper years; and, when we die, this makes one part of our funeral eulogy; though, according to the principles before laid down, we should have been as pertinently and more innocently employed all the while, if we had been picking straws in Bedlam. The measure of prosecuting learning is its usefulness to good life; and, consequently, all prosecution of it beyond or beside this end, is impertinent and immoderate. For my own part, I am so thoroughly convinced of the certainty of the principles here propounded, that I look upon myself as under almost a necessity of conducting my studies by them, and intend to study nothing at all but what serves to the advancement of piety and good life. I have spent about thirteen years in the most celebrated university in the world, in pursuing both such learning as the academical standard requires, and as my private genius inclined me to; but I intend to spend my uncertain remainder of time in studying only what makes for the moral improvement of my mind, and the regulation of my life. More particularly, I shall apply myself to read such books as are rather persuasive than instructive; such as warm, kindle, and enlarge the affections, and awaken the Divine sense in the soul; being convinced, by every day’s experience, that I have more need of heat than light; though were I for more light, still I think the love of God is the best light of the soul of man.” This is a long extract; but it is of some consequence, as furnishing a key to the whole of Wesley’s literary pursuits—from this, the commencement of his Methodist career, to the end of his protracted life. His aim was not to shine in scholarship, but to live a life of goodness. 1742. [Sidenote: 1742 Age 39]