Isaac Watts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Isaac Watts.

Isaac Watts (July 17, 1674 – November 25, 1748) is recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", as he was the first prolific and popular English hymnwriter, credited with some 750 hymns. Many of his hymns remain in active use today and have been translated into many languages.

1 Life
2 Cultural impact
3 Other works
4 Memorials
5 List of hymns
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Life

Statue of Isaac Watts in Southampton.

Born in Southampton, Watts was brought up in the home of a committed Nonconformist — his father had been incarcerated twice for his controversial views. At his local school he learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew and displayed a propensity for rhyme at home, driving his parents to the point of distraction on many occasions with his verse. Once, he had to explain how he came to have his eyes open during prayers.

"A little mouse for want of stairs

ran up a rope to say its prayers."

Receiving corporal punishment for this, he cried

"O father, do some pity take

And I will no more verses make."

Watts, unable to go to either Oxford or Cambridge due to his Nonconformity, went to the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington in 1690.

His education led him to the pastorate of a large Independent Chapel in London, and he also found himself in the position of helping trainee preachers, despite poor health. Taking work as a private tutor, he lived with the nonconformist Hartopp family at Fleetwood House, Abney Park in Stoke Newington, and later became part of the household of Sir Thomas Abney at Theobalds in Hertfordshire whose children he taught. Though a nonconformist, Sir Thomas practiced occasional conformity to the Church of England as necessitated by his being Lord Mayor of London 1700–01. Likewise Isaac Watts held religious opinions that were more nondenominational or ecumenical than was at that time common for a nonconformist; having a greater interest in promoting education and scholarship, than preaching for any particular ministry.

On the death of Sir Thomas Abney, Watts moved permanently with Lady Mary Abney and her remaining daughter to their second home, Abney House, at Abney Park in Stoke Newington, a property that Lady Mary had inherited from her brother along with title to the Manor itself. The beautiful grounds at Abney Park, which became Watts' permanent home from 1736 to 1748, led down to an island heronry in the Hackney Brook where Watts sought inspiration for the many books and hymns written during these two decades. He died there in Stoke Newington and was buried in Bunhill Fields, having left behind him a massive legacy, not only of hymns, but also of treatises, educational works, essays and the like. Watts' papers were given to Yale University; an institution with which he was connected due to its being founded predominantly by fellow Independents (Congregationalists).

One of his best known poems was an exhortation "Against Idleness And Mischief" in Divine Songs for Children :

How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour,

And gather honey all the day

From every opening flower!

How skillfully she builds her cell!

How neat she spreads the wax!

And labours hard to store it well

With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labour or of skill,

I would be busy too;

For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,

Let my first years be passed,

That I may give for every day

Some good account at last

[edit] Cultural impact

The preceding poem was famously parodied by Lewis Carroll in his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in a poem that is now better known than the original:

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in,

With gently smiling jaws!

In the 1884 comic opera called Princess Ida, there is a punning reference to Watts in Act I. At Princess Ida's women's university no males of any kind are allowed, and the Princess's father, King Gama, relates that "She'll scarcely suffer Dr. Watt's 'hymns'".

[edit] Other works

Besides being a great hymn-writer, Isaac Watts was also a renowned theologian and logician, writing many books on these subjects. One such text on logic was particularly popular; its full title was, Logick: or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences. This book , the Logick, was first published in 1724, and its popularity and sales success ensured that it went through twenty editions. The Logick was a textbook which followed the Aristotelian and scholastic traditions in logic, (for which, see the Organon, the logical works of Aristotle collected and edited by Porphyry), although the influence of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is also evident in the work. Isaac Watts' Logick became the standard text on logic at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale; being used at Oxford for well over 100 years. Isaac Watts' writing style, his thorough acquaintance with logic as it was conceived during his time, and his personal conception of the subject, mean that the text has historical value, and remains of interest to the student of Aristotelian logic.

The Logick was followed in 1741 by a supplement, The Improvement of the Mind, which itself went through numerous editions and later inspired Michael Faraday.

[edit] Memorials

Isaac Watts' tomb in Bunhill Fields.

London's only public statue to Isaac Watts is in Abney Park, Stoke Newington.

The earliest surviving built memorial to Isaac Watts is at Westminster Abbey; this was completed shortly after his death. His much-visited chest tomb, in its photogenic setting at Bunhill Fields, dates from 1808, replacing the original that had been paid for and erected by Lady Mary Abney and the Hartopp family. In addition a stone bust of Watts can be seen in the non-conformist library Dr Williams's Library in central London. The earliest public statue stands at Abney Park, where he lived and died before it became a cemetery and arboretum; a later, rather similar statue, was funded by public subscription for a new Victorian public park in the city of his birth, Southampton. In the mid nineteenth century a Congregational Hall, the Dr Watts Memorial Hall, was also built in Southampton, though after the Second World War it was lost to redevelopment.

One of the earliest built memorials may also now be lost: a bust to Watts that was commissioned on his death for the London chapel with which he was associated. The chapel was demolished in the late eighteenth century; remaining parts of the memorial were rescued at the last minute by a wealthy landowner for installation in his chapel near Liverpool. It is unclear whether it still survives.

The stone statue in front of the Abney Park Chapel at Dr Watts' Walk, Abney Park Cemetery, was erected in 1845 by public subscription. It was designed by the leading British sculptor, Edward Hodges Baily RA FRS. A scheme for a commemorative statue on this spot had first been promoted in the late 1830s by George Collison, who in 1840 published an engraving as the frontispiece of his book about cemetery design in Europe and America; and at Abney Park Cemetery in particular. This first cenotaph proposal was never commissioned, and Baily's later design was adopted in 1845.