So early as the year 1700 Watts’ brother, Mr. Enoch Watts, wrote a letter to him from Southampton, urging upon him the publication of his hymns. It sets not only the mind of the writer as a member of the Doctor’s family in a favourable light, as well as it expresses the probable general feeling of desire for some hymns suitable for Divine service. We quote it here:
“Southampton: March, 1700.
“Dear Brother,—
“In your last you discovered an inclination to oblige the world by showing it your hymns in print, and I heartily wish, as well for the satisfaction of the public as myself, that you were something more than inclinable thereunto. I have frequently importuned you to it before now, and your invention has often furnished you with some modest reply to the contrary, as if what I urge was only the effect of a rash and inconsiderate fondness to a brother; but you will have other thoughts of the matter when I first assure you that that affection, which is inseparable from our near relationship, would have had in me a very different operation, for instead of pressing you to publish, I should with my last efforts have endeavoured the concealment of them, if my best judgment did not direct me to believe it highly conducing to a general benefit, without the least particular disadvantage to yourself. This latter I need not have mentioned, for I am very confident whoever has the happiness of reading your hymns (unless he be either sot or atheist) will have a very favourable opinion of their author; so that, at the same time you contribute to the universal advantage, you will procure the esteem of men the most judicious and sensible. In the second place, you may please to consider how very mean the performers in this kind of poetry appear in the pieces already extant. Some ancient ones I have seen in my time, who flourished in Hopkins and Sternhold’s reign; but Mason now reduces this kind of writing to a sort of yawning indifferency, and honest Barton chimes us asleep. There is, therefore, a great need of a pen, vigorous and lively as yours, to quicken and revive the dying devotion of the age, to which nothing can afford such assistance as poetry, contrived on purpose to elevate us even above ourselves. To what may we impute the prevalency of the songs, filled with the fabulous divinity of the ancient fathers, on our passions? Is it, think you, only owing to a natural propensity in us to be in love with fable, and averse to truth in her native plainness? I presume it may partly be ascribed to this, that as romance has more need of artifice than truth to set it off, so it generally has such an abundance more, that it seldom fails of affecting us by making new and agreeable impressions. Yours now is the old truth, stripped of its ragged ornaments, and appears, if we may say so, younger by ages, in a new and fashionable dress, which is commonly tempting.
“And as for those modern gentlemen who have lately exhibited their version of the Psalms, all of them I have not seen I confess, and, perhaps, it would not be worth while to do it unless I had a mind to play the critic, which you know is not my talent, but those I have read confess to me a vast difference to yours, though they are done by persons of no mean credit. Dr. Patrick most certainly has the report of a very learned man, and, they say, understands the Hebrew extremely well, which, indeed, capacitates him for a translator, but he is thereby never the more enabled to versify. Tate and Brady still keep near the same pace. I know not what sober beast they ride (one that will be content to carry double), but I am sure it is no Pegasus: there is in them a mighty deficiency of that life and soul which is necessary to raise our fancies and kindle and fire our passions, and something or other they have to allege against the rest of adventurers; but I have been persuaded a great while since, that were David to speak English, he would choose to make use of your style. If what I have said seems to have no weight with you, yet you cannot be ignorant what a load of scandal lies on the Dissenters, only for their imagined aversion to poetry. You remember what Dr. Speed says:
So far hath schism prevailed they hate to see
Our lines and words in couplings to agree,
It looks too like abhorred conformity:
A hymn so soft, so smooth, so neatly drest,