Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/23

Rh worker, and as the course of his education did not for many years take the direction he desired, he contrived to earn for himself the University training essential to a scholar. The foundation of a liberal education was laid at the Free School, Dorchester, where he remained till nearly sixteen, when his father died, leaving a widow and family in very poor circumstances. The Dissenting friends of both parents then came forward and obtained for the promising eldest son an exhibition of thirty pounds a year, raised among themselves, and sent him to London, to Mr. Veal's at Stepney, where he remained for a couple of years.

There are two things almost inseparable from a tincture of Irish blood at all events in the upper and cultivated classes a wonderful facility for scribbling and a hot-headed love of engaging in small controversies. Both of them speedily came to light in Samuel Wesley, for he at once became a dabbler in rhyme and faction, and so far pleased his patrons that they printed a good many of his jeux d esprit. Some words of sound advice were given him by Dr. Owen, who was, perhaps, afraid that the intoxication of seeing himself in print might lead to neglect of severer studies. He counselled the youth to apply himself to critical learning, and gilded the pill by a bonus of ten pounds a year as a reward for good conduct and progress. In consequence of continual magisterial prosecutions, Mr. Veal was obliged to give up his establishment, and his clever young pupil was transferred to that of Mr. Charlea Morton, M.A., of Newington Green, which then stood foremost among Dissenting places of education. Samuel Wesley's mother and a maiden aunt appear to have migrated to London, and with them he made his home. Literary work and remuneration opened before him,