The neighbourhood of London, to which Isaac Watts removed from Southampton for the purpose of completing his studies, and preparing for the work of the ministry, was Stoke Newington, and in that neighbourhood he was destined to pass the greater part of his life. It was probably even then pervaded, as for a long time before and ever since, by an atmosphere of mild but consistent Nonconformity; the academy in which he studied was beneath the superintendence of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, the pastor of the Independent Church assembling in Girdlers’ Hall, in the City. It was probably one of the most considerable of the time, and appears to have succeeded to one also well known upon the same spot, of which the principal was the Rev. Charles Morton. Here studied the celebrated Daniel Defoe, also originally intended for the Nonconformist pulpit, as he says in one of his reviews: “It is not often I trouble you with any of my divinity; the pulpit is none of my office. It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour of that sacred employ.” The academy had a good reputation, and the effort which old Samuel Wesley had made to sully its fair fame only reflected his own dishonour, and left it untarnished.

Charles Morton was one of those obscure but remarkable men in which our country at that time was so rich. He was descended from a singularly distinguished family—that of Cardinal Morton, Thomas Morton, Bishop of Durham, and many other distinguished men. He took his degree of M.A. at Wadham College, Oxford, and became, and continued until the Act of Uniformity, rector of Blisland, in Cornwall; after preaching for a short time at St. Ives he removed to London, and shortly after opened an academy on Newington Green. Defoe pronounces the highest encomiums upon him and his method as a tutor; and Samuel Wesley, in the midst of his bitterness and ungracious flippancy—for he had been maintained on the foundation under the idea of entering the Nonconformist ministry—ceases from his abuse to honour the memory of his master; he, however, after having trained several men who became eminent in their day, teased by continued persecution, passed over to America; there his fame had preceded him; there he became pastor of a church in Charlestown, and Vice-president of Harvard University.[5]

Shortly after the departure of Mr. Morton for America, the academy to which Watts was consigned was founded by the eminently learned Theophilus Gale, M.A., the author of that large medley of scholarship “The Court of the Gentiles.” He also had been deprived of considerable Church preferments. To his charge the eccentric Philip Lord Wharton committed the tutorship of his sons; with them he travelled on the Continent, adding to the stores of his mental wealth, and contracting a friendship with the learned Bochart. He arrived in the metropolis on his return to see the city in the flames of the terrible conflagration, but to learn that the manuscripts he had left in the care of a friend were all saved, while the house in which they had been preserved was destroyed. His mind was so largely stored with every kind of learning that his friends entreated him to settle as a professor of theology, which he did at Stoke Newington, and there he continued till he died in 1678, at the early age of forty-nine. He left his personal estate for the education of young men for the ministry; his library, with the exception of his philosophical books, to Harvard College. Beneath a tutor so distinguished the interests of the two academies had probably merged into one. The successor of Mr. Gale was one of his own students, Thomas Rowe, whom we have already mentioned. He was the son of the Rev. John Rowe, M.A., ejected from Westminster Abbey, and who was called to preach the thanksgiving sermon before the Parliament on the occasion of the destruction of the Spanish fleet, October 8th, 1656. Thomas Rowe very early entered upon the work of the ministry. At the age of twenty-one he succeeded his father as pastor of Girdlers’ Hall in Basinghall Street.

Isaac Watts came to the academy of Stoke Newington in the year 1690; he was then in his sixteenth year. “Such he was,” says Dr. Johnson, “as every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted.”

There was no doubt a rare congeniality of spirit between the tutor and his illustrious pupil; the native gentleness of the latter found nothing perhaps in the former to give to it either sharpness or force; indeed, the name of Thomas Rowe would be lost but for the fame of Watts. The pupil was nearer to manhood than was implied in his years; he was a well-informed and richly cultivated scholar when he left his father’s house, and his modest bearing was such as even a tutor might entrust with the responsibilities of friendship. Friendship soon matured between them; the tutor testified that he never on any occasion had to give his pupil a reproof. His academical exercises show with what diligence he was applying himself to the work of preparation for the work of his future life. A sweet and cheerful gravity pervaded his manners and his studies, and it may be boldly said that in the great universities of that time there were very few who wrought with so much vigour or to so much purpose. His Latin essays written at this period “show,” says Dr. Johnson, “a degree of knowledge both philosophical and theological, such as very few attain by a much longer course of study.” This verdict of Johnson is only just. One method adopted by Watts in his studies he has commended to others in his “Improvement of the Mind,” and it has probably been often successfully adopted. It was the plan of abridging the works of the more eminent writers in the various departments of study. Thus he printed the material more indelibly on his memory; at the same time, by recasting the thoughts or the information in his own mind, he was so compelled to analyze and digest that he made the whole matter more entirely his own mental property. To this practice he alludes when he says: “Other things also of the like nature may be usefully practised with regard to the authors which you read—viz., If the method of a book be irregular, reduce it into form by a little analysis of your own, or by hints in the margin; if those things are heaped together which should be separated, you may wisely distinguish and divide them; if several things relating to the same subject are scattered up and down separately through the treatise, you may bring them all to one view by references; or if the matter of a book be really valuable and deserving, you may throw it into a better method, reduce it to a more logical scheme, or abridge it into a lesser form. All these practices will have a tendency both to advance your skill in logic and method, to improve your judgment in general, and to give you a fuller survey of that subject in particular. When you have finished the treatise with all your observations upon it, recollect and determine what real improvements you have made by reading that author.”[6]

There was another plan which reveals the careful student, and to which Dr. Gibbons refers in his life: “There was another method also which the doctor adopted, it may be in the time of his preparatory studies, though of this we are not able to furnish positive evidence, but of which there is the fullest proof in his further progress of life, namely, that of interleaving the works of authors, and inserting in the blank pages additions from other writers on the same subject. I have now by me, the gift of his brother Mr. Enoch Watts, the ‘Westminster Greek Grammar’ thus interleaved by the doctor, with all he thought proper to collect from Dr. Busby’s and Mr. Teed’s ‘Greek Grammars,’ engrafted by him into the supplemental leaves; and I have besides in my possession a present from the doctor himself, a printed discourse by a considerable writer, on a controverted point in divinity, interleaved in the same manner, and much enlarged by insertions in the doctor’s own hand.” Certainly from hints such as these no writer could seem by his own careful diligence to be more admirably prepared to write to and counsel young men and others concerning the improvement of the mind.

Most of the biographers of Watts have referred to his fellow-students. Several of them were interesting men. “The first genius in the academy,” to adopt Watts’ own descriptive designation, was Mr. Josiah Hart; but very speedily after his removal from Mr. Rowe he conformed, and became chaplain to John Hampden, Esq., the member for Buckinghamshire. Presently after he became chaplain to his grace the Duke of Bolton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Such offices furnished very easy opportunities for advancement in the Church. Before long he became Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh; and in 1742 he was translated to the archbishopric of Tuam, with which was united the bishopric of Enaghdoen, with liberty to retain his former see of Ardagh; yet he retained friendly relationships with his old fellow-student, and in the “Lyrics” occurs a free translation of an epigram of Martial to Cirinus, which seems to intimate that he was not wanting himself in poetic inspiration:

Fifty years after the period of their life as fellow-students we find the Archbishop writing to Watts, “God grant we may be useful while we live, and may run clear and with unclouded minds till we come to the very dregs! I send you my visitation charge to my clergy of Tuam. I submit it to your judgment. Your old friend and affectionate servant, Josiah Tuam.” If in some part singularly expressed, it gives a not unpleasing idea of the writer’s character.

Another fellow-student was Mr. John Hughes; but he also, though dedicated to, and educated for, the Dissenting ministry, upon leaving the academy soon conformed to the Establishment; he cultivated the lighter studies of music, poetry, and painting. The Lord Chancellor Cowper, in 1717, appointed him secretary to the commissions of the peace; and after the resignation of the Chancellor he was still continued in the same office. He became a contributor to the “Tatler,” “Spectator,” and “Guardian,” and he attained to the friendship of some of the most distinguished men of the age. Addison admired him as a poet, Pope held him in veneration for his goodness, and Bishop Hoadley honoured him as a friend.

Others of the fellow-students continued stedfast to the principles of their Dissenting Alma Mater, and became in their way also useful and remarkable men; among these was Mr. Samuel Say, the fellow-townsman of Watts, and one year his junior. After a useful course of ministrations he succeeded Dr. Calamy at Westminster, and continued there until his death. Through life he was on intimate friendly terms with his fellow-townsman. Little as we know of him, sufficient is known to give to us the picture of a thoroughly accomplished man, even with considerable claims to be regarded as a man of genius; indeed it strikes us, in reviewing the intercourse of these young men with each other, and their recommendations of each other, that there was a thoroughness about their attainments; and that while they were faithful to severer studies they were not indisposed to those graceful exercises of the mind and fancy which have generally, but we believe unjustly, been regarded as incompatible with the severity of the Puritan character. To this indulgence, no doubt, the taste of the tutor, Mr. Rowe, was favourable. We know that Watts was accomplished in several departments of taste, although all the exercises which have come down to us from his college-days are quite of the severer character—critical, metaphysical, and theological—but his conscience was probably of that tender order which would esteem it an unfaithfulness to the object for which he was placed in the academy to turn aside to pursuits of a lighter and less sacred description. Another fellow-student of Isaac Watts was Daniel Neal, celebrated as the author of “The History of the Puritans;” he proved in an eminent degree his call to the work of the ministry, and after some time spent in travel settled as a pastor in the metropolis.

It is usual in our day, with the Dissenting academies, to receive no one as student for the ministry who has not previously qualified himself by membership with the church which commends him. The practice appears to have been more liberal in Watts’ day. He was never a member of the church at Southampton, but in the third year of his residence with Mr. Rowe he united himself with the church of his tutor, as he enters it in his memoranda, “I was admitted to Mr. T. Rowe’s church December, 1693.” This church also, like so many of the Independent churches in the city, had a very honourable ancestry—as we have previously said, it then held its meetings in Girdlers’ Hall, Basinghall Street; after the death of Mr. Rowe it removed to Haberdashers’ Hall, but the church itself appears to have originated with the eminent William Strong, M.A., still held in honour by the lovers of old Puritan literature for his folio on the Covenants. He was a fellow of Katherine Hall, Cambridge, and rector of More Crichel, in Dorsetshire. This living during the Civil Wars he was compelled by the Cavaliers to relinquish, and, coming to London, he became minister of the church assembling in Westminster Abbey, and subsequently in the House of Lords. It is singular that thus both the ministers of the congregation in Girdlers’ Hall were originally pastors of the church in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Strong died in 1654, and was buried in the Abbey church, but upon the restoration his remains had, with those of Cromwell, Blake, and Pym, the honour of exhumation. Still, in the church when Watts became a member of it, lingered some of the old elements which first composed it; perhaps the most conspicuous of these was Major-General Goffe, the well-known name of one of the judges of Charles I.

Such was the church with which Watts held his first communion, and from which he was only transferred to become the pastor of that over which he presided for the remainder of his life. It need hardly be said that whatever interest attached to its memory in connection with the circumstances which we have recited, his name confers upon it the most permanent human interest. The union must have strengthened that intimacy we have already pointed out between himself and his tutor, pastor, and friend. It is not probable that even at this period Mr. Rowe had the large scholarship and keen insight into the beauties of the most famous classics possessed by his pupil, if we may form a judgment from the Pindaric ode to Mr. Pinhorne, but a quiet mind will often marshal ideas into order, and give a military usefulness in commanding materials it could not recruit. Watts was probably never, at any period of his life, wanting in the accoutrements of discipline; but this was the service chiefly rendered at the academy, this and the more earnest entrance upon philosophical and theological studies. We are sure also that he and his tutor well harmonized in their sense of the duty and the dignity of moral independence; Watts had already shown himself to be possessed of this by his entrance into the academy. In his lines “To the much honoured Mr. Thomas Rowe, the director of my youthful studies,” he says:

And here we may say farewell to the tutor; he lived just long enough to see his scholar settled in the ministry; but for his companion pupils he occupied a solitary home; he was never married, and in 1705, riding through the city on horseback, he was seized with a fit, fell from his horse, and instantly died. He was one of those men of whom the world makes little mention, and finds little recorded; he was a comparatively young man. We have dwelt upon the furniture of his mind, the attractiveness of his manners, the docility and beauty of his disposition; to these it may be added that he was also probably possessed of an engaging manner in the pulpit, as he retained what was then considered a large congregation to the time of his death.

While referring to the Dissenting academies of those days, it may be interesting to notice that from one of them in Gloucester, beneath the tutorship of the Rev. Samuel Jones, two eminent men received their first training for the ministry of the Church of England, although intended for the Nonconformist communion—Samuel Butler, the distinguished author of the “Analogy,” and Bishop of Durham; and Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop probably found one of his earliest patrons in Dr. Watts, by whom, as the following letter testifies, he was introduced to the academy. The biographers of the Archbishop, Dr. Porteus and Dr. Stinton, pass over the Archbishop’s first studies, as conducted by “one Mr. Jones, who kept an academy at Gloucester;” but the following letter from Secker, written when about the age of eighteen to Dr. Watts, gives a very admirable idea of the manner in which he directed the work of study in the academy:

Secker’s first communion was with a Dissenting church—the Rev. Timothy Jollie’s—and he preached his first sermon in a Dissenting meeting-house at Bolsover, in Derbyshire. He retained his feelings of affectionate indebtedness to his early friend to the close of Watts’ life.

His term of study closed at Stoke Newington, Watts, still little more than a youth, returned for some time to his father’s house at Southampton. Worshipping with the congregation there, under the ministry of the Rev. Nathaniel Robinson, he felt that the psalmody was far beneath the beauty and dignity of a Christian service. He was requested to produce something better, and the following Sabbath the service was concluded with what is now the first hymn of the first book; and a stirring hymn it is—as an ascription of praise or worship, and as a confession of faith it is remarkably comprehensive and complete.

This is the tradition of the origin of the first hymn. It was received with great alacrity and joy. It was indeed “a new song.” The young poet was entreated to produce another, and another. The series extended from Sabbath to Sabbath, until almost a volume was formed, although their publication was long delayed. This was the interesting result of his return to Southampton.