Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/57

 THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 45

His Logic was once a famous book, and his Catechisms, Scripture History, and other works, were used largely in the training of the young. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, and a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey. It is said that his income never exceeded ^100 a year, of which he spent a third in charity.

Dr. Watts was not much above five feet in height, but Dr. Johnson says the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. He was a master in the art of pronunciation, and had wonderful flow of thoughts and promptitude of language. Johnson s praise halts when he approaches the hymns. His devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of his topics enforces per petual 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.

His Horae Lyricae appeared in 1706 ; Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707 ; Divine and Moral Songs for the Use of Children, prepared for Lady Abney s three little daughters, 1715 ; Psalms of David, 1719.

James Montgomery called him the inventor of hymns in our language. The extreme poverty of hymns at that time ensured his work marvellous popularity. He docs not always rise to the height of his task, but he wrote for ordinary people. The meta phors are generally sunk to the level of vulgar capacities. If the verse appears so gentle and flowing as to incur the censure of feebleness, I may honestly affirm that it sometimes cost me labour to make it so. Some of the beauties of poesy are neglected, and some wilfully defaced, lest a more exalted turn of thought or language should darken or disturb the devotions of the weakest souls.

4 Few have left such a solid contribution to our best hymns as Isaac Watts, and no one has so deeply impressed himself on their structure. His advance beyond his predecessors shows the service he rendered to sacred song. His faults are bombast and doggerel. Turgid epithets and tawdry orna ments were the fashion of the time ; and they probably adver tised his hymns in literary circles, as they did in a parallel case, that of the New Version? His hymns have a unity and sense of proportion which were lacking in earlier hymns. This arose partly from the slow singing of the day, and the preacher s habit of condensing into a hymn, given out at

�� �