FOOTNOTES
[1] “Dr. Isaac Watts,” a Lecture by Hermann Carlyle, LL.B., seventh minister of the church of which Dr. Watts’ father was for forty-eight years a deacon.
[2] It is interesting to remember that Isaac Watts the elder was the first local trustee to Robert Thorner’s munificent bequest, which is now the grandest of all the Southampton charities, and has made the name of Thorner in that town a household word.
[3] The soil of Southampton seems to have been favourable to the production of the lyrical faculty, although it is not probable that many of those whose hearts have been stirred by the holy strains of Watts have been acquainted with the melodies of one of the most national of English song-writers, the laureate of sailors, also a townsman of Southampton, Thomas Dibden.
[4] See [Appendix].
[5] Walter Wilson’s “Life of Defoe,” vol. i. pp. 26, 27.
[6] “The Improvement of the Mind,” chap. iv. of “Books and Reading.”
[7] Afterwards, says Dr. Gibbons, Dr. Daniel Scott. He was a very learned and amiable man. After he had studied under Mr. Jones he removed to Utrecht for further education; there he took the degree of doctor of laws. In the year 1741 he published a new version of St. Matthew’s Gospel, with critical notes, and an examination of Dr. Mills’ various readings. He published, also, in the year 1745, an “Appendix to H. Stephens’ Greek Lexicon,” in two volumes.
[8] “History and Antiquities of Stoke Newington.” By William Robinson, LL.D., F.S.A.
[9] The interested reader consulting that singular monument of patient and painstaking industry, “The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting-Houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark,” by Walter Wilson, will probably feel astonishment, not less at their number than at the singular places in which they assembled.
[10] Matt. xviii. 20.
[11] Originally Mart Lane.
[12] “Quarterly Review,” vol. lxxxix. pp. 303, 304.
[13] “Ode to Mr. Pinhorne.” Translated by Dr. Gibbons.
[14] Lord Lytton, in “Devereux.”
[15] “Quarterly Review,” No. 222, April, 1862. Art. Hymnology.
[16] “British and Foreign Evangelical Review,” 1865.
[17] “The Poet of the Sanctuary,” etc. By Josiah Conder. 1857.
[18] “The Psalter and the Hymn Book.” Three Lectures by James Hamilton.
[19] See Crosbie’s “History of the English Baptists” (1740), vol. iii.
[20] “Quarterly Review,” vol. xxxviii. Art. Psalmody.
[21] “Letter to Rev. S. F. Macdonald,” by James Martineau, 1859.
[22] “Old Town Folk,” chap. iii.
[23] For illustrations of this, see “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. ⸺ or a Gnat destroying the Little Arian Foxes among the Vines,” and part of the “Remains of Dr. Watts’ Clear’d from the Leaves and Rags of Arianism.”
[24] See this idea illustrated in “An Essay on the Book of Psalms,” by Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 1825, and “An Essay on the Literature of the Book of Psalms,” in the “Preachers’ Lantern,” vol. ii. p. 558.
[25] Lord Barrington’s “Theological Works,” 3 vols.
[26] “Biog. Brit.” Article, Barrington.
[27] Dr. Southey, remarking on this incident, says: “The hymn, indeed, was likely to have this effect upon an assembly whose minds were under the immediate impression produced by a pathetic preacher.” They were those well-known words:
Give me the wings of faith to rise
Within the veil, and see
The saints above, how great their joys,
How bright their glories be.
Once they were mourning here below,
And wet their couch with tears,
They wrestled hard, as we do now,
With sins, and doubts, and fears.
I ask them whence their victory came;
They with united breath
Ascribe their conquest to the Lamb,
Their triumph to His death.
They marked the footsteps that He trod,
His zeal inspired their breast;
And, following their Incarnate God,
Possess the promised rest.
Our glorious Leader claims our praise
For His own pattern given,
While the long cloud of witnesses
Show the same path to heaven.
[28] See an admirable and interesting summary of Doddridge’s Life and Character,—“Philip Doddridge:” “North British Review.”
[29] Glover’s “Leonidas,” a poem scarcely ever read or referred to now, but which created considerable interest on its publication, and for some time held a conspicuous place in English poetry.
[30] Mr. Waller’s lines, to which her ladyship refers, are at the conclusion of his Divine Poems:
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made:
Stronger by weakness wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home:
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
The verses of Dr. Watts which her ladyship intends is the poem in his “Horæ Lyricæ,” entitled “A Sight of Heaven in Sickness.”
[31] “Daniel Defoe, His Life and Recently Discovered Writings.” By William Lee. 3 vols.
[32] See “Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe,” etc. By Walter Wilson, Esq.
[33] See the whole of this in the “Posthumous Works of the late learned and Rev. Isaac Watts,” 1779.
[34] See an interesting table of “Memorable Affairs in my Life and Coincidents,” in Watts’ writing, in [Appendix] to this volume.
[35] See “History of England,” by Earl Stanhope, vol. i. chap. 1.
[36] Lord Macaulay says: “There was considerable excitement, but it was allayed by a temperate and artful letter to the clergy, the work, in all probability, of Bishop Gibson, who stood high in the favour of Walpole, and shortly after became minister for ecclesiastical affairs.”
[37] Essay on “Popular Ignorance.”
[38] See the “Clapham Sect.” Sir James Stephen’s Essays in “Ecclesiastical Biography.”
[39] “Memorials, etc. etc. of the late W. M. Bunting.”
[40] Doddridge’s “Life and Correspondence,” vol. iv. p. 520.
[41] “Without question we must affirm that Body is the necessary means of bringing Mind into relationship with space and extension, and so of giving it Place, very plainly a disembodied spirit, or we ought rather to say, an unembodied spirit, or sheer mind, is nowhere.”—Isaac Taylor’s “Physical Theory of Another Life,” chap. ii.
[42] See Preface to the second vol. of “World to Come,” Octavo edition.
[43] 1 Cor. i. 26.
[44] So says Mr. Carlyle, in one of the most interesting little documents in connection with the life of Watts ever published, the little pamphlet to which we have already referred.
[45] Montgomery on the Cholera Mount of Sheffield.
[46] “Memorials, Historical, Descriptive, Poetical and Pictorial, Commemorative of the Inauguration of the Statue to Dr. Isaac Watts, in the Western Park, Southampton, by the Earl of Shaftesbury, July 17th, 1861.” See also “The Proceedings connected with the Inauguration of the Memorial Statue to Dr. Isaac Watts, at Southampton, July 17th, 1861.”
[47] “There is also perhaps more method and clearness in the logic of Watts than in that of Arnauld. The good English sense—the business faculty—that of practical life, repeats itself here in the highest degree; whilst the speculative mind of a tolerably scholarly theologian is yet more full in the art of thinking. Now Watts is complete without being extravagant; he has touched very adequately all that is necessary, and he always stops at the very precise point where depth might have injured transparency.”
[48] “The Athenian Oracle, being an entire collection of all the valuable Questions and Answers in the old Athenian Mercurys, intermixed with many cases in Divinity, History, Philosophy, Mathematics, Love, and Poetry, and never before Published,” etc. 4 vols. Printed for Andrew Bell, at the Cross Keys.
“Athenian Sport; or, Two Thousand Paradoxes Merrily Argued, by a Member of the Athenian Society.”
“Memoirs for the Ingenious; containing several Curious Observations in Philosophy, Mathematics, Physic, Philology, and other Arts and Sciences, in Miscellaneous Letters.” Printed for H. Rhodes, and for J. Harris, at the Arrow, in the Poultry.
[49] “Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences of the French Virtuosi, upon Questions of all sorts for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, made in the Assembly of the Beaux Esprit of Paris, by the most ingenious persons of that nation, rendered into English.” Sold at the George, in Fleet Street, and the Mitre, Middle Temple, 1665.
[50] Rogers’ “Life of Howe,” p. 476.
[51] The matter, we suppose, is long since set at rest; it may be very distinctly set at rest by a study of Watts’ works, discussing the great question of the Trinity. “Watts not a Socinian,” by the Rev. S. Palmer, puts the matter in a popular and concise form; but when his monument was erected in Southampton, a lecture was delivered and published on “His Life, Character, and Religious Opinions,” by the Rev. Edmund Kell, M.A., F.S.A., the late Unitarian minister of Southampton, in which the old exploded dishonest statements were all reiterated.
[52] This is illustrated and manifest by the writings of Waterland, which are almost contemporary with the discussions of Watts.
[53] J. R. Lowell.
[54] This matter has been well argued against the Atheistic view, in a very interesting little pamphlet, “Croll on the Conservation of Force.”
[55] Psalm lxxvi. 5, 10.
[56] “These expressions may be sufficiently justified if we consider Jephthah’s rash vow of sacrifice, which fell upon his only child; and Samson’s rude or unbecoming conduct in his amours with the Philistine woman at Timnath, the harlot at Gaza, and his Delilah at Sorek; his bloody quarrels and his manner of life. The learned and pious Dr. Owen, as I have been often informed by his intimate friend, Sir John Hartopp, called him a rude believer. He might have strong faith of miracles, but a small share of that faith which purifies the heart.”