that." The conduct of one of his nephews contributed to deepen his afflictions; and occasionally his faculties seemed benumbed by sorrow and pain. Dr. Doddridge, who had come from Bath expressly to visit him, complains in a letter to Mrs. Doddridge, August 16, 1746, that he found his friend "quite amazed and even stupified to such a degree as hardly to take notice of anything about him."

Of the closing hours of his life, some interesting notices are preserved in two letters from his confidential attendant and amanuensis, Mr. Baker, to Dr. Doddridge. In one place he says, "Dr. Clark, his physician, was with him about two hours ago, and told us he was going off apace. Through the goodness of God he lay tolerably easy, and fell into a doze, in which he spent the night, and I never knew his mind any other than calm and peaceful, and so it will remain, I trust, to the time of his departure." On the 29th, the same friend writes,— "He is quite sensible, and his mind in a state of great serenity. I told him this morning that he had taught us how to live, and he was now teaching us how to die. He replied, 'Yes.' I told him I hoped he experienced the comfort of these words,-'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' He answered in these words: 'I do so.

Thus tranquilly, on the 25th of November, 1748, in perfect reliance on the mercy of his Divine Master, this faithful servant fell asleep. His remains were interred in the burial-ground of Bunhill Fields, according to his own request, deep in the earth; and the affectionate friendship of his pupil, Sir John Hartopp, and Lady Abney, erected a handsome monument to his memory, on which the following simple epitaph, written by himself, was engraved.

ISAAC WATTS, D. D.,

Pastor of a Church of Christ in London,
Successor to

The Rev. Joseph Caryl, Dr. John Owen, Mr. David Clarkson, and Dr. Isaac Chauncy;

After fifty years of feeble labours in the Gospel,
Interrupted by four years of tiresome sickness,
Was at last dismissed to his rest.

IN UNO JESU OMNIA.

2 Cor. v. 8. Absent from the body and present with the Lord. Col. iii. 4. When Christ who is my life shall appear, then shall I also appear with him in glory.

In stature Watts did not much exceed five feet, and was of a slender form; his complexion was pale and fair, and his eyes small and gray, but, when animated, became very piercing and expressive. Of his diminutive appearance an anecdote has been frequently told, of which the following version is given by Mr. Burder. Happening to be in a coffee-room with some friends, he heard a gentleman ask rather contemptuously,-" What! is that the great Dr. Watts?" and immediately turning towards him, he repeated a verse from his Lyric Poems,

Were I so tall to reach the pole,

To grasp the wide world with my span,

I must be measured by my soul,

The soul's the standard of the man.

Our knowledge of his private habits accords with his public character. He was fond of filling up the vacant spaces in his study with the portraits of eminent men, and was always pleased to receive an addition to his collection. He was not entirely ignorant of the art of painting, and had even found leisure to employ the pencil. Dr. Gibbons had seen pictures by him of Democritus, Heraclitus, Aristotle, and Alexander. A criticism of Watts upon one of the Cartoons of Raphael is preserved.

St. Paul is represented preaching at Athens, and stretching out his hands towards heaven, while the people are gazing in mute attention below. "I will tell you,” said the doctor, "what St. Paul is saying:-Behold, He comes!" His conversation, as might be expected, was agreeable and instructive. Speaking of the verse in Job, where the eye of the crocodile is compared to the eyelid of the morning, he said, “In the morning you may sometimes observe upon the edge of the horizon, a bright opening of the day, and above it a black scowling cloud. The bright opening of the day is not unlike an eye, and the incumbent cloud is not unlike an eyelid ; whence the poetic ground for the expression." He might have illustrated his explanation with some beautiful lines of Henry More :

Fresh varnished groves, tall hills, and gilded clouds
Arching an eyelid for the glowing morn,

Fair clustered buildings which our sight so crowds
At distance, with high spires to heaven upborne,
Vast plains with lowly cottages forlorn,
Rounded about with the low wavering sky.

The last line has all the vivid truth of Thomson.

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In reviewing the character of Watts, we are charmed by the gentleness and forgiving tenderness of his mind. One of his favourite virtues was charity, of whose praise he never wearies. "I find," he said, a strange pleasure in discoursing of this virtue, hoping that my very soul may be moulded into its divine likeness. I would always feel it inwardly warming my heart; I would have it look through my eyes continually, and it should be ever ready on my lips, to soften every expression of my tongue; I would dress myself in it as my best raiment; I would put it on upon my faith and hope, not so as entirely to hide them, but as an upper and more visible vesture,

constantly to appear in among men.

For our Christian charity is to evidence our other virtues." The quality, so eloquently commended in his writings, shone out beautifully in all his actions,-it imparted a meekness to his censure, and a mildness to his opposition*. From the bitterness of theological controversy he always preserved himself unspotted:-" David," he once observed, "might better bear Saul's armour than he could enter into such a manner of dispute." To personal satire, especially, he constantly expressed his decided aversion, and over the entrance to his study, the following lines, from the Fourth Satire of Horace, were suspended in a frame:

absentem qui rodit amicum:

Qui non defendit, alio culpante; solutos
Qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis
Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere.
Qui nequit, hic niger est hunc tu Romane caveto.

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But Watts had one failing painfully fruitful of disquietude; and in the latter part of his life he sincerely repented of its indulgence. I allude to his spiritual curiosity. My work," he says, "is always to lay the Bible before me, to consult that sacred and infallible guide, and to square and adjust all my sentiments by that certain and unerring rule. It is to the Supreme Judge of controversies that I pay an unreserved submission, and would desire all further light from this fountain." But from this "sacred and infallible guide,” he might have learnt that the unrestrained desire to eat of the forbidden tree becomes of itself a sin, and by discomposing the mind, renders it susceptible of the most erroneous impressions. "Happy had it been for him," is the beautiful remark of his latest biographer, "if he who humbled his mind to the composition of songs and spelling-books for children, had applied

* Johnson.

to his own case our Saviour's words, and in this instance become as a little child himself. Happy had it been, because, during the whole course of his innocent and otherwise most peaceful life, he seems never to have been assailed by any other temptation than this of the intellect, never to have been beset with any other troubles than those in which his own subtlety entangled him*.”

Instructed from his earliest youth in the most rigid tenets of Calvinism, and consequently influenced, as he could not fail to be, by the flattering promises of that belief which assured eternal salvation to himself, the natural benignity of his disposition shrank from that article of his creed which devoted so many of his fellow beings to eternal condemnation. "Surely," he said, "the Lord Jesus would never be sent in flaming fire to render vengeance on those that obey not the Gospel, if there was no sufficient salvation provided in that gospel which he commands them to receive:" and again, "Can we think that the righteous Judge of the world will merely send words of grace and salvation amongst them, on purpose to make his creatures so much the more miserable, when there is no real grace to salvation contained in these words for them who refuse to receive it?" Thus he constructed a problem which all his ingenuity could not solve. Many expressions of Scripture, he thought, give us reason to conclude that " Christ lived and died in some respects as a common mediator of mankind, though with a peculiar regard to the elect." In this manner he sought to establish a conditional salvation.

Upon the existence of the soul in a future state, he often speculated with a fancifulness worthy of Henry More. But it would be well if in our curious meditations