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A Visit to the Town of Dr. Isaac Watts.

Southampton, England, June 28, 1902.

Southampton, the ancient seaport at which travellers to Europe by the steamships of the North German Lloyd line first set foot on British soil, is a place of considerable interest at any time, but was especially attractive to us after a cold and uncomfortable voyage across the Atlantic. The day of our arrival was fine, with blue sky and genial sunshine, the water of the Solent, between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, was free from the ocean swell, and Southampton Water was quieter still, so we landed with thankful hearts and rising spirits. The city, which is a place of some 70,000 inhabitants, owes its importance to its sheltered harbor and to the phenomenon of double tides, which prolong high water for two hours.

Historical Interest of Southampton.

This mention of the tides reminds me to say that Southampton is the place where Canute the Dane is said to have given his famous rebuke to his flattering courtiers. All the children who have read any English history will recall the story.

They are familiar, too, with the hard-hearted action of William the Conqueror in laying waste an area of one hundred and forty square miles in this neighborhood for the purpose of making a hunting ground, which has ever since been known as the New Forest, and which still stretches westward from Southampton Water. It will be remembered that the Conqueror's son and successor, William Rufus, met his death here, being found one day in these woods with an arrow through his heart. That arrow may have been shot by one of the many peasants who had been driven from their homes when the New Forest was made, though most writers attribute the deed, without sufficient proof, to a gentleman named Walter Tyrrell. At any rate, here William Rufus was killed, and at Winchester, thirteen miles from Southampton, he was buried under the floor of the cathedral, "many looking on and few grieving," as the old chronicler says.

Of still more interest to young readers, especially boys, who are familiar with Sir Walter Scott's stories, The Talisman and Ivanhoe, is the fact that the Crusaders under Richard the Lion Hearted, sailed from Southampton for the Holy Land. That was in 1189.

In the summer of 1620, however, a far more important expedition, though far less spectacular, was fitted out at Southampton by the hiring of a ship here called the Mayflower, in which shortly afterwards the Pilgrim Fathers sailed for the New World.

It will be seen, then, that Southampton is a place of no small historical interest, to say nothing of its associations with Edward III., Henry V., and Charles I., or its being the birthplace of Sir John E. Millais, the artist, or of its having fine statues of Lord Palmerston and "Chinese" Gordon.

Chief Distinction of the Town.

But it was not on account of any of these things that we determined to give to this place the first few hours we were to spend in England. The special reason for our interest in Southampton is that it was the birthplace and residence of the greatest hymn writer that ever lived, a man of totally different physique, character, gifts, and influence from the able, but bloody kings with whose names the earlier history of the place is associated, a small, delicate, scholarly, Christian man, of lovely spirit, who, by exactly antipodal methods, has established a wider, more real, more beneficent, and more lasting reign over human hearts than William or Richard were able to achieve—the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D., whose simpler pieces for children have become household words throughout the English-speaking world, such as, "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber," "Let dogs delight to bark and bite," "How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour," etc., and who, as even a supercilious and grudging critic like Matthew Arnold admitted, wrote the finest hymn in the English language, "When I survey the wondrous cross," and very many others of scarcely inferior merit.

He was the author of various able treatises on philosophy and theology, but it was the thought of what he had done for the world by his hymns that caused us to stop at Southampton. So, mounting the winding stairway to the top of the "double-decker" electric tram car, much better adapted to sightseeing than our single-story street cars in America, we were carried smoothly and quickly up the bright and busy High Street, gaily decorated for the Coronation, and in a few minutes passed under the great stone arch of the Bar Gate, the most interesting portion of the ancient city wall. The modern city, of course, stretches far beyond the walls, street after street of clean and attractive houses, with a profusion of brilliant flowers and neatly trimmed greenery, shut in from the street, in many cases, by high stone walls, over which, however, we can easily see from our elevated position.

Sketch of the Great Hymn-Writer.

Presently, in the centre of a small park, which opens on the left with velvety grass and fine trees, we see the object of our search, a marble statue of a very small and wizened man, of benevolent face and venerable appearance, with a Bible in his hand, and on the pedestal in bold letters the name, "Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D." He was born in 1674, was devoted to books from his infancy, and began to learn Latin when four years old. Afterwards, as a youth he became so proficient at school that friends proposed to provide for his support at the university (he was the eldest of nine children, and the family, while not indigent, was not rich), but he declined the offer because he could not conscientiously belong to the Church of England. He cast in his lot with the Dissenters, and became one of the promoters of that mighty and beneficent force in English religious and political life known as "the Nonconformist Conscience." That his education did not suffer from the choice he then made is clear from his later work. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was a stiff Churchman, with no love for Dissenters in general, is constrained, in his work on English Poets, to pay a warm tribute to Dr. Watts' remarkable attainments, and says it was with great propriety that in 1728 he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a doctor of divinity. Dr. Johnson adds a remark, which is commended to the earnest attention of American colleges, which have done so much to bring honorary degrees into contempt by their promiscuous bestowment, "Academical honors would have more value, if they were always bestowed with equal judgment." He says further that Dr. Watts was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. "Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction."

Of his talents in general the same discriminating writer says that "perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled if he had not divided his powers to different pursuits," and of his character, that he admired Dr. Watts' meekness of opposition and mildness of censure in theological discussion (qualities which no one could attribute to Dr. Johnson himself), and that it was not only in his book, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity. Dr. Johnson concludes his appreciation of him with this remark, "Happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his nonconformity," which shows both his exalted estimate of the man and his amusing dislike of the Dissenter. But in nothing was the greatness of Dr. Watts' character more clearly shown than in his nonconformity; and his countrymen have continued to take his view of that matter in ever-increasing numbers, so that now more than half of the English people are nonconformists. But of that I shall have something to say at another time.