for he was engaged to translate some of the works of John Biddle, regarded as the father of English Unitarians ; but it is said that as he could not conscientiously approve of their tendency, he threw up the affair.
The passion of writing lampoons, however, remained strong, and was further fanned by his meeting at Dr. Annesley's with John Dunton, the bookseller, who was then wooing Elizabeth Annesley. The two became firm friends, as is not unusual when a wealthy publisher meets with a young man of literary ability, whose peculiar line of talent runs parallel with the taste of the times. From that hour his literary earnings went far towards his support, and he needed them, for he was becoming discontented with the Dissenters and beginning to find fault with their doctrines. Dr. Owen wished him and some others to graduate at one of the English universities, with the notion that the tide might soon turn, and that Dissenters might be allowed to take the ordinary degrees; but the idea that any of them would prove recreant to Nonconformist principles does not appear to have entered the good man's head. It also appears that a e: reverend and worthy" member of the Wesley family came to London from a great distance, and held serious converse with his young kinsman against the "Dissenting schism"; so it is probable that several influences combined to induce Samuel, at the age of one-and-twenty, to quit his non-conforming friends and join the Church of England. He had, moreover, made up his mind to go to Oxford, and, as a young man of spirit, could surely not have wished to be hampered and baulked in his University career by entering that abode of learning without belonging to the Established Church. It was the reaction of the frame of mind in which he had
