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

by Edwin Paxton Hood

“When I see such awful appearances in nature, huge and lofty rocks hanging over my head, and at every step of my approach they seem to nod upon me with overwhelming ruin; when my curiosity searches far into hollow clefts, their dark and deep caverns of solitude and desolation, methinks, whilst I stand amongst them, I can hardly think myself in safety, and, at best, they give a sort of solemn and dreadful delight. Let me improve the scene to religious purposes, and raise a Divine meditation. Am I one of those wretches who shall call to these huge impending rocks to fall upon me?”

When Watts first visited Tunbridge Wells in search of health and refreshment, it must have been to our modern sense an uncomfortable place; even at the close of his life and in his later visits, it was only just rising into importance as the retreat of the coteries of fashion and letters; it is almost the only spot left now which we may be sure, from some points of view, looks much as it did in the day when Watts, Richardson, or Johnson walked along the Pantiles, and inhaled the breezes from the neighbouring rocks and grounds. Such as it was at the close of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, we find described in the pages of Macaulay and some of the novelists and poets. The waters possessed some real, and acquired an artificial, fame; there was no town, only a few neat and rustic cottages, some of these moveable; moveable cabins and huts were drawn on sledges from one part of the common to another. Fashionable London tradespeople went down and spread out their bazaars under the trees, and near the spring; a fair was daily held, in which were booths where the man of letters and the politician might find his cup of coffee, his newspaper, and his friend; and others, in which the gambler might find his vice and his victim. On the whole, it was a merry place for sated and wearied fashionable loungers, where they might believe that they were becoming rural, and charm themselves into the persuasion that they were the spectators of a poetry of nature, which they would have been indisposed to experience too long or too deeply; but a place where we cannot suppose that Watts found himself for any length of time at home. He was, however, frequently there, and upon one occasion he was guilty of one of the few of what may be called the vanities of verse which fell from his pen. The atmosphere of watering-places is favourable to every kind of literary as well as other lounging. Watts was not altogether insensible, we should suppose, to the charms of female beauty, and certainly a man may well be moved to express himself in verse concerning it, when feeble verses have been erroneously attributed to him. It was in the summer of 1712, when at Tunbridge Wells, that he wrote the following lines in honour of Lady Sunderland, one of the daughters of the Duke of Marlborough; her husband had just been dismissed from the councils of the queen, and she had just withdrawn from the court. We may suppose the little clusters of various loungers and talkers would be surprised to see them in some one of the little local flying “Mercury’s” of the day where these verses appeared and were attributed to Watts; he appears to have felt it was an occasion for some apology for stepping into such a by-way; he does so in the following note, upon which fancy may a little divert itself as to the life he and others led at Tunbridge Wells:

TO AMYNTAS.

“Perhaps you were not a little surprised, my friend, when you saw some stanzas on the Lady Sunderland at Tunbridge Wells, and were told that I wrote them; but when I give you a full account of the occasion your wonder will cease. The Duke of Marlborough’s three daughters, namely, the Lady Godolphin, the Lady Sunderland, and the Lady Bridgewater, had been at the Wells some time when I came there; nor had I the honour of any more acquaintance with any of them than what was common to all the company in the Wells, that is, to be told who they were when they passed by. A few days afterwards they left that place, and the next morning there was found a copy of verses in the coffee-house, called the ‘Three Shining Sisters;’ but, the author being unknown, some persons were ready to attribute them to me, knowing that I had heretofore dealt in rhyme. I confess I was ashamed of several lines in that copy. Some were very dull, and others, as I remember, bordered upon profaneness.

“That afternoon I rode abroad as usual for my health, and it came into my head to let my friends see that, if I would choose such a theme, I would write in another manner than that nameless author had done. Accordingly, as I was on horseback, I began a stanza on the ‘Three Shining Sisters,’ but my ideas, my rhyme, and the metre would not hit well while the words ran in the plural number; and this slight occurrence was the real occasion of turning my thoughts to the singular; and then, because the Lady Sunderland was counted much the finest woman of the three, I addressed the verses to her name. Afterwards when I came to the coffee-house, I entertained some of my friends with these lines, and they, imagining it would be no disagreeable thing to the company, persuaded me to permit them to pass through the press.”

But here are the verses—

Ode To Lady Sunderland, 1712.

Fair nymph, ascend to Beauty’s throne,

And rule that radiant world alone;

Let favourites take thy lower sphere,