tune of florid and difficult vocalization, and is now
heard only in Old Folks' Concerts.

* * * * *

The Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D., was born at Southampton, Eng., in 1674. His
father was a deacon of the Independent Church there, and though not an
uncultured man himself, he is said to have had little patience with the
incurable penchant of his boy for making rhymes and verses. We hear
nothing of the lad's mother, but we can fancy her hand and spirit in the
indulgence of his poetic tastes as well as in his religious training.
The tradition handed down from Dr. Price, a colleague of Watts, relates
that at the age of eighteen Isaac became so irritated at the crabbed and
untuneful hymns sung at the Nonconformist meetings that he complained
bitterly of them to his father. The deacon may have felt something as
Dr. Wayland did when a rather "fresh" student criticised the Proverbs,
and hinted that making such things could not be "much of a job," and the
Doctor remarked, "Suppose _you_ make a few." Possibly there was the same
gentle sarcasm in the reply of Deacon Watts to his son, "Make some
yourself, then."

Isaac was in just the mood to take his father at his word, and he
retired and wrote the hymn--

Behold the glories of the Lamb.

There must have been a decent tune to carry it, for it pleased the
worshippers greatly, when it was sung in meeting--and that was the
beginning of Isaac Watts' career as a hymnist.

So far as scholarship was an advantage, the young writer must have been
well equipped already, for as early as the entering of his fifth year he
was learning Latin, and at nine learning Greek; at eleven, French; and
at thirteen, Hebrew. From the day of his first success he continued to
indite hymns for the home church, until by the end of his twenty-second
year he had written one hundred and ten, and in the two following years
a hundred and forty-four more, besides preparing himself for the
ministry. No. 7 in the edition of the first one hundred and ten, was
that royal jewel of all his lyric work--

When I survey the wondrous cross.

Isaac Watts was ordained pastor of an Independent Church in Mark Lane,
London, 1702, but repeated illness finally broke up his ministry, and
he retired, an invalid, to the beautiful home of Sir Thomas Abney at
Theobaldo, invited, as he supposed, to spend a week, but it was really
to spend the rest of his life--thirty-six years.

Numbers of his