This, then, was the spot associated with some of Watts’ earliest, happiest days, and was the scene of their quiet close. His friendship with Thomas Gunston was evidently founded on moral and intellectual relationship, and when he died, he poured out his grief in a long elegy, published in the Lyrics. It is noticeable in the poetry of Watts, and of that day, that so many of the subjects are devoted to the memory of friends. If a friend died, or if any other circumstance happened in life, it seemed necessary to embody the impressions in verse, and we need not, perhaps, regard this as altogether artificial and unnatural; in Watts’ instance, we may be sure it was not so, although many of the expressions sound extravagant; those to which most exception is taken have scarcely more of this characteristic than some of the similar poems of Milton; we may, for instance, remember Lycidas:
Mourn, ye young gardens, ye unfinished gates,
Ye green enclosures and ye growing sweets
Lament; for ye our midnight hours have known,
And watched us walking by the silent moon
In conference divine, while heavenly fire,
Kindling our breasts, did all our thoughts inspire
With joys almost immortal.
And again—
Oft have I laid the awful Calvin by,