A VISIT TO THE TOWN OF DR. ISAAC WATTS.
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND, _June 28, 1902_.
Southampton, the ancient seaport at which travellers to Europe by
the steamships of the North German Lloyd line first set foot on
British soil, is a place of considerable interest at any time, but
was especially attractive to us after a cold and uncomfortable voyage
across the Atlantic. The day of our arrival was fine, with blue sky
and genial sunshine, the water of the Solent, between the Isle of
Wight and the mainland, was free from the ocean swell, and Southampton
Water was quieter still, so we landed with thankful hearts and rising
spirits. The city, which is a place of some 70,000 inhabitants, owes
its importance to its sheltered harbor and to the phenomenon of double
tides, which prolong high water for two hours.
[Sidenote: Historical Interest of Southampton.]
This mention of the tides reminds me to say that Southampton is the
place where Canute the Dane is said to have given his famous rebuke to
his flattering courtiers. All the children who have read any English
history will recall the story.
They are familiar, too, with the hard-hearted action of William the
Conqueror in laying waste an area of one hundred and forty square
miles in this neighborhood for the purpose of making a hunting ground,
which has ever since been known as the New Forest, and which still
stretches westward from Southampton Water. It will be remembered that
the Conqueror's son and successor, William Rufus, met his death here,
being found one day in these woods with an arrow through his heart.
That arrow may have been shot by one of the many peasants who had
been driven from their homes when the New Forest was made, though most
writers attribute the deed, without sufficient proof, to a gentleman
named Walter Tyrrell. At any rate, here William Rufus was killed, and
at Winchester, thirteen miles from Southampton, he was buried under the
floor of the cathedral, "many looking on and few grieving," as the old
chronicler says.
Of still more interest to young readers, especially boys, who are
familiar with Sir Walter Scott's stories, _The Talisman_ and _Ivanhoe_,
is the fact that the Crusaders under Richard the Lion Hearted, sailed
from Southampton for the Holy Land. That was in 1189.
In the summer of 1620, however, a far more important expedition, though
far less spectacular, was fitted out at Southampton by the hiring of
a ship here called the _Mayflower_, in which shortly afterwards the
Pilgrim Fathers sailed for the New World.
It will be seen, then, that Southampton is a place of no small
historical interest, to say nothing of its associations with Edward
III., Henry V., and Charles I., or its being the birthplace of Sir
John E. Millais, the artist, or of its having fine statues of Lord
Palmerston and "Chinese" Gordon.
[Sidenote: Chief Distinction of the Town.]
But it was not on account of any of these things that we determined to
give to this place the first few hours we were to spend in England.
The special reason for our interest in Southampton is that it was the
birthplace and residence of the greatest hymn writer that ever lived,
a man of totally different physique, character, gifts, and influence
from the able, but bloody kings with whose names the earlier history of
the place is associated, a small, delicate, scholarly, Christian man,
of lovely spirit, who, by exactly antipodal methods, has established
a wider, more real, more beneficent, and more lasting reign over human
hearts than William or Richard were able to achieve--the Rev. Isaac
Watts, D. D., whose simpler pieces for children have become household
words throughout the English-speaking world, such as, "Hush, my dear,
lie still and slumber," "Let dogs delight to bark and bite," "How doth
the little busy bee improve each shining hour," etc., and who, as even
a supercilious and grudging critic like Matthew Arnold admitted, wrote
the finest hymn in the English language, "When I survey the wondrous
cross," and very many others of scarcely inferior merit.
He was the author of various able treatises on philosophy and theology,
but it was the thought of what he had done for the world by his hymns
that caused us to stop at Southampton. So, mounting the winding
stairway to the top of the "double-decker" electric tram car, much
better adapted to sightseeing than our single-story street cars in
America, we were carried smoothly and quickly up the bright and busy
High Street, gaily decorated for the Coronation, and in a few minutes
passed under the great stone arch of the Bar Gate, the most interesting
portion of the ancient city wall. The modern city, of course, stretches
far beyond the walls, street after street of clean and attractive
houses, with a profusion of brilliant flowers and neatly trimmed
greenery, shut in from the street, in many cases, by high stone walls,
over which, however, we can easily see from our elevated position.
[Sidenote: Sketch of the Great Hymn-Writer.]
Presently, in the centre of a small park, which opens on the left
with velvety grass and fine trees, we see the object of our search, a
marble statue of a very small and wizened man, of benevolent face and
venerable appearance, with a Bible in his hand, and on the pedestal
in bold letters the name, "REV. ISAAC WATTS, D.D." He was born in
1674, was devoted to books from his infancy, and began to learn Latin
when four years old. Afterwards, as a youth he became so proficient
at school that friends proposed to provide for his support at the
university (he was the eldest of nine children, and the family, while
not indigent, was not rich), but he declined the offer because he could
not conscientiously belong to the Church of England. He cast in his lot
with the Dissenters, and became one of the promoters of that mighty and
beneficent force in English religious and political life known as "the
Nonconformist Conscience." That his education did not suffer from the
choice he then made is clear from his later work. Dr. Samuel Johnson,
who was a stiff Churchman, with no love for Dissenters in general, is
constrained, in his work on _English Poets_, to pay a warm tribute to
Dr. Watts' remarkable attainments, and says it was with great propriety
that in 1728 he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited
diploma, by which he became a doctor of divinity. Dr. Johnson adds
a remark, which is commended to the earnest attention of American
colleges, which have done so much to bring honorary degrees into
contempt by their promiscuous bestowment, "Academical honors would have
more value, if they were always bestowed with equal judgment." He says
further that Dr. Watts was one of the first authors that taught the
Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. "Whatever they
had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly
obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed
them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished
diction."
Of his talents in general the same discriminating writer says that
"perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled if
he had not divided his powers to different pursuits," and of his
character, that he admired Dr. Watts' meekness of opposition and
mildness of censure in theological discussion (qualities which no one
could attribute to Dr. Johnson himself), and that it was not only
in his book, but in his mind, that _orthodoxy_ was _united_ with
_charity_. Dr. Johnson concludes his appreciation of him with this
remark, "Happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his
verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his nonconformity,"
which shows both his exalted estimate of the man and his amusing
dislike of the Dissenter. But in nothing was the greatness of Dr.
Watts' character more clearly shown than in his nonconformity; and
his countrymen have continued to take his view of that matter in
ever-increasing numbers, so that now more than half of the English
people are nonconformists. But of that I shall have something to say at
another time.