In attempting any estimate of the prose writings of Watts we give the first place to his educational works. And without descending to adulation it may be fairly questioned whether any one individual in English literature has effected so much and such various work for the cause of education as Isaac Watts. As we have seen, he gave a system of logic to the universities, a very simple system, but it broke up the old trammels and chains of mere verbal logic, and taught students to look after, and how to look at things. Johnson says: “Of his philosophical pieces his ‘Logic’ has been received into the universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation. If he owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man who undertakes merely to methodize or illustrate a system pretends to be its author. Few books,” continues Johnson, “have been perused by me with greater pleasure 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 magnified 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 deficiency in his duty if this book is not recommended.” And in another paragraph of his memoir Johnson says: “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 in 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.”
There is, indeed, scarcely a department of knowledge, however simple, to which he did not descend; there is scarcely a region of thought, however subtle, through which he did not familiarly move. We have a volume on the “Art of Reading, Writing, and Pronouncing English,” this is for the very youngest students; and for the same age we have his First and Second Catechisms, and his “Divine and Moral Songs;” we have his work on “Astronomy, Geography, and the Use of the Globes,” and the “Compendium of the Assembly’s Catechism, with Proofs,” and his most charming and rememberable “Catechism of Scripture History,” a large and yet most compendious volume: and thus we reach the period of life when he prepares the mind for its graver studies and more serious exploits.
The “Logic” is easy and delightful reading, and yet sets in order, disciplines, marshals, and reviews mental materials so admirably that it may be read with great profit as well as pleasure. When Lord Barrington told Watts that he had a purpose to read it through once every year, he said no extravagant thing. It brings the mind back to its simplicity; it is not, and does not profess to be, a science of mind or analysis of method, or the laws of thought, but it is a treatise on logic, understanding by that term not so much the pushing inquiry into unexplored domains and fields, as the setting forth the grammar of thought, the principles of numeration, by which a knowledge of the contents of the mind may be obtained, which is surely the true idea of logic. The affluence of illustrations and references is very great, these occur easily and rapidly, they are gathered up as a reaper gathers up a sheaf. In its method it reminds us somewhat of Bacon’s “Novum Organum,” for in every chapter, and every discrimination, illustration, and distinction, occur instances unfolding the intention of the author, and we venture to think that no logic has appeared since so well calculated to make a clear and honest mind. The characteristics of the “Logic” of Watts are very admirably summed up by Tissot, of Dijon, in his preface to a translation published in Paris, 1848: “II y a aussi plus de méthode et de clarté peut-être dans la logique de Watts que dans celle d’Arnaud. Le bon sens Anglais, le sens des affaires, celui de la vie pratique, s’y révèle à un très haut degré, tandis que le sens spéculatif d’un théologien passablement scolastique encore est plus sensible dans l’Art de Penser. Dr. Watts a su être complet; sans être excessif, il a touché très convenablement tout ce qui devait l’être, et s’est toujours arrêté au point précis où plus de profondeur nuit a la clarté.”[47]
As the “Logic” is a methodical and orderly arrangement of those principles which give conduct to the understanding, as we have called it a grammar rather than an etymology of the laws of thought, a setting forth of their necessary conditions of thinking, rather than an inquiry into their first principles, so his “Improvement of the Mind” is an advance in the education of the character. The “Logic” is a code of principles, the “Improvement of the Mind” the illustration of those principles in their practice and action. No book can be better fitted to strengthen and direct the mind in the first years of mind-life. Is it ever read now? Is there an edition of it in circulation now? Are there many youths who would have patience to read it now? And yet no work has taken its place. It also, like the “Logic,” is fertile in illustrations of all that the author desires to convey; every means by which the mind can be enlarged or strengthened is dwelt upon; here there seems to be no unnecessary diffuseness, but a compact presentation. The style is apothegmatical, and rather colloquial than rhetorical, and it leaves upon the mind of the reader the impression of a large world of wealth in the mind of the author of which its pages are the mere fragments and indications. There is a wisdom which rules men’s lives and acts in their minds unconsciously, and ages and times vary in the method pursued for the attainment of knowledge. Perhaps, in the times in which we live the method is very much out of sight, and men become wise in spite of themselves, the faculties of character are sharpened and made intense by friction. It may also be said that character is not so much the result of certain rules laid down for practice, as the inevitable pressure of certain conditions from which it cannot well escape; life educates men more than books, and the sharp collision of society and its rough usages more than rules derived from writers. All this is true; but still some men continue to preach, and others continue to hear, it is to be supposed under the impression that the preaching and the hearing are not altogether in vain; and it is a very desirable thing frequently to draw out into the light certain principles, to give to minds, so to speak, a pictorial resemblance of the idea.
It is so in the “Improvement of the Mind,” the very subjects are suggestive: general rules to obtain knowledge,—the five methods of improvement compared—rules relating to observation—books and reading—judgment of books—living instruction by teachers—learning a language—of knowing the sense of writers and speakers—conversation—of disputes in general—the Socratical way of disputation—forensic disputes—academic or scholastic disputes—study or meditation—of fixing the attention—of enlarging the capacity of the mind—of improving the memory—of determining questions—of inquiring into causes and effects—of the sciences and their use. Then follows the second part, which was posthumous; hitherto the mind has been supposed to be attaining, now it is itself communicating, and here are discussions on methods of teaching and reading lectures—of an instructive style—of convincing of truth or delivering from error—of the use and abuse of authority—of managing the prejudices of men—of instruction by preaching—of writing books for the public, etc. etc. And beneath all these subjects is spread out a mass of wise and useful observations, the result, the reader thinks, of a life of earnest and careful study. A wise and candid judgment pervades every page. A confidence in the writer as in one who is not writing merely, but who is giving to the reader a portion of himself, grows in the mind. Watts was himself an exceedingly careful student. We have seen how his practice was to condense or to amplify the volumes or the pages he himself read. He recommended this plan to be followed with the nobler pieces of composition, and such as it seemed desirable to make the heirlooms of the mind.
We have now lying before us the “Ecclesiastics” of John Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester. The volume bears every internal evidence of being the property of Dr. Watts: it is interleaved, and in addition to the varied and singular learning of the book itself, in the handwriting of the Doctor there is a perfect storehouse of references, exhibiting the amazing world of knowledge over which his mind travelled; and not merely references, but frequently some condensed expression of sentiment and opinion. We ought to refer to this very valuable little manuscript volume again. It often seems surprising that volumes such as these have fallen into such neglect; but they only share the fate of multitudes of others in various departments equally worthy. The number of those who gaze upon the true regalia of literature is very small; our times delight in startling contrasts, antitheses and paradoxes, and illustrations frequently rather remarkable for their brilliancy than for their solid and abiding persuasiveness. The literature of every time has its vices and its virtues; writers even exercising a far stronger fascination and spell over their day than Watts are very seldom referred to now, they are names and little more. They are like extinct creations of other times, a kind of dodo, a being very near to our own day, but yet only known by a specimen preserved in a museum. Thus probably the two works to which we have referred will have few more readers. Yet safer and wiser charts for travelling the seas of knowledge were never prepared, and while they breathe a fine mental independence, a freshness wafted from undiscovered realms, they are eminently free from all that rashness and audacity of speculation which some have chosen to regard as a pursuit of knowledge, or as adding to the spoils of the understanding. He kept his students within the bounds of the knowable and provable, and if he trampled upon the ridiculous logic which had for years held the mind of Europe in chains, by the fetters of words which had no kind of sense either in the heavens or the earth, and resolutely determining that words could only be valuable when they were the real signs of things, and things of which something could be known; on the other hand, he gave no encouragement to licentiousness of thought, which is as dangerous to the well-being of the intelligence as the servility of opinion. So that, on the whole, whatever advances and attainments we have made since, we may believe that for the discipline and tutelage of the young, a better finger-post could scarcely be set up upon the highways of knowledge than Watts’ “Logic;” a better and more living guide a young man can scarcely have through the cities of instruction than his “Improvement of the Mind.”
Among the pieces of our author which are least known are the essays variously published under the title of “Reliquiæ Juveniles; Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse, on Natural, Moral, and Divine Subjects, written chiefly in younger years.” These were published in 1734, and dedicated to the Countess of Hertford. A similar volume is the “Remnants of Time Employed in Prose and Verse; or, Short Essays and Composures on Various Subjects.” All of these are very pleasing essays, in which the writer gives a more than ordinary rein to his fancy: the pieces are in prose and verse, and they display a considerable amount of humour; the subjects are very various, and display the purely literary excursions of the author’s mind. The reader will be so far interested as to enjoy some few selections. To dwell at length upon the characteristics of the essays, or to indulge in any lengthy citation, would be like writing a dissertation upon Johnson’s “Rambler,” or Addison’s “Spectator;” indeed, there is very much of the Christian Rambler and the Christian Spectator in these papers: brief essays on manners, on certain vices or defects of character, conveyed after the usage of the time beneath names sheltered under a Greek or Latin etymology; sometimes a graceful meditation upon a text of Scripture, and sometimes a poem. We have ourselves found these essays always fresh and interesting, possessing much of the spirit and vivacity and philosophical meditativeness of Cowley, with a perpetual suffusion of Christian sentiment and doctrine, and the whole exhibiting the vigilance of the author’s eye, and the active usefulness of his mind.
THE SKELETON.
“Young Tramarinus was just returned from his travels abroad, when he invited his uncle to his lodgings on a Saturday noon. His uncle was a substantial trader in the City, a man of sincere goodness, and of no contemptible understanding; Crato was his name. The nephew first entertained him with learned talk of his travels. The conversation happening to fall upon anatomy, and speaking of the hand, he mentioned the carpus and the metacarpus, the joining of the bones by many hard names, and the periosteum which covered them, together with other Greek words, which Crato had never heard of. Then he showed him a few curiosities he had collected; but anatomy being the subject of their chief discourse, he dwelt much upon the skeletons of a hare and a partridge. ‘Observe, sir,’ said he, ‘how firm the joints! how nicely the parts are fitted to each other! how proper this limb for flight, and that for running; and how wonderful the whole composition!’ Crato took due notice of the most considerable parts of those animals, and observed the chief remarks his nephew made; but being detained there two hours without a dinner, assuming a pleasant air, he said, ‘I wish these rarities had flesh upon them, for I begin to be hungry, nephew, and you entertain me with nothing but bones.’ Then he carried home his nephew to dinner with him, and dismissed the jest.
“The next morning his kinsman Tramarinus desired him to hear a sermon at such a church, ‘For I am informed,’ said he, ‘the preacher will be my old schoolmaster.’ It was Agrotes, a country minister, who was to fulfil the service of the day; an honest, a pious, and a useful man, who fed his own people weekly with Divine food, composed his sermons with a mixture of the instructive and the pathetic, and delivered them with no improper elocution. Where any difficulty appeared in the text or the subject, he usually explained it in a very natural and easy manner, to the understanding of all his parishioners. He paraphrased on the most affecting parts largely, that he might strike the conscience of every hearer, and had been the happy means of the salvation of many; but he thought thus with himself, ‘When I preach at London I have hearers of a wiser rank, I must feed them with learning and substantial sense, and must have my discourse set thick with distinct sentences and new matter.’ He contrived, therefore, to abridge his composures, and to throw four of his country sermons together to make up one for the City, and yet he could not forbear to add a little Greek in the beginning. He told the auditors how the text was to be explained; he set forth the analysis of the words in order, showed the hoti and the dioti—that is, that it was so, and why it was so—with much learned criticism—all of which he wisely left out in the country; then he pronounced the doctrine distinctly, and filled up the rest of the hour with the mere rehearsal of the general and special heads; but he omitted all the amplification which made his performances in the country so clear and so intelligible, so warm and affecting. In short, it was the mere joints and carcase of a long composure, and contained above forty branches in it. The hearers had no time to consider or reflect on the good things which were spoken, or apply them to their own consciences; the preacher hurried their attention so fast onward to new matters that they could make no use of anything he said while he spoke it, nor had they a moment for reflection, in order to fix it in their memories and improve by it at home.
“The young gentleman was somewhat out of countenance when the sermon was done, for he missed all that life and spirit, that pathetic amplification, which impressed his conscience when he was but a school-boy. However, he put the best face upon it, and began to commend the performance. ‘Was it not,’ said he, ‘sir, a substantial discourse? How well connected all the reasons! How strong all the inferences, and what a variety and number of them!’ ‘It is true,’ said the uncle, ‘but yet methinks I want food here, and I find nothing but bones again. I could not have thought, nephew, you would have treated me two days together just alike; yesterday at home, and to-day at church, the first course was Greek, and all the rest mere skeleton.’”
GOD IN VEGETATION.
“Let us first consider this as it relates to the vegetable part of the creation. What a profusion of beauty and fragrancy, of shapes and colours, of smells and tastes, is scattered among the herbs and flowers of the ground, among the shrubs, the trees, and the fruits of the field! Colouring in its original glory and perfection triumphs here; red, yellow, green, blue, purple, with vastly more diversities than the rainbow ever knew, or the prism can represent, are distributed among the flowers and the blossoms. And what variety of tastes, both original and compounded, of sweet, bitter, sharp, with a thousand nameless flavours, are found among the herbs of the garden! What an amazing difference of shapes and sizes appears among the trees of the field and forest in their branches and their leaves! and what a luxurious and elegant distinction in their several fruits! How very numerous are their distinct properties in their uses in human life! And yet these two common elements, earth and water, are the only materials out of which they are all composed, from the beginning to the end of nature and time. Let the gardener dress for himself one field of fresh earth, and make it as uniform as he can; then let him plant therein all the varieties of the vegetable world, in their roots or in their seeds, as he shall think most proper; yet out of this common earth, under the droppings of common water from heaven, every one of these plants shall be nourished, and grow up in their proper forms; all the infinity, diversity of shapes and sizes, colours, tastes, and smells, which constitute and adorn the vegetable world, would the climate permit, might be produced out of the same clods. What rich and surprising wisdom appears in that Almighty Operator, who out of the same matter shall perfume the bosom of the rose, and give the garlic its offensive and nauseous powers; who from the same spot of ground shall raise the liquorice and the wormwood, and dress the cheek of the tulip in all its glowing beauties! What a surprise, to see the same field furnish the pomegranate and the orange tree, with their juicy fruit, and the stacks of corn with their dry and husky grains; to observe the oak raised from a little acorn into its stately growth and solid timber; and that pillars for the support of future temples and palaces should spring out of the same bed of earth that sent up the vine with such soft and feeble limbs as are unable to support themselves! What a natural kind of prodigy it is, that chilling and burning vegetables should arise out of the same spot; that the fever and frenzy should start up from the same bed where the palsy and the lethargy lie dormant in their seeds! Is it not exceeding strange that healthful and poisonous juices should rise up, in their proper plants, out of the same common glebe, and that life and death should grow and thrive within an inch of each other? What wondrous and inimitable skill must be attributed to that Supreme Power, that First Cause, who can so infinitely diversify effects, where the servile second cause is so uniform and always the same! It is not for me in this place to enter into a long detail of philosophy, and show how the minute fibres and tubes of the different seeds and roots of vegetables take hold of, attract, and receive the little particles of earth and water proper for their own growth; how they form them at first into their own shapes, sending them up aspiring above ground by degrees, and mould them so as frame the stalks, the branches, the leaves, and the buds of every flower, herb, and tree. But I presume the world is too weary of substantial forms, and plastic powers, and names without ideas, to be persuaded that these mere creatures of fancy should ever be the operators in this wondrous work. It is much more honourable to attribute all to the design and long forethought of God the Creator, who formed the first vegetables in such a manner, and appointed their little parts to ferment under the warm sunbeams, according to such established laws of motion as to mould the atoms of earth and water which were near them in their own figure, to make them grow up into trunk and branches, which every night should harden into firmness and stability; and, again, to mould new atoms of the same element into leaves and bloom, fruit and seed, which last, being dropped into the earth, should produce new plants of the same likeness to the end of the world.”
FOOD.
“If the food of which one single animal partakes be never so various and different, yet the same laws of motion which God has ordained in the animal world, convert them all to the same purposes of nourishment for that creature. Behold the little bee gathering its honey from a thousand flowers, and laying up the precious store for its winter food. Mark how the crow preys upon a carcase, anon it crops a cherry from the tree; and both are changed into the flesh and feathers of a crow. Observe the kine in the meadows feeding on a hundred varieties of herbs and flowers, yet all the different parts of their bodies are nourished thereby in a proper manner: every flower in the field is made use of to increase the flesh of the heifer, and to make beef for men; and out of all these varieties there is a noble milky juice flowing to the udder, which provides nourishment for young children. So near akin is man, the lord of the creation, in respect of his body, to the brutes that are his slaves, that the very same food will compose the flesh of both of them, and make them grow up to their appointed stature. This is evident beyond doubt in daily and everlasting experiments. The same bread-corn which we eat at our tables will give rich support to sparrows and pigeons, to the turkey and the duck, and all the fowls of the yard: the mouse steals it and feeds on it in its dark retirement; while the hog in the sty, and the horse in the manger, would be glad to partake. When the poor cottager has nursed up a couple of geese, the fox seizes one of them for the support of her cubs, and perhaps the table of the landlord is furnished with the other to regale his friends. Nor is it an uncommon thing to see the favourite lap-dog fed out of the same bowl of milk which is prepared for the heir of a wealthy family, but which nature had originally designed to nourish a calf. The same milky material will make calves, lap-dogs, and human bodies.”
CHRIST AS A SUN.
“I cannot deny myself, in this place, the pleasure of publishing to the world a very beautiful resemblance, the first hints and notices whereof I received formerly in conversation from my reverend and worthy friend Mr. Robert Bragge, whereby the person of Christ as God-man in His exalted state may be happily represented. The sun in the heavens is the most glorious of all visible beings: his sovereign influence has a most astonishing extent through all the planetary globes, and bestows light and heat upon all of them. It is the sun that gives life and motion to all the infinite varieties of the animal world in the earth, air, and water. It draws out the vegetable juices from the earth, and covers the surface of it with trees, herbs, and flowers. It is the sun that gives beauty and colour to all the millions of bodies round the globe; by its pervading power perhaps it forms minerals and metals under the earth. Its happy effects are innumerable; they reach certainly to everything that has life and motion, or that gives life, support, or pleasure to mankind. Now suppose God should create a most illustrious spirit, and unite it to the body of the sun, as a human soul is united to a human body: suppose this spirit had a perceptive power capacious enough to become conscious of every sunbeam, and all the influences and effects of this vast shining globe, both in its light, heat, and motion, even to the remotest region; and suppose at the same time it was able, by an act of its will, to send out or withhold every sunbeam as it pleased, and thereby to give light and darkness, life and death, in a sovereign manner, to all the animal inhabitants of this our earth, or even of all the planetary worlds. Such may be the ‘glorified human soul of our blessed Redeemer united to His glorified body;’ and perhaps His knowledge and His power may be as extensive as this similitude represents, especially when we consider this soul and body as personally united to the Divine nature, and as one with God. Now this noble thought may be supported by such considerations as these. As our souls are conscious of the light, shape, motions, etc., of such distant bodies as the planet Saturn or the fixed stars, because our eyes receive rays from thence; so may not a human soul united to a body as easily be supposed to have a consciousness of anything, wheresoever it can send out rays or emit either fluids or atoms from its own body? May not the sun, for instance, if a soul were united to it, become thereby so glorious a complex being, as to send out every ray with knowledge, and have a consciousness of everything wheresoever it sends its direct or reflected rays? And may not the human soul of our Lord Jesus Christ have a consciousness of everything wheresoever it can send direct or reflected rays from His own shining and glorified body? To add yet to the wonder, we may suppose that these rays may be subtle as magnetic beams, which penetrate brass and stone as easily as light doth glass; and at the same time they may be as swift as light, which reaches the most amazing distance of several millions of miles in a minute. By this means, since the light of the sun pervades all secret chambers in our hemisphere at once, and fills all places with direct and reflected beams, if consciousness belonged to all those beams, what a sort of omniscient being would the sun be! I mean omniscient in its own sphere. And why may not the human soul and body of our glorified Saviour be thus furnished with such an amazing extent of knowledge and power, and yet not be truly infinite? Let us dwell a little longer upon these delightful contemplations. If a soul had but a full knowledge and command of all the atoms of one solid foot of matter, which according to modern philosophy is infinitely divisible, what strange and astonishing influences would it have over this world of ours? What confusions might it raise in distant nations, sending pestilential streams into a thousand bodies, and destroying armies at once? And it might scatter benign or healing and vital influences to as large a circumference. If our blessed Lord, in the days of His humiliation, could send virtue out of Him to heal a poor diseased woman, who touched the hem of His garment with a finger, who knows what healing atoms, or what killing influences, He may send from His dwelling in glory to the remotest distances of our world, to execute His Father’s counsels of judgment or mercy? It is not impossible, so far as I can judge, that the soul of Christ in its glorified state may have as much command over our heavens and our earth, and all things contained in them, as our souls in the present state have over our own limbs and muscles to move them at pleasure. Let us remember that it is now found out, and agreed in the new philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, that the distances are prodigious to which the powerful influence of the sun reaches in the centre of our planetary system. It is the sun who holds and restrains all the planets in their several orbits, and keeps in those vast bodies of Jupiter and Saturn in their constant revolutions—one at the distance of 424 millions, and the other at the distance of 777 millions of miles—besides all the other influences it has upon everything that may live and grow in those planetary worlds. It is the sun who reduces the long wanderings of the comets back again near to himself from distances more immensely great than those of Saturn and Jupiter. And why may not the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in soul and body, have a dominion given Him by the Father larger than the sun in the firmament? Why may not the Son of God be endued with an immediate consciousness and agency to a far greater distance? Thus if we conceive of the human soul of Christ, either in the amazing extent of its own native powers or in the additional acquirements of a glorified state, we see reason to believe that its capacities are far above our old usual conceptions, and may be raised and exalted to a degree of knowledge, power, and glory suitable and equal to His operations and offices, so far as they are attributed to His human nature in the word of God.”
APPARENT FOLLY REAL WISDOM.
“This very man, this Gelotes, a few days ago, was carried by his neighbour Typiger, to see a gentleman of his acquaintance; they found him standing at the window of his chamber, moving and turning round a glass prism, near a round hole which he had made in the window-shutter, and casting all the colours of the rainbow upon the wall of the room. They were unwilling to disturb him, though he amused himself at this rate for half an hour together, merely to please and entertain his eyesight, as Gelotes imagined, with the brightness and the strength of the reds and the blues, the greens and the purples, in many shifting forms of situation, while several little implements lay about him, of white paper and shreds of coloured silk, pieces of tin with holes in them, spectacles and burning-glasses. When the gentleman at last spied his company, he came down and entertained them agreeably enough upon other subjects, and dismissed them. At another time, Gelotes beheld the same gentleman blowing up large bubbles with a tobacco-pipe out of a bowl of water well impregnated with soap, which is a common diversion of boys. As the bubbles rose, he marked the little changeable colours on the surface of them with great attention, till they broke and vanished into air and water. He seemed to be very grave and solemn in this sort of recreation, and now and then smiled to see the little appearances and disappearances of colours, as the bubbles grew thinner towards the top, while the watery particles of it ran down along the side to the bottom, and the surface grew too thin and feeble to include the air, then it burst to pieces and was lost. ‘Well,’ says Gelotes to his friend, ‘I did not think you would have carried me into the acquaintance of a madman; surely he can never be right in his senses who wastes his hours in such fooleries as these. Whatsoever good opinion I had conceived of a gentleman of your intimacy, I am amazed now that you should keep up any degree of acquaintance with him, when his reason is gone and he is become a mere child. What are all these little scenes of sport and amusement, but proofs of the absence of his understanding? Poor gentleman! I pity him in his unhappy circumstances; but I hope he has friends to take care of him under this degree of distraction.’ Typiger was not a little pleased to see that his project, with regard to his neighbour Gelotes, had succeeded so well; and when he had suffered him to run on at this rate for some minutes, he interrupted him with a surprising word: ‘This very gentleman,’ says he, ‘is the great Sir Isaac Newton, the first of philosophers, the glory of Great Britain, and renowned among the nations. You have beheld him now making these experiments over again by which he first found out the nature of light and colours, and penetrated deeper into the mysteries of them than all mankind ever knew before him. This is the man, and these his contrivances, upon which you so freely cast your contempt, and pronounce him distracted. You know not the depth of his designs, and therefore you censured them all as fooleries, whereas the learned world has esteemed them the utmost reach of human sagacity.’
“Gelotes was all confusion and silence; whereupon Typiger proceeded thus: ‘Go now and ridicule the law-giver of Israel, and the ceremonies of the Jewish Church, which Moses taught them; go, repeat your folly and your slanders, and laugh at these Divine ceremonies, merely because you know not the meaning of them, go, and affront the God of Israel, and reproach Him for sending Moses to teach such forms of worship to the Jews. There is not the least of them but was appointed by the Greatest of Beings, and has some special design and purpose in the eye of Divine Wisdom. Many of them were explained by the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, as types and emblems of the glories and blessings of the New Testament; and the rest of them, whose reason has not been discovered to us, remain, perhaps, to be made known at the conversion of the Jews, when Divine light shall be spread over all the ancient dispensations, and a brighter glory diffused over all the rites and forms of religion which God ever instituted among the race of Adam.’”
A PLEA FOR CHRISTIANIZING HORACE.
“It is a piece of ancient and sacred history which Moses informs us of, that when the tribes of Israel departed from the land of Egypt, they borrowed of their neighbours gold and jewels by the appointment of God, for the decoration of their sacrifices and solemn worship when they should arrive at the appointed place in the wilderness. God Himself taught His people how the richest of metals which had ever been abused to the worship of idols might be purified by the fire, and being melted up into a new form, might be consecrated to the service of the living God, and add to the magnificence and grandeur of His tabernacle and temple. Such are some of the poetical writings of the ancient heathens; they have a great deal of native beauty and lustre in them, and through some happy turn given them by the pen of a Christian poet may be transformed into Divine meditations, and may assist the devout and pious soul in several parts of the Christian life and worship. Amongst all the rest of the Pagan writers, I know none so fit for this service as the odes of Horace, as vile a sinner as he was. Their manner of composure comes nearer the spirit and force of the Psalms of David than any other; and as we take the devotions of the Jewish king, and bring them into our Christian churches, by changing the scene and the chronology, and superadding some of the glories of the Gospel so may the representation of some of the heathen virtues, by a little more labour, be changed into Christian graces, or, at least, into the image of them, so far as human power can reach. One day, musing on this subject, I made an experiment on the two last stanzas of Ode xxix, Book iii.
A work like this would be incomplete if it did not attempt some general estimate, however feeble, of our author’s works, which are, however, so various that it is difficult to bring their relation to their author’s mind beneath one classification. The remark Dr. Jennings made in his funeral sermon is simply just, when he says he “questions whether any author before Dr. Watts ever appeared with a reputation on such a variety of subjects as he has, both as a prose writer and a poet. However,” he adds, “this I may venture to say, there is no man now living of whose works so many have been diffused at home and abroad, which are in such constant use, and translated into such a variety of languages, many of which I doubt not will remain more durable monuments of his great talents than any representation I can make of them, though it were to be graven on pillars of brass. Thus did he shine as an ingenious man and a scholar.”
This circumstance of the variety of his writings constitutes them an element of his character: he was more various than intense, acute rather than profound. There are some of his works upon which we need not permit ourselves to be detained, they illustrate his readiness in turning to every kind of labour which seemed to give the promise of usefulness, for usefulness was evidently in everything the object he set before himself. Regarded by the immense apparatus now at hand for every kind of mental exercise Watts’ labours do some of them seem needless; but regarded from his own age, it appears as if he created, originated, and gave effect to almost every department of religious or improving knowledge. If the reader looks round the literary horizon of that day, he will learn rightly to estimate the benefits conferred by this writer; and these works, the smallest, the most inferior of his mental exercises, were not one of them a mere compilation, they were all the emanations of that perpetually active mind, which, whether the body were well or ill, must be employed for some useful object and end. None of his books were made out of other books, excepting, indeed, so far as almost every volume must imply the knowledge of a subject and the mind of an author; and at the same time it must be said that some of his books for the young have been dropped but not surpassed; they might still furnish the best hints and the best arrangements for obtaining and imparting knowledge.
Being a literary man, Watts falls beneath a class of observations which are not either necessary or applicable in forming an estimate of almost any of his brethren, such as Howe, or Jacomb, or Bradbury, or, indeed, any of the writers of his order or day. The wisdom of his mind was remarkable; it was “a city, built four square.” In this useful purpose, which he ever kept before him, whatever charges may be preferred against him on the score of the indulgence of fancy (and many of his writings reveal how capable he was of such excursions), he kept his mind singularly free from the literary vanities of his times, and his times as singularly illustrate at once the vanity and the glory of literature. If anybody would know what vanities there were, let him take down the volumes of the Athenian Oracle,[48] and he will find few other volumes which will give so lively an impression of the literary folly of those times. Old Samuel Wesley, John Wesley’s father, did not disdain to contribute largely to those pages; they are affluent in absurdities, while they have a show of learned ignorance. Select a few; most of the essays are in the way of question and answer. “Balaam being a Moabite, how could he understand the ass speaking to him in Hebrew? How came the two disciples to know Moses and Elias on the mount? I am resolved to go round the earth on foot; I desire to know whether my head or my feet will travel the most, and how much the one more than the other? Whether or no there is a vacuum? Whether it is more proper to say the soul contains the body, or the body the soul? Whether the quadrature of the circle be possible? Pray, why does a n d not spell t u m? t h e, m e d? etc. etc. Whether Adam was a giant? How a silkworm lives when it has left off eating and is enclosed in its web? Whether it is prudent to live in a room haunted by spirits? Whether, since mermen and mermaids have more of the human shape than other fishes, they may be thought to have more reason? Where extinguished fire goes to? Where was the land of Nod? How is it the spaniel knows its master’s horse? Whether a finite creature is capable of enduring infinite loss?” etc. etc.
These volumes, perhaps, constitute the most amazing collection of nonsense in our own or any other language; nor are they without a certain value as illustrating, not only the time, then in possession of men, but the ridiculous way in which they used it. Of course there are questions, and many of them, of a more grave and serious character, but for the most part they are the very soap-bubbles of the most foppish and foolish imaginations, the most undisciplined and frequently prurient and indecent fancies. The indulgence in these was quite a phase of the intellectual life of the time. A singular chapter in the curiosities of literature and science a reader may find in such volumes as the “Philosophical Conferences of France;”[49] and the vanities of theology were quite equal to the vanities of literature, as may be seen in the innumerable productions of the time.
With a mind so disposed to imaginative excursions, it is quite worthy of notice that Watts preserved a wise balance of all his powers and faculties; he lived on the confines of the age of the wildest mysticism our literature has known. From some words in his works he appears to have been well acquainted with the writings of Henry More, and also to have entertained for them that reverence and respect which assuredly many of them command; but from their singular and erratic fancies he kept himself quite free. Very strange are the matters with which we find these old men entertained themselves, affirming “that God of Himself is a dale of darkness, were it not for the light of the Son;” “that the star-powers are Nature, and the star-circle the mother of all things, from which all is, subsists, and moves;” “that the waters of the world are mad, which makes them rave and run up and down, so as they do in the channels of the earth;” “that they, at last, shall be calcined into crystal;” “that the pure blood in man answers to the element of fire in the great world, his heart to the earth, his mouth to the Arctic pole; and”—but we will not finish this sublime stretch of metaphysical imagination—“that there be two kinds of fires, the one a cold fire and the other hot, and that death is a cold fire;” “that everything has sense, imagination, and a fiducial knowledge of God in it—metals, meteors, and plants not excepted.” Also the like pleasant excursions of fancy are found in “Paracelsus,” as “that the stars are, as it were, the phials, or cucurbits, in which meteorical sal, sulphur, and mercury are contained, and that the winds are made out of these by the ethereal vulcans, are blown forth out of these emunctories, as when a man blows or breathes out of his mouth;” “that the stars are, as it were, the pots in which the archeus, or heavenly vulcan, prepares pluvious matter, which, exhaled from thence, first appears in the form of clouds, and after condenses to rain;” “that hail and snow are the fruits of the stars, proceeding from them as flowers and blossoms from trees;” “that the lightning and thunder are, as it were, the deciduous fruits of the ethereal stars;” “that the stars eat and are nourished,” etc. etc.
All this, and a good deal more to the like purpose. Since the beginning of the world, men have asked of themselves and others strange questions, like those Southey discovered in Luys de Escobar: “When God made dresses for Adam and Eve, how did He get the skins of which those dresses were made, seeing that beasts were not yet killed?” “Perhaps,” says the respondent, “He made skins on purpose.” “Why are there three persons in the Trinity rather than four or five?” “St. Cosmas and St. Damian cut off a black man’s leg and fastened it on a white man; which will have the leg at the resurrection?” “How did Adam learn Hebrew?” Queer curiosities these, all of which will remind the reader of the madness of Elinora Melorina, a lady of Mantua, who, being fully persuaded she was married to a king, would kneel down and talk with him, as if he had then been present with his retinue. Nay, if she by any chance found a piece of glass upon a dunghill, or if she came upon a piece of oyster-shell or tin, or any such thing that would glisten in the sunshine, she would say it was a jewel sent from her lord and husband, and upon this account she would fill her cabinet full of this kind of rubbish. The cabinets of the mystics, amidst some worthier matter, are full of the kind of rubbish we have quoted above, which, when instanced as solutions of things psychical or physical, seem to be as satisfactory as the old story of the foolish person who, riding an ass to the pond to drink by the light of the moon, and some clouds intervening, and hiding the moon while the ass was drinking, arrived at the grave conclusion that the ass had swallowed up the moon, and took it clean out of being. When such grave problems and questions are the result of so much of fasting and devotion, they only remind us of the question preferred by a monk on one occasion to a higher Church dignitary: “How many keys did Christ give to Peter?” which brought the satisfactory reply, that “he ought to prepare himself by a course of physic for such grave, sweet, and savoury questions!” Illustrative as they are of the literary vanities and follies of the time, follies to which even scholarly clergymen and eminent writers lent themselves, and as illustrating also not only the freedom of Watts from such epidemical foolishness, but the work he did in calling the mind to healthful methods of thought, the writer trusts their quotation here may be forgiven.
He appears to have preserved his mind in great stillness. It is the quiet and still mind which is wise and prudent; and, like Henry More, to whom we have referred, his life would repeat what that great man was wont to say, “In the more peaceful spirit, when it is also a quick and perceptive one, will always reside those faculties which are to the soul vision and power. In the deep and calm mind alone, in a temper clear and serene, such as is purged from the dregs, and devoid of the more disorderly tumults of the body, doth true wisdom or genuine philosophy, as in its own proper tower, securely reside.” Hence the first great attribute of Watts’ mind is clearness.
He ever kept before him a purpose of usefulness, alike in teaching men what to think about, and how to think about it; indeed, it is simply true, as Gibbons has remarked, that perspicuity was eminently a feature of his intellect; and it must be admitted that upon whatever he speaks or writes, he is always clearly to be understood—as we have seen, it was by no means a great virtue of his age, or of his contemporaries; and if he discoursed upon the more lofty and difficult subjects of thought or philosophy, they seem to acquire clearness in their passage through his mind. He did not crowd words upon each other, and images of every order were used by him, not to add to the splendour of a paragraph, or to set off a division, but for the purpose of reflecting light on the reader’s mind. He has dwelt himself upon the prime importance of perspicuity. In his “Improvement of the Mind,” he says: “He that would gain a happy talent for the instruction of others must know how to disentangle and divide his thoughts, if too many are ready to crowd into one paragraph; and let him rather speak three sentences distinctly and clearly, which the hearer receives at once with his ears and his soul, than crowd all the thoughts into one sentence, which the hearer has forgotten before he can understand it.” It is a prime virtue in Watts’ style that it is clear; it ought to be a chief virtue in every writer. In him it illustrated the character of his mind. He seemed even to be impatient of the dark and obscure, and he never would permit himself to repose near the absolutely incomprehensible without attempting in some way to understand it; so, also, as he attempts to express his mind upon any subject, his sentences instantly appear to be the very windows of the intellect. And this accounts for that other noticeable characteristic of his style—its perfect ease. There was smoothness and grace, the entire absence of the turgid and the bombastic; his sentences flowed along in happy harmony. Very frequently such a style conveys the impression that a man has nothing to say, when, perhaps, it is by immense labour, and by the study of the finest writers, and by conversation, that he has attained to that grace and natural ease of manner in which all who listen or who read are instantly able to apprehend the meaning. Thus he himself translates his favourite Horace: