SOURCE: Bishop, Selma L. “Watts's Composition of Hymns” and “Watts's Interest in Matters of Philology.” In Isaac Watts: Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707-1748; A Study in Early Eighteenth Century Language Changes, pp. xix-xxiv; xxv-xxxii. London: Faith Press, 1962.

[In the following essays, Bishop analyzes Watts's impact on hymns sung in church and examines his views on writing methods and linguistic techniques.]

WATTS'S COMPOSITION OF HYMNS

No doubt Watts's interest in hymnody began vaguely with his mother's encouragement of her son to write verse in his childhood. It had its true beginning in his love of the Latin Psalms of George Buchanan (1506-1582)¹ to whom Watts referred occasionally and whose influence he admitted. He referred likewise to another writer of Psalms in Latin, Dr. Arthur Johnston, M.D. (1587-1641).² He offered praise to these two authors whom he read in his youth:

A Stanza, or a Couplet of these Writers (George Buchanan and Dr. Johnston) would now and then stick upon the Minds of Youth, and would furnish them infinitely better with pious and moral Thoughts, and do something towards making them good Men and Christians.³

He called Buchanan's Psalms ‘excellent translations’⁴ and thought the lower classes should read Dr. Johnston's translations.

Watts's real incentive to write hymns for worship came, as tradition says, with his father's urging, after his son's complaint that hymns were the worst part of church worship. The next Sabbath, in 1694-5, the church had a new song to sing, and the steady composition by Watts continued for some years. This first song was incorporated as Hymn I into Watts's Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707). Watts's conscience forbade him to include in his book of Hymns those compositions in which he recorded too much of his imagination, which at times he called ‘flights’; instead he placed about twenty-five hymns marked by gay, lively metaphor in his first edition of poetry, Horae Lyricae (1706). As he was working on his Hymns, he was also steadily composing his Psalms of David, published in 1719. He acknowledged that he preferred publishing the Hymns and the Horae Lyricae before the Psalms of David as a trial flight in poetry to save them from the initial and worst criticism.⁵

Watts's purposes in writing his Hymns and Spiritual Songs were far different from that of his Horae Lyricae; the Hymns, to profit the common, uneducated Christian's understanding; the Horae Lyricae, to entertain educated, polite society. His materials, therefore, differed greatly: the first, based upon both Old and New Testament themes, were loose paraphrastic interpretations of the Scriptures; the second, sometimes interpreting Scriptures metaphorically beyond the mental capacity of the masses, but usually of a dedicatory nature to friends, were always tinged with moral thought. Those which were enlargements upon Casimire's poetry or upon Horace's odes, in that passages of high moral philosophy of those poets were chosen as themes, easily retained the ethical colouring. Whereas such differences were to be expected between Watts's Hymns and his Lyrics, it would be less anticipated that there should have been striking dissimilarities between the aims of the Hymns and of the Psalms of David; yet while that of the Psalms was to add the distinctly evangelical tone to the paraphrases of David's Psalms by frequent mention of Jesus instead of Jehovah as well as by other appeals to the heart, that of the Hymns bore even farther away from Hebraisms by use of only those Psalms which lent themselves easily to the theme of love, or more frequently by employment of passages from the New Testament in loose paraphrase. Even greater freedom characterized Watts's Hymns, especially such pieces as There Is A Land of Pure Delight, where he gilded in a Christian message some reference at least to his own locality. Perhaps Watts's own words describe his Hymns best: ‘… one or more suited to every theme, and subject in divinity.’⁶ Like other hymn writers of his day he felt challenged to do something to change the Christian hymn, acknowledging that the audience, as they sang the usual Psalms at church, showed on their faces a lack of understanding of the lines they sang. Watts seemed willing to incur any amount of scorn to bring about his purpose of clarification of the text of psalmody. He was aware that he might suffer condemnation of church fathers through his desire to substitute Jesus Christ, the Saviour of man, and His sacrifice for mankind for Jehovah and the terms of Israelitish history. Louis F. Benson called Watts ‘fearless’ in his attempts to thwart public opinion. He said:

He appeared in the person of Isaac Watts, a minister among the Independents, of marked gifts, who wore the self confidence of youth like a panoply, and advanced into what he knew would be a fray with full intent of being the aggressor.⁷

Watts labelled his aim as ‘The Grand Design’—a plan by which he hoped to bring back to his country its former ‘Life and Beauty’. He explained: ‘This would make Religion appear like itself, and confound the Blasphemies of a profligate World, ignorant of pious Pleasures.’⁸

Watts clarified his method as one by which he omitted parts of the Scriptures with little bearing upon the life of the masses; as one by which he lowered language, by what he called ‘sunk expression’. By contrast his way of paraphrase for the upper classes was to ‘use words of greater Latitude and Comprehension suited to the general Circumstances of Men’. The actual process of paraphrase of Hymns and of Psalms was in general the same: omission, abridging, transposing, expanding. He explained that Hymns were ‘suited to most common Affairs of Christians’. In other words, he believed they should represent man's natural joys or sorrows. He held:

The most frequent Tempers and Changes of our Spirit, and Conditions of our Life are here copied, and the Breathings of our Piety exprest according to the Variety of our Passions, our Love, our Fear, our Hope, our Desire, our Sorrow, our Wonder, and our Joy, as they are refined into Devotion, and act under the Influence and Conduct of the Blessed Spirit; all conversing with God the Father by the new and living Way of Access to the Throne, even the Person and the Meditation of our Lord Jesus Christ. To him also, even to the Lamb that was slain and now lives, I have address'd many a Song.⁹

He expressly tried to avoid topics of dispute, or those tainted with rancor of party or sect. He aimed at smoothness of verse and sound; at a simplicity which might be called feeble by critics, for it shunned diction ordinarily classed as ‘Beauties of Poesy’. He admitted writing figurative verse at times unintentionally, though his aim was ‘to allay the Verse’. He had written the Psalms for all worshippers, placing the versions for plain people in Common Metre and those for the more educated in Proper or Special Metres, whereas he had written the Hymns for ‘Souls of meaner Capacity’.¹⁰

Watts wrote the Hymns in the four accepted metres of the day, fitting his lines to common tunes. He seldom allowed stops at the midline, reserving them for the ends of lines, so that singing might be more intelligible where a leader read the lines, one by one. Thus the syntax was adapted to the choral practice of the time.

Watts divided the Hymns and Spiritual Songs into three books. The first took the form and the sense from particular Scriptures, or became paraphrases of New Testament doxologies or Old Testament passages alluding to the Messiah. The second comprised songs, more of his own composition, whose sense and matter he hoped might not conflict with Divinity. He believed these more than any others of the book would suit the taste of the more erudite. In the Hymns he admitted himself, more frequently than in other religious compositions, tempted to self-expression, when, as he said, ‘the Light exceeded the Heat’.¹¹ The third book contained hymns and doxologies adapted to the celebration of the Lord's Supper, which above all others he wished to have classified as ‘pious Meditations’ for the ‘Reformation of Psalmody’.

In Watts's prose works, mainly The Improvement of the Mind (1741), A Guide to Prayer (1715), and Logick (1733), it behooves the student of Watts to read what the hymnist said of his own methods of writing religious compositions. Especially in later years he referred to his attempts at improving his writing over his early efforts. He admitted his mistakes in grammar and other literary techniques, and explicated his methods of emendation rather simply: ‘… a few Dashes and Alterations corrected the Mistakes … composed in a thousand leisure Moments.’¹² He categorized men's failure to rectify their errors as ‘Mere Sloth which makes us content ourselves with uncertain Guesses’.¹³ His intention to use only the best of language is revealed in his statement: ‘Fine Language is needed to save the ruin'd and degenerate World.’¹⁴ Watts quoted Addison in A Guide to Prayer, on the value of fine phrase, variety, and conciseness; to both the most natural, facile phrase was most suitable. He deplored hackneyed expression, citing Sternhold and Hopkins as users of the obsolete and inappropriate in hymns. The inconsistency in use of capitals he held to scorn, seeming to advocate a doctrine of being consistent in usage, and including himself in the fault of causing confusion through inconsistencies. Further guide to Watts's purposes in matters of language and style are included in the section (§ 3) on his philological interest.

The Hymn which Watts described as human-made, not a close translation of the biblical source, fully identified in his prefaces to his Hymns and his Psalms of David and more fully analysed in his essay on Psalmody, which accompanied the first edition of the Hymns, gave to the world his conception of proper worshipful expression for modern Christians. Benson praised Watts's plan as one that worked with his generation. He said: ‘It worked. … The hymn of human composure won the place from which it has never been displaced.’¹⁵ Benson held that what Ambrose had been to the Latin, Watts was to the Christian English hymn.

As to the position of Watts in modern hymnology Frederick John Gillman¹⁶ seems to have made a fair estimate. He concluded that there are not over one hundred hymns of the pre-Watts period yet in use, and that not until 1707 did hymn-writing make headway in Great Britain. Another dependable survey by Hemenway and Stuart¹⁷ shows that two-fifths of the hymns in 750 hymn books are those of Isaac Watts; that though Charles Wesley wrote between 7000 and 8000 hymns and Watts only 697, Watts is represented by 191 hymns used by Calvinistic churches, whereas 99 are those of Wesley. As might be expected, however, the Methodist hymnals used only 78 Watts beside 307 Wesley hymns.

The list of what is ordinarily referred to as Watts's immortal hymns seems to include usually Alas! and Did my Saviour Bleed? Am I A Soldier of the Cross? Before Jehovah's Awful Throne, Blest are the Sons of Peace, Come Let Us Join our Cheerful Songs, Come Ye That Love the Lord, Give Me The Wings of Faith to Rise, How Vain Are All Things Here Below, I'll Praise My Maker While I've Breath, Jesus Shall Reign Where'er The Sun, Let Every Tongue Thy Goodness Speak, My God The Spring of All my Joys, There Is A Land of Pure Delight, Unveil Thy Bosom, Faithful Tomb, When I Can Read My Titles Clear, and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.

According to Catherine Herzel, Watts established the Hymn in church services. She said: ‘We might almost say that before Watts, English churches sang Psalms. After Watts, they sang Hymns.’¹⁸

WATTS'S INTEREST IN MATTERS OF PHILOLOGY

The table of changes resulting from the collation of the early editions of Watts's Hymns and Spiritual Songs should indicate something about the semasiological interests of Watts. His extensive revision of complete lines which occurred particularly from the first to the second edition, as well as the hundreds of one-word substitutions or variances in spelling, in capitalization, and in punctuation throughout the sixteen editions seem to extol him as a decided linguist or philologist.

In such works as The Improvement of the Mind Watts often voiced concern in the natural character of the writer, in his purpose, and in the methods or techniques. First, emphasizing the use of source books or lexicons, he urged:

It is necessary that we should be furnished with Vocabularies and Dictionaries of several Sorts, viz. Of common Words, Idioms and Phrases … ; of Technical Words or the Terms of Art … of historical and geographical Dictionaries. … These are to be consulted on every Occasion,¹⁹

holding that, where one could not rise to true expertness as a critic in linguistical matters, he should by all means consult the expert through treatises. He advised:

Every Man who pretends to the Learned Professions, if he doth not rise to be a Critick himself in Philological Matters he should be frequently conversing with those Books, whether Dictionaries, Paraphrasts, Commentators, or the Criticks, who may relieve any Difficulties he meets with.²⁰

The best of texts and source books had come under his observation. He urged writers to consult rhetorical treatises: ‘Those who have a Mind to inform themselves more perfectly of the Genius and composition of our Language, either in the Original Derivation of it, or in the present Use and Practice, must consult such Treatises as are written on the Purpose.’²¹ These authorities of the old standard etymological or syntactical books as also of later revised works were known to Watts. He spoke discriminatingly on dictionaries: ‘The best Dictionary that I know for this purpose is entitled, A New English Dictionary, & c. by J. K. The 2d edition, 1713. In the small octavo.’²² Relative to a paraphrastic treatise he advised:

I know of none equal to that Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, composed by Mr. James Greenwood; wherein he has known the deep Knowledge, without haughty Airs of a Critick; and he is preparing a new Edition, with great Improvements by the friendly Communications of the learned World.²³

He extolled grammarians Clarke and Ruddiman in particular, who could clarify grammatical technicalities to a reader's delight:

The English Accidence doubtless has many faults. But those editions of it which were printed since the Year 1728, under the Correction of a learned Professor, are the best. … Mr. Clarke of Hull has said enough in a few Pages of the Preface to his new Grammar (1723) to make that Practice very irrational and improper.²⁴

Watts saw no ill effects if a writer had to admit the use of aids in composition. He confessed himself no expert in the field of writing, advising that literary composition as a science was not his ‘profest Business’. The greatest of the great in the four fields of thought, he held, were users of aids in compositional workmanship, and such he regarded he might safely follow as examples:

Now, if I had a mind to flatter my Ambition, I would call in several Great Names to answer for me. Shall those renowned Divines and Mathematicians, Bishop Wilkins, and Dr. Wallis; shall Milton, that noblest of Poets, and Ray, that pious Philosopher, busy themselves in Grammars, and Dictionaries, and Nomenclatures, and employ their Meditations on Words and Syllables, and that without sinking their Character? Then surely I may tread in their Steps, and imitate such Patterns, without Disgrace?²⁵

His excuse for deficient knowledge among the English was the polylingual history of their language whereby it had taken on irregularities for which no rules might hold in all cases. He maintained:

I have by no means aim'd at Perfection, and shall not at all be disappointed when the World tells me I have not attained the Impossible. The English Tongue being composed out of many Languages, enjoys indeed a Variety of their Beauties; but by this Means it becomes also so exceeding irregular, that no perfect Account of it can be given in certain Rules.²⁶

His day he characterized as one when spellings were uncertain due to French influence; therefore, the learned were prone to carelessness and indifference; and etymological matters, indefinite and uncertain even for the researcher.

Watts, however, cited among the needs of a good writer the knowledge of philology, each of the four phases of which he dealt with directly in his prose discussions on logic. First, he urged the study of composition and rhetoric, holding rhetorical ability as indispensable to the writer, ‘whose Sentiments are most proper and just, his Explications clear, and his Reasoning strong, and all Parts of the Discourse … well connected, and set in a happy Light’.²⁷ Citing the difficulties of producing a work that was a piece throughout, he used as an example the brilliant odes of Casimire or the almost faultless epic of Milton, urging writers to attempt varying types of expression for diverse themes or ends. He said:

… a wise and judicious Writer directs his Expression generally toward his designed End … he treats of it distinctly and professedly …, in mystical or metaphorical Terms …, in plain and literal …, in an oratorical, affecting or persuasive Way, or a doctrinal, instructive Way,²⁸

and reasoned that ‘… where a Subject is grand, the Poet fails not to represent it in all its Grandeur’.²⁹ Writing poetry called for an intricate search for words, as he no doubt experienced through his composition of the Hymns, and in his further revisions of them. For such an exploring, that meant time-consuming consultation of word studies, especially of ‘synonyms’ and ‘metonyms’, he proposed:

He that writes well in Verse will find a Necessity to send his Thoughts in search through all the Treatises of Words that express any one Idea in the same Language, that so he may comport with his own most beautiful and vivid Sentiments of the Thing he describes.³⁰

Such care in diction built rhetorical skill. He viewed good rhetoric as meaning to achieve exactness, beauty, and force, holding that, if it were plain reasoning, the sense must be expressed with clarity, intelligence, and simplicity; and that if vivacity, spirit, affection, and power were sought, the ideas would flow through figurative language.³¹ The careful writer he thus admonished: ‘Do not content yourselves with obscure and confused Ideas, where the clear are to be obtained.’³²

Other phases of philology discussed by Watts and pursued by him throughout his composition and revision of the Hymns were derivations and spelling, or etymology. Though he believed that spelling could never become exceedingly perfect, he strove hard to aid his countrymen to achieve greater excellency in their word concepts. In his textbook on writing and reading he amply treated the matter of poor concepts of words among the English people, deploring the wretched practices among the majority of the unlearned as the possible result of ignorance of vowels, consonants, and diphthongs along with phonetical inabilities. The grossest weakness he cited as that of being ‘utter Strangers to the Derivation of Words from foreign Languages’.³³ Such persons were incapacitated for spelling by any of the three processes common in the early eighteenth century: by custom, by sound, and by derivation. He begged indulgence of critics for his readers' spelling by the first two methods rather than by the ‘Etymological and Learned Way’.³⁴ Also, he condoned his readers for spelling two ways many words of the same derivation, citing words like advice—advise and practice—practise as varying if used as noun or verb; or precious and ancient as equally correct with ‘c’ or ‘t’. He cleared the less learned for involved spellings when the critics themselves wrangled on the subject. He did not consider such arguments worthwhile, and labelled spelling by custom as ‘Sovereign over all’.³⁵ He urged: ‘I'll never contest the Business of Spelling with any Man.’ Perhaps the feeling about the impossibility of rectifying the matter of spelling among his countrymen accounted for his varied spellings of words throughout the several early editions of the Hymns. Watts was not eager to make too significant the matter of tracing derivations of English words through their numerous relations; he advised against showing ‘critical Learning’ while delving into the sense, or spreading out the ‘Etymology of Terms, the synonymous and paranymous … Names.’³⁶ Despite some argument that the spelling and punctuation of eighteenth century printed matter depended entirely upon the printer, there would hardly seem justification for such argument when it pertains to one so deeply sensitive to such matters as Watts, whose textbooks on reading, writing, and spelling together with his Logick and Improvement of the Mind were so thoroughly accepted and respected that they were used in academies or in Cambridge and Oxford respectively for over one hundred years.³⁷ Watts's fervent interest in such matters indicates a great concern in philological phases of his Hymns.

Watts provided numerous tables of words with multiple spellings in his day. Only those used frequently in his Hymns are here quoted:

TABLES VI-IX

1.	ak-ache
2.	busie, bizzy-busy
3.	Caesar-Casar
4.	chear-cheer
5.	choir-quire
6.	choose-chuse
7.	cloth-cloath
8.	clothe-cloathe
9.	compleat-complete
10.	connexion-connection
11.	counsellor, -our-councellor, -our
12.	countrey-country
13.	desart-desert
14.	economy-oeconomy
15.	Emanuel-Immanuel
16.	extream-extreme
17.	foreign-forreign
18.	goodnesse-goodness
19.	gulf-gulph
20.	houshold-household
21.	lanch-launch
22.	leasure-leisure
23.	landscape-landskip
24.	meer-mere
25.	murder-murther
26.	murderer-murtherer
27.	persuade-perswade
28.	persue-pursue
29.	profane-prophane
30.	public-publick, music-ick
31.	shew-show
32.	sonne-sunne
33.	Sion-Zion
34.	steady-steddy
35.	strait-straight
36.	soldier-souldier
37.	sovereign-soverain, sov'reign-sov'raign
38.	subtil-subtle
39.	vail-veil
40.	vertue-virtue
41.	waist-waste
42.	wrack-wreck38

Grammar was itself a subject which Watts thought the writer should include in the corps of writing techniques. He explained that grammar included spelling, and more. To him it was distinctly a different thing from mere knowledge of language for speaking, though it embraced correct speaking and pronunciation as well as writing with propriety. He urged writers when seeking the ‘naked Truth … to use plain and proper Words’.³⁹ All ambiguities and equivocal terms, he thought, should be avoided, all tautology and useless repetitions. Whereas Watts indicated that at times the writer needs to attempt elegant phrase, rhetorically effective, at others he must seek explicitly plain, concise diction. All letters omitted in speaking, he held, were necessary in good writing, making for added correctness. In his work, The Art of Reading and Writing, he inserted complete rules of etymology and syntax. As for regulations for use of capitals he indicated that all the names of God were to begin with a great letter; as, Lord, Eternal, Almighty, Holy Spirit, and I AM THAT I AM. The growing custom of writing all noun-substantives with capitals was irksome to Watts. In sentence structure he believed that too many thoughts and ideas were crowded into one sentence or paragraph. Long parentheses in sentences he would avoid as distracting to clear thought. Rules for the comma included the concept of the use of a pause of certain length, with the warning: ‘… be sure to make no Stop where the Sense admits of none.’⁴⁰ The comma should stand ‘betwixt all the lesser Parts of the same Sentence while we can tell two as, “Neither Death, nor Life, nor Angels, nor Powers”’;⁴¹ the semicolon, to go between the ‘bigger Parts of the same Sentence to count three’; the colon, to divide ‘two or more Sentences that belong to the same Sense’, that have ‘proper connections with one another, [and] requiring a pause longer than the semicolon’.⁴²

Watts dispelled the fourth principle of philology with only a few statements on the nearly impossible search for linguistical history of words in etymological study, since the English language had suffered numerous inroads of foreign words and successive translations which too often obscured their derivations. Holding to the third of the four-fold definition, the art of criticism, as a much needed art of the writer, he considered it as the ability or skill to judge well what relates to a subject and to explicate the obscure, to supply the defective element, to amend the erroneous in manuscripts or ancient copes, and to correct the mistakes of authors or editors in the sense of the words. In securing the critical faculty, an author needed to associate with all the source books named in the early portion of this section. He classified philologists as (1) users of sources for their own good and (2) the critics. One should do all possible in the field; especially he should become acquainted with opinions of authorities, in matters of composition, to help himself, even if he were not capable of ‘spread[ing] a juster Knowledge of these Things among the inquisitive Part of Mankind’.⁴³ It was evidently this concern which caused Watts to revise his Hymns, especially the second edition. Though Watts was only a youth of twenty-two or -three⁴⁴ when he wrote most of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, he demonstrated himself as one of semantical and philological interests. Watts the sixty-seven-year-old philosopher in 1741 found time and concern in summarizing and theorizing on the art of writing, providing over the span of some thirteen years, more and more concise ideas on the characteristics of the most capable writer.

The true Watts appears to have reached into many sources for neater phrase in his Hymns; to have simplified meanings for the more lowly intelligence by numerous verbal substitutions; to have used ‘sunk Expression’, to have come from the more vague and dignified phrase to the more highly individualized term; as, from ‘upon their Brow’ to ‘as Summer Evenings be’; from ‘happy Skies’ to ‘Worlds of Light’; and from ‘climb the Skies’ to ‘close our Eyes’. Watts, in the face of the critics, arrived at conclusions about matters of technique in writing and was unafraid to assert them plainly to the world.

‘But after all, Custom, which will be the Standard of Language, has rendered both these Methods tolerable, at least to the Unlearned.’⁴⁵ He saw the influence of the common mind, which he called the vulgar or the unlearned, as the shaping influence in matters of language and form of writing in the future, a situation accounting evidently for the multiple changes in his Hymns.

Notes

1. ‘George Buchanan (1506-1582) … was immured in a monastery for some months. … He occupied himself with translating the Psalms into Latin.’ Dictionary of National Biography, VII, 188-9.

2. ‘Arthur Johnston, M.D. (1587-1641): … writer of Latin verse … effective rival in poetic fame to George Buchanan … metrical Latin Psalter, on which his reputation chiefly rests.’ Ibid., X, 946-7.

3. Watts, Improvement of the Mind (London, 1741), p. 115.

4. Ibid., p. 114.

5. ‘… the Doctor thought it best, as he himself informed me, to send his Lyric Poems first … if these were accepted with mankind they would be in a favourable disposition to receive his Hymns.’ Thomas Gibbons, Memoirs of Isaac Watts (London, 1780), p. 255.

6. Ibid.

7. Benson, The Hymnody of the Christian Church (New York, 1926), p. 2.

8. Horae Lyricae (London, 1731), xx.

9. Psalms of David (London, 1719), xvii.

10. Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1725), ix.

11. Ibid., xi.

12. Mind, viii.

13. Ibid., 117.

14. Ibid., 354.

15. Benson, Early Editions of the Hymns (Philadelphia, 1902), p. 93.

16. Gillman, Evolution of the Hymn (London, 1927), p. 28.

17. Hemenway and Stuart, Gospel Singers … (New York, 1891), pp. 104-10.

18. Herzel, To Thee We Sing (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 142.

19. Improvement of the Mind (London, 1741), p. 76.

20. Ibid., p. 361.

21. Op. cit., x.

22. The Art of … English, 81.

23. Mind, xxviii.

24. Ibid., 106.

25. The Art of Reading and Writing, p. viii.

26. Ibid., p. xvi.

27. Improvement of the Mind, p. 106.

28. Ibid., p. 121.

29. Ibid., p. 222.

30. Ibid., pp. 356-7.

31. Logick (London, 1734), p. 66.

32. Ibid., p. 80.

33. The Art of Reading and Writing, p. xvi.

34. The Art, xvi.

35. Ibid., xxvi.

36. Logick, 357.

37. See G. G. Cunningham, Lives (Glasgow, 1836), IV, ii, 293; Evelyn P. Hope, ‘Isaac Watts’, Fortnightly, CLXX (December 1, 1948), 405-6; Walter Wilson, History of Dissenting Churches (London: W. Button & Son, 1806), p. 506.

38. The Art of Reading and Writing, pp. 93 f.

39. Logick, p. 66.

40. The Art of Reading and Writing, p. 47.

41. Ibid., p. 36.

42. Ibid., pp. 36-7.

43. Improvement of the Mind, p. 357.

44. Gibbons, Memoirs, 253-4: ‘… the years 1695 and 1696. During this period he composed his hymns, at least a great part of them.’

45. The Art of Reading and Writing, p. 92.

Bibliography

Texts

WATTS, ISAAC, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in Three Books, London, By J. Humfreys for John Lawrence, 1707.

Other Works of Watts Consulted, Prose and Poetry

The Art of Reading and Writing English: Or, the Chief Principles and Rules of Pronouncing our Mother-Tongue, both in Prose and Verse; with a Variety of Instructions for True Spelling, Written as First for Private Use and now Published for the Benefit of all Persons who desire a better Acquaintance with Their Native Language, Printed for Emanuel Matthews Richard Ford and Richard Hett, London, 1734.

Horae Lyricae, Poems Chiefly Lyrical, In Three Books, Sixth edition, London, Printed for Richard Hett, mdccxxxi.

The Improvement of the Mind: Or, A Supplement to the Art of Logick, London, Printed for James Brackstone, mdccxli.

Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, Fifth edition, London, Printed for Emanuel Matthews … Richard Ford … and Richard Hett, mdccxxxiii.

The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, London, Printed for J. Clark, R. Ford and R. Cruttenden, 1719.