Millar, to which Thomson wrote a
preface.]

[Footnote 166: See vol. v. p. 329 of this edition, and Mr. Roscoe's Life
of Pope, for some anecdotes respecting Gay's Beggars' Opera and Polly,
illustrative of the efficacy of a lord-chamberlain's interference with
the stage. ED.]

[Footnote 167: Several anecdotes of Thomson's personal appearance and
habits are scattered over the volumes of Boswell. ED.]

[Footnote 168: For an interesting collection of the various readings of
the successive editions of the Seasons, see vols. ii. in. and iv. of the
Censura Literaria. Thomson's own preface to the second edition of Winter
may be found in vol. ii. p. 67, of the above-quoted work. ED.]

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. Pinhorn, 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, appears to have paid attention to Latin
poetry. His verses to his brother, in the _glyconick_ measure, written
when he was seventeen, are remarkably easy a