Wesley often dined with him , sometimes with his other colleagues . the Rector &apos;s brother , Sir Justinian , was an occasional guest whom Wesley met at dinner on Christmas day , 1732 . three days later , all the fellows in residence had dinner and supper with the Rector and his brother and played cards . a year later when Wesley &apos;s father was staying in Oxford over Christmas , Isham invited John Wesley to read prayers and later entertained them both . both Isham and his brother were among the subscribers to the projected work on Job , as were also some of the fellows and former undergraduates . at times the Rector was justifiably concerned at Wesley &apos;s indiscreet religious zeal , but realized his merits , and on 28th June , 1734 , made a donation to the work of the Castle , a gesture by which Wesley was obviously touched . Wesley had been recalled to act as tutor to the undergraduates , and it was as a teacher and preceptor that he had returned into residence in November , 1729 . he was already well-read in the classics and in divinity . these , together with logic , were the principal subjects in which he had to guide his pupils . like all his contemporaries , he regarded Aldrich &apos;s textbook on logic , compendium artis logicae , with profound reverence ; he supplemented his teaching on logic and classics by reading Sanderson and Langbaine . long after he had left Oxford the imprint of the syllogistic reasoning which he had learned and taught remained . for several years , he wrote much later , I was Moderator in the disputations which were held six times a week at Lincoln College in Oxford . I could not help acquiring hereby some degree of expertness in arguing ; and especially in discerning and pointing out well-covered and plausible fallacies . he fulfilled his duty as Moderator by lecturing or presiding over disputations in the College Hall at ten or eleven on week-day mornings . at first he seems not to have had a private pupil , though he certainly gave his brother , Charles , and their mutual friend , William Morgan , what could be called tutorials . with them he read Milton &apos;s poetry , Lucas &apos; popular devotional work , Norris &apos; sermons , lives of Bonnel and de Renty and the warning tract known as the second spira . the character of these books suggests that this reading may have been part of that prescribed for the recently formed holy club . in June , 1730 , he noted proudly that he had his first pupil , in all probability Joseph Green , the Bible clerk whom he had introduced to the Rector on 10th June and whom he took to be matriculated two days later . Green &apos;s father lived at Shipton , where Wesley often took the service for his friend , the former Lincoln undergraduate , Joseph Goodwin . it was probably through Wesley &apos;s efforts that Green came to Lincoln . he was soon calling on Wesley , who lived in rooms just above him in College , at ten every morning , presumably for tuition . on 4th June , 1730 , the Rector had allocated eleven men to Wesley , John Westley , Jonathan Black , from Harringworth in Northamptonshire , Thomas Waldegrave , a Lincolnshire boy from Londonthorpe , two northerners , Thomas Hylton from Monkwearmouth and Robert Davison from Durham , John Bartholomew from Dorchester , Dorset , John Sympson , almost a neighbour , from Gainsborough , Edward Browne , a merchant &apos;s son from St Asaph , Richard Bainbridge from Leeds , and George Podmore from Edgmond in Shropshire . none of these ever achieved great distinction , but Bainbridge was later a fellow of Lincoln , while Thomas Waldegrave was subsequently elected a fellow of Magdalen and was Edward Gibbon &apos;s first tutor . it is one of the minor ironies of history that in going through the plays of Terence with the precocious young man Waldegrave was probably reproducing the notes which he had once learned from John Wesley ; but Gibbon thought the tutorials so unrewarding that he resolved to absent himself from them . there were few days when Wesley did not give up some hours , usually either at ten in the mornings or two or five in the afternoons , to his pupils ; even on Sundays and holy days he noted in his diaries that he had seen his pupils , presumably to give them religious instruction . it is not very clear what the College tutor in the eighteenth century was expected to teach outside the lectures in Hall where he presided over disputations or commented on the Greek testament . fortunately John Wesley has himself left a list of the books which he read with his pupils . in 1730 he instructed them in Virgil &apos;s Aeneid , Terence &apos;s plays , Horace &apos;s poems , Juvenal &apos;s satires , Phaedrus , and Anacreon . in English they studied Richard Lucas &apos; enquiry after happiness , Norris &apos; sermons , Stephen &apos;s letters and half of John Ellis &apos; defence of the thirty-nine articles . next year he read gentleman instructed and Charles Wheatley &apos;s the Church of England man &apos;s companion with one pupil . with another he perused Atterbury &apos;s sermons and Edward Welchman &apos;s articuli 39 ecclesiae Anglicanae . with another he ended Cicero &apos;s de natura deorum and read his Tusculan disputations . with another he studied Aldrich &apos;s logic , but to so little effect that when they had finished it they began all over again . finally a fifth pupil read the plays of Terence as well as Aldrich with him . he had evidently acquired something of a reputation as a tutor in logic as three young graduates of the College , William Smith , George Bulman , and Frederick Williams were given tuition in the ubiquitous Aldrich . he took his pupils &apos; intellectual problems seriously , correcting declamations for Edward Browne on 22nd September , 1730 , and for Joseph Leech on the afternoon of 28th February , 1733 , and teaching Thomas Greives an hour later that same day ; earlier he had spent some time thinking out syllogisms for an exercise in logic . on 26th June , 1732 , he wrote out a logical problem for Smith . in the winter of 1733 he noted wearily that his pupils would not learn Hebrew and on the last day of the year he was angry because they had failed to turn up . his relationship with these young men was much more than that of teacher and pupil . hitherto his contacts at Lincoln had been with men of comparatively senior status like William Cleaver , Matthew Horbery , the son of a former vicar of Haxey , and a future fellow of Magdalen and his neighbour , Robert Pindar , who matriculated as long ago as 1726 . now he was concerned with supervising younger men who had just entered the College , and he certainly set out to take an interest in them far beyond the obligations of a tutorial nature . he sat with young Joseph Green at the Bear . in August , 1732 , after calling on Benjamin Holloway , son of the rector of Middleton Stoney , who was to enter the college in the following November , he accompanied Richard Bainbridge on an expedition to Cottisford and Rousham . he said later that he made no attempt to persuade his pupils to become members of the holy club , but he had too strong a personality to keep his religious views in the background . his diary shows that he regularly invited his pupils to breakfast and prayers , and those who showed any interest in the activities of the holy club were subsequently brought under close supervision and spiritual discipline . his first book , a collection of forms of prayers for every day in the week , with preface and questions for self-examination , was written for his pupils and published in 1733 . it is possible that the Rector was increasingly and explicably unwilling to entrust Wesley with the care of pupils because of his close identification with the holy club . in August , 1733 , Wesley told his mother that he had as many pupils as he required . if I have no more pupils after these are gone from me , I shall then be glad of a curacy near you ; if I have , I shall take it as a signal that I am to remain here . there were in fact only a small number of new entries at Lincoln every year . Wesley seems to have been only on intimate terms with his earlier pupils and either because of lack of time or because the Rector was anxious about the recruitment of impressionable young men his later pupils were few . this view is supported by Richard Morgan &apos;s unfriendly picture of Wesley in a letter to his father . indeed , he wanted to be transferred to the other tutor of the College , reckoned one of the best tutors in the University , and of whom Lord Lichfield had so high an opinion that he thought to send his eldest son to Lincoln . he has , he wrote , what few are in college ( except one gentleman commoner and two servitors who are Mr Wesley &apos;s pupils ) under his tuition . if Morgan was correct , then at the beginning of 1734 Wesley had , presumably in addition to Morgan , only three other pupils , probably Westley Hall ( who was a gentleman commoner ) , Matthew Robinson , and either Joseph Green or Joseph Leech , all of whom were servitors . we should , however , be careful about accepting Morgan &apos;s statement without qualification , and other evidence would suggest that Wesley was at least being consulted on tutorial matters by other members of the College . his residence at Lincoln may have attracted a number of undergraduates to the College . John Sympson , who was admitted as a servitor in 1728 , lived in Gainsborough ; so did George and Thomas Hutton , whose father was a local lawyer . Joseph Green , from Shipton , probably entered the College as a Bible clerk partly through Wesley &apos;s support . he certainly played a part in the admission of two of his other prot&amp;eacute;g&amp;eacute;s , Westley Hall and John Whitelamb . Westley Hall was admitted as a gentleman commoner on 22nd January , 1731 , and John Whitelamb was admitted as a servitor on 10th April , 1731 , and , much to Wesley &apos;s satisfaction , was later given a scholarship . Hall , who came from Salisbury , was related through his mother to John Westley , who was already an undergraduate at Lincoln . his mother , who was a daughter of a vicar of Imber , near Warminster , had married a clothier , Francis Hall ; his brother , Robert , later Lord Mayor of London , and knighted in 1744 , was the father of the Lincoln undergraduate ; my first cousin , John Westley being there &amp;hellip; John Wesley my tutor , as Hall later commented . John Whitelamb , poor starveling Johnny , was the son of humble parents ( his father Robert , however , is described in the matriculation book as Robert , gentleman of the parish of Hatfield ) , who lived at Wroot , the dreary village where Wesley acted as curate ; and he had been employed by the elder Wesley as his amanuensis . he was an intelligent young man , who entered the College at the unusually late age of twenty-two ; Wesley had great hopes of Whitelamb , but as in the case of Westley Hall , they were steadily to evaporate . of the twelve young men who entered the College in 1731 , the one who was eventually to repay Wesley &apos;s tutorship most was in his first year practically unknown to him ; James Hervey , the son of the curate of Collingtree . although Wesley was as far as possible rationing time to serve the more serious pursuits of life , he neither withdrew from social life nor ceased to take part in the normal recreations of Oxford . twice , on 10th March and 19th May , 1730 , he went dancing . genuinely fond as he was of music , he seized such opportunities as Oxford then presented , once attending a concert with Charles and William Morgan ; and in the summer he himself studied the gavotte from Otho , non e si vago e bello . he occasionally went on the river ; on 28th September , 1730 , he gathered walnuts . walking was his normal exercise , with Charles and Morgan , to Binsey , round the Meadows , or in Merton garden , once with Wilder and Dr Grove . he was now the proud possessor of a horse . this was in effect a first necessity if he was to take services at the villages in the neighbourhood of Oxford . yesterday , he told his mother on 28th February , 1730 , I had the offer of another curacy to continue a quarter or half a year , which I accepted with all my heart . 