{\b Isaac Watts}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 17 July 1674

{\b Date of Death}.: 25 November 1748

{\b Works}.

Horae Lyricae  (1706), Hymns and Spiritual Songs  (1707), Divine Songs  
(1715), The Psalm of David  (1719)

{\b Featured Works}.

'A Prospect of Heaven Makes Death Easy', 'Against Idleness and Mischief'.

{\b General Comment}.

Isaac Watts, English poet and hymn writer, was born in Southampton, the eldest 
of nine children. He was educated at Southampton Grammar School and at Stoke 
Newington Dissenting Academy (where Daniel Defoe had also been taught). A very 
bright pupil, he was offered, but refused a University education by a patron. 
He worked as a private tutor for some time. In 1702 he became Pastor of the 
Independent Congregation at Mark Lane, London. He began suffering health 
problems in 1703, and so was offered a house-room by Sir Thomas Abney, a 
member of the congregation. Watts lived with him, and after his death with his 
widow, for the rest of his life, first at Theobalds, Hertfordshire, and then 
at Abney House, Newington. He resigned as pastor in 1712.

He is mainly known as a hymn writer. His verse was published in Horae Lyricae: 
Poems Chiefly of the Lyric Kind  (1706), and his principal collections of 
hymns are to be found in Hymns and Spiritual Songs  (1707), and The Psalms of 
David  (1719). Divine Songs  (1715) was the first hymn book composed 
especially for children. He achieved some notoriety in Lewis Carroll's parody 
of his character in Alice in Wonderland. In addition to his hymn writing he 
wrote philosophical, sociological and theological works in prose. He received 
an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Edinburgh University in 1728.