Watts, ISAAC

Watts, ISAAC, hymn-writer and divine, was born on July 17, 1674, at Southampton, where his father kept a boarding-school and wrote poetry. At sixteen he was sent to an academy in London kept by Thomas Rowe, an Independent minister. Here his devotion to his studies was so excessive as to permanently injure his constitution. In 1696 he became tutor in the family of Sir John Hartopp at Stoke-on-Trent, and there he remained six years, acting also as assistant to Dr Chauncy, minister of the Independent Church in Mark Lane, whom he succeeded in 1702. His health was throughout infirm; and in 1712 he was prostrated by an illness so violent that he never thoroughly recovered from its effects. A visit which he paid to Sir Thomas Abney at Theobalds for change of air resulted in his domestication in the establishment till his death, thirty-six years afterwards, on November 25, 1748. As his health permitted he continued to preach and to write. Though hardly over 5 feet high, and feeble physically, he was counted among the best preachers of his time, and his sermons by no means belie this reputation. His theology was marked by a large charity and catholic spirit then uncommon amongst Dissenters. The degree of D.D. was given him by Edinburgh in 1728. His theological works were numerous, but are now quite forgotten. His treatise on Logic, long since superseded, was once a text-book at Oxford. But this childless saint and scholar assured the perpetuity of his name by his Divine and Moral Songs for Children (1715), which, in spite of many a metrical defect and much hopeless prose, show strength, sanity, and the right simplicity without weakness. And in Dr Johnson's words, 'a voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach.' His Horæ Lyricæ (1706), Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1807-9), and Psalms of David Imitated (1719) contain nearly 500 hymns and versions, of which many remain amongst the cherished treasures of English devotion. It is enough to name but these: 'There is a land of pure delight,' 'Jesus shall reign where'er the sun,' 'When I survey the wondrous cross,' and 'O God, our help in ages past.' There are Lives by Dr Gibbons, Dr Johnson, Southey, Milner (1834), and E. Paxton Hood (1875).