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

by Edwin Paxton Hood

Savours of human learning and the beast.

And, perhaps, it has been thought there were some grounds for his aspersion from the admired poems of Ben. Keach, John Bunyan, etc., all flat and dull as they are; nay, I am much out if the latter has not formerly made much more ravishing music with his hammer and brass kettle.

“Now when you are exposed to the public view these calumnies will immediately vanish, which, methinks, should be a motive not the least considerable. And now we are talking of music, I have a crotchet in my brain, which makes me imagine, that as chords and discords equally please heavy-eared people, so the best divine poems will no more inspire the rude and illiterate than the meanest rhymes, which may in some measure give you satisfaction, in that fear you discover, ne in rude vulgus cadant, and you must allow them to be tasteless to many people, tolerable to some, but to those few who know their beauties, to be very pleasant and desirable; and, lastly, if I do not speak reason, I will at present take my leave of you, and only desire you to hear what your ingenious acquaintance in London say to the point, for I doubt not you have many solicitors there, whose judgments are much more solid than mine. I pray God Almighty have you in His good keeping, and desire you to believe me, my dear brother,

“Your most affectionate kinsman and friend,

“Enoch Watts.”

But notwithstanding this and other solicitations, the first edition was not published until 1707. The copyright of the hymns was sold to Mr. Lawrence, the publisher, for £10; about half a century before the same sum was given to Milton for his “Paradise Lost;” the volume instantly obtained a very large acceptance, and he then directed his attention to his version of the Psalms; this was only completed by him during the painful and distressing illness from which he suffered about 1712 and the following years, but the Psalms were not published until the year 1719.

“Dr. Watts,” says James Montgomery, in his introduction to the “Christian Psalmist,” “may almost be called the inventor of hymns in our language, for he so far departed from all precedent that few of his compositions resemble those of his forerunners, while he so far established a precedent to all his successors that none have departed from it otherwise than according to the peculiar turn of mind in the writer, and the style of expressing Christian truths employed by the denomination to which he belonged.” And, again, he says, “We come to the greatest name among hymn-writers, for we hesitate not to give that praise to Dr. Isaac Watts, since it has pleased God to confer upon him, though one of the least of the poets of this country, more glory than upon the greatest either of that or of any other, by making his ‘Divine Songs’ a more abundant and universal blessing than the verses of any uninspired penman that ever lived. In his ‘Psalms and Hymns’ (for they must be classed together) he has embraced a compass and variety of subjects which include and illustrate every truth of revelation, throw light upon every secret movement of the human heart, whether of sin, nature, or grace, and describe every kind of trial, temptation, conflict, doubt, fear, and grief, as well as the faith, hope, charity, the love, joy, peace, labour, and patience of the Christian in all stages of his course on earth, together with the terrors of the Lord, the glories of the Redeemer, and the comforts of the Holy Spirit, to urge, allure, and strengthen him by the way. There is in the pages of this evangelist a word in season for every one who needs it, in whatever circumstances he may require counsel, consolation, reproof, or instruction. We say this without reserve of the materials of his hymns; had their execution only been correspondent with the preciousness of these, we should have had a Christian Psalmist in England next (and that only in date, not in dignity) to the ‘Sweet Singer of Israel.’ Nor is this so bold a word as it may seem. Dr. Watts’ hymns are full of ‘the glorious Gospel of the blessed God;’ his themes, therefore, are much more illustrious than those of the son of Jesse, who only knew ‘the power and glory’ of Jehovah as he had ‘seen them in the sanctuary,’ which was but the shadow of the New Testament Church, as the face of Moses holding communion with God was brighter than the veil he cast over it when conversing with his countrymen.”

His attention was very early awakened to the importance and necessity for some improvement in this department of Divine service. Our readers will remember that after he had closed his academical studies at Stoke Newington, before he entered on the ministry, he returned home and lived during the years 1695 and 1696 in the old house with his father; he devoted those years, the twenty-first and twenty-second of his life, to systematic reading, meditation, and prayer; and during those years he appears to have composed the greater number of his hymns. Thus, if they are among the first effusions of his poet’s pen, they are among the best, and in this circumstance they resemble the first and chief volume of one of his successors in the art of sacred poetry in our own day, John Keble, whose “Christian Year” was the production of his earliest manhood, and all whose subsequent efforts in verse seem to be a vain striving to overtake the beauty and harmony of his first performances. Many of Watts’ later hymns are very noble and beautiful, but the greater number appear to have been composed in those early Southampton days. Dr. Gibbons says, “Mr. John Morgan, a minister of very respectable character now living at Romsey, Hants, has sent me the following information: ‘The occasion of the Doctor’s hymns was this, as I had the account from his worthy fellow-labourer and colleague, the Rev. Mr. Price, in whose family I dwelt above fifty years ago. The hymns which were sung at the Dissenting meeting at Southampton were so little to the gust of Mr. Watts, that he could not forbear complaining of them to his father. The father bid him try what he could do to mend the matter. He did, and had such success in his first essay that a second hymn was earnestly desired of him, and then a third, and fourth, etc., till in process of time there was such a number of them as to make up a volume.’”