Isaac Watts; his life and writings, his homes and friends

by Edwin Paxton Hood

Watts, as we have seen, lived so much in retirement and retreat, and was so constant a sufferer from the infirmities of health, that little is known in the way of incident and anecdote of his life. In a sense, indeed, he lived constantly before the eyes of men, for his industry, when he was capable of industry, must have been immense; he must have read extensively, he thought deeply, and he possessed not only an active but a facile pen, which appears to have served him very readily when he desired to translate his thoughts into language. His life belongs to that order we represent by such names as Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and John Howe: we do not here compare or contrast the finer details of their character, but, like them, he appears to have been essentially a man of contemplation; his activity was only the reflection of a contemplative life. In height he was quite beneath the common standard; Dr. Gibbons says not above five feet, or, at most, five feet two inches; we are not accustomed to associate so small a stature with any commanding presence in the pulpit; yet his preaching was greatly admired, and Dr. Jennings says that it was not only weighty and powerful, “but there was a certain dignity and respect in his very aspect which commanded attention and awe, and when he spoke, such strains of truly Christian eloquence flowed from his lips as one thinks could not be easily slighted, if resisted.” He was altogether a very slight figure—thin, an oval face, an aquiline nose, his complexion fair and pale, and, Gibbons says, his forehead low; but this does not appear in his portrait, nor does that which it usually indicates, a want of generosity, mark his character. When unable to preach, it was with difficulty he could be persuaded to accept the stipend of the church of which he was the pastor, saying that, as he could not preach, he had no title to any salary. His refusal was not accepted, but the delicate sense of honour marks the character of the man; while, from the time he lived in the Abney family, he devoted a third part of his income to charitable purposes. His eyes appear to have lighted up his face; they are described as singularly small and grey, and are said to have been amazingly piercing and expressive. His voice was very fine and, slender, but regular, audible, and pleasant. The anecdote is well known of him that when he was in one of those coffee-houses—then the haunts of men who knew what company they might expect to find, for every particular coterie had its own place of rendezvous—he overheard his name given by one person to another, who said in surprise, “What! is that the great Dr. Watts?” Whereupon he wrote down a verse and handed it to him:

Were I so tall to reach the pole,

And grasp the ocean in a span,

I must be measured by my soul,—

The mind’s the standard of the man.

We have never thought the anecdote a very likely one; Watts was altogether too quiet, and we may use the word, majestic in his manner to make it possible he would do this. The verse is indeed his, but it occurs in a lengthy poem, and it is possible that it was fitted into a fabulous incident which some inventor of scenic situations thought might be, or ought to be, true. There is another anecdote which has been related of him, although we have seen it attributed to others, how, when once in a coffee-house, and somewhat in the way of a tall giant of a man, he said to Watts, “Let me pass, O giant!” and Watts replied, “Pass on, O pigmy!” “I only referred to your mind,” said the giant; “I also to yours,” replied Watts.

Whatever impression such anecdotes may convey, one of his chief characteristics was a very modest appreciation of himself. “His humility,” said Dr. Jennings, “like a deep shade, set off his other graces and virtues, and made them shine with greater lustre.” And of those attributes of his character of which others thought most highly, he thought very inconsiderably. And to such a character is often allied that which is very noticeable in him, a very grateful sense of all favours conferred upon him. There was nothing narrow in his mind, he had a great width of thought and a great width of love: although, as we have seen, a Nonconformist by strong conviction, judging the communion to which he belonged as favourable to civil and religious freedom, and regarding the service as most in harmony with what he considered the simplicity of the Gospel, he was on terms of friendship with many other communions, and especially with several of the prelates, ministers, and members of the Established Church. It would be expected, although this is not invariably the case, that a mind so richly stored, united to so ready an eloquence, would shine in conversation, and this was the case. It is said that in conversation his wit sparkled; his biographer says, “It was like an ethereal flame, ever vivid and penetrating;” but he had an aversion to satire. Referring to the pictures he sometimes introduces, illustrating the vices and follies of his age, he utterly disclaims the idea that in them he has attempted to portray any personal character. “I would not,” he says, “willingly create needless pain or uneasiness to the most despicable figure among mankind; there are vexations enough among the beings of my species without my adding to the heap. When a reflecting glass shows the deformity of a face so plain as to point to the person, he will sooner be tempted to break the glass than reform his blemishes; but if I can find any error of my own happily described in some general character, I am then awakened to reform it in silence, without the public notice of the world, and the moral writer attains his noblest end.” He was not happy in the friendship of listeners, who took down with any accuracy the sayings which fell from him; and it is probable that in conversation, although rich and full, wide and wise, it was rather remarkable for these characteristics than for either its gaiety or its force.

There were few waste moments for which he had to give an account; he acted like a miser by his time, and permitted few moments to pass without their being garnered and compelled to pay interest. We read of his writing on horseback, and whithersoever he travelled the objects which entered either the eye or the ear seem to have left abiding impressions. It seems even the injustice of his opponents in disputation did not make him angry. Such injustice we know he had to experience; and when, in his later years, he offended on both sides, one writer complaining of him that he had gone too far, and another that he had not gone far enough, he contented himself by saying, “Moderation must expect a box on both ears.” A character like that of Watts inspires confidence in almost all that proceeds from his pen: the men, indeed, who carry what Chalmers called “weight in life,” are usually the tall, the self-assertive, and the strong; none of these attributes mark him, and yet he appears to have carried great weight. It was not by vehemence, but by wisdom; he did not win by the forcible striking of the ball, but by prescience and a judicious calculation.

Watts, like so many of the great wits, poets, and authors of his time, was what we should now consider very slightly versed in the accomplishments of travel: a few places in the neighbourhood of London and Southampton and Tunbridge Wells seem almost to exhaust his excursions. Indeed, England was for the most part an unknown country, and as to the continent of Europe, men of wealth and fashion were expected to perfect their education by the grand tour, but to persons even in Watts’ circle of society, France, Switzerland, and Italy, with their cities, memories, forests, and mountains, were unknown. Gray had not yet discovered Cumberland and Westmoreland, and when discovered, there were no facilities to make travel thither very easy; Yorkshire and Lancashire were almost equally unknown. The place to which we frequently find Watts retreating for the benefit of his health was Tunbridge Wells, and a singular place it must have been for a retreat, judging from the description Macaulay has given us of it in his history; but it furnishes us with a singular sense of the simple things which excited the imagination, to read how Watts regarded it. Many a modern reader is struck with surprise at Shakespeare’s description of the cliffs of Dover—a description of terror and fear arising from precipitous heights, which we could scarcely now persuade ourselves to be just of Helvellyn and Pendle. The rocks of Tunbridge seemed to Watts so wild and fearful that they furnish him with a subject for a sermon, “On the vain Refuge of Sinners,” from the text reciting the condition of those who said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne.” The sermon is expressly called “A Meditation upon the Rocks near Tunbridge Wells,” and he says: