CHAPTER XVI.
Summary and Estimate of Prose Writings.
In attempting any estimate of the prose writings of Watts we give the first place to his educational works. And without descending to adulation it may be fairly questioned whether any one individual in English literature has effected so much and such various work for the cause of education as Isaac Watts. As we have seen, he gave a system of logic to the universities, a very simple system, but it broke up the old trammels and chains of mere verbal logic, and taught students to look after, and how to look at things. Johnson says: “Of his philosophical pieces his ‘Logic’ has been received into the universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation. If he owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man who undertakes merely to methodize or illustrate a system pretends to be its author. Few books,” continues Johnson, “have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his ‘Improvement of the Mind,’ of which the radical principles may indeed be found in Locke’s ‘Conduct of the Understanding,’ but they are so expanded and magnified by Watts as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the highest degree useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of instructing others may be charged with deficiency in his duty if this book is not recommended.” And in another paragraph of his memoir Johnson says: “For children he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and in another making a catechism for children in their fourth year; a voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach.”
There is, indeed, scarcely a department of knowledge, however simple, to which he did not descend; there is scarcely a region of thought, however subtle, through which he did not familiarly move. We have a volume on the “Art of Reading, Writing, and Pronouncing English,” this is for the very youngest students; and for the same age we have his First and Second Catechisms, and his “Divine and Moral Songs;” we have his work on “Astronomy, Geography, and the Use of the Globes,” and the “Compendium of the Assembly’s Catechism, with Proofs,” and his most charming and rememberable “Catechism of Scripture History,” a large and yet most compendious volume: and thus we reach the period of life when he prepares the mind for its graver studies and more serious exploits.
The “Logic” is easy and delightful reading, and yet sets in order, disciplines, marshals, and reviews mental materials so admirably that it may be read with great profit as well as pleasure. When Lord Barrington told Watts that he had a purpose to read it through once every year, he said no extravagant thing. It brings the mind back to its simplicity; it is not, and does not profess to be, a science of mind or analysis of method, or the laws of thought, but it is a treatise on logic, understanding by that term not so much the pushing inquiry into unexplored domains and fields, as the setting forth the grammar of thought, the principles of numeration, by which a knowledge of the contents of the mind may be obtained, which is surely the true idea of logic. The affluence of illustrations and references is very great, these occur easily and rapidly, they are gathered up as a reaper gathers up a sheaf. In its method it reminds us somewhat of Bacon’s “Novum Organum,” for in every chapter, and every discrimination, illustration, and distinction, occur instances unfolding the intention of the author, and we venture to think that no logic has appeared since so well calculated to make a clear and honest mind. The characteristics of the “Logic” of Watts are very admirably summed up by Tissot, of Dijon, in his preface to a translation published in Paris, 1848: “II y a aussi plus de méthode et de clarté peut-être dans la logique de Watts que dans celle d’Arnaud. Le bon sens Anglais, le sens des affaires, celui de la vie pratique, s’y révèle à un très haut degré, tandis que le sens spéculatif d’un théologien passablement scolastique encore est plus sensible dans l’Art de Penser. Dr. Watts a su être complet; sans être excessif, il a touché très convenablement tout ce qui devait l’être, et s’est toujours arrêté au point précis où plus de profondeur nuit a la clarté.”[47]
As the “Logic” is a methodical and orderly arrangement of those principles which give conduct to the understanding, as we have called it a grammar rather than an etymology of the laws of thought, a setting forth of their necessary conditions of thinking, rather than an inquiry into their first principles, so his “Improvement of the Mind” is an advance in the education of the character. The “Logic” is a code of principles, the “Improvement of the Mind” the illustration of those principles in their practice and action. No book can be better fitted to strengthen and direct the mind in the first years of mind-life. Is it ever read now? Is there an edition of it in circulation now? Are there many youths who would have patience to read it now? And yet no work has taken its place. It also, like the “Logic,” is fertile in illustrations of all that the author desires to convey; every means by which the mind can be enlarged or strengthened is dwelt upon; here there seems to be no unnecessary diffuseness, but a compact presentation. The style is apothegmatical, and rather colloquial than rhetorical, and it leaves upon the mind of the reader the impression of a large world of wealth in the mind of the author of which its pages are the mere fragments and indications. There is a wisdom which rules men’s lives and acts in their minds unconsciously, and ages and times vary in the method pursued for the attainment of knowledge. Perhaps, in the times in which we live the method is very much out of sight, and men become wise in spite of themselves, the faculties of character are sharpened and made intense by friction. It may also be said that character is not so much the result of certain rules laid down for practice, as the inevitable pressure of certain conditions from which it cannot well escape; life educates men more than books, and the sharp collision of society and its rough usages more than rules derived from writers. All this is true; but still some men continue to preach, and others continue to hear, it is to be supposed under the impression that the preaching and the hearing are not altogether in vain; and it is a very desirable thing frequently to draw out into the light certain principles, to give to minds, so to speak, a pictorial resemblance of the idea.
It is so in the “Improvement of the Mind,” the very subjects are suggestive: general rules to obtain knowledge,—the five methods of improvement compared—rules relating to observation—books and reading—judgment of books—living instruction by teachers—learning a language—of knowing the sense of writers and speakers—conversation—of disputes in general—the Socratical way of disputation—forensic disputes—academic or scholastic disputes—study or meditation—of fixing the attention—of enlarging the capacity of the mind—of improving the memory—of determining questions—of inquiring into causes and effects—of the sciences and their use. Then follows the second part, which was posthumous; hitherto the mind has been supposed to be attaining, now it is itself communicating, and here are discussions on methods of teaching and reading lectures—of an instructive style—of convincing of truth or delivering from error—of the use and abuse of authority—of managing the prejudices of men—of instruction by preaching—of writing books for the public, etc. etc. And beneath all these subjects is spread out a mass of wise and useful observations, the result, the reader thinks, of a life of earnest and careful study. A wise and candid judgment pervades every page. A confidence in the writer as in one who is not writing merely, but who is giving to the reader a portion of himself, grows in the mind. Watts was himself an exceedingly careful student. We have seen how his practice was to condense or to amplify the volumes or the pages he himself read. He recommended this plan to be followed with the nobler pieces of composition, and such as it seemed desirable to make the heirlooms of the mind.
We have now lying before us the “Ecclesiastics” of John Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester. The volume bears every internal evidence of being the property of Dr. Watts: it is interleaved, and in addition to the varied and singular learning of the book itself, in the handwriting of the Doctor there is a perfect storehouse of references, exhibiting the amazing world of knowledge over which his mind travelled; and not merely references, but frequently some condensed expression of sentiment and opinion. We ought to refer to this very valuable little manuscript volume again. It often seems surprising that volumes such as these have fallen into such neglect; but they only share the fate of multitudes of others in various departments equally worthy. The number of those who gaze upon the true regalia of literature is very small; our times delight in startling contrasts, antitheses and paradoxes, and illustrations frequently rather remarkable for their brilliancy than for their solid and abiding persuasiveness. The literature of every time has its vices and its virtues; writers even exercising a far stronger fascination and spell over their day than Watts are very seldom referred to now, they are names and little more. They are like extinct creations of other times, a kind of dodo, a being very near to our own day, but yet only known by a specimen preserved in a museum. Thus probably the two works to which we have referred will have few more readers. Yet safer and wiser charts for travelling the seas of knowledge were never prepared, and while they breathe a fine mental independence, a freshness wafted from undiscovered realms, they are eminently free from all that rashness and audacity of speculation which some have chosen to regard as a pursuit of knowledge, or as adding to the spoils of the understanding. He kept his students within the bounds of the knowable and provable, and if he trampled upon the ridiculous logic which had for years held the mind of Europe in chains, by the fetters of words which had no kind of sense either in the heavens or the earth, and resolutely determining that words could only be valuable when they were the real signs of things, and things of which something could be known; on the other hand, he gave no encouragement to licentiousness of thought, which is as dangerous to the well-being of the intelligence as the servility of opinion. So that, on the whole, whatever advances and attainments we have made since, we may believe that for the discipline and tutelage of the young, a better finger-post could scarcely be set up upon the highways of knowledge than Watts’ “Logic;” a better and more living guide a young man can scarcely have through the cities of instruction than his “Improvement of the Mind.”
Among the pieces of our author which are least known are the essays variously published under the title of “Reliquiæ Juveniles; Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse, on Natural, Moral, and Divine Subjects, written chiefly in younger years.” These were published in 1734, and dedicated to the Countess of Hertford. A similar volume is the “Remnants of Time Employed in Prose and Verse; or, Short Essays and Composures on Various Subjects.” All of these are very pleasing essays, in which the writer gives a more than ordinary rein to his fancy: the pieces are in prose and verse, and they display a considerable amount of humour; the subjects are very various, and display the purely literary excursions of the author’s mind. The reader will be so far interested as to enjoy some few selections. To dwell at length upon the characteristics of the essays, or to indulge in any lengthy citation, would be like writing a dissertation upon Johnson’s “Rambler,” or Addison’s “Spectator;” indeed, there is very much of the Christian Rambler and the Christian Spectator in these papers: brief essays on manners, on certain vices or defects of character, conveyed after the usage of the time beneath names sheltered under a Greek or Latin etymology; sometimes a graceful meditation upon a text of Scripture, and sometimes a poem. We have ourselves found these essays always fresh and interesting, possessing much of the spirit and vivacity and philosophical meditativeness of Cowley, with a perpetual suffusion of Christian sentiment and doctrine, and the whole exhibiting the vigilance of the author’s eye, and the active usefulness of his mind.