In midst of dangers, fears, and deaths, And praise thee for thy mercies past, My life, if thou preserv'st my life, And death, if death must be my lot, ISAAC WATTS. Born 1674-Died 1748. WATTS was taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at an early age, at the free school at Southampton, his native place. His proficiency was so great, that it was proposed to send him to the University; but he resolved to take his lot with the dissenters. "Such he was," says Dr. Johnson, “as every Christian church would rejoice to have adopted." His education was therefore completed at an academy. He declares that he was a maker of verses from fifteen to forty. He began to preach in his twenty-fourth year, being chosen assistant to Dr. Chauncey in Southampton, whom he afterwards succeeded. In 1712, he was attacked by a fever of such length and violence, that he never entirely recovered from the weakness to which it reduced him. In this state he found in Sir Thomas. Abney a friend, such as is not often to be met with. That gentleman received him into his own house, where he remained an inmate of the family for thirtysix years, and was uniformly treated with the most unalterable friendship, kindness, and attentive respect. He continued the associate pastor of his congregation through life; for when, from the infirmities of age having become unable to perform the public duties of his office, he offered to remit the salary connected with it, his people affectionately refused to accept his resignation. In this calm and pious retreat, where every thing contributed to sooth his feelings and promote his restoration to health, he composed most of his voluminous and valuable works. And here he died, after a long life of the most devoted piety and extensive usefulness. "By his natural temper," says Dr. Johnson, "he was quick of resentment; but 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 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. With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure." Dr. Doddridge has likewise artlessly described the character and pursuits of his venerated friend, in an affectionate dedication to him of his "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul." Amidst many things that were unnatural, or trite, Watts has displayed a very vivid imagination, and produced some of the most suitable devotional lyrics in the English language. His poetry is always religiously pure, and some of its shorter strains burn with the chastened sublimity of his pious emotions, expressed in language which could hardly have been rendered more appropriately beautiful. Considered as the work of one mind, his volume of Psalms and Hymns is a remarkable production, and if the best of its contents were selected and published together, such a book would alone entitle him to a high rank among the British poets. His hymns for infant minds display, likewise, a true poetical genius. Had he made poetry the business of his life, his success would doubtless have been eminent; it was only his relaxation. "He is one of the few poets," says Johnson, "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 copy his benevolence to man and his reverence to God." THE DANGERS OF LIFE AND THE PLEASURES OF IMMOR TALITY. Every grief we feel, Shortens the destin'd number: every pulse Bears a sharp moment of the pain away, And the last stroke will come. By swift degrees That ends this mortal story! But if a glimpse of light, with flattering ray, Break through the clouds of life; or wandering fire To bogs, and fens, and pits, and certain death. Too long allure your gaze, nor tempt your thoughts Claim kindred with the skies, nor mix with dust O, there are gardens of the immortal kind, That crown the heavenly Eden's rising hills It guides the way unerring. Happy clue Through this dark wild! 'T was wisdom's noblest work, All join'd by power divine, and every link is love. THE PROSPECT OF HEAVEN. THERE is a land of pure delight, There everlasting spring abides, Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between. But timorous mortals start and shrink O could we make our doubts remove,- Could we but climb where Moses stood, Not Jordan's stream nor death's cold flood It is needless to multiply quotations from a book so familiarly known and so constantly used in public, social, and private worship, as the Psalms and Hymns of Watts. Though unequal, they are sometimes eminently beautiful. Let us take for example of their happiest and frequent excellence, the following stanza. Pure are the joys above the sky, And all the region peace; EDWARD YOUNG. Born 1681-Died 1765. THE father of Young was a pious and honored clergyman in the Church of England. The poet was educated principally at Oxford University, where he obtained a fellowship in law. In this profession he never practised, but seems to have made poetry his chief employment, till in 1728 he entered into orders, and was appointed chaplain to the king. In 1730 he was presented to a rectory of three hundred pounds, and in the year following married the lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the earl of Litchfield. This lady died in 1741, in which year he commenced his Night Thoughts. In the early part of his life, Young is said to have been ambitious and profligate; but it is remarkable that his earliest poetry is of the most serious cast, and the following anecdote is related of his conversation. The infidel, Tindal, used to spend much of his time at the college where Young resided. "The other boys," said the atheist, "I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow, Young, is continually pestering me with something of his own." As a clergyman, he was distinguished for his piety and eloquence. His turn of mind was solemn, and his conversation, as well as his writings, all had reference to a future state. Yet he seems always to have been greatly addicted to flattery, and he did not cease to seek for preferment, even till his death. As a poet, he possessed a very strong and sublime imagination, unaccompanied to an equal degree by delicacy of judgment or refinement of taste. Hence his poems, while they contain a great number of noble and powerful passages, abound likewise in false and meretricious ornament, unnatural thoughts, harsh expressions, and laboured conceits. The felicity and splendour of his conceptions is continually interrupted with false wit and antithesis. If at one moment he speaks from the heart, at the next his thoughts are evidently produced by a strained and exaggerated fancy. "He has been well described in a late poem," says Campbell," as one in whom 'Still gleams and still expires the cloudy day Of genuine poetry.' The reader most sensitive to his faults must have felt, that there is in him a spark of originality which is never long extinguished, however far it may be from vivifying the entire mass of his poetry. Many and exquisite are his touches of sublime expression, of profound reflection, and of striking imagery. It is recalling but a few of these, to allude to his description, in the eighth book, of the man, whose thoughts are not of this world; to his simile of the traveller, at the opening of the ninth book, to his spectre of the antediluvian world, and to some parts of his very unequal description of the conflagration; above all, to that noble and familiar image, When final ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o'er creation." It is true, that he seldom, if ever, maintains a flight of poetry long free from oblique associations, but he has individual passages, which Philosophy might make her texts, and Experience select for her mottos." The moral influence of his poetry is excellent in the highest degree. No person can arise from the perusal of his Night Thoughts, without feeling more deeply the value of time, the awful solemnity of death, and the unspeakable importance of a preparation for eternity. REFLECTIONS AT MIDNIGHT. THE bell strikes One. We take no note of time Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke I feel the solenın sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours. Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. How much is to be done! My hopes and fears |