WATTS.

T'

HE Poems of Dr. WATTS were by

my recommendation inferted in the late Collection; the readers of which are to impute to me whatever pleasure or weariness they may find in the perufal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret, and Yalden.

ISAAC WATTS was born July 17, 1674, at Southampton, where his father, of the fame name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, though common report makes him a fhoemaker. He appears, from the narrative of Dr. Gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor illiterate.

Ifaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his infancy; and began, we are told, to learn Latin when he was four years old, I fuppofe, at home. He was afterwards taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, by Mr. Pinhorne, a clergyman, master of the Free-school at Southampton, to whom the gratitude of his fcholar afterwards infcribed a Latin ode.

His proficiency at school was so conspicuous, that a subscription was propofed for his fupport at the Univerfity; but he declared his refolution to take his lot with the Diffenters. Such he was as every Chriftian Church would rejoice to have adopted.

He therefore repaired in 1690 to an academy taught by Mr. Rowe, where he had for his companions and fellow-students Mr. Hughes the poet, and Dr. Horte, afterwards Archbishop of Tuam. Some Latin Effays, fupposed to have been written as exercises at this academy, fhew a degree of knowledge, both philofophical and theological, fuch as very few attain by a much longer course of ftudy.

He

He was, as he hints in his Miscellanies, a maker of verses from fifteen to fifty, and in his youth he appears to have paid attention to Latin poetry. His verfes to his brother, in the glyconick measure, written when he was feventeen, are remarkably eafy and elegant. Some of his other odes are deformed by the Pindarick folly then prevailing, and are written with fuch neglect of all metrical rules as is without example among the ancients; but his diction, though perhaps not always exactly pure, has fuch copiousness and splendour, as fhews that he was but at a very little distance from excellence.

His method of study was to impress the contents of his books upon his memory by abridging them, and by interleaving them to amplify one fyftem with fupplements from another.

With the congregation of his tutor Mr. Rowe, who were, I believe, Independents, he communicated in his nineteenth year.

At the

age of twenty he left the academy, and spent two years in ftudy and devotion

at the house of his father, who treated him with great tenderness; and had the happiness, indulged to few parents, of living to fee his fon eminent for literature and venerable for piety.

He was then entertained by Sir John Hartopp five years, as domeftick tutor to his fon; and in that time particularly devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and being chofen affiftant to Dr. Chauncey, preached the first time on the birth-day that compleated his twenty-fourth year; probably confidering that as the day of a fecond nativity, by which he entered on a new period of existence.

In about three years he fucceeded Dr. Chauncey; but, foon after his entrance on his charge, he was feized by a dangerous illnefs, which funk him to fuch weakness, that the congregation thought an affiftant neceffary, and appointed Mr. Price. His health then returned gradually, and he performed his duty, till (1712) he was feized by a fever of fuch violence and continuance, that, from the feebleness which it brought upon him, he never perfectly recovered.

This calamitous ftate made the compassion of his friends neceffary, and drew upon him the attention of Sir Thomas Abney, who received him into his houfe; where, with a conftancy of friendship and uniformity of conduct not often to be found, he was treated for thirty-fix years with all the kindness that friendship could prompt, and all the attention that refpect could dictate. Sir Thomas died about eight years afterwards; but he continued with the lady and her daughters to the end of his life. The lady died about a year after him.

A coalition like this, a ftate in which the notions of patronage and dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits, deferves a particular memorial; and I will not withhold from the reader Dr. Gibbons's reprefentation, to which regard is to be paid as to the narrative of one who writes what he knows, and what is known likewife to multitudes befides.

"Our next obfervation fhall be made upon that remarkably kind Providence which brought the Doctor into Sir Thomas Abney's