'
Keeper, I have seen enough.--
Taking then a pinch of snuff,
I concluded, looking round them,
'May their god, the devil, confound them.
Take them, Satan, as your due,
All except the Fifty-two.'
[1] 'Sir Tom:' Sir Thomas Prendergrast, a privy councillor.
ISAAC WATTS.
We feel relieved, and so doubtless do our readers, in passing from the
dark tragic story of Swift, and his dubious and unhappy character, to
contemplate the useful career of a much smaller, but a much better man,
Isaac Watts. This admirable person was born at Southampton on the 17th
of July 1674. His father, of the same name, kept a boarding-school for
young gentlemen, and was a man of intelligence and piety. Isaac was the
eldest of nine children, and began early to display precocity of genius.
At four he commenced to study Latin at home, and afterwards, under one
Pinhorn, a clergyman, who kept the free-school at Southampton, he
learned Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. A subscription was proposed for
sending him to one of the great universities, but he preferred casting
in his lot with the Dissenters. He repaired accordingly, in 1690, to
an academy kept by the Rev. Thomas Rowe, whose son, we believe, became
the husband of the celebrated Elizabeth Rowe, the once popular author
of 'Letters from the Dead to the Living.
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