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

by Edwin Paxton Hood

There, in the grammar-school of the town, in the dark reigns of the Second Charles and James, the little Puritan was the most diligent and advanced scholar, the beloved of his master. He very early exhibited a great proficiency in Latin, Greek, and French. A spare, pale child, there was perhaps nothing peculiarly prepossessing in his features, if we except the bright, intense sparkling eye, and the quivering, nervous expression. There was certainly nothing robust about him, but all the indications of the future scholar. May we not also say the indications of the future saint—a little meditative Samuel—of a time in our history of which we may say “the Word of the Lord was precious in those days, there was no open vision?”

These first years, when the mind was gathering to itself the many tools of knowledge, were passed in his father’s house at Southampton—an utterly different Southampton from that which we see now—a charming little sequestered town; the gentle river rolled its pleasant and pellucid waves before it, undisturbed by the iron floating bridge, as the nobler Southampton Water rolled along between it and the Isle of Wight. Unsullied by steamboats, it was no depôt for the great navies of the West, but it must have been a charming country town, its streets almost overshadowed by the noble trees of the New Forest. The historian and antiquarian will find no lack of material for observation and suggestion in Southampton; it is rich in old nooks and reminiscences, and as full of material for the artist as for the archæologist. Legend and story of St. Benedict or King Canute, of the knightly Bevis and Ascapart were, we may be sure, not less fragrant then than they are there to-day. Many of the old houses are standing; the old town walls, the monuments of the great Roman road, and the noble bars of the town looked, we may be sure, more perfect then than now; the neighbourhood in which Watts lived still bears traces of being the oldest part of the town; other spots, which bear the marks of nineteenth century improvements in handsome parks and squares and streets, were then only wide, open fields; and many of the objects interesting to those who visit English shrines have altogether passed away. The gaol in which Watts’ father was confined, St. Michael’s Prison, the old Bull Hall, and the buildings round the old Walnut tree—the town retains the names of these places, and still conveys some impression of what they were. The Blue Anchor Postern still exhibits its massive old masonry, the relics of a building inhabited by King John, and a royal residence of Henry III. Yet more interesting memories gather in another part of the town, round the Widows’ Almshouses,[2] founded by Mr. Thorner, the friend and co-religionist of Watts’ father. The little town, from being one of the most inconsiderable, has become one of the most thriving and famous in the empire.

Still, changed as Southampton is during the last two hundred years, it is not difficult to realize something of its ancient character. Its counterpart or resemblance may still be found in some of those small seaport towns of France which have been left to their primitive isolation by the retreating tides of population. Yet a good many things in the old town of Southampton remain unchanged. It is full of quaint nooks and corners, gateways and archways bearing the evident marks of high antiquity. For a long period Southampton sank into a state of sequestration and repose; but her early history was something like her later, and there was a day when in the most palmy and splendid time of Venice her connection with that great commercial republic was as intimate as it is now with the Eastern and Western Indies. Its glory dates from the time of the Conquest; and a circumstance ominous to England in the landing there of Philip II., of Spain, the husband and ill-adviser of Mary, is the last instance recorded of its prominence and splendour in the ancient day. The old parish of All Saints, in which Watts was born, and the neighbourhood in which his childhood was passed, remain so little changed as to enable the visitor to carry in his mind a fair picture of the old lanes and streets, rambling round the old church, in the middle of the now rudely paved square.

The house in which Watts was born, in French Street, is still standing, and seems to give the assurance of being much the same, although it has so far yielded to the indignities of time that one side of it is a public-house and the other a marine store. It must have been a plain but roomy, substantial building, standing back with its garden behind it, full of lofty rooms and rambling nooks and passages. There he first saw the light, there he passed his play days of childhood; there the dreamy, studious boy accumulated the first spoils of knowledge; returning thither after his academical course was closed, there he wrote his first, and even a considerable number of his hymns; and thither, a celebrated man, he often came to visit his parents, even when he was an old man. A fragrant memory of early piety and matured holiness still lingers over the old place, and consecrates it as one of our English shrines.[3]

In his childhood circumstances happened likely to produce some effect upon his mind. The memory of the terrible plague of 1665, in which between one and two thousand persons were swept away, was still fresh in Southampton for one hundred and fifty years after. The annalists of the town tell us it did not recover from the state of decay into which it fell from that dreadful visitation. The shops were all closed, all who could fled from the town, and the streets were overgrown with grass. When Watts was six years old the great comet flamed over England, with which were associated in many minds such dreadful portents, and it no doubt lent a colour to many of his after most imaginative conceptions. It was an object of singularly marvellous splendour. Several years after he seems to have put the memory of the impressions it produced upon him into the couplets in which he alters Young’s description, and the words sufficiently show how the surprising spectacle had excited his youthful fancy:

Who stretched the comet to prodigious size,

And poured his flaming train o’er half the skies?

Is’t at Thy wrath the heavenly monster glares

O’er the pale nations, to announce Thy wars?