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Introduction
The Methodist

The Augustan Reprint Society

EVAN LLOYD

THE METHODIST.

A POEM.

(1766)

Introduction by

Raymond Bentman

PUBLICATION NUMBER 151-152
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1972

GENERAL EDITORS

William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
David S. Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Curt A. Zimansky, State University of Iowa

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Jean T. Shebanek, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

INTRODUCTION

Evan Lloyd’s works consist chiefly of four satires written in1766 and 1767,[1] all of which are now little-known. What little noticehe receives today results from his friendship with John Wilkesand David Garrick and from one satire, The Methodist, which is usuallyincluded in surveys of anti-Methodist literature.[2] For themost part, his obscurity is deserved. In The Methodist, however,he participates in a short-lived revolt against the tyranny of Augustansatire and shows considerable evidence of a talent that might havecreated a new style for formal verse satire.

The seventeen-sixties were a difficult period for satire. Thestruggle between Crown and Parliament, the new industrial and agriculturalmethods, the workers’ demands for higher pay, the new ruraland urban poor, the growth of the Empire, the deteriorating relationswith the American colonies, the increasing influence of the ideasof the Enlightenment, the popularity of democratic ideas, the Wilkescontroversy, the growth of Methodism, the growth of the novel, theinterest in the gothic and the picturesque and in chinoiserie, sentimentali

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