So he continued to the close, rising into no ecstasies, nor sinking into any great depressions, in the full possession of his understanding, free from pain of body, comfortable in spirit. This was during the autumn of 1748. It was during the month of November that he was confined to his room, never to leave it any more. For three weeks he continued in the state just described, tenderly attended for the most part by Lady Abney or Mr. Parker. The following extracts are from Mr. Parker’s letters to the brother of Dr. Watts, residing at Southampton, the first dated November 24th, 1748: “I wrote to you by the last post that we apprehended my master very near his end, and that we thought it not possible he should be alive when the letter reached your hands; and it will no doubt greatly surprise you to hear that he still lives. We ourselves are amazed at it. He passed through the last night in the main quiet and easy, but for five hours would receive nothing within his lips. I was down in his chamber early in the morning, and found him quite sensible. I begged he would be pleased to take a little liquid to moisten his mouth, and he received at my hand three teaspoonsful, and has done the like several times this day. Upon inquiry he told me he lay easy, and his mind was peaceful and serene. I said to him this morning that he had taught us how to live, and was now teaching us how to die by his patience and composure, for he has been remarkably in this frame for several days past. He replied, ‘Yes.’ I told him I hoped he experienced the comfort of these words, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ He answered, ‘I do.’ The ease of body and calmness of mind which he enjoys is a great mercy to him, and to us. His sick chamber has nothing terrifying in it. He is an upright man, and I doubt not that his end will be peace. We are ready to use the words of Job, and say, ‘We shall seek him in the morning, but he shall not be.’ But God only knows by whose power he is upheld in life, and for wise purposes, no doubt. He told me he liked that I should be with him. All other business is put off, and I am in the house night and day. I would administer all the relief that is in my power. He is worthy of all that can be done for him. I am your very faithful and truly afflicted servant.”
On the next day, November 25th, in the afternoon, aged seventy-four years, four months, and eight days, the gentle spirit of the Doctor passed away, and Mr. Parker wrote again to the same person: “At length the fatal news is come. The spirit of the good man, my dear master, took its flight from the body to worlds unseen and joys unknown yesterday in the afternoon, without a struggle or a groan. My Lady Abney and Mrs. Abney are supported as well as we can reasonably expect. It is a house of mourning and tears, for I have told you before now that we all attended upon him and served him from a principle of love and esteem. May God forgive us all, that we have improved no more by him, while we enjoyed him!” “May I be excused,” says his biographer, “if I take the liberty of adding that I saw the corpse of this excellent man in his coffin, and observed nothing more than death in its aspect. The countenance appeared quite placid, like a person fallen into a gentle sleep, or such as the spirit might be supposed to leave behind it upon its willing departure to the celestial happiness. How justly might I have said at the moment I beheld his dead earth, as he does in an epitaph upon a pious young man, who was removed from our world after a lingering and painful illness:
“So sleep the saints, and cease to groan,
When sin and death have done their worst:
Christ has a glory like His own
Which waits to clothe their waking dust!”
And this was the manner in which “this silver cord was loosed, and this golden bowl broken.”
They buried him, of course, in Bunhill Fields; thither already had been borne the bodies of many of those who had been his fellow-students, and his most familiar friends; and thither were to follow him at last many of those friends who were for a few brief years to survive him. It was the Campo Santo of Nonconformity, the spot consecrated by the memories of the martyrs and confessors of civil and religious liberty, and their tombs then were fresh. Their graves and their memories were green and verdant. Amidst the wilderness of indiscriminate tombs it is now scarcely possible to decipher localities, dust has mingled with dust, yet it would be scarcely possible to visit anywhere a spot where almost every mound recalled venerable remains or in the course of years became haunted by such tender and animating memories. Bunhill Fields does not possess the attractive and splendid tombs of Père la Chaise or Munich, of Greenwood or Kensall Green, but it may be with perfect certainty affirmed that none of these places possess such a congregation of sainted sleepers, and such consecrated dust.
The history of this pensive enclosure goes back to the reign of Henry III. It had been from a period even anterior to this set apart as the exercising and training ground for the archers and train-bands of the City; indeed it is probable, whether he knew it or not, that this is the very spot to which Lord Lytton refers in some of the earlier scenes of the “Last of the Barons,” the archery-ground of Finsbury; a romantic and lovely spot, a very easy walk from the quaint gabled houses of the old City four hundred years since. It was a spot surrounded by gardens and orchards in the Manor of Finsbury or Fensbury, and on the borders of that extensive suburban tract, the Moor Fields; but when the Great Plague decimated London, the Corporation set apart this field as a burial-place for the poor. It was a gentle acclivity, a rising spot of ground, which, affection had called the Bonhill, at a time when the language of the country was very largely held in possession by Norman influences and French terms, as in innumerable instances mingled with Saxon. Thus:
In death divided from their dearest kin,