Mr. Isaac Watts, Tutor.

Our valued fellow-townsman, Mr. F. L. Blake, tells us that he was considerably interested by our remarks recently on the subject of Dr. Isaac Watts’s poetry. Such an interest, in fact, did our words awaken, that, upon reading them, Mr. Blake threw aside the paper, went to his book-case, and took down an old volume of Watts’s hymns and poems. He had not read the volume in many years, and sweet were the memories that came to him as he thumbed over the musty pages. “Still,” says he, “I cannot agree with you when you speak of Dr. Watts’s verse as ‘quaint, simple poetry.’ One of the first hymns I struck was a recital of the joys of the redeemed, and I shuddered when I read this stanza:—

“‘In heaven above among the blest,

What mortal tongue can tell

The joys of saints when looking down

On damnèd souls in hell!’

“I don’t believe you really think that this is ‘quaint, simple poetry.’”

Few men have been more read and less understood than Dr. Isaac Watts. He was in many particulars a remarkable man. Old Sam Johnson described him as a little man not more than five feet tall, with an austere expression, and a deep, 97resonant voice. Watts was always more or less of a valetudinarian. He was unwise enough at the age of twenty-five to hire himself to Sir John Hartopp of Stoke-Newington as tutor to Sir John’s children—a lad named Ralph, aged sixteen, and a girl named Delia, aged eighteen. The care which this engagement involved so seriously impaired Watts’s health that he was never thereafter a robust man. Ralph Hartopp was a wild boy; and Delia, the girl, appears to have been a rather flippant miss. There dwelt in Stoke-Newington, at this time, one Richard Steele, a reckless but bright fellow, who fell in love with Delia Hartopp, and by his attentions gave Tutor Watts grave uneasiness; for Watts recognized in Steele a “godless young man, given over to the vanities and frivolities of the world.” Steele had a friend named Addison,—Joseph Addison,—a taciturn young man, who exhibited a fondness for sitting around in ale-houses and at street-corners, merely for the purpose of watching people, and of hearing them talk. This Addison had one ambition, and that was to print a satirical daily paper in London; and he calculated that when his friend Steele married Sir John Hartopp’s daughter, Sir John himself would advance the capital necessary to set Steele and Addison up in the newspaper business. So, in his quiet, unobtrusive way, Addison helped Steele with his wooing of Sir John’s pretty daughter.

98We can imagine how grievously Steele and Addison tormented Tutor Watts: both were shrewd and witty, had seen much of the world, and were keen satirists of human character. When it got to them that Watts was in the habit of writing “religious and moral poems for the better guidance and wiser admonition” of his pupils, they set themselves to writing poems too; and these poems they cast in Watts’s way, and right often was the good man grievously scandalized thereby. One of these poems, which appears to have been the work of Steele and Addison conjointly, has come down to posterity under the ostentatious title of “The Redemption of Mistress Prudence told in Rhyme for the Better Understanding of Our Sovereign Beauty, the Fair Delia.” These lines, thus addressed to Delia Hartopp, were as follow:—

“Behold our Prudence in her prime

As meek and fair a dame as any;

Yet was she tempted in her time,

As tempted are, alas! too many.

Satin and silken gowns had she,

Feathers and ribbons, plumes and laces,—

Vain gewgaws fetched across the sea

From divers godless foreign places.

Thereat her foolish, wicked pride

Did vaunt itself to such condition,

That she did constantly deride

Her gentle tutor’s admonition.

99In vain he reasoned with the maid;

In fashion’s way she strode undaunted;

And all the more her tutor prayed,

Why, all the more her plumes she flaunted.

At last, however, waxing sick

Of worldly praise and admiration,

She felt her quickened conscience prick,

And straightway sought her soul’s salvation.

And when she saw, through tearful eyes,

How nearly Satan’s darts had missed her,

She doffed her dazzling flummeries,

And gave them to her younger sister.”

It is narrated that these verses shocked Tutor Watts beyond all telling, and we can believe it. Sir John Hartopp was a jolly old fellow, immensely proud of his children, and confident that, after the wildness natural to youth toned down, they would be a credit to their family. So Sir John simply laughed at these verses and others that poor Watts brought to him as the work of “those evil-minded young men.” It appears that the conscientious tutor got very little sympathy from his employer.

The following lines, said to have been instigated by Richard Steele, were found in Ralph Hartopp’s copy-book one morning:—

THE HUMANE LAD.

Why should a naughty, froward boy

The harmless little fly assail,

Or why his precious time employ

At pulling faithful Rover’s tail?

100Where’er I go, each living thing

Has its predestined place to fill;

And naught that moves on foot or wing

Was made for boys to vex or kill.

The little fly, howe’er so frail,

Was made on Rover’s hide to prey;

And faithful Rover’s honest tail

Was made to brush the flies away.

So let each bird and beast enjoy

The vain, brief life which God has given,

Whilst I my youthful hours employ

In works that fit the soul for heaven.

Yet, however much Dick Steele and his friend enjoyed the business of satirizing Tutor Watts’s poems, they occasionally let slip verse that not only served to assuage the tutor’s anger, but also redounded to their own credit. It was Watts’s custom to take his pupils for a walk every pleasant day, and during these walks he was wont to discourse upon profitable topics. The following lines, written under date of July 21, 1697, are supposed to have been addressed to Ralph and Delia Hartopp by Tutor Watts; but Dr. Johnson pronounces them “clearly the work of Joseph Addison:”—

A NOONTIDE HYMN.

Come, gentle pupils, let us kneel

Beneath this tree upon the sod,

And, mindful of our sin, appeal

Unto the good and gracious God.

101Look out upon the fruitful wold,

And see the ripening grain upraise

Its bursting tops of green and gold

Unto the sky in silent praise.

The winds are hushed, the fields are still,

The brooks that babbled sink to rest:

A holy reverence seems to thrill

Creation’s vast, responsive breast.

It is the solemn noontide hour,

When grateful Nature everywhere

Acknowledges the heavenly power

In one still, universal prayer.

So let us kneel upon the sod,

And, with his works before our face,

Commend our souls anew to God,

And crave his sanctifying grace.

At another time, in evident imitation of Watts’s style,—though the imitation is not particularly clever,—Steele framed an evening hymn, the original manuscript of which is still preserved, we believe, among the Hartopp collection in the British Museum:—

AN EVENING HYMN.

Pardon the evil I have done

To thee, O Lord! this day:

Vouchsafe thy blessed peace to one

Who seeks the heavenly way.

As turns the truant to his home,

When sore and sick is he,

So, penitent and weak, I come,

And give my soul to thee.

102’Tis thine, dear Lord; and, if thou wilt,

Protect it through this night;

Or, cleansing it of all its guilt,

Take it to realms of light.

Though o’er the sea and on the land

The raging storms may sweep,

Rocked in the hollow of thy hand

Shall I securely sleep.

I may not know another day,

Nor see the morrow’s sun:

Still, clinging to thy knees, I pray,

“Father, thy will be done.”

Verses of this kind were not objectionable in the eyes of Tutor Watts, but we can imagine how outraged he felt when he discovered that the following stanzas were being circulated in Stoke-Newington as a poem from his pen:—

THE MERCIFUL LAD.

Through all my life the poor shall find

In me a constant friend,

And on the weak of every kind

My mercy shall attend.

The dumb shall never call on me

In vain for kindly aid,

And in my hands the blind shall see

A bounteous alms displayed.

In all their walks the lame shall know

And feel my goodness near,

And on the deaf will I bestow

My gentlest words of cheer.

103“’Tis by such pious works as these—

Which I delight to do—

That men their fellow-creatures please,

And please their Maker too.”

Well, to make a long story short, Isaac Watts broke down at last under the pressure brought to bear upon him by Sir John Hartopp’s good-natured indifference, Ralph’s recklessness, Delia’s giddiness, Dick Steele’s wit, and Joe Addison’s humor. He went to Sir John one day, and in a husky, weary voice said, “Good-by, Sir John: I’m off by next coach.” He was tired, sick, discouraged. He sought and found refuge in the house of a hospitable and wealthy friend, and there he abode for the rest of his life. He never again served as tutor; but he lived to see his old pupils, Ralph and Delia, become proper and pious members of society. Subsequently, too, his relations with Steele and Addison became of the friendliest character; and, when “The Spectator” rose to popularity in London, Dr. Watts not infrequently contributed to its columns. Delia Hartopp did not marry Steele, after all, but a Nottinghamshire gentleman named Mulgrave.

Most of Dr. Watts’s hymns were written, as we understand, during the later years of his life. He was such a prolific writer that much of his work was necessarily indifferent. But his hymns have, as a whole, been admired by the severest and most eminent critics; and they have been 104read and sung by people of all classes for many, many years. We think that they have come to be almost a part of the Protestant faith.

It is probable that Watts’s “Divine and Moral Songs for the Young” will live as long as English literature survives. We can conceive of no seismic phenomenon capable of obliterating the two poems, “How doth the little busy bee,” and “Let dogs delight to bark and bite;” and we have yet to read a tenderer bit of religious verse than Watts’s cradle-hymn, “Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber.”

Touching the stanza which Mr. Blake quotes for our consideration, we will say that it is quaint and simple. Its meaning is clear, and its language is forcible: it expresses in four lines what the average modern poet could not or would not tell in ten times four lines. Yet we do not believe that Dr. Watts wrote it.