Born, at Southampton, 17 July 1674. Educated at Southampton Grammar School, till 1690. At Dissenters’ school in London, 1690–93. Private tutor in family of Sir John Hartopp, at Stoke Newington, 1696–1702. Assistant to Independent Minister at Mark Lane, 1698; Ordained Minister, March 1702. Severe illness, 1703 and 1712. Lived in house of Sir Thomas Abney, at Theobalds, 1712–48. D.D., Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, 1728. Died, at Theobalds, 25 Nov. 1748. Buried in Bunhill Fields. Works: “Horæ Lyricæ,” 1706; “Essay against Uncharitableness” (anon.), 1707; “A Sermon,” 1707; “Hymns and Spiritual Songs,” 1707; “Orthodoxy and Charity United” (anon.), 1707; “Guide to Prayer,” 1715; “The Psalms of David,” 1719; “Divine and Moral Songs,” 1720; “The Art of Reading and Writing English,” 1721; “Sermons on Various Subjects” (3 vols.), 1721–23; “The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity … asserted,” 1722; “Death and Heaven,” 1722; “The Arian invited to the Orthodox Faith,” 1724; “Three Dissertations relating to the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity,” 1724; “Logick,” 1725; “The Knowledge of the Heavens and Earth made easy,” 1726; “Defense against the temptation to Self-Murther,” 1726; “The Religious Improvement of Publick Events,” 1727; “Essay towards the Encouragement of Charity Schools,” 1728; “Prayers composed for the use … of Children,” 1728; “Treatise on the Love of God,” 1729; “Catechisms for Children,” 1730; “Humble attempt toward the revival of Practical Religion,” 1731; “The Strength and Weakness of Human Reason” (anon.), 1731; “Essay towards a Proof of a Separate State of Souls,” 1732; “Short View of the Whole Scripture History,” 1732; “Essay on the Freedom of Will,” 1732; “Philosophical Essays,” 1733; “Reliquiæ Juveniles,” 1734; “The Redeemer and the Sanctifier” (anon.), 1736; “The Holiness of Times, Places and People,” 1738; “The World to Come,” 1738; “A New Essay on Civil Power in Things Sacred” (anon.), 1739; “Essay on the Ruin and Recovery of Mankind,” 1740; “Improvement of the Mind,” 1741; “A Faithful Enquiry after the … Doctrine of the Trinity” (anon.), 1745; “Glory of Christ as God-Man Unveiled” (anon.), 1746; “Useful and Important Questions concerning Jesus” (anon.), 1746; “Evangelical Discourses,” 1747; “The Rational Foundation of a Christian Church,” 1747. Posthumous: “Nine Sermons preached … 1718–19,” ed. by P. J. Smith, 1812. Collected Works: in 6 vols., 1810–11. Life: by T. Milner, 1834.
Personal
We here commit to the ground the venerable remains of one, who being intrusted with many excellent talents by him who is the giver of every good and perfect gift, cheerfully and unweariedly employed them as a faithful steward of the manifold grace of God in his Master’s service, approving himself as a minister of Christ in much patience, in afflictions, and distress, by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the armour of righteousness, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report and who, amidst trials from within and from without, was continued by the kind providence of God, and the powerful supports of his grace to a good old age, honoured and beloved by all parties, retaining his usefulness till he had just finished his course, and being at last favoured, according to his own wishes and prayers, with a release from the labours of life into that peaceful state of good men, which commences immediately after death. O how delightful is that voice from heaven which has thus pronounced, “Blessed are the dead who die in the lord, yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works follow them.”
By his natural temper he was quick of resentment; but by his established and habitual practice he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children and to the poor. To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the third part of his annual revenue, though the whole was not a hundred a year; and for the children he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems of instruction, adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason, through its gradations of advance in the morning of life.
His stature was beneath the common standard, perhaps not above five feet, or at most five feet two inches, but without any thing like deformity in his frame. His body was spare and lean, his face oval, his nose acquiline, his complexion fair and pale, his forehead low, his cheek bones rather prominent, but his countenance on the whole by no means disagreeable, his eyes were small and grey, and whenever he was attentive or eager, amazingly piercing and expressive, his voice was rather too fine and slender, at least it would have been thought so, if he had been of a larger mould, but it was regular, audible, and pleasant.
In reviewing these discourses it may be justly remarked, that they possess uncommon excellence, and in some respects, notwithstanding the many volumes of sermons since published, have never been exceeded, or even equalled. The beautiful perspicuity and simplicity of their style renders them familiar to the meanest capacities. Their originality of thought, and the happy illustrations that abound in them, discover the genius of the writer; but the fervour of his exhortations, his close addresses to the conscience, and the rich veins of evangelical truth and christian experience in every discourse, shew the christian divine in full proportion. The only thing that can be justly objected to is, that they contain redundancies of expression, and some slight inaccuracies, not exactly conformable to the critical taste of the present age. It is to be remembered, however, that they were written or revised in the chamber of sickness; many of them perhaps with an aching head, and a trembling hand. If they do not, in general, smell of the lamp of study so much as some productions of the present age, they partake more of the holy unction of the gospel.
No circumstance, either public or private, tended to provoke in him any angry or acrimonious feelings. Strongly as he was attached to the general principle of nonconformity, there was no bitterness in his dissent; he lived not only in charity with all men, but on terms of good will and friendship with some of the most eminent of the clergy. All parties agreed in rendering justice to the benignity of his disposition, the usefulness of his labours, and the purity of his life.
We know little of the mother of Dr. Watts, beyond this simple but touching record, and that she was an excellent woman, who, like her son, would seem to have had a taste for poetic numbers; for it is told of her, that when her husband kept a school at Southampton, she used to encourage the boys after their lessons to write verses, and that she used to give those who did so a farthing as a reward. Her own boy would seem to have been a little touched on this point with something of becoming zeal for the poet’s honour, for his early composition was this:—
| “I write not for a farthing, but to try | |
| How I your farthing writers can defy.” |
In the nave of Westminster Abbey, the last resting-place of so many kings, queens, poets, artists, divines, and philosophers, we saw a little tablet of white marble, sacred to the memory of Dr. Watts. On its front is a figure of Watts sitting on a stool, apparently lost in deep thought and meditation. In one hand he holds a pen, and with the other points to a celestial globe, while an angel seems opening to his enraptured senses the “wonders of creation.” A bust of the great divine rests upon the monument, and below are the words, “Isaac Watts, D.D., born July 17, 1674, died November 25, 1748.”
Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, 1722
For my own part I cannot but think that this good man approached as nearly to christian perfection as any mortal ever did in this sublunary state; and therefore I consider him as a better interpreter of the christian doctrine than the most learned critics, who, proud of their reason and their learning, despised or neglected the very life and soul of christianity, the living, everlasting gospel, the supernatural influence of divine grace; and be it ever remembered, that Dr. Watts was a man who studied the abstrusest sciences, and was as well qualified to become a verbal critic, or a logical disputant on the scriptures, as the most learned among the Doctors of the Sorbonne, or the greatest proficients in polemical divinity. I mention this circumstance for the consideration of those who insinuate that the doctrines of grace cannot be entertained but by ignorant, as well as fanatical persons; by persons uninitiated in the mysteries of philosophy.
Few writers have been more useful, especially in Psalms and Hymns: a fine genius, and deep piety. He fell into some peculiar notions on the Trinity, and was answered by Abraham Taylor, Hurrion, and Edwards. If the wise and good Dr. Watts erred, let all take heed of rash speculations on revealed things.
Logick, 1725
Watts, when he does not bewilder himself and his readers in scholastic subtleties,… is very judicious.
The Logic of Watts, of Duncan, and of others, are worth reading as books, but not as books upon Logic.
Improvement of the Mind, 1741
An excellent work. It is metaphysics carried into every day life and practice.
The justice of this commendation has generally been acceded to, although more recent inquiries have shown, that some of the views of the mind in the book in question are defective.
Hymns
We come to the greatest name among hymn-writers, for we hesitate not to give that praise to Dr. Isaac Watts, since it has pleased God to confer upon him, though one of the least of the poets of his country, more glory than upon the greatest either of that or of any other, by making his Divine Songs a more abundant and useful blessing than the verses of any uninspired penman that ever lived. In his Psalms and Hymns (for they must be classed together), he has embraced a compass and variety of subjects which include and illustrate every truth of revelation, throw light upon every secret movement of the human heart, whether of sin, nature, or grace, and describe every kind of trial, temptation, conflict, doubt, fear and grief, as well as the faith, hope, charity, the love of joy, peace, labor, and patience of the Christian in all stages of his course on earth; together with the terrors of the Lord, the glories of the Redeemer, and the comforts of the Holy Spirit, to urge, allure, and strengthen him by the way. Then, as in the pages of the evangelist, a word in season for every one who needs it, in whatever circumstance she may require counsel, consolation, reproof, or instruction. We say this, without reserve, of the materials of his hymns, had their execution always been correspondent with the preciousness of these, we should have had a Christian Psalmist, in England, next (and that only in date, not in dignity) to the Sweet Singer of Israel!
Some of his hymns were written to be sung after his sermons, the hymn in each case giving expression to the meaning of the text upon which he had been discoursing. Produced as they were wanted, and for a practical purpose, some of these hymns lack the fire and genius of poetry, and the same must be admitted of some of his other productions.
The Independents, as represented by Dr. Watts, have a just claim to be considered the real founders of modern English hymnody. No doubt Watts’s taste was often faulty, and his style unequal; but more hymns which approached to a very high standard of excellence might be found in his works than in those of any other single writer in the English language.
We are confirmed in our estimate of the relative value of Watts’ hymns by the proportion they bear in nearly all our collections to those of other contributors. Of 1290 hymns in the “Sabbath Hymn Book,” 254, as we count, are from Watts, and 56 from Charles Wesley, the next largest contributor. The “Plymouth Collection” has 1374 hymns, of which 218 are from Watts and 81 are from Wesley. In “Songs for the Sanctuary,” Dr. Charles S. Robinson’s book, there are 1345 hymns, with 198 from Dr. Watts. “Psalms and Hymns,” the Connecticut Collection, so called, has 1293 separate pieces, of which 514 are Watts’. The “Psalmist” (Baptist) has 1180, with 301 from Dr. Watts. And so in nearly all the hymn books of the various denominations, with the exception of the Methodist Episcopal and Wesleyan churches; and in their collections, while Wesley leads, Watts is admitted to the second rank. A recent writer in an English magazine, after an examination of 750 different hymn books, ascribes to Dr. Watts the authorship of two-fifths of the hymns which are used in the English-speaking world.
There are lines in those hymns which offend against all good taste. Yet there are wonderful jewels in that oft rubbishy mass of some six hundred religious poems. The man who could write them “ought not to have written as he has written.” They “will be sung, I fancy,” says the same critic, “so long as men praise God together.” And indeed, they are wonderful, wonderful in their firm clear English, their noble sentences, in that true ring which touches every Christian heart.
I don’t know but these bits of moral music may have been hustled out from modern church primers for something more æsthetic; but I am sure that a good many white-haired people—of whom I hope to count some among my readers—are carried back pleasantly by the rhythmic jingle of the good Doctor to those child days when hopes were fresh, and holidays a joy, and summers long; and when flowery paths stretched out before us, over which we have gone toiling since—to quite other music than that of Dr. Isaac Watts. And if his songs are gone out of our fine books, and have fallen below the mention of the dilettanti critics, I am the more glad to rescue his name, as that of an honest, devout, hard-working, cultivated man who has woven an immeasurable deal of moral fibre into the web and woof of many generations of men and women.
His poetical fame rests on his hymns. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the stern embargo which Calvin had laid on the use in the music of sacred worship of everything except metrical psalms and canticles has been broken by the obscure hymns of Mason, Keach, Barton, and others; and hymns were freely used in the baptist and independent congregations. The poetry of Watts took the religious world of dissent by storm. It gave an utterance, till then unheard in England, to the spiritual emotions, in their contemplation of God’s glory in nature and his revelation in Christ, and made hymn-singing a fervid devotional force. The success of Watts’s hymns approached that of the new version of the Psalms. Edition followed edition. In the early years of this century the annual output of Watts’s hymns, notwithstanding all the wealth of hymn production arising out of methodism, was still fifty thousand copies.
Poems
Was nevertheless, if I am in any degree a judge of verse, a man of true poetical ability; careless, indeed, for the most part, and inattentive too often to those niceties which constitute elegance of expression, but frequently sublime in his conceptions, and masterly in his execution.
He is emphatically the classic poet of the religious world, wherever the English language is known.
I have liked Dr. Watts’s “Psalms and Hymns” ever since the time when, scarcely three years old, I was made to repeat, with his book in my hand, and with such gestures as were prescribed to me, the psalm beginning with the words:—
| “Come sound his praise abroad | |
| And hymns of glory sing.”… |
In him the thought is true, the form of its utterance false; the feeling lovely, the word, often to a degree, repulsive. The ugly web is crossed now and then by a fine line, and even damasked with an occasional good poem: I have found two, and only two, in the whole of his seventy-five “Lyrics sacred to Devotion.” His objectivity and boldness of thought, and his freedom of utterance, cause us ever and anon to lament that he had not the humility and faith of an artist as well as of a Christian.
Shelley’s masterpiece, in the shorter form of lyric (as, if such a judgment be permissible, all things considered, the Editor would hold the “Skylark”), follows Gray’s: and in No. 83 we have one of the most stately and musical odes in our or any language. With these, Watts’ verses come like the child they describe into a company of kings and conquerors. Indeed, the admirable author of the “Cradle Song” almost apologized for publishing it;—yet, within its little sphere, this also is a masterpiece:—Reynolds himself does not paint childhood with a more absolute tenderness.
General
This, I think, is a just censure on the greatest part of those who have written religious books in English verse; but I except from this number the ingenious Mr. Watts, whose Divine poetry is very laudable, and much superior to all that have gone before him in the lyric kind.
Happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God.
In his literary character, Dr. Watts may be considered as a poet, a philosopher, and a theologian. In the first of these departments, if he did not attain a very high rank, he was, at least, considerably above mediocrity; and his devotional poetry, in particular, possesses a sweetness and simplicity, both in thought and diction, which deservedly acquired for it, especially among the Dissenters, with whom his psalms and hymns are in daily use, an established reputation. His philosophical productions can claim the rare merit of being always practically useful, and have been of the most essential service in the education of youth. His logic has received the highest encomium by its admission into the universities; his “Philosophical Essays;” his “Treatise on Education,” &c. &c., are conducive to the best purposes of morality and instruction; and on his work entitled “The Improvement of the Mind.”… In theology the compositions of our author are uncommonly numerous; and every page displays his unaffected piety, the purity of his principles, the mildness of his disposition, and the great goodness of his heart. The style of all his works is perspicuous, correct, and frequently elegant; and, happily for mankind, his labours have been translated and dispersed with a zeal which does honour to human nature; for there are probably few persons who have studied the writings of Dr. Watts without a wish for improvement; without an effort to become a wiser or a better member of society.
Dr. Watts’s devotional poetry was for the most part intentionally lowered to the understanding of children. If this was a sacrifice of taste, it was at least made to the best of intentions. The sense and sincerity of his prose writings, the excellent method in which he attempted to connect the study of ancient logic with common sense, and the conciliatory manner in which he allures the youthful mind to habits of study and reflection, are probably remembered with gratitude by nine men out of ten, who have had proper books put into their hands at an early period of their education.
Of Watts, the companion of our younger and later years, it is impossible to speak without reverence and respect. His Hymns are the charm of our early youth; his Logic, the well-known theme of schoolboy study; and his Sermons, Essays, and other theological compositions, are a source of never failing gratification, in the advance, maturity, and decline of life. The man at fourscore may remember, with gratitude, the advantage of having committed the Hymns of this pious man to his infantine memory.
There are some reputations that are great merely because they are amiable. There is Dr. Watts; look at the encomiums passed on him by Dr. Johnson: and yet to what, according to his statement, does his merit amount? Why, only to this: that he did that best which none can do well, and employed his talents uniformly for the welfare of mankind. He was a good man, and the voice of the public has given him credit for being a great one. The world may be forced to do homage to great talents, but they only bow willingly to these when they are joined with benevolence and modesty; nor will they put weapons into the hands of the bold and unprincipled sophist to be turned against their own interests and wishes.
Watts had inherited a large share of the original temptation,—that inward and spiritual temptation whereby man is incited to pluck the forbidden fruit. He approached too near the veil; and confiding in his own natural and cultivated acuteness, endeavoured sometimes strictly to define what the Scriptures have left indefinite, as if he were possessed of an intellectual prism with which he could decompose the Light of Light. There were times when he was conscious of this. Upon publishing some sermons, many years after they were written, in which he had expatiated on the nature of the Trinity, he confessed in a note that there were “warmer efforts of imagination than riper years could indulge, on a theme so sublime and abstruse.”
A name never to be uttered without reverence by any lover of pure Christianity or by any well-wisher of mankind.
In his doctrinal writings there are signs of the diffuse sentimentalism which not unfrequently accompanies a feeble constitution. We may grant to his biographer that there is not an expression in his sermons “that could raise the faintest blush upon the cheek of modesty, or irritate the risibility of the most puerile.” The more positive merits discovered by the same admirer will, perhaps, hardly keep the modern reader from somnolency. The sermons, however, show something of the old unction. They appeal strongly to the inward witness of the spirit, with a comparative indifference to the ordinary evidential argument. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he addresses the heart rather than the intellect; and in his hands Christianity is not emasculated Deism, but a declaration to man of the means by which God pleases to work a supernatural change in human nature. The emotional current is still running strongly, though combined with a rather heterogeneous collection of speculative opinions.
