The spirited tune to this hymn of Watts, by Frederick Lampe, variously named “Kent” and “Devonshire,” historically reaches back so near to the poet's time that it must have been one of the earliest expressions of his fervent words.
Johan Friedrich Lampe, born 1693, in Saxony, was educated in music at Helmstadt, and came to 136 / 106 England in 1725 as a band musician and composer to Covent Garden Theater. His best-known secular piece is the music written to Henry Carey's burlesque, “The Dragon of Wantley.”
Mrs. Rich, wife of the lessee of the theater, was converted under the preaching of the Methodists, and after her husband's death her house became the home of Lampe and his wife, where Charles Wesley often met him.
The influence of Wesley won him to more serious work, and he became one of the evangelist's helpers, supplying tunes to his singing campaigns. Wesley became attached to him, and after his death—in Edinburgh, 1752—commemorated the musician in a funeral hymn.
In popular favor Bradbury's tune of “Rolland” has now superseded the old music sung to Watts' lines—
My God, how endless is Thy love,
Thy gifts are every evening new,
And morning mercies from above
Gently distil like early dew.
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