He continued to the end of his life the teacher of a congrega- 17 tion', and no reader of his works can doubt his fidelity or diligence. In the pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet?, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. I once mentioned the reputation which Mr. Foster 3 had gained by his proper delivery to my friend Dr. Hawkesworth“, who told me that in the art of pronunciation he was far inferior to Dr. Watts.

Such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of 18 language, that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory sermons; but having adjusted the heads, and sketched out some particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers'.

He did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticula- 19 tions; for, as no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth, he did not see how they could enforce it.

At the conclusion of weighty sentences he gave time, by 20 a short pause, for the proper impression.

To stated and publick instruction he added familiar visits 21 and personal application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence of religion.

By his natural temper he was quick of resentment, but 22 by his established and habitual practice he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children and to the poor. To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the third part of his annual revenue”, though the whole was not a hundred a year; and for children he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion and systems

8 Johnson perhaps avoids the term effect upon reasonable minds. It minister, which he defines as 'one may augment noise, but it never can who serves at the altar; one who enforce argument. If you speak to performs sacerdotal functions. He a dog you use action; you hold up uses it, however, for a Dissenter, post, your hand thus because he is a brute; AKENSIDE, 2.

and in proportion as men are reGibbons, p. 322.

moved from brutes action will have Ante, SAVAGE, 188.

the less influence upon them.' Bos* Ante, SWIFT, 1.

well's Johnson, ii. 211. See also ib. 5 For his preaching see Gibbons, i. 334, iv. 322. p. 142.

* Gibbons, p. 146. 6 JOHNSON. Action can have no 8 In the preface to his Divine Songs

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of instruction, adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke', and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach?

As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry continual, his writings are very numerous and his subjects various. With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness of opposition and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his book but in his mind that

orthodoxy was united with charity 3. 24

Of his philosophical pieces his Logick has been received into the universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation": if he owes part of it to Le Clerc 5 it must be considered that no man who undertakes merely to methodise or illustrate a system

pretends to be its author. 25 In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late

learned Mr. Dyer that he confounded the idea of space with that of empty space, and did not consider that though space might be

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for Children he says: 'I have endeavoured to sink the language to the level of a child's understanding, and yet to keep it, if possible, above contempt.' Eng. Poets, lvi. 199.

I Watts's Philosophical Essays contain 'some remarks on Mr. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding'

Ante, MILTON, 106, 147: 3 'One would think that the princes, the priests, and the people, the learned and the unlearned, the great and the mean, should have all by this time seen the folly and madness of seeking to propagate the truth by the acts of cruelty. ... Men cannot believe what they will, nor change their religion and their sentiments as they please.' WATTS, The Improvement of the Mind, Part ii. ch. 3,

* Queen's College, Oxford, had at this time (1760–4] considerable repu

tation for its logic, and Bentham
owned that his tutor gave him out
of Sanderson's Logic some materials
for correct reasoning. The English
logic taught was Watts's, which Ben-
tham always called “Old Women's
logic. Bentham's Works, x. 37.

John James wrote from Queen's
College in 1778:-'From a careful
perusal of Watts and Duncan I hope
e'er long to acquire a competent
knowledge (of logic), and to be able
at least not to be silent in the Hall
[at the disputations).' Letters of
Radcliffe and James, p. 50.

s Gibbon, in 1762, described Le Clerc's Bibliothèque Universelle as "an inexhaustible source of amusement and instruction.' Misc. Works, V. 224.

Samuel Dyer, a member of the Literary Club. Boswell's Johnson, i. 479, iv, 11.

sec. 5.

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without matter, yet matter, being extended, could not be without space,

Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure 26 than his Improvement of the Mind, of which the radical principles may indeed be found in Locke's Conduct of the Understanding, but they are so expanded and ramified by Watts as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the highest degree useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of instructing others may be charged with deficience in his duty if this book is not recommended !

I have mentioned his treatises of Theology as distinct from his 27 other productions, but the truth is that whatever he took in hand was, by his incessant solicitude for souls, converted to Theology. As piety predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works; under his direction it may be truly said, “Theologiæ Philosophia ancillatur,' philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction: it is difficult to read a page without learning, or at least wishing, to be better. The attention is caught by indirect instruction, and he that sat down only to reason is on a sudden compelled to pray.

It was therefore with great propriety that, in 1728, he received 28 from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a Doctor of Divinity. Academical honours would have more value if they were always bestowed with equal judgement.

He continued many years to study and to preach, and to do 29 good by his instruction and example, till at last the infirmities of age disabled him from the more laborious part of his ministerial functions, and, being no longer capable of publick duty, he offered to remit the salary appendant to it; but his congregation would not accept the resignation ?

By degrees his weakness increased, and at last confined him to 30 his chamber and his bed, where he was worn gradually away without pain, till he expired Nov. 25, 1748, in the seventy-fifth year of his age ?

'Not long after the publication of Watts's Improvement of the Mind.' the Lives Johnson wrote of his step- John. Letters, ii

. 232. See also John. daughter : - Poor Lucy's health is Misc. ii. 2; Boswell's Johnson, iv. very much broken. She takes very 311; ante, POPE, 380. little of either food or exercise, and a Gibbons, p. 146. her hearing is very dull, and her 3 16. p. 318; Gent. Mag. 1748, utterance confused; but she will have p. 525.

31 Few men have left behind such purity of character or such

monuments of laborious piety. He has provided instruction for all ages, from those who are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened readers of Malbranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature unexamined; he has taught the art

of reasoning, and the science of the stars. 32 His character, therefore, must be formed from the multiplicity

and diversity of his attainments, rather than from any single performance; for it would not be safe to claim for him the highest rank in any single denomination of literary dignity: yet perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled, if he had

not divided his powers to different pursuits. 33 As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have

stood high among the authors with whom he is now associated. For his judgement was exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice discernment; his imagination, as the Dacian Battle' proves, was vigorous and active, and the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be supplied. His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory? The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no

man has done well 3. 34 His poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be

expected from the amusements of a Man of Letters, and have different degrees of value as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or less favourable to invention. Eng. Poets, lvi. 93.

madversions upon Dr. Watts, who Ante, COWLEY, 146. "When was nevertheless, if I am in any Johnson would try to repeat the degree a judge of verse, a man of Dies irae, he could never pass the true poetical ability; ... frequently stanza ending, Tantus labor non sit sublime in his conceptions, and cassus, without bursting into a flood masterly in his execution. 16. xv. of tears; which sensibility I used to 92. A fortnight later, after reading quote against him when he would the Life, he wrote :- Nothing can inveigh against devotional poetry.' be more judicious, or more characterMrs. Piozzi, John. Misc. i. 284. istic of a distinguishing taste, than 'Pity! Religion has so seldom found Johnson's observations upon Watts ; A skilful guide into poetic ground !' though I think him a little mistaken COWPER, Table Talk, Works, viii. in his notion that divine subjects 143

have never been poetically treated Cowper wrote on Sept. 18, 1781:- with success.' Ib. iv. 129. “Report informs me that Dr. Johnson • 'JOHNSON. Dr. Watts's poems has been severe enough in his ani- are by no means his best works; I

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He writes too often without regular measures, and too often in 35 blank verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent. He is particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters". His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of spriteliness and vigour”? He is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed by his verses or his prose to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God 3.

cannot praise his poetry itself highly, here restored according to its original.' but I can praise its design.' Bos- Warburton, v. 34. ('The surreptiwell's Johnson, iii. 358.

tious editions were published by * Boswell says of The Rambler :- Pope. Ante, POPE, 148.) According Johnson's ladies seem strangely to Nichols, it was on Dr. Watts's formal, even to ridicule; and are 'very serious though gentle remonwell denominated by the names strance' that other names were subwhich he has given them, as Misella, stituted. Lit. Anec. v, 218. Zozima, Properantia, Rhodoclia. 3 How much in Watts piety preBoswell's Johnson, i. 223.

dominated over poetry is shown by Warburton, in a note on The his saying :-'I had rather be the Dunciad, i. 145-6:

author of Mr. Baxter's Call to the 'A Gothic Library! of Greece and Unconverted than of Milton's ParaRome

dise Lost. Gibbons, p. 157Well purg'd, and worthy Settle, [The verdict of after generations Banks and Broome'

has gone against Johnson's criticism writes :— It was printed in the sur- of Watts's devotional poetry in at reptitious editions, w-ly (Wesley), least one instance. Perhaps there is W-s [Watts), who were persons no hymn more familiar to Englisheminent for good life; the one writ men in all time of our tribulation' the Life of Christ in verse, the other than ‘Our God, our help in ages some valuable pieces in the lyric past,' sung to its fine old tune of kind on pious subjects. The line is

St. Anne.)