The Man.
Watts, as we have seen, lived so much in retirement and retreat, and
was so constant a sufferer from the infirmities of health, that little
is known in the way of incident and anecdote of his life. In a sense,
indeed, he lived constantly before the eyes of men, for his industry,
when he was capable of industry, must have been immense; he must have
read extensively, he thought deeply, and he possessed not only an active
but a facile pen, which appears to have served him very readily when he
desired to translate his thoughts into language. His life belongs to that
order we represent by such names as Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and
John Howe: we do not here compare or contrast the finer details of their
character, but, like them, he appears to have been essentially a man of
contemplation; his activity was only the reflection of a contemplative
life. In height he was quite beneath the common standard; Dr. Gibbons
says not above five feet, or, at most, five feet two inches; we are not
accustomed to associate so small a stature with any commanding presence
in the pulpit; yet his preaching was greatly admired, and Dr. Jennings
says that it was not only weighty and powerful, “but there was a certain
dignity and respect in his very aspect which commanded attention and
awe, and when he spoke, such strains of truly Christian eloquence flowed
from his lips as one thinks could not be easily slighted, if resisted.”
He was altogether a very slight figure—thin, an oval face, an aquiline
nose, his complexion fair and pale, and, Gibbons says, his forehead
low; but this does not appear in his portrait, nor does that which it
usually indicates, a want of generosity, mark his character. When unable
to preach, it was with difficulty he could be persuaded to accept the
stipend of the church of which he was the pastor, saying that, as he
could not preach, he had no title to any salary. His refusal was not
accepted, but the delicate sense of honour marks the character of the
man; while, from the time he lived in the Abney family, he devoted a
third part of his income to charitable purposes. His eyes appear to have
lighted up his face; they are described as singularly small and grey, and
are said to have been amazingly piercing and expressive. His voice was
very fine and, slender, but regular, audible, and pleasant. The anecdote
is well known of him that when he was in one of those coffee-houses—then
the haunts of men who knew what company they might expect to find, for
every particular coterie had its own place of rendezvous—he overheard his
name given by one person to another, who said in surprise, “What! is that
the great Dr. Watts?” Whereupon he wrote down a verse and handed it to
him:
Were I so tall to reach the pole,
And grasp the ocean in a span,
I must be measured by my soul,—
The mind’s the standard of the man.
We have never thought the anecdote a very likely one; Watts was
altogether too quiet, and we may use the word, majestic in his manner to
make it possible he would do this. The verse is indeed his, but it occurs
in a lengthy poem, and it is possible that it was fitted into a fabulous
incident which some inventor of scenic situations thought might be, or
ought to be, true. There is another anecdote which has been related of
him, although we have seen it attributed to others, how, when once in a
coffee-house, and somewhat in the way of a tall giant of a man, he said
to Watts, “Let me pass, O giant!” and Watts replied, “Pass on, O pigmy!”
“I only referred to your mind,” said the giant; “I also to yours,”
replied Watts.
Whatever impression such anecdotes may convey, one of his chief
characteristics was a very modest appreciation of himself. “His
humility,” said Dr. Jennings, “like a deep shade, set off his other
graces and virtues, and made them shine with greater lustre.” And of
those attributes of his character of which others thought most highly,
he thought very inconsiderably. And to such a character is often allied
that which is very noticeable in him, a very grateful sense of all
favours conferred upon him. There was nothing narrow in his mind, he
had a great width of thought and a great width of love: although, as we
have seen, a Nonconformist by strong conviction, judging the communion
to which he belonged as favourable to civil and religious freedom, and
regarding the service as most in harmony with what he considered the
simplicity of the Gospel, he was on terms of friendship with many other
communions, and especially with several of the prelates, ministers, and
members of the Established Church. It would be expected, although this
is not invariably the case, that a mind so richly stored, united to so
ready an eloquence, would shine in conversation, and this was the case.
It is said that in conversation his wit sparkled; his biographer says,
“It was like an ethereal flame, ever vivid and penetrating;” but he had
an aversion to satire. Referring to the pictures he sometimes introduces,
illustrating the vices and follies of his age, he utterly disclaims the
idea that in them he has attempted to portray any personal character. “I
would not,” he says, “willingly create needless pain or uneasiness to the
most despicable figure among mankind; there are vexations enough among
the beings of my species without my adding to the heap. When a reflecting
glass shows the deformity of a face so plain as to point to the person,
he will sooner be tempted to break the glass than reform his blemishes;
but if I can find any error of my own happily described in some general
character, I am then awakened to reform it in silence, without the public
notice of the world, and the moral writer attains his noblest end.”
He was not happy in the friendship of listeners, who took down with
any accuracy the sayings which fell from him; and it is probable that
in conversation, although rich and full, wide and wise, it was rather
remarkable for these characteristics than for either its gaiety or its
force.
There were few waste moments for which he had to give an account; he
acted like a miser by his time, and permitted few moments to pass without
their being garnered and compelled to pay interest. We read of his
writing on horseback, and whithersoever he travelled the objects which
entered either the eye or the ear seem to have left abiding impressions.
It seems even the injustice of his opponents in disputation did not make
him angry. Such injustice we know he had to experience; and when, in his
later years, he offended on both sides, one writer complaining of him
that he had gone too far, and another that he had not gone far enough,
he contented himself by saying, “Moderation must expect a box on both
ears.” A character like that of Watts inspires confidence in almost all
that proceeds from his pen: the men, indeed, who carry what Chalmers
called “weight in life,” are usually the tall, the self-assertive, and
the strong; none of these attributes mark him, and yet he appears to have
carried great weight. It was not by vehemence, but by wisdom; he did
not win by the forcible striking of the ball, but by prescience and a
judicious calculation.
Watts, like so many of the great wits, poets, and authors of his
time, was what we should now consider very slightly versed in the
accomplishments of travel: a few places in the neighbourhood of
London and Southampton and Tunbridge Wells seem almost to exhaust his
excursions. Indeed, England was for the most part an unknown country,
and as to the continent of Europe, men of wealth and fashion were
expected to perfect their education by the grand tour, but to persons
even in Watts’ circle of society, France, Switzerland, and Italy, with
their cities, memories, forests, and mountains, were unknown. Gray had
not yet discovered Cumberland and Westmoreland, and when discovered,
there were no facilities to make travel thither very easy; Yorkshire and
Lancashire were almost equally unknown. The place to which we frequently
find Watts retreating for the benefit of his health was Tunbridge
Wells, and a singular place it must have been for a retreat, judging
from the description Macaulay has given us of it in his history; but it
furnishes us with a singular sense of the simple things which excited
the imagination, to read how Watts regarded it. Many a modern reader
is struck with surprise at Shakespeare’s description of the cliffs of
Dover—a description of terror and fear arising from precipitous heights,
which we could scarcely now persuade ourselves to be just of Helvellyn
and Pendle. The rocks of Tunbridge seemed to Watts so wild and fearful
that they furnish him with a subject for a sermon, “On the vain Refuge of
Sinners,” from the text reciting the condition of those who said to the
mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that
sitteth upon the throne.” The sermon is expressly called “A Meditation
upon the Rocks near Tunbridge Wells,” and he says:
“When I see such awful appearances in nature, huge and lofty rocks
hanging over my head, and at every step of my approach they seem to nod
upon me with overwhelming ruin; when my curiosity searches far into
hollow clefts, their dark and deep caverns of solitude and desolation,
methinks, whilst I stand amongst them, I can hardly think myself in
safety, and, at best, they give a sort of solemn and dreadful delight.
Let me improve the scene to religious purposes, and raise a Divine
meditation. Am I one of those wretches who shall call to these huge
impending rocks to fall upon me?”
When Watts first visited Tunbridge Wells in search of health and
refreshment, it must have been to our modern sense an uncomfortable
place; even at the close of his life and in his later visits, it was only
just rising into importance as the retreat of the coteries of fashion
and letters; it is almost the only spot left now which we may be sure,
from some points of view, looks much as it did in the day when Watts,
Richardson, or Johnson walked along the Pantiles, and inhaled the breezes
from the neighbouring rocks and grounds. Such as it was at the close
of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, we find described in
the pages of Macaulay and some of the novelists and poets. The waters
possessed some real, and acquired an artificial, fame; there was no town,
only a few neat and rustic cottages, some of these moveable; moveable
cabins and huts were drawn on sledges from one part of the common to
another. Fashionable London tradespeople went down and spread out their
bazaars under the trees, and near the spring; a fair was daily held, in
which were booths where the man of letters and the politician might find
his cup of coffee, his newspaper, and his friend; and others, in which
the gambler might find his vice and his victim. On the whole, it was a
merry place for sated and wearied fashionable loungers, where they might
believe that they were becoming rural, and charm themselves into the
persuasion that they were the spectators of a poetry of nature, which
they would have been indisposed to experience too long or too deeply; but
a place where we cannot suppose that Watts found himself for any length
of time at home. He was, however, frequently there, and upon one occasion
he was guilty of one of the few of what may be called the vanities of
verse which fell from his pen. The atmosphere of watering-places is
favourable to every kind of literary as well as other lounging. Watts was
not altogether insensible, we should suppose, to the charms of female
beauty, and certainly a man may well be moved to express himself in verse
concerning it, when feeble verses have been erroneously attributed to
him. It was in the summer of 1712, when at Tunbridge Wells, that he wrote
the following lines in honour of Lady Sunderland, one of the daughters
of the Duke of Marlborough; her husband had just been dismissed from the
councils of the queen, and she had just withdrawn from the court. We may
suppose the little clusters of various loungers and talkers would be
surprised to see them in some one of the little local flying “Mercury’s”
of the day where these verses appeared and were attributed to Watts; he
appears to have felt it was an occasion for some apology for stepping
into such a by-way; he does so in the following note, upon which fancy
may a little divert itself as to the life he and others led at Tunbridge
Wells:
TO AMYNTAS.
“Perhaps you were not a little surprised, my friend, when you
saw some stanzas on the Lady Sunderland at Tunbridge Wells,
and were told that I wrote them; but when I give you a full
account of the occasion your wonder will cease. The Duke of
Marlborough’s three daughters, namely, the Lady Godolphin, the
Lady Sunderland, and the Lady Bridgewater, had been at the
Wells some time when I came there; nor had I the honour of
any more acquaintance with any of them than what was common
to all the company in the Wells, that is, to be told who they
were when they passed by. A few days afterwards they left that
place, and the next morning there was found a copy of verses in
the coffee-house, called the ‘Three Shining Sisters;’ but, the
author being unknown, some persons were ready to attribute them
to me, knowing that I had heretofore dealt in rhyme. I confess
I was ashamed of several lines in that copy. Some were very
dull, and others, as I remember, bordered upon profaneness.
“That afternoon I rode abroad as usual for my health, and
it came into my head to let my friends see that, if I would
choose such a theme, I would write in another manner than that
nameless author had done. Accordingly, as I was on horseback, I
began a stanza on the ‘Three Shining Sisters,’ but my ideas,
my rhyme, and the metre would not hit well while the words ran
in the plural number; and this slight occurrence was the real
occasion of turning my thoughts to the singular; and then,
because the Lady Sunderland was counted much the finest woman
of the three, I addressed the verses to her name. Afterwards
when I came to the coffee-house, I entertained some of my
friends with these lines, and they, imagining it would be no
disagreeable thing to the company, persuaded me to permit them
to pass through the press.”
But here are the verses—
ODE TO LADY SUNDERLAND, 1712.
Fair nymph, ascend to Beauty’s throne,
And rule that radiant world alone;
Let favourites take thy lower sphere,
No monarchs are thy rivals here.
The court of Beauty built sublime,
Defies all pow’rs but heaven and time;
Envy, that clouds the hero’s sky,
Aims but in vain her shafts so high.
Not Blenheim’s field, nor Ister’s flood,
Nor standards dyed in Gallic blood,
Torn from the foe, add nobler grace
To Churchill’s house than Spenser’s face.
The warlike thunder of his arms
Is less commanding than her charms;
His lightning strikes with less surprise
Than sudden glances from her eyes.
His captives feel their limbs confined
In iron; she enslaves the mind:
We follow with a pleasing pain,
And bless the conqueror and the chain.
The Muse that dares in numbers do
What paint and pencil never knew,
Faints at her presence in despair,
And owns th’ inimitable fair.
Presently appeared the following epigram or _impromptu_ composed by some
divine, of which it has been truly remarked that it is difficult to say
whether the author or the lady has the greater compliment!—
While numerous bards have sounded Spenser’s name,
And made her beauties heirs to lasting fame,
Her memory still to their united lays
Stands less indebted than to Watts’s praise.
What wondrous charms must to that fair be given,
Who moved a mind that dwelt so near to heaven!
Tunbridge Wells is still the pleasant resort of those who seek the mild
and quiet attractions of charming scenery, refreshing breezes, and crags
and downs; but the romantic season of Tunbridge Wells is to be sought for
about the period when Watts and his contemporaries were visitors there,
scenes open to the fancy which it would be difficult to realize now
amidst its splendid palatial residences; even Nature must look less like
Nature than it did then, while the superior auxiliaries of comfort and
accommodation have, as in almost all such instances, been purchased at
the expense of dissipating the charms and rural beauties of a place which
still retains so many of them as to make one of the most attractive and
satisfying haunts for a sick heart among the sanatories of England.
The life of Dr. Watts must be illustrated rather from his works than from
its incidents. It is remarkable that so little is recorded of him; his
powers of conversation seem to have been considerable, and his reputation
for wit was what we might naturally suppose from the liveliness of many
of his prose writings. But he was certainly unfortunate in his first
biographer. Dr. Gibbons was an accomplished man, a correct and fine
scholar, but surely the last thing for which he was ever intended, either
by nature or by grace, was to write a biography. _His_ contains many
noticeable and acute remarks, and some passages which almost dilate
into beauty; but it is strange that, constant as was his intercourse
with his friend, he has preserved scarcely anything either of anecdote,
conversation, or description illustrating their intercourse; and it
seems certain that Watts’ life would have well repaid the assiduity of
a Boswell. His mind was remarkably full, and Gibbons testifies how, on
any and every occasion, he was able to express himself at once with
great force, propriety, and elegance. But his biographer only tells us
how his life, from the time of his earliest studies, afforded little
variety, and consequently has few subjects for narration—it “flowed
along in an even, uniform tenor; one year, one month, one week, one day
being, in a manner, a repetition of the former.” Like some other eminent
men, it somewhat appears as if he finished the furnishing of his mind
when in his youngest years, and devoted all the after period of his life
to the unfolding, amplifying, expounding, and popularizing the stores
he had amassed and acquired. Dr. Gibbons refers to the fact that his
“Treatise on Astronomy and Geography” was most probably prepared for the
tuition of Mr.—afterwards Sir John—Hartopp; when published in 1725, in
the dedication to Mr. Eames, he says that: “The papers had lain by him
in silence above twenty years;” and as to his “Logic,” we have already
referred to it; and the dedication in which he tells his former pupil
that “it was fit that the public should receive, through his hands, what
was originally written for the assistance of his younger studies, and
was thus presented to him.” And thus we are assured that the work which
met with so large a reception and distinguished applause was prepared
in days when he was himself little more than a youth, to serve his own
purposes of tuition. Such was the life of this interesting man—it was a
fountain of life and power. In the spacious chapel-walk in Southampton
there is a pavement-stone marked with the letter W—it stands for Watts;
but, as Mr. Carlyle says in his interesting paper on Watts, it might
stand for Watts’ Well; it was once the property of Isaac Watts, and the
well has a long story, well authenticated in the church records of the
Above Bar congregation. That well of clear, beautiful water was purchased
by old Isaac Watts from his friend, Robert Thorner, the founder of the
Southampton Charity. It was on, and constituted a part of, the tenement
known by the name of the Meeting-house; then it was leased to the church,
then it was purchased by the church. It was known in Southampton two
hundred years ago. It is now a fountain sealed, but still it is known,
and proudly the pastor says, “Our father Isaac gave us this well, and
drank thereof, himself and his children.”[44] Watts’ Well is no inapt
symbol or emblem of Watts’ life and labours. Even lost to sight, sealed
over, its springs still pour along their refreshing, cooling, and
transparent streams; nor have the crowds who hurry thoughtlessly by power
to interfere with the useful freshness of its pure blessings.
“The last days are the best witnesses for a man.” “Blessed,” says old
Robert Harris, “shall he be that so lived that he was desired, and so
died that he was missed.” Isaac Watts illustrated in a remarkable manner
power in weakness.
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