“I am, sir, your most obliged humble servant,
“Barrington.
“My wife is very much obliged by your civility. She has desired a copy of your letter, which, she says, will be as useful to her as it has been entertaining, if it be not her own fault. Both our humble services attend the good family where you are. I am sorry my lady’s cold is like to deprive us of their company on Wednesday.”
Yet another of the circle of friends, whose names occur to the mind when we think of Watts, is the saintly James Hervey. One of Watts’ biographers speaks of “the bloated effusions of Hervey which are now justly discarded, then not only tolerated, but admired.” It is an unjust judgment; James Hamilton was much more fair and faithful when he says of him that “he had a mind of uncommon gorgeousness, his thoughts are marched to a stately music, and were arrayed in the richest superlatives;” and he speaks of Hervey’s “Theron and Aspasia” as “one of our finest prose poems.” James Hervey deserves that his name should be mentioned with great affection and respect. His life was perpetually stretched upon a rack of infirmity and weakness. There is even a kind of pathetic drollery in watching him at Weston Favell living his bachelor’s life, and, while stirring the saucepan which held the gruel constituting his modest meal, turning aside to derive some new fancy, fact, or image from the microscope on his study table. As a writer, he indulged himself too freely in colour, but many of his works are very pleasing; he was not only passionately fond of natural scenery, but in an equal degree delighted in the discoveries of natural history; his copious description of the human frame is one of the most seductive dissertations on anatomy and physiology in our language; and those subjects, not remarkable for being invested with the charms of fancy, certainly do in his descriptions appear to be invested by the fascinations of poetry. He was a friend of both Doddridge and Watts. He lived ever in the neighbourhood of the grave, but his little church of Weston Favell was filled with a loving congregation. It was a small flock, for it was a small church: but the humble villagers felt a large amount of affectionate regard for their feeble and yet famous friend. Into his church he speedily introduced, after their publication, Dr. Watts’ Hymns. So he tells Watts:
“To tell you, worthy Doctor, that your works have long been my delight and study, the favourite pattern by which I would form my conduct and model my style, would be only to echo back in the faintest accents what sounds in the general voice of the nation. Among other of your edifying compositions, I have reason to thank you for your ‘Sacred Songs,’ which I have introduced into the service of my church; so that in the solemnities of the Sabbath, and in a lecture on the week-day, your music lights up the incense of our praise, and furnishes our devotions with harmony. Our excellent friend, Dr. Doddridge, informs me of the infirm condition of your health, for which reason I humbly beseech the Father of spirits and the God of our life to renew your strength as the eagle’s, and to recruit a lamp that has shone with distinguished lustre in His sanctuary; or, if this may not consist with the counsels of unerring wisdom, to make all your bed in your languishing, softly to untie the cords of animal existence, to enable your dislodging soul to pass triumphantly through the valley of death, leaning on your beloved Jesus, and rejoicing in the greatness of His salvation. You have a multitude of names to bear on your breast and mention with your lips, when you approach the throne of grace in the beneficent exercise of intercession; but none, I am sure, has more need of such an interest in your supplications than, dear sir, your obliged and humble and affectionate servant,
“James Hervey.”
There could not be a very long intimacy between these two, or much knowledge of each other; they were both hermits, following, in the midst of much weakness, the calls of duty and the pursuits of a cultivated taste. The letter we have just quoted was written the year before Watts died; Hervey lived ten years longer, but died at the age of forty-seven. He forms one of a cluster of men singularly interesting to contemplate. With Doddridge, from their vicinity in the same county, he was on terms of the closest intimacy. He was a large scholar, a poet by natural temperament, and an intense lover of natural description. His works, once so famous, are almost forgotten, and have fallen into quite an undeserved neglect, partly arising, it may be, from the unfavourable estimate formed of them by those who have not read them, or who may have fixed their impressions from the scanning his “Contemplation of the Starry Heavens,” or his “Reflections in a Flower Garden,” or his “Descant on Creation.” His portrait should be suspended in the gallery of those we are noticing as one, who, if not among Watts’ most intimate friends, yet revered and loved him much.
But there is one name with which that of Watts is constantly united; it is the name of one whose nature in a marked and special manner seemed fitted to produce a perfect harmony and accord, it is the name of Philip Doddridge. At what period the friendship commenced cannot be very exactly ascertained. Probably, had the life of Doddridge been spared to pen the biography of his venerable friend, the present biographer might have felt his work a superfluity of naughtiness; but, considerable as the distance was between the ages of the friends, Watts preceded his younger brother by only a short time to the grave. Like Watts, his name is especially associated with the hymnology of England; nor is there a collection of sacred songs which does not contain some strains from the pair of sweet singers. Doddridge is indeed rather known by a few pieces, very sweet and helpful, but limited in the range of their emotions, and never attempting the lofty and dazzling flight of Watts’ nobler pieces.
Doddridge’s life is full of interest; it has yet to be written, for there was a variety of incidents in his story which scarcely appears in the biography of Kippis, or the admirable memoir of Job Orton. All things considered, it was a wonderful life: its activity was amazing, the variety of his literary acquirements and spoils was prodigious; one would say he had much more of the poet’s temperament than Watts; he was impulsive, passionate, affectionate, yet we certainly miss in him that indefinable something which constitutes the poet, and which something, Watts assuredly possessed.