In the Academy at Stoke Newington.
The neighbourhood of London, to which Isaac Watts removed from
Southampton for the purpose of completing his studies, and preparing for
the work of the ministry, was Stoke Newington, and in that neighbourhood
he was destined to pass the greater part of his life. It was probably
even then pervaded, as for a long time before and ever since, by an
atmosphere of mild but consistent Nonconformity; the academy in which
he studied was beneath the superintendence of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, the
pastor of the Independent Church assembling in Girdlers’ Hall, in the
City. It was probably one of the most considerable of the time, and
appears to have succeeded to one also well known upon the same spot,
of which the principal was the Rev. Charles Morton. Here studied the
celebrated Daniel Defoe, also originally intended for the Nonconformist
pulpit, as he says in one of his reviews: “It is not often I trouble
you with any of my divinity; the pulpit is none of my office. It was my
disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the
honour of that sacred employ.” The academy had a good reputation, and
the effort which old Samuel Wesley had made to sully its fair fame only
reflected his own dishonour, and left it untarnished.
Charles Morton was one of those obscure but remarkable men in which our
country at that time was so rich. He was descended from a singularly
distinguished family—that of Cardinal Morton, Thomas Morton, Bishop of
Durham, and many other distinguished men. He took his degree of M.A.
at Wadham College, Oxford, and became, and continued until the Act of
Uniformity, rector of Blisland, in Cornwall; after preaching for a short
time at St. Ives he removed to London, and shortly after opened an
academy on Newington Green. Defoe pronounces the highest encomiums upon
him and his method as a tutor; and Samuel Wesley, in the midst of his
bitterness and ungracious flippancy—for he had been maintained on the
foundation under the idea of entering the Nonconformist ministry—ceases
from his abuse to honour the memory of his master; he, however, after
having trained several men who became eminent in their day, teased
by continued persecution, passed over to America; there his fame had
preceded him; there he became pastor of a church in Charlestown, and
Vice-president of Harvard University.[5]
Shortly after the departure of Mr. Morton for America, the academy to
which Watts was consigned was founded by the eminently learned Theophilus
Gale, M.A., the author of that large medley of scholarship “The Court
of the Gentiles.” He also had been deprived of considerable Church
preferments. To his charge the eccentric Philip Lord Wharton committed
the tutorship of his sons; with them he travelled on the Continent,
adding to the stores of his mental wealth, and contracting a friendship
with the learned Bochart. He arrived in the metropolis on his return to
see the city in the flames of the terrible conflagration, but to learn
that the manuscripts he had left in the care of a friend were all saved,
while the house in which they had been preserved was destroyed. His
mind was so largely stored with every kind of learning that his friends
entreated him to settle as a professor of theology, which he did at Stoke
Newington, and there he continued till he died in 1678, at the early age
of forty-nine. He left his personal estate for the education of young men
for the ministry; his library, with the exception of his philosophical
books, to Harvard College. Beneath a tutor so distinguished the interests
of the two academies had probably merged into one. The successor of Mr.
Gale was one of his own students, Thomas Rowe, whom we have already
mentioned. He was the son of the Rev. John Rowe, M.A., ejected from
Westminster Abbey, and who was called to preach the thanksgiving sermon
before the Parliament on the occasion of the destruction of the Spanish
fleet, October 8th, 1656. Thomas Rowe very early entered upon the work of
the ministry. At the age of twenty-one he succeeded his father as pastor
of Girdlers’ Hall in Basinghall Street.
Isaac Watts came to the academy of Stoke Newington in the year 1690; he
was then in his sixteenth year. “Such he was,” says Dr. Johnson, “as
every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted.”
There was no doubt a rare congeniality of spirit between the tutor and
his illustrious pupil; the native gentleness of the latter found nothing
perhaps in the former to give to it either sharpness or force; indeed,
the name of Thomas Rowe would be lost but for the fame of Watts. The
pupil was nearer to manhood than was implied in his years; he was a
well-informed and richly cultivated scholar when he left his father’s
house, and his modest bearing was such as even a tutor might entrust with
the responsibilities of friendship. Friendship soon matured between
them; the tutor testified that he never on any occasion had to give
his pupil a reproof. His academical exercises show with what diligence
he was applying himself to the work of preparation for the work of his
future life. A sweet and cheerful gravity pervaded his manners and his
studies, and it may be boldly said that in the great universities of
that time there were very few who wrought with so much vigour or to so
much purpose. His Latin essays written at this period “show,” says Dr.
Johnson, “a degree of knowledge both philosophical and theological, such
as very few attain by a much longer course of study.” This verdict of
Johnson is only just. One method adopted by Watts in his studies he has
commended to others in his “Improvement of the Mind,” and it has probably
been often successfully adopted. It was the plan of abridging the works
of the more eminent writers in the various departments of study. Thus
he printed the material more indelibly on his memory; at the same time,
by recasting the thoughts or the information in his own mind, he was
so compelled to analyze and digest that he made the whole matter more
entirely his own mental property. To this practice he alludes when he
says: “Other things also of the like nature may be usefully practised
with regard to the authors which you read—viz., If the method of a book
be irregular, reduce it into form by a little analysis of your own, or by
hints in the margin; if those things are heaped together which should be
separated, you may wisely distinguish and divide them; if several things
relating to the same subject are scattered up and down separately through
the treatise, you may bring them all to one view by references; or if the
matter of a book be really valuable and deserving, you may throw it into
a better method, reduce it to a more logical scheme, or abridge it into
a lesser form. All these practices will have a tendency both to advance
your skill in logic and method, to improve your judgment in general, and
to give you a fuller survey of that subject in particular. When you have
finished the treatise with all your observations upon it, recollect and
determine what real improvements you have made by reading that author.”[6]
There was another plan which reveals the careful student, and to which
Dr. Gibbons refers in his life: “There was another method also which
the doctor adopted, it may be in the time of his preparatory studies,
though of this we are not able to furnish positive evidence, but of which
there is the fullest proof in his further progress of life, namely, that
of interleaving the works of authors, and inserting in the blank pages
additions from other writers on the same subject. I have now by me, the
gift of his brother Mr. Enoch Watts, the ‘Westminster Greek Grammar’
thus interleaved by the doctor, with all he thought proper to collect
from Dr. Busby’s and Mr. Teed’s ‘Greek Grammars,’ engrafted by him into
the supplemental leaves; and I have besides in my possession a present
from the doctor himself, a printed discourse by a considerable writer,
on a controverted point in divinity, interleaved in the same manner, and
much enlarged by insertions in the doctor’s own hand.” Certainly from
hints such as these no writer could seem by his own careful diligence to
be more admirably prepared to write to and counsel young men and others
concerning the improvement of the mind.
Most of the biographers of Watts have referred to his fellow-students.
Several of them were interesting men. “The first genius in the academy,”
to adopt Watts’ own descriptive designation, was Mr. Josiah Hart;
but very speedily after his removal from Mr. Rowe he conformed, and
became chaplain to John Hampden, Esq., the member for Buckinghamshire.
Presently after he became chaplain to his grace the Duke of Bolton, Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland. Such offices furnished very easy opportunities for
advancement in the Church. Before long he became Bishop of Kilmore and
Ardagh; and in 1742 he was translated to the archbishopric of Tuam, with
which was united the bishopric of Enaghdoen, with liberty to retain his
former see of Ardagh; yet he retained friendly relationships with his
old fellow-student, and in the “Lyrics” occurs a free translation of an
epigram of Martial to Cirinus, which seems to intimate that he was not
wanting himself in poetic inspiration:
So smooth your numbers, friend, your verse so sweet,
So sharp the jest, and yet the turn so neat,
That with her Martial, Rome would place Cirine,
Rome would prefer your sense and thought to mine.
Yet modest you decline the public stage,
To fix your friend alone amidst th’ applauding age.
Fifty years after the period of their life as fellow-students we find
the Archbishop writing to Watts, “God grant we may be useful while we
live, and may run clear and with unclouded minds till we come to the very
dregs! I send you my visitation charge to my clergy of Tuam. I submit it
to your judgment. Your old friend and affectionate servant, JOSIAH TUAM.”
If in some part singularly expressed, it gives a not unpleasing idea of
the writer’s character.
Another fellow-student was Mr. John Hughes; but he also, though dedicated
to, and educated for, the Dissenting ministry, upon leaving the academy
soon conformed to the Establishment; he cultivated the lighter studies
of music, poetry, and painting. The Lord Chancellor Cowper, in 1717,
appointed him secretary to the commissions of the peace; and after the
resignation of the Chancellor he was still continued in the same office.
He became a contributor to the “Tatler,” “Spectator,” and “Guardian,” and
he attained to the friendship of some of the most distinguished men of
the age. Addison admired him as a poet, Pope held him in veneration for
his goodness, and Bishop Hoadley honoured him as a friend.
Others of the fellow-students continued stedfast to the principles of
their Dissenting Alma Mater, and became in their way also useful and
remarkable men; among these was Mr. Samuel Say, the fellow-townsman of
Watts, and one year his junior. After a useful course of ministrations he
succeeded Dr. Calamy at Westminster, and continued there until his death.
Through life he was on intimate friendly terms with his fellow-townsman.
Little as we know of him, sufficient is known to give to us the picture
of a thoroughly accomplished man, even with considerable claims to be
regarded as a man of genius; indeed it strikes us, in reviewing the
intercourse of these young men with each other, and their recommendations
of each other, that there was a thoroughness about their attainments; and
that while they were faithful to severer studies they were not indisposed
to those graceful exercises of the mind and fancy which have generally,
but we believe unjustly, been regarded as incompatible with the severity
of the Puritan character. To this indulgence, no doubt, the taste of the
tutor, Mr. Rowe, was favourable. We know that Watts was accomplished
in several departments of taste, although all the exercises which
have come down to us from his college-days are quite of the severer
character—critical, metaphysical, and theological—but his conscience was
probably of that tender order which would esteem it an unfaithfulness
to the object for which he was placed in the academy to turn aside to
pursuits of a lighter and less sacred description. Another fellow-student
of Isaac Watts was Daniel Neal, celebrated as the author of “The History
of the Puritans;” he proved in an eminent degree his call to the work of
the ministry, and after some time spent in travel settled as a pastor in
the metropolis.
It is usual in our day, with the Dissenting academies, to receive no one
as student for the ministry who has not previously qualified himself
by membership with the church which commends him. The practice appears
to have been more liberal in Watts’ day. He was never a member of the
church at Southampton, but in the third year of his residence with Mr.
Rowe he united himself with the church of his tutor, as he enters it in
his memoranda, “I was admitted to Mr. T. Rowe’s church December, 1693.”
This church also, like so many of the Independent churches in the city,
had a very honourable ancestry—as we have previously said, it then held
its meetings in Girdlers’ Hall, Basinghall Street; after the death of
Mr. Rowe it removed to Haberdashers’ Hall, but the church itself appears
to have originated with the eminent William Strong, M.A., still held
in honour by the lovers of old Puritan literature for his folio on the
Covenants. He was a fellow of Katherine Hall, Cambridge, and rector
of More Crichel, in Dorsetshire. This living during the Civil Wars he
was compelled by the Cavaliers to relinquish, and, coming to London,
he became minister of the church assembling in Westminster Abbey, and
subsequently in the House of Lords. It is singular that thus both the
ministers of the congregation in Girdlers’ Hall were originally pastors
of the church in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Strong died in 1654, and was
buried in the Abbey church, but upon the restoration his remains had,
with those of Cromwell, Blake, and Pym, the honour of exhumation. Still,
in the church when Watts became a member of it, lingered some of the old
elements which first composed it; perhaps the most conspicuous of these
was Major-General Goffe, the well-known name of one of the judges of
Charles I.
Such was the church with which Watts held his first communion, and
from which he was only transferred to become the pastor of that over
which he presided for the remainder of his life. It need hardly be said
that whatever interest attached to its memory in connection with the
circumstances which we have recited, his name confers upon it the most
permanent human interest. The union must have strengthened that intimacy
we have already pointed out between himself and his tutor, pastor, and
friend. It is not probable that even at this period Mr. Rowe had the
large scholarship and keen insight into the beauties of the most famous
classics possessed by his pupil, if we may form a judgment from the
Pindaric ode to Mr. Pinhorne, but a quiet mind will often marshal ideas
into order, and give a military usefulness in commanding materials it
could not recruit. Watts was probably never, at any period of his life,
wanting in the accoutrements of discipline; but this was the service
chiefly rendered at the academy, this and the more earnest entrance upon
philosophical and theological studies. We are sure also that he and his
tutor well harmonized in their sense of the duty and the dignity of moral
independence; Watts had already shown himself to be possessed of this by
his entrance into the academy. In his lines “To the much honoured Mr.
Thomas Rowe, the director of my youthful studies,” he says:
I hate these shackles of the mind
Forged by the haughty wise;
Souls were not born to be confined,
And led, like Samson, blind and bound;—
But when his native strength he found
He well avenged his eyes.
I love thy gentle influence, Rowe,
Thy gentle influence like the sun,
Only dissolves the frozen snow,
Then bids our thoughts like rivers flow,
And choose the channels where they run.
And here we may say farewell to the tutor; he lived just long enough
to see his scholar settled in the ministry; but for his companion
pupils he occupied a solitary home; he was never married, and in 1705,
riding through the city on horseback, he was seized with a fit, fell
from his horse, and instantly died. He was one of those men of whom
the world makes little mention, and finds little recorded; he was a
comparatively young man. We have dwelt upon the furniture of his mind,
the attractiveness of his manners, the docility and beauty of his
disposition; to these it may be added that he was also probably possessed
of an engaging manner in the pulpit, as he retained what was then
considered a large congregation to the time of his death.
While referring to the Dissenting academies of those days, it may be
interesting to notice that from one of them in Gloucester, beneath the
tutorship of the Rev. Samuel Jones, two eminent men received their first
training for the ministry of the Church of England, although intended
for the Nonconformist communion—Samuel Butler, the distinguished author
of the “Analogy,” and Bishop of Durham; and Thomas Secker, Bishop of
Oxford, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop probably
found one of his earliest patrons in Dr. Watts, by whom, as the following
letter testifies, he was introduced to the academy. The biographers of
the Archbishop, Dr. Porteus and Dr. Stinton, pass over the Archbishop’s
first studies, as conducted by “one Mr. Jones, who kept an academy at
Gloucester;” but the following letter from Secker, written when about the
age of eighteen to Dr. Watts, gives a very admirable idea of the manner
in which he directed the work of study in the academy:
“GLOUCESTER: _Nov. 18th, 1711_.
“REV. SIR,
“Before I give you an account of the state of our academy,
and those other things you desired me, please to accept of
my hearty thanks for that service you have done me, both in
advising me to prosecute my studies in such an extraordinary
place of education, and in procuring me admittance into it.
I wish my improvements may be answerable to the advantages I
enjoy; but, however that may happen, your kindness has fixed
me in a place where I may be very happy, and spend my time to
good purpose, and where, if I do not, the fault will be all
my own. I am sensible how difficult it is to give a character
of any person or thing, because the most probable guesses we
make very often prove false ones. But, since you are pleased to
desire it, I think myself obliged to give you the best and most
impartial account of matters I can.
“Mr. Jones, then, I take to be a man of real piety, great
learning, and an agreeable temper; one who is very diligent in
instructing all under his care, very well qualified to give
instructions, and whose well-managed familiarity will always
make him respected. He is very strict in keeping good order,
and will effectually preserve his pupils from negligence and
immorality. And accordingly, I believe, there are not many
academies freer in general from those vices than we are. In
particular my bedfellow, Mr. Scott,[7] is one of unfeigned
religion, and a diligent searcher after truth. His genteel
carriage and agreeable disposition gain him the esteem of every
one. Mr. Griffith is more than ordinary serious and grave, and
improves more in everything than one could expect from a man
who seems to be not much under forty; particularly in Greek
and Hebrew he has made a great progress. Mr. Francis and Mr.
Watkins are diligent in study and truly religious. The elder
Mr. Jones, having had a better education than they, will in
all probability make a greater scholar; and his brother is one
of quick parts. Our logic, which we had read once over, is so
contrived as to comprehend all Hereboord, and far the greater
part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, and the Art of Thinking. What Mr.
Jones dictated to us was but short, containing a clear and
brief account of the matter, references to the places where it
was more fully treated of, and remarks on, or explications of
the authors cited, when need required. At our next lecture we
gave an account both of what the author quoted and our tutor
said, who commonly then gave us a larger explication of it,
and so proceeded to the next thing in order. He took care,
as far as possible, that we understood the sense as well as
remembered the words of what we had read, and that we should
not suffer ourselves to be cheated with obscure terms which had
no meaning. Though he be no great admirer of the old logic,
yet he has taken a great deal of pains both in explaining
and correcting Hereboord, and has for the most part made him
intelligible, or shown that he is not so. The two Mr. Joneses,
Mr. Francis, Mr. Watkins, Mr. Sheldon, and two more gentlemen,
are to begin Jewish Antiquities in a short time. I was designed
for one of their number, but rather chose to read logic once
more; both because I was utterly unacquainted with it when I
came to this place, and because the others having all, except
Mr. Francis, been at other academies, will be obliged to make
more haste than those in a lower class, and consequently cannot
have so good or large accounts of anything, nor so much time
to study every head. We shall have gone through our course in
about four years’ time, which I believe that nobody that once
knows Mr. Jones will think too long.
“I began to learn Hebrew as soon as I came hither, and find
myself able now to construe and give some grammatical account
of about twenty verses in the easier parts of the Bible, after
less than an hour’s preparation. We read every day two verses
apiece in the Hebrew Bible, which we turn into Greek (no one
knowing which his verses shall be, though at first it was
otherwise). And this, with logic, is our morning’s work. Mr.
Jones also began about three months ago some critical lectures,
in order to the exposition you advised him to. The principal
things contained in them are about the antiquity of the Hebrew
language, letters, vowels, the incorruption of the Scriptures,
ancient divisions of the Bible, an account of the Talmud,
Masora, and Cabala. We are at present upon the Septuagint, and
shall proceed after that to the Targumim, and other versions,
etc. Every part is managed with abundance of perspicuity, and
seldom any material thing is omitted that other authors have
said upon the point, though very frequently we have useful
additions of things which are not to be found in them. We have
scarce been upon anything yet but Mr. Jones has had those
writers which are most valued on that head, to which he always
refers us. This is what we first set about in the afternoon,
which being finished we read a chapter in the Greek Testament,
and after that mathematics. We have gone through all that is
commonly taught of algebra and proportion, with the first
six books of Euclid, which is all Mr. Jones designs for the
gentlemen I mentioned above, but he intends to read something
more to the class that comes after them.
“This is our daily employment, which in the morning takes up
about two hours, and something more in the afternoon. Only on
Wednesdays, in the morning, we read Dionysius’s Periegesis,
on which we have notes, mostly geographical, but with some
criticisms intermixed; and in the afternoon we have no lecture
at all. So on Saturday, in the afternoon, we have only a
Thesis, which none but they who have done with logic have any
concern in. We are also just beginning to read Isocrates and
Terence, each twice a week. On the latter our tutor will give
us some notes which he received in a college from Perizonius.
“We are obliged to rise at five of the clock every morning,
and to speak Latin always, except when below stairs amongst
the family. The people where we live are very civil, and the
greatest inconvenience we suffer is, that we fill the house
rather too much, being sixteen in number, besides Mr. Jones.
But I suppose the increase of his academy will oblige him to
move next spring. We pass our time very agreeably betwixt
study and conversation with our tutor, who is always ready to
discourse freely of anything that is useful, and allows us
either then or at lecture all imaginable liberty of making
objections against his opinion, and prosecuting them as far as
we can. In this and everything else he shows himself so much a
gentleman, and manifests so great an affection and tenderness
for his pupils as cannot but command respect and love. I almost
forgot to mention our tutor’s library, which is composed for
the most part of foreign books, which seem to be very well
chosen, and are every day of great advantage to us.
“Thus I have endeavoured, sir, to give you an account of all
that I thought material or observable amongst us. As for my own
part, I apply myself with what diligence I can to everything
which is the subject of our lectures, without preferring one
subject before another; because I see nothing we are engaged in
but what is either necessary or extremely useful for one who
would thoroughly understand those things which most concern
him, or be able to explain them well to others. I hope I have
not spent my time, since I came to this place, without some
small improvement, both in human knowledge and that which is
far better, and I earnestly desire the benefit of your prayers
that God would be pleased to fit me better for His service,
both in this world and the next. This, if you please to afford
me, and your advice with relation to study, or whatever else
you think convenient, must needs be extremely useful, as well
as agreeable, and shall be thankfully received by your most
obliged humble servant,
“THOMAS SECKER.”
Secker’s first communion was with a Dissenting church—the Rev. Timothy
Jollie’s—and he preached his first sermon in a Dissenting meeting-house
at Bolsover, in Derbyshire. He retained his feelings of affectionate
indebtedness to his early friend to the close of Watts’ life.
His term of study closed at Stoke Newington, Watts, still little
more than a youth, returned for some time to his father’s house at
Southampton. Worshipping with the congregation there, under the ministry
of the Rev. Nathaniel Robinson, he felt that the psalmody was far
beneath the beauty and dignity of a Christian service. He was requested
to produce something better, and the following Sabbath the service
was concluded with what is now the first hymn of the first book; and
a stirring hymn it is—as an ascription of praise or worship, and as a
confession of faith it is remarkably comprehensive and complete.
Behold the glories of the Lamb
Amidst His Father’s throne;
Prepare new honours for His name,
And songs before unknown.
Let elders worship at His feet,
The church adore around,
With vials full of odours sweet,
And harps of sweeter sound.
Those are the prayers of the saints,
And these the hymns they raise;
Jesus is kind to our complaints,
He loves to hear our praise.
Eternal Father, who shall look
Into Thy secret will?
Who but the Son shall take the book,
And open every seal?
He shall fulfil Thy great decrees,
The Son deserves it well;
Lo! in His hand the sovereign keys
Of heaven, and death, and hell.
Now to the Lamb that once was slain,
Be endless blessings paid;
Salvation, glory, joy, remain
For ever on Thy head.
Thou hast redeemed our souls with blood,
Hast set the prisoners free;
Hast made us kings and priests to God,
And we shall reign with Thee.
The worlds of nature and of grace
Are put beneath Thy power;
Then shorten these delaying days,
And bring the promised hour.
This is the tradition of the origin of the first hymn. It was received
with great alacrity and joy. It was indeed “a new song.” The young poet
was entreated to produce another, and another. The series extended from
Sabbath to Sabbath, until almost a volume was formed, although their
publication was long delayed. This was the interesting result of his
return to Southampton.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]