Books: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.

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"Your most affectionate Brother,
"James Thomson."
(Addressed) "To Mrs. Thomson in Lanark."

The benevolence of Thomson was fervid, but not active; he would give
on all occasions what assistance his purse would supply, but the
offices of intervention or solicitation he could not conquer his
sluggishness sufficiently to perform. The affairs of others,
however, were not more neglected than his own. He had often felt
the inconveniences of idleness, but he never cured it; and was so
conscious of his own character that he talked of writing an Eastern
tale "Of the Man who Loved to be in Distress." Among his
peculiarities was a very unskilful and inarticulate manner of
pronouncing any lofty or solemn composition. He was once reading to
Dodington, who, being himself a reader eminently elegant, was so
much provoked by his odd utterance that he snatched the paper from
his hands and told him that he did not understand his own verses.

The biographer of Thomson has remarked that an author's life is best
read in his works; his observation was not well timed. Savage, who
lived much with Thomson, once told me how he heard a lady remarking
that she could gather from his works three-parts of his character:
that he was "a great lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously
abstinent;" "but," said Savage, "he knows not any love but that of
the sex; he was, perhaps, never in cold water in his life; and he
indulges himself in all the luxury that comes within his reach."
Yet Savage always spoke with the most eager praise of his social
qualities, his warmth and constancy of friendship, and his adherence
to his first acquaintance when the advancement of his reputation had
left them behind him.

As a writer, he is entitled to one praise of the highest kind: his
mode of thinking and of expressing his thoughts is original. His
blank verse is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other
poet, than the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley. His
numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his own growth, without
transcription, without imitation. He thinks in a peculiar train,
and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature
and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet; the
eye that distinguishes in everything presented to its view whatever
there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a
mind that at once comprehends the vast and attends to the minute.
The reader of the "Seasons" wonders that he never saw before what
Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson
impresses. His is one of the works in which blank verse seems
properly used. Thomson's wide expansion of general views, and his
enumeration of circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed
and embarrassed by the frequent intersections of the sense, which
are the necessary effects of rhyme. His descriptions of extended
scenes and general effects bring before us the whole magnificence of
Nature, whether pleasing or dreadful. The gaiety of Spring, the
splendour of Summer, the tranquillity of Autumn, and the horror of
Winter, take in their turns possession of the mind. The poet leads
us through the appearances of things as they are successively varied
by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us so much of his
own enthusiasm that our thoughts expand with his imagery and kindle
with his sentiments. Nor is the naturalist without his part in the
entertainment, for he is assisted to recollect and to combine, to
arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his
contemplation. The great defect of the "Seasons" is want of method;
but for this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many
appearances subsisting all at once, no rule can be given why one
should be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help of
order, and the curiosity is not excited by suspense or expectation.
His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as
may be said to be to his images and thoughts "both their lustre and
their shade;" such as invests them with splendour, through which,
perhaps, they are not always easily discerned. It is too exuberant,
and sometimes may be charged with filling the ear more than the
mind.

These poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance,
I have since found altered and enlarged by subsequent revisals, as
the author supposed his judgment to grow more exact, and as books or
conversation extended his knowledge and opened his prospects. They
are, I think, improved in general; yet I know not whether they have
not lost part of what Temple calls their "race," a word which,
applied to wines in its primitive sense, means the flavour of the
soil.

"Liberty," when it first appeared, I tried to read, and soon
desisted. I have never tried again, and therefore will not hazard
either praise or censure. The highest praise which he has received
ought not to be suppressed: it is said by Lord Lyttelton, in the
Prologue to his posthumous play, that his works contained

"No line which, dying, he could wish to blot."

WATTS.

The poems of Dr. Watts were, by my recommendation, inserted in the
late Collection, the readers of which are to impute to me whatever
pleasure or weariness they may find in the perusal of Blackmore,
Watts, Pomfret, and Yalden.

Isaac Watts was born July 17, 1674, at Southampton, where his
father, of the same name, kept a boarding-school for young
gentlemen, though common report makes him a shoemaker. He appears,
from the narrative of Dr. Gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor
illiterate.

Isaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his
infancy, and began, we are told, to learn Latin when he was four
years old--I suppose, at home. He was afterwards taught Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew, by Mr. Pinhorne, a clergyman, master of the Free
School at Southampton, to whom the gratitude of his scholar
afterwards inscribed a Latin ode. His proficiency at school was so
conspicuous that a subscription was proposed for his support at the
University, but he declared his resolution of taking his lot with
the Dissenters. Such he was as every Christian Church would rejoice
to have adopted. He therefore repaired, in 1690, to an academy
taught by Mr. Rowe, where he had for his companions and fellow
students Mr. Hughes the poet, and Dr. Horte, afterwards Archbishop
of Tuam. Some Latin Essays, supposed to have been written as
exercises at this academy, show a degree of knowledge, both
philosophical and theological, such as very few attain by a much
longer course of study. He was, as he hints in his "Miscellanies,"
a maker of verses from fifteen to fifty, and in his youth he appears
to have paid attention to Latin poetry. His verses to his brother,
in the glyconic measure, written when he was seventeen, are
remarkably easy and elegant. Some of his other odes are deformed by
the Pindaric folly then prevailing, and are written with such
neglect of all metrical rules as is without example among the
ancients; but his diction, though perhaps not always exactly pure,
has such copiousness and splendour as shows that he was but a very
little distance from excellence. His method of study was to impress
the contents of his books upon his memory by abridging them, and by
interleaving them to amplify one system with supplements from
another.

With the congregation of his tutor, Mr. Rowe, who were, I believe,
Independents, he communicated in his nineteenth year. At the age of
twenty he left the academy, and spent two years in study and
devotion at the house of his father, who treated him with great
tenderness, and had the happiness, indulged to few parents, of
living to see his son eminent for literature and venerable for
piety. He was then entertained by Sir John Hartopp five years, as
domestic tutor to his son, and in that time particularly devoted
himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and, being chosen
assistant to Dr. Chauncey, preached the first time on the birthday
that completed his twenty-fourth year, probably considering that as
the day of a second nativity, by which he entered on a new period of
existence.

In about three years he succeeded Dr. Chauncey; but soon after his
entrance on his charge he was seized by a dangerous illness, which
sunk him to such weakness that the congregation thought an assistant
necessary, and appointed Mr. Price. His health then returned
gradually, and he performed his duty till (1712) he was seized by a
fever of such violence and continuance, that from the feebleness
which it brought upon him he never perfectly recovered. This
calamitous state made the compassion of his friends necessary, and
drew upon him the attention of Sir Thomas Abney, who received him
into his house, where, with a constancy of friendship and uniformity
of conduct not often to be found, he was treated for thirty-six
years with all the kindness that friendship could prompt, and all
the attention that respect could dictate. Sir Thomas died about
eight years afterwards, but he continued with the lady and her
daughters to the end of his life. The lady died about a year after
him.

A coalition like this, a state in which the notions of patronage and
dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal
benefits, deserves a particular memorial; and I will not withhold
from the reader Dr. Gibbons's representation, to which regard is to
be paid as to the narrative of one who writes what he knows, and
what is known likewise to multitudes besides:--

"Our next observation shall be made upon that remarkably kind
Providence which brought the Doctor into Sir Thomas Abney's family,
and continued him there till his death, a period of no less than
thirty-six years. In the midst of his sacred labours for the glory
of God, and good of his generation, he is seized with a most violent
and threatening fever, which leaves him oppressed with great
weakness, and puts a stop at least to his public services for four
years. In this distressing season, doubly so to his active and
pious spirit, he is invited to Sir Thomas Abney's family, nor ever
removes from it till he had finished his days. Here he enjoyed the
uninterrupted demonstrations of the truest friendship. Here,
without any care of his own, he had everything which could
contribute to the enjoyment of life, and favour the unwearied
pursuit of his studies. Here he dwelt in a family which, for piety,
order, harmony, and every virtue, was a house of God. Here he had
the privilege of a country recess, the fragrant bower, the spreading
lawn, the flowery garden, and other advantages, to soothe his mind
and aid his restoration to health; to yield him, whenever he chose
them, most grateful intervals from his laborious studies, and enable
him to return to them with redoubled vigour and delight. Had it not
been for this most happy event, he might, as to outward view, have
feebly, it may be painfully, dragged on through many more years of
languor, and inability for public service, and even for profitable
study, or perhaps might have sunk into his grave under the
overwhelming load of infirmities in the midst of his days; and thus
the Church and world would have been deprived of those many
excellent sermons and works which he drew up and published during
his long residence in this family. In a few years after his coming
hither, Sir Thomas Abney dies; but his amiable consort survives, who
shows the Doctor the same respect and friendship as before, and most
happily for him and great numbers besides; for, as her riches were
great, her generosity and munificence were in full proportion; her
thread of life was drawn out to a great age, even beyond that of the
Doctor's, and thus this excellent man, through her kindness, and
that of her daughter, the present Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, who in a
like degree esteemed and honoured him, enjoyed all the benefits and
felicities he experienced at his first entrance into this family
till his days were numbered and finished, and, like a shock of corn
in its season, he ascended into the regions of perfect and immortal
life and joy."

If this quotation has appeared long, let it be considered that it
comprises an account of six-and-thirty years, and those the years of
Dr. Watts.

From the time of his reception into this family his life was no
otherwise diversified than by successive publications. The series
of his works I am not able to deduce; their number and their variety
show the intenseness of his industry and the extent of his capacity.
He 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.
He continued to the end of his life a teacher of a congregation, and
no reader of his works can doubt his fidelity or diligence. In the
pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five
feet, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity
and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious.
I once mentioned the reputation which Mr. Foster had gained by his
proper delivery, to my friend Dr. Hawkesworth, who told me that in
the art of pronunciation he was far inferior to Dr. Watts. Such was
his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of language, that in
the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory
sermons, but, having adjusted the heads and sketched out some
particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers. He did
not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as
no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth,
he did not see how they could enforce it. At the conclusion of
weighty sentences he gave time, by a short pause, for the proper
impression.

To stated and public instruction he added familiar visits and
personal application, and was careful to improve the opportunities
which conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence
of religion. By his natural temper 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.

As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry
continual, his writings are very numerous and his subjects various.
With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his
meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not
only in his book, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with
charity.

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 methodise or illustrate a system pretends to be
its author.

In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late
learned Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of SPACE with that of
EMPTY SPACE, and did not consider that though space might be without
matter, yet matter being extended could not be without space.

Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his
"Improvement of the Mind," of which the radical principle may indeed
be found in Locke's "Conduct of the Understanding;" but they are so
expanded and ramified 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.

I have mentioned his treatises of theology as distinct from his
other productions; but the truth is that whatever he took in hand
was, by his incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology.
As piety predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works.
Under his direction it may be truly said, Theologiae philosophia
ancillatur (Philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction).
It is difficult to read a page without learning, or at least
wishing, to be better. The attention is caught by indirect
instruction; and he that sat down only to reason is on a sudden
compelled to pray. It was therefore with great propriety that, in
1728, he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited
diploma, by which he became a Doctor of Divinity. Academical
honours would have more value if they were always bestowed with
equal judgment. He continued many years to study and to preach, and
to do good by his instruction and example, till at last the
infirmities of age disabled him from the more laborious part of his
ministerial functions, and, being no longer capable of public duty,
he offered to remit the salary appendent to it; but his congregation
would not accept the resignation. By degrees his weakness
increased, and at last confined him to his chamber and his bed,
where he was worn gradually away without pain, till he expired
November 25th 1748, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

Few men have left behind such purity of character, or such monuments
of laborious piety. He has provided instruction for all ages--from
those who are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened
readers of Malebranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor
spiritual nature unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and
the science of the stars. His character, therefore, must be formed
from the multiplicity and diversity of his attainments, rather than
from any single performance, for it would not be safe to claim for
him the highest rank in any single denomination of literary dignity;
yet, perhaps, there was nothing in which he would not have excelled,
if he had not divided his powers to different pursuits.

As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have stood
high among the authors with whom he is now associated. For his
judgment was exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice
discernment; his imagination, as the "Dacian Battle" proves, was
vigorous and active, and the stores of knowledge were large by which
his fancy was to be supplied. His ear was well tuned, and his
diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like
that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topics enforces
perpetual 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 poems on
other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected from the
amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of value
as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or
less favourable to invention. He writes too often without regular
measures, and too often in blank verse; the rhymes are not always
sufficiently correspondent. He is particularly unhappy in coining
names expressive of characters. His lines are commonly smooth and
easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there
that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater
measure of sprightliness and vigour? He is at least one of the few
poets 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 imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his
benevolence to man, and his
reverence to God.

A. PHILIPS.

Of the birth or early part of the life of Ambrose Philips I have not
been able to find any account. His academical education he received
at St. John's College in Cambridge, where he first solicited the
notice of the world by some English verses, in the collection
published by the University on the death of Queen Mary. From this
time how he was employed, or in what station he passed his life, is
not yet discovered. He must have published his "Pastorals" before
the year 1708, because they are evidently prior to those of Pope.
He afterwards (1709) addressed to the universal patron, the Duke of
Dorset, a "Poetical Letter from Copenhagen," which was published in
the Tatler, and is by Pope, in one of his first Letters, mentioned
with high praise as the production of a man "who could write very
nobly."

Philips was a zealous Whig, and therefore easily found access to
Addison and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him
anything more than kind words, since he was reduced to translate the
"Persian Tales" for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached,
with this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown.
The book is divided into many sections, for each of which, if he
received half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was
very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean sound. He was employed in
promoting the principles of his party, by epitomising Hacket's "Life
of Archbishop Williams." The original book is written with such
depravity of genius, such mixture of the fop and pedant, as has not
often appeared. The epitome is free enough from affectation, but
has little spirit or vigour.

In 1712 he brought upon the stage The Distressed Mother, almost a
translation of Racine's Andromaque. Such a work requires no
uncommon powers, but the friends of Philips exerted every art to
promote his interest. Before the appearance of the play a whole
Spectator, none indeed of the best, was devoted to its praise; while
it yet continued to be acted, another Spectator was written to tell
what impression it made upon Sir Roger, and on the first night a
select audience, says Pope, was called together to applaud it. It
was concluded with the most successful Epilogue that was ever yet
spoken on the English theatre. The three first nights it was
recited twice, and not only continued to be demanded through the
run, as it is termed, of the play, but whenever it is recalled to
the stage, where by peculiar fortune, though a copy from the French,
it yet keeps its place, the Epilogue is still expected, and is still
spoken.

The propriety of Epilogues in general, and consequently of this, was
questioned by a correspondent of the Spectator, whose letter was
undoubtedly admitted for the sake of the answer, which soon
followed, written with much zeal and acrimony. The attack and the
defence equally contributed to stimulate curiosity and continue
attention. It may be discovered in the defence that Prior's
Epilogue to Phaedra had a little excited jealousy, and something of
Prior's plan may be discovered in the performance of his rival. Of
this distinguished Epilogue the reputed author was the wretched
Budgell, whom Addison used to denominate "the man who calls me
cousin;" and when he was asked how such a silly fellow could write
so well, replied, "The Epilogue was quite another thing when I saw
it first." It was known in Tonson's family, and told to Garrick,
that Addison was himself the author of it, and that, when it had
been at first printed with his name, he came early in the morning,
before the copies were distributed, and ordered it to be given to
Budgell, that it might add weight to the solicitation which he was
then making for a place.

Philips was now high in the ranks of literature. His play was
applauded; his translations from Sappho had been published in the
Spectator; he was an important and distinguished associate of clubs,
witty and poetical; and nothing was wanting to his happiness but
that he should be sure of its continuance. The work which had
procured him the first notice from the public was his "Six
Pastorals," which, flattering the imagination with Arcadian scenes,
probably found many readers, and might have long passed as a
pleasing amusement had they not been unhappily too much commended.

The rustic poems of Theocritus were so highly valued by the Greeks
and Romans that they attracted the imitation of Virgil, whose
Eclogues seem to have been considered as precluding all attempts of
the same kind; for no shepherds were taught to sing by any
succeeding poet, till Nemesian and Calphurnius ventured their feeble
efforts in the lower age of Latin literature.

At the revival of learning in Italy it was soon discovered that a
dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little
difficulty, because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound
or refined sentiment; and for images and descriptions, satyrs and
fauns, and naiads and dryads, were always within call; and woods and
meadows, and hills and rivers, supplied variety of matter, which,
having a natural power to soothe the mind, did not quickly cloy it.

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