Hymns
, and his metrical version of the
Psalms
. But his
Horæ Lyricæ
, published in 1709, had already attracted much attention when he contributed this Psalm to the
Spectator
. In the Preface to that collection of
Poems chiefly of the Lyric kind, in Three Books, sacred, I. to Devotion and Piety. II. To Virtue, Honour, and Friendship. III. To the Memory of the Dead,
he had argued that Poesy, whose original is divine, had been desecrated to the vilest purpose, enticed unthinking youth to sin, and fallen into discredit among some weaker Christians. 'They submit indeed to use it in divine psalmody, but they love the driest translation of the Psalms best.' Watts bade them look into their Bibles and observe the boldness of its poetic imagery, rejected the dictum of Boileau, that