SOURCE: Abelove, Henry. “Notes and Documents: John Wesley's Plagiarism of Samuel Johnson and Its Contemporary Reception.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 1 (1996): 73-79.

[In the following essay, Abelove discusses the charges of plagiarism and lack of political credibility, brought by the Baptist minister Caleb Evans against Wesley.]

About the last week of September, 1775, John Wesley published A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. In it he argued that “the supreme power in England” had a clear, legal right to tax the colonies and that the Americans who thought otherwise and were “all in an uproar” had been misled by a small cabal of designing Englishmen. What these Englishmen secretly hoped to do was overthrow the monarchy, and they were fomenting civil unrest in America and in England, too, as a means to that end. If the Americans wanted to be sensible, they would stop acting as dupes of the cabal and quietly pay their taxes.¹

Such a pamphlet was bound to get a warm reception in official quarters. It may even be true, as one of Wesley's itinerant lay preachers later said, that the ministry arranged to have copies distributed at every church in London and sent a spokesman to Wesley with an offer of a pension—and, when he refused the pension, gave him instead fifty pounds to donate to a charity of his own choosing.² Outside official quarters the pamphlet was by no means so generally approved. Many readers were pro-American and reacted angrily to it; some attacked it and Wesley as well.³ Of these attackers perhaps the ablest was Caleb Evans, a Baptist minister of Bristol, whose Letter to the Rev. John Wesley Occasioned by His Calm Address appeared early in October. Part of the Letter Evans devoted to refuting Wesley's views on taxation, the rest to two charges meant to discredit Wesley personally.

Evans charged, first, that Wesley had plagiarized—had lifted big chunks of the Calm Address “verbatim, without acknowledgement” from Samuel Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny, which had been published in March of 1775; second, that Wesley was politically fickle—had varied so much and so inexplicably in his attitude to America that he no longer deserved a hearing. For until lately, until he had published the Calm Address, he had repeatedly expressed himself in favor of the Americans, calling them an “oppressed, injured people,” recommending a book entitled An Argument in Defense of the Exclusive Right Claimed by the Colonies to Tax Themselves, and, during the general election of the preceding year, supporting the candidate for Bristol who was American-born and a “friend to America.”⁴

The last item in this bill of particulars, about the election of the preceding year, was especially colorful. Evans did not name the American who had stood for Bristol in 1774, but his readers probably knew that he was referring to the flamboyant radical Henry Cruger. Born and educated in New York, Cruger came to Bristol while still young and made a reputation there as a merchant, a womanizer, an opponent of the Stamp Act, and a partisan of Wilkes. Campaigning in 1774, he issued a broadside calling for more frequent Parliaments and a limit on the number of placemen and pensioners in the House of Commons. He also showed that he favored conciliation with the Americans, that he opposed the ministry's policy of tolerating the Catholics of Canada, and that he believed members of Parliament should vote as their constituents instructed. Lord North described him to the king as “a hot Wilkite and American Patriot”; and it was this man whose candidacy Evans said Wesley had supported, only a year before publishing the Calm Address.⁵

Wesley tried to answer Evans's charges in the preface to a new printing of his pamphlet, which appeared late in October. He conceded that he had taken much from Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny—but in such a way as to extenuate the fault. He said that he had used “the chief arguments from that treatise” because he felt that he had the “duty” to impart to others what it taught him. He also conceded that until he read Johnson's pamphlet he had sided with the Americans in the dispute on taxation. But he represented his change of mind as a matter of dignified intellectual growth rather than fickleness. He said that formerly he had been of “a different judgment”; presently, he had “more light.” Two of the stories that Evans had told to illustrate fickeless, Wesley denied. He said that he had neither recommended the book arguing for the Americans' exclusive right to tax themselves nor expressed himself in their favor as Evans claimed:

The book which this writer says I so strongly recommended, I never yet saw with my eyes. And the words which he says I spoke, never came out of my lips.

Concerning the last story Evans had told, the story of the support provided Cruger in the election of the preceding year, Wesley said nothing.⁶

Having read this answer, Evans quickly returned to the attack. In a preface to a new printing of the Letter, which appeared early in November, he noted that Wesley had confessed to plagiarism, as charged; that however much he might try to extenuate the fault, he had at last been made to admit that he had “published as his own, what he had pilfered from another.”⁷ Evans also recurred to the charge of fickleness, mocking Wesley's efforts to dignify his change of mind. Then he went on to deal what he plainly regarded as the knockout blow. With a show of triumph he named two residents of Bristol, men of substance—James Rouquet, a Church of England clergyman, and William Pine, a printer—who were, he reported, ready to swear out an affidavit affirming half of what Wesley had denied. Both knew Wesley well, and both had heard him recommend the book, An Argument in Defense of the Exclusive Right Claimed by the Colonies to Tax Themselves. About the latter half of Wesley's denial, Evans complained. He said that nobody could reply to it concretely; it had been too vaguely put: Wesley said of some words that they had never passed his lips, but he neglected to specify which of the pro-American words attributed to him he was referring to. Nevertheless Evans did reply generally. He gave a blanket assurance, on the authority of Rouquet and Pine, that Wesley had spoken just as the Letter originally described. Of Wesley's support for Cruger in the election of 1774, Evans made no new mention. For that Wesley had not denied—had not even tried to gloss over.⁸

At about the same time Evans was bringing out this new printing of his pamphlet, Rouquet and Pine each sent Wesley a private letter. Rouquet wrote pointedly. He said that he remembered hearing Wesley recommend a book arguing for the exclusive right of the colonies to tax themselves and also hearing him describe the Americans as an “oppressed, injured people”: when Wesley made this recommendation and spoke these words, he had been a guest in Rouquet's home. Rouquet said that he had read Wesley's recent denial with concern, and added that he might have to “declare the truth” unless Wesley printed a retraction.⁹ Pine said that he had long regarded Wesley as a “father”; but, Pine added, he was nonetheless obliged to tell the truth. He said that he had received his copy of the book arguing for the exclusive right of the colonists to tax themselves from Wesley's own hands. He hinted that unless a retraction were printed soon, he would contradict Wesley “publicly.”¹⁰

By this time Wesley was hard-pressed. His effort to answer Evans's first attack had only brought him new and bigger troubles. Rouquet and Pine—friends of his¹¹—were threatening in private letters to release an affidavit exposing him as a liar; and Evans was back in print, heralding them. In these circumstances Wesley sent a quick note to Rouquet insisting, “I remember nothing of that book,” but promising to look at a copy of it to see if he might once have read it and then forgotten.¹² Five days later, on 13 November, he wrote to Rouquet again and at greater length, saying that he had looked at the book, could not remember having seen it before but apparently had, and supposed he must have recommended it in Bristol. He ended the letter by commenting with some petulance on the threats Rouquet and Pine had made to release an affidavit:

If you have a mind to press the thing farther, do, and let it stand as an everlasting monument, to all the world, of the gratitude of William Pine and James Rouquet, to John Wesley.¹³

On the following day, still concerned about their threats, he wrote also to Pine and uttered an oracular warning:

Let no warm man persuade you to take any step which you may repent as long as you live.¹⁴

He did not publish the retraction that Rouquet had requested explicitly, Pine, implicitly. But he brought out a new printing of the Calm Address, preface included, omitting the passage in which he denied having recommended the book and denied having talked in a pro-American way.¹⁵

Meanwhile Wesley spoke about his state of mind to his Methodist flock, some of whom probably already knew from Evans's preface of the threats made by Rouquet and Pine. In the course of a sermon given at the Foundery, the main Methodist preaching house in London, Wesley said that he still felt charitably toward those two men—that he would continue to pray for them and pity them, no matter how many affidavits they might release, no matter how they might try to “stab” his “reputation.” One of his hearers, much edified, recounted for a newspaper what Wesley had said and praised him for his “Christian candour.”¹⁶

Rouquet and Pine did not release an affidavit. Perhaps they were satisfied by the new printing of the Calm Address, with the passage so especially objectionable to them omitted; perhaps Wesley's letters had cowed them. Evans, however, was neither satisfied nor cowed; he wanted to press Wesley still further, to make him do more than just omit from his pamphlet the passage that had been proved wrong. So on 7 December Evans placed an open letter in the Gazeteer, addressed to Wesley, demanding that he confess his error publicly and frankly.¹⁷ To this goad Wesley reacted a few days later with an open letter of his own, placed in the same newspaper and addressed to Evans. Here he did much as Evans had demanded. He said he had been wrong to claim that he had never seen the book; in fact he had seen it and recommended it, but since “forgotten it.” He also said that he might “very possibly” have called the Americans an “oppressed, injured people.”¹⁸ With this surrender Evans was content. On 16 December he sent a last open letter to the Gazeteer, saying that so far as he was concerned, the “controversy” between him and Wesley was finished. He added that from the start he had aimed at discrediting Wesley in the eyes of his Methodist followers, at weakening his “authority” over them.¹⁹

That Evans succeeded in doing so may be doubted. Wesley was exceptionally skillful in evoking and retaining the deference and love of his followers;²⁰ and it is possible, maybe even likely, that the bulk of the Methodists who knew of the quarrel with Evans, Rouquet, and Pine stayed as determinedly devoted as that hearer at the Foundery who wrote to the newspaper to praise Wesley's candor. Still, Evans did succeed in wresting from Wesley several concessions. He forced him to admit to plagiarism. He forced him to admit that he had changed his mind about America. When threatened with proof, Wesley withdrew his denial of two of the stories Evans told to illustrate the pro-American stance, and virtually confirmed them. As for the story of his support for Cruger, that Wesley had conceded by his silence.

Did Wesley mean to concede that, too? Had he really supported the candidacy of a Wilkite? His silence would be hard to understand except as a concession, but it is not the only evidence that he had campaigned for Cruger. Another tell-tale sign may be found by glancing at the results of the election. Apparently Cruger drew votes from one group of Bristol electors especially, and it was the group that Wesley headed and powerfully influenced. It was the Methodists.²¹

Was Wesley's plagiarism a violation of English law as it then stood? Almost certainly, yes. Since the Statute of Anne, which had gone into effect on 10 April 1710, writings such as Samuel Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny had been regarded legally as property, and their ownership had been regulated. In the case of Donaldson v. Becket, decided finally by the House of Lords in February 1774—a little more than a year before Johnson's pamphlet was published—the rule was established, or perhaps upheld, that the property right in authorship was limited in term rather than perpetual. But the statutory term was relatively long, at least fourteen years.²²

During all the time Evans was attacking Wesley, and wresting concessions from him, the author from whom he had plagiarized, Samuel Johnson, kept out of the fight—published nothing on the Calm Address. At some point Wesley decided to send him a gift, perhaps to mollify him. It was a Bible commentary. Johnson delayed a while before acknowledging it, but on 6 February 1776 he wrote Wesley a letter, thanking him for the gift and then going on to show in tactful language that no mollifying was necessary, that he had taken the plagiarism as a compliment:

I have thanks likewise to return for the addition of your important suffrage to my argument on the American question. To have gained such a mind as yours, may justly confirm me in my own opinion. What effect my paper has had upon the publick, I know not; but I have no reason to be discouraged. The Lecturer was surely in the right, who, though he saw his audience slinking away, refused to quit the Chair, while Plato staid.²³

So Wesley, after all the bother Evans caused him, had this much to console him: Samuel Johnson compared him to Plato. Johnson also derived some advantage from his generous gesture. He got the opportunity to express and reinforce the fantasy that was soothing him during that period of his late middle-age when he wrote less than he liked, spent much of his time talking, and let others such as Wesley and Boswell copy his words. Calling his copyist Plato, he could imagine himself Socrates.

Notes

1. John Wesley, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies (Bristol, 1775), 4, 11, passim. I quote here from the printing that Frank Baker designates “A” in A Union Catalogue of the Publications of John and Charles Wesley (Durham, N.C., 1966), 145. A new edition of John Wesley's writings is now underway at Abingdon Press, but the volumes so far published do not include the Calm Address or any of Wesley's correspondence from the 1770s.

2. James Everett, Adam Clarke Portrayed (London, 1843), 2:320-22; Luke Tyerman repeats the anecdote in The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., 2d. ed. (London, 1871), 3:191.

3. A partial list of the attacks on Wesley's Calm Address may be found in Richard Green, Anti-Methodist Publications Issued During the Eighteenth Century (London, 1902), 125-132. See also Clive D. Field, “Anti-Methodist Publications of the Eighteenth Century: A Revised Bibliography,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 23 (summer 1991): 159-280.

4. Americanus (Caleb Evans), A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, Occasioned by His Calm Address to the American Colonies (London, 1775), 2, 22-23, passim.

5. Cruger won, heading the poll with 3,565 votes. Once elected, he let his radicalism subside. By May of 1779 he was taking a government pension. Edmund Burke had stood for Bristol in the same election and won with 2,707 votes. On the broadside Cruger issued, see G. E. Weare, Edmund Burke's Connection with Bristol From 1774 Till 1780 (Bristol, 1894), 30; on his womanizing, see Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. George H. Guttridge (Cambridge and Chicago, 1961), 3:46; on his life, the election, and North's comment, see Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons 1754-1790 (London, 1964), 2:280-82; 1:283-86.

6. John Wesley, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies, new ed., corrected and enlarged (London, n.d.), iii, vi. This is the printing that Baker designates “N” (Catalogue, 146).

7. Wesley had plagiarized other authors, too. For my analysis of his reasons for copying as he did, see Henry Abelove, The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists (Stanford, Calif., 1990), 85-86. For another, quite different account, which says that Wesley copied “ingenuously,” see Henry Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, 2d ed. (London, 1992), 346-47, 376-77.

8. Caleb Evans, A Letter to the Rev. John Wesley, Occasioned by His Calm Address to the American Colonies, new ed. (London, 1775), i-viii.

9. Rouquet dated his letter 6 November 1775. It was later published, together with Pine's, in Caleb Evans, A Reply to the Rev. Mr. Fletcher's Vindication of Mr. Wesley's Calm Address to Our American Colonies (Bristol, n.d.), 6-9.

10. Pine dated his letter 7 November 1775. See Evans, Reply, 10-12.

11. Rouquet was a close friend. In Wesley's will, as it then stood, Rouquet was named as literary executor. See Ms. Will, John Wesley, 27 April 1768 (Wesleyan University Archives, Middletown, Ct.). This will was never proved.

12. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford (London, 1931), 6:188.

13. This passage is omitted from the text of the letter as given in Telford, Letters of Wesley, 6:189, where the date is incorrectly printed as 12 November 1775. The full text may be found in Evans, Reply, 13-14.

14. Telford, Letters of Wesley, 6:189.

15. John Wesley, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies, new ed., corrected and enlarged (London, n.d.), iv. This is the printing that Baker designates “Q” (Catalogue, 146). An account of the printing history of the Calm Address is provided in Frank Baker, “The Shaping of Wesley's Calm Address,” Methodist History 14 (October 1975): 3-12. But Baker fails to mention the omission I remarked in footnote 13, and he gives a pianissimo treatment to the matter of the plagiarism.

16. London Packet, 4-6 December 1775. Evans, who read the newspaper, was less edified than Wesley's hearer. He commented in Evans, Reply, 15.

17. Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 7 December 1775, 598. This letter appeared also in the London Chronicle, 7-9 December, 556.

18. Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 13 December 1775, 603; Telford, Letters of Wesley, 6:194-95.

19. Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 23 December 1775, 612.

20. Abelove, Evangelist of Desire, 7-39.

21. Brooke and Namier say that Cruger “relied heavily” for his electoral victory on the Methodists (House of Commons, 1:285). I have also consulted P. T. Underdown, “The Parliamentary History of the City of Bristol 1750-1790” (M.A. thesis, University of Bristol, 1948), but have found no further information there on the Methodist vote. In 1779, long after Wesley had abandoned his early and temporary pro-American stance, he published a journal that covered the period in 1774 when he had been in Bristol, campaigning for Cruger. He said nothing of that campaigning. He probably wanted it to be forgotten. What he did say was that had met with the electors who were members of the Methodist society and urged them to vote for the candidate they judged “most worthy,” to “speak no evil” of the candidate they opposed, and to “take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.” See The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. N. Curnock (London, 1916), 6:40. See also Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vol. 22, Journals and Diaries, vol. 5, ed. W. Reginald Ward and Richard Heitzenrater (Nashville, 1993), 429.

22. Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 42-47, 98-103. Rose also discusses Johnson's views on the matter of literary property; see 107-11. For a far-reaching analysis of the uses and consequences of authorship in the early modern era, see Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, The Imaginary Puritan: Literature, Intellectual Labor, and the Origins of Personal Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992).

23. Letters of Samuel Johnson: The Hyde Edition, ed. Bruce Redford (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 2:290.