All this, and a good deal more to the like purpose. Since the beginning of the world, men have asked of themselves and others strange questions, like those Southey discovered in Luys de Escobar: “When God made dresses for Adam and Eve, how did He get the skins of which those dresses were made, seeing that beasts were not yet killed?” “Perhaps,” says the respondent, “He made skins on purpose.” “Why are there three persons in the Trinity rather than four or five?” “St. Cosmas and St. Damian cut off a black man’s leg and fastened it on a white man; which will have the leg at the resurrection?” “How did Adam learn Hebrew?” Queer curiosities these, all of which will remind the reader of the madness of Elinora Melorina, a lady of Mantua, who, being fully persuaded she was married to a king, would kneel down and talk with him, as if he had then been present with his retinue. Nay, if she by any chance found a piece of glass upon a dunghill, or if she came upon a piece of oyster-shell or tin, or any such thing that would glisten in the sunshine, she would say it was a jewel sent from her lord and husband, and upon this account she would fill her cabinet full of this kind of rubbish. The cabinets of the mystics, amidst some worthier matter, are full of the kind of rubbish we have quoted above, which, when instanced as solutions of things psychical or physical, seem to be as satisfactory as the old story of the foolish person who, riding an ass to the pond to drink by the light of the moon, and some clouds intervening, and hiding the moon while the ass was drinking, arrived at the grave conclusion that the ass had swallowed up the moon, and took it clean out of being. When such grave problems and questions are the result of so much of fasting and devotion, they only remind us of the question preferred by a monk on one occasion to a higher Church dignitary: “How many keys did Christ give to Peter?” which brought the satisfactory reply, that “he ought to prepare himself by a course of physic for such grave, sweet, and savoury questions!” Illustrative as they are of the literary vanities and follies of the time, follies to which even scholarly clergymen and eminent writers lent themselves, and as illustrating also not only the freedom of Watts from such epidemical foolishness, but the work he did in calling the mind to healthful methods of thought, the writer trusts their quotation here may be forgiven.
He appears to have preserved his mind in great stillness. It is the quiet and still mind which is wise and prudent; and, like Henry More, to whom we have referred, his life would repeat what that great man was wont to say, “In the more peaceful spirit, when it is also a quick and perceptive one, will always reside those faculties which are to the soul vision and power. In the deep and calm mind alone, in a temper clear and serene, such as is purged from the dregs, and devoid of the more disorderly tumults of the body, doth true wisdom or genuine philosophy, as in its own proper tower, securely reside.” Hence the first great attribute of Watts’ mind is clearness.
He ever kept before him a purpose of usefulness, alike in teaching men what to think about, and how to think about it; indeed, it is simply true, as Gibbons has remarked, that perspicuity was eminently a feature of his intellect; and it must be admitted that upon whatever he speaks or writes, he is always clearly to be understood—as we have seen, it was by no means a great virtue of his age, or of his contemporaries; and if he discoursed upon the more lofty and difficult subjects of thought or philosophy, they seem to acquire clearness in their passage through his mind. He did not crowd words upon each other, and images of every order were used by him, not to add to the splendour of a paragraph, or to set off a division, but for the purpose of reflecting light on the reader’s mind. He has dwelt himself upon the prime importance of perspicuity. In his “Improvement of the Mind,” he says: “He that would gain a happy talent for the instruction of others must know how to disentangle and divide his thoughts, if too many are ready to crowd into one paragraph; and let him rather speak three sentences distinctly and clearly, which the hearer receives at once with his ears and his soul, than crowd all the thoughts into one sentence, which the hearer has forgotten before he can understand it.” It is a prime virtue in Watts’ style that it is clear; it ought to be a chief virtue in every writer. In him it illustrated the character of his mind. He seemed even to be impatient of the dark and obscure, and he never would permit himself to repose near the absolutely incomprehensible without attempting in some way to understand it; so, also, as he attempts to express his mind upon any subject, his sentences instantly appear to be the very windows of the intellect. And this accounts for that other noticeable characteristic of his style—its perfect ease. There was smoothness and grace, the entire absence of the turgid and the bombastic; his sentences flowed along in happy harmony. Very frequently such a style conveys the impression that a man has nothing to say, when, perhaps, it is by immense labour, and by the study of the finest writers, and by conversation, that he has attained to that grace and natural ease of manner in which all who listen or who read are instantly able to apprehend the meaning. Thus he himself translates his favourite Horace:
Smooth be your style, and plain and natural,
To strike the sins of Wapping or Whitehall;
While others think this easy to attain,
Let them but try, and with their utmost pain,
They’ll sweat and strive to imitate in vain.
Another attribute, to which Gibbons alludes, in Watts’ style is his dignity, especially in the use of his metaphors and in the restraint he puts upon himself in his most ardent and animated passages. A wise use of the passions is a marked characteristic of his writings, as he says, “Did the Great God ever appoint statues for His ambassadors to invite sinners to His mercy; words of grace written upon brass or marble would do the work almost as well; where the preachers are stone no wonder if the hearers are motionless.” And in a fine passage in which he reprobates the philosophy of the Earl of Shaftesbury, under the name of Rhapsodus, who affirms that neither the fear of future punishment, nor the hope of future reward, can possibly be called good affections, Watts exclaims:
“Go, dress up all the virtues of human nature in all the beauties of your oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of social virtue and the amiable qualities of goodness, till your hearts or lungs ache, among the looser herds of mankind, and you will ever find, as your heathen fathers have done before you, that the wild appetites and passions of men are too violent to be restrained by such mild and silken language. You may as well build up a fence of straw and feathers to resist a cannon-ball, or try to quench a flaming granado with a shell of fair water, as hope to succeed in these attempts. But an eternal heaven and an eternal hell carry a Divine force and power with them. This doctrine, from the mouth of Christian preachers, has begun the reformation of multitudes. This Gospel has recovered thousands among the nations from iniquity and death. They have been awakened by these awful scenes to begin religion, and afterwards their virtue has improved itself into superior and more refined principles and habits by Divine grace, and risen to high and eminent degrees, though not to consummate state. The blessed God knows human nature better than Rhapsodus doth, and has throughout His Word appointed a more proper and more effectual method of address to it by the passions of hope and fear, by punishments and rewards.”