III. WATTS AS A HYMN WRITER
Watts had been recognized from childhood as having a talent in the making of verses. Returning from a church service in Southampton, he sharply criticized the hymns of Barton—an inferior contemporary of John Mason. His devout father, a deacon in the church, playfully, perhaps seriously, replied that he should try his skill in supplying a better one. The challenge was accepted and he brought his father the hymn:
“Behold the glories of the Lamb
Amidst his Father’s throne;
Prepare new honors for his name,
And songs before unknown.”
He little realized that it was his life’s most illustrious task to fulfill the exhortation of the last two lines.
The success of the new hymn when lined out to the congregation and sung by them led to a demand for more. Thus unconsciously and unpretentiously was ushered in a new epoch in the devotional singing of the Christian Church. Presumably this occurred in his twenty-first year, for this and the succeeding year were spent at home in Southampton in varied studies and in writing hymns.
These hymns seem to have remained in manuscript for some years, despite the earnest protest of his younger brother, who declared that “Mason now reduces this kind of writing to a sort of yawning indifference, and honest Barton chimes us asleep.” This literary judgment of young Enoch must not be taken too seriously, except as expressing his eagerness to have his brilliant brother’s hymns brought before the public.
It was nearly or quite ten years after the first hymn that a collection of hymns and odes and other poems, Horæ Lyricæ, was issued, in 1706. It contained twenty-five hymns, four psalm paraphrases, and eleven religious songs in varied measures and meters. It also contained elegies, odes, and blank verse of a purely literary character. In his preface he suggests the spirit and methods which should later be more fully developed. “The hymns were never written to appear before the judges of wit, but only to assist the meditations and worship of vulgar Christians.”[1]
In 1709 the second edition of the Horæ furnished an increased number of hymns. In the preface of this edition he confesses that in the hymns of the Horæ “there are some expressions which are not suited to the plainest capacities, and differ too much from the usual methods of speech in which holy things are proposed to the general part of mankind.”
The hymns contained in the more popular Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707, and in the augmented edition of 1709, were of a plainer type for “the level of vulgar capacities.” The edition of 1709 contained two hundred and fifty-five hymns, seventy-eight paraphrases, and twenty-two communion hymns. The hymns were in only three meters, Long, Common, and Short. Watts had an eye single for practicability.
The four Psalm versions contained in his Horæ Lyricæ had a prefatory note, “An essay on a few of David’s Psalms translated into plain verse, in language more agreeable to the clearer revelations of the Gospel,” which makes certain that he had already clearly in mind the evangelical psalter which, despite his absorption in other tasks and his long illness in 1712, finally appeared in 1719, “The Psalms of David imitated in the language of the New Testament and apply’d to the Christian state and worship.” Watts excluded twelve Psalms entirely and omitted passages from some of the one hundred and thirty-eight that were retained, because they were not adapted to Christian use.
Although he never married, Watts was very fond of children. In 1715, in the midst of his program for the public service of song, his opus magnum, he prepared his “Divine Songs, attempted in easy language for the use of children.” It was to be used in connection with the “Catechism” he had prepared for their use. It was the first collection of its kind and was the forerunner of the immense supply of children’s songs that was to grow out of the activities of the Sunday school. One is amazed that the writer of “When I survey the wondrous cross,” or “Our God, our help in ages past,” could write so tender and graceful a lullaby as
“Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.”