“I am glad my little prayer-book is acceptable to you and your daughter. I perceive you have been also (among many others) uneasy to have no easier and plainer catechism for children than that of the Assembly. I had a letter from Leicestershire the very same day when I received yours on the same subject; and long after this a multitude of requests have I had to set my thoughts at work for this purpose. I have designed it these many years. I have laid out some schemes for this purpose, and I would have three or four series of catechisms, as I have of prayers. I believe I shall do it ere long if God afford health. But, dear friend, forgive me if I cannot come into your scheme of ‘bringing in the creed;’ for it is, in my opinion, a most imperfect and immethodical composition, and deserves no great regard, unless it be put in at the end of the catechism for form’s sake, together with the Lord’s Prayer and Ten Commandments, as is done in the Assembly’s Catechism. The history of the life and death of Christ is excessively long in so short a system and the design of the death of Christ (which is the glory of Christianity) is utterly omitted. Besides, the operations, of the Spirit are not named. The practical articles are all excluded. In short, ’tis a very mean composure, and has nothing valuable—præter mille annos. My ideas of these matters run in another track, which, if ever I have the happiness to see you, may be matter for communication between us. I am sorry I forgot to put up the coronation ode in my pocket. I will count myself in debt till I have an occasion to send you something more valuable along with it. Two days (ago) I published a little essay on charity schools, my treatise of education growing so much longer in my hands than I designed. If it were worth while to send such a trifle you should have it. In the meantime I take leave, and with due salutations to yourself and yours,
“I am your affectionate brother and servant,
“I. Watts.”
William Coward is the name of one of Watts’ intimate friends, an oddity in his way as great as Mrs. Bendish: he had been a merchant in the city; he lived in retirement at Waltonstow; his name is well known now in Nonconformist circles as the founder of “The Coward Trust,” a useful fountain of benevolence for the education of young, and the assistance of poor decayed ministers. He was a type of man easily realised to the imagination, dogmatical and opinionated, a bundle of eccentricities. Among others, it was his whim to establish a rule that the doors of his house should never be opened, however pressing the emergency, after eight o’clock at night, to any person whatever, visitor or friend. The name of Hugh Farmer is still held in high and deserved respect for manifold attainments, one of Doddridge’s most hopeful students, and who had probably been recommended to Mr. Coward by Doddridge, to whose academy Coward was a munificent helper. Farmer was the chaplain of the eccentric man, but he arrived one evening at the door too late; he found himself without lodging for the night, and was compelled to betake himself to the house of another, perhaps equally eminent, but more courteous friend, Mr. Snell, who not only took him in for that evening, but compelled him to stay with him for thirty years. Nonconformist ministers appear to have possessed some singularly appreciative friends in those days. William Coward, however, was, if a man of singular eccentricity, one possessed of sterling virtues, and especially zealous in the maintenance of the more rigid articles of faith, and was constantly devising some plans of usefulness to assist both metropolitan and country ministers. Watts appears to have had great influence over him, and could comb his rugged asperities into smoothness. Watts it was to whom we are greatly indebted for the shape assumed by the “Coward Trust.” He devoted £20,000, and by Watts’ wise and most judicious advice it was left in such a manner that, unlike many other trusts, it has been saved from the consequence of diversion or litigation; and, largely and most respectably useful, it has furnished a most helpful hand in giving a thorough and most respectable education to many a young minister, and helping many a poor one, even to the present day. The “will” of William Coward is a curiosity, and may be studied, by those who have patience, on the walls of the library of the New College.
Among the friends of Watts, whose names ought to be mentioned, we must not omit that of John Shute, Lord Barrington, a person very interesting in his own times. He moved in that immediate circle of which Watts was a distinguished member; he was nearly of Watts’ age, and his mother was a daughter of that Joseph Caryl who was one of Watts’ early predecessors in the ministry at Mark Lane. He was a thoughtful, scholarly man, as the several works he published abundantly show.[25] His sixth and youngest son became the well-known Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham. In the memoir prefixed to the three volumes of his father’s works, the name of Dr. Watts is never even mentioned, although the verses from the lyrics, referring to the intimacy of Shute with John Locke, addressed to him by Watts, are quoted. He was a member of the Church meeting at Pinners’ Hall, and had previously attended the ministry of Thomas Bradbury; but when that person behaved so indecently to Dr. Watts, and took so turbulent a part in the discussion with reference to the Trinity, Lord Barrington united himself with the Church at Pinners’ Hall, then beneath the ministry of Dr. Jeremiah Hunt. It seems probable that an intimacy commenced early in life between Mr. Shute and Isaac Watts, perhaps before the settlement of Watts in the ministry. It was in 1718 that Swift writes of him, “One Mr. Shute is named for the secretary to Lord Wharton; he is a young man, but reckoned the shrewdest head in England, and the person in whom the Presbyterians chiefly confide; and if money be necessary toward the good work (that is, the repeal of the sacramental test) in Ireland, it is reckoned he can command as far as £100,000 from the body of Dissenters here. As to his principles, he is a truly moderate man, frequenting the church and the meeting indifferently.” He took the name of Barrington about the time this letter was written, a connection of his family, Francis Barrington, Esq., of Tofts, in Essex, leaving to him his estate conditionally upon his taking his name and adopting his arms. The high favour in which he stood with George I. exposed him to the jealousy and enmity of Sir Robert Walpole. He had an interview with the king on the first day after his arrival in London, apparently in order that he might decline certain offices of preferment which were made him, because the Schism and Conformity Bills were as yet unrepealed. Upon this occasion he stated to the king the grievances beneath which Dissenters suffered, although they were amongst the most hearty and faithful friends of the House of Hanover. In the fifth year of this reign he was created a peer. He stood very high in the friendship of the king, and it seems that it was this very friendship which brought about the close of his political life when, in 1723, he was expelled from the House of Commons for his connection with the Harburgh lottery. This was a company formed for carrying on trade between England and the king’s electoral dominions, and it had been proposed that it should be assisted by a lottery to defray the expenses in deepening the River Elbe near the port of Harburgh; the project had not met with the approbation of Lord Barrington, but he received the king’s personal commands to continue as sub-governor of the company, Prince Frederick being the governor. It furnished, however, the occasion which Sir Robert Walpole knew how to use for the removal from his path of a man dangerous to his own unscrupulous ambition. The project itself was simply a means, favoured by the king, for promoting trade between the two countries. But now, in his retirement, he betook himself to pursuits of a very different character, and the volumes of his theological works are most interesting, and show abundantly how he brought to bear upon the department of theology that clearness of judgment which had characterized his political life, united to a keen analytic power of criticism and discrimination very interesting to follow through the subjects he discusses; his essay “On the Dispensation of God to Mankind as revealed in Scripture” is especially entertaining and suggestive.
He was nephew, by his mother, of Sir Thomas Abney, and this would make his intimacy with the family in which Watts resided very natural; but at his house at Tofts he kept round about him much intellectual society, and sometimes even of persons widely differing in opinion from himself, such persons as Antony Collins,[26] the well-known sceptical writer of that day. The Greek Testament was frequently the subject of investigation and criticism, and on one occasion it is said Collins remarked concerning the apostle Paul, “I think so well of him as a man of sense and a gentleman, that if he had asserted he had worked miracles himself, I would have believed him.”
Lord Barrington instantly produced a passage to that effect, when the disconcerted sceptic seized his hat and hastily retreated from the company. Upon another occasion his lordship inquired how it was that although he professed to have no religion himself, he was so careful that his servants should attend regularly at church, when he replied he did this to prevent them robbing and murdering him. This amiable nobleman, moderate, wise, and well informed, if we may not rather speak of him as a man of extensive and varied scholarship, was such a one as could well appreciate and sympathize with Isaac Watts. At the old house at Tofts, or Beckets, in Berkshire, where Lord Barrington died, we may be sure that Watts was a frequent visitor, and it was the frequency of the intercourse probably which permits us so few letters between them, and of those letters none before 1718. We have already quoted the high estimate he formed of Watts’ “View of Scripture History;” his estimate of the “Logic” he rates so highly that he says, “I shall not only recommend it to others, but use it as the best manual of its kind myself, and I intend, as some have done Erasmus or a piece of Cicero, to read it over once a year.” The following note sets every point of his friendship with Watts in a very pleasing light:
“London, Jan. 11, 1718.
“Rev. Sir,
“I cannot dispense with myself from taking the first opportunity I have of acknowledging your great favour in assisting me so readily to offer up the praise due to Almighty God for His signal mercies vouchsafed me on three several occasions, and of assuring you that it was with the utmost concern I understood that I must not flatter myself with the hopes of your being with us in this last. But how very obliging are you, who would give yourself the trouble to let me know that, though you could not give me the advantage of your company at Hatton Garden, yet I should not want your assistance at a distance, where you would address such petitions to heaven to meet ours as tend to render me one of the best and happiest men alive. This they will influence to me in some measure, both by their prevalency at the throne of grace, and by instructing me in the most agreeable manner what I should aspire to. Whilst I read your letter, I found my blood fired with the greatest ambition to be what you wish me. I will, therefore, carefully preserve it, where it shall be least liable to accidents, and where it will be always most in my view. There, as I shall see what I ought to be, by keeping it always before me, I shall not only have the pleasure of observing the masterly strokes of the character you wish me, but, I hope, come in time to bear some resemblance to it. Whilst you were praying for us, we did not forget you; nor shall I cease to beseech Almighty God to make you a bright example of passive virtue, till He shall see fit to restore you to that eminent degree of acceptableness and service you have once enjoyed.