Charles Wesley was born on 18 December 1707 at Epworth, Lincolnshire, into a household that was at once crowded, precarious, intellectually ambitious, and intensely religious. He was the eighteenth child of Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, and Susanna Wesley, whose formidable discipline and devotional intelligence made her one of the great formative presences in the history of English Methodism. Nineteen children we…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Charles Wesley
Poet B
Isaac Watts
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 77%
Blended 77%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England, on 17 July 1674, into a household where religious conviction was inseparable from risk. He died on 25 November 1748, having become one of the most widely read and sung English writers of his age. To later generations he would be called the “father of English hymnody,” a title that is not merely honorary. Before Watts, English Protestant congregations, especially among the…
“It is a great deal easier to prevent an ill habit than to break it.”
In time
Charles Wesley
Isaac Watts
1674
1788
They overlapped for 42 years (1707–1748).
When Charles Wesley was born, Isaac Watts was about 33.
Charles Wesley was about 41 when Isaac Watts died.
On the map
About 294 km separate Epworth, Lincolnshire, England from Southampton, England. Both have ground in England.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
hymns
christ
religious
hymn
Charles Wesley: epworth, lincolnshire, john wesley, george whitefield, methodism, hymns and sacred poems, o for a thousand tongues to sing, fort frederica. Isaac Watts: southampton, father of english hymnody, hymns and spiritual songs, when i survey the wondrous cross, nonconformist minister, isaac chauncey, thomas rowe, john hughes.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Charles Wesley
Isaac Watts
Emotional landscapes
Charles Wesley: Spirituality, Peace, Joy. Isaac Watts: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair.