THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 81
of illness were very severe, and from 1712 to 1710 he was obliged to desist altogether from his ministerial work.
Watts collected works were first published by him in 1720, in six quarto volumes. They consist for the most part of sermons (to some of which suitable hymns are appended), and treatises on great theological subjects; and while comprehensive and scholarly in their character, and in some places marked by the boldness of their speculations, they are notwithstanding of a very practical nature.
Southey, in his life of Watts, has pointed out that the poet acknowledges that in his later years his speculations were content with a lower flight. For in a note appended to his sermons on the Trinity, which were published years after they were written, Watts says they were " warmer efforts of imagination than riper years could indulge on a theme so sublime and abstruse." And he adds, " Since I have searched more studiously into the mystery of late, I have learned more of my own ignorance ; so that when I speak of these unsearchables, I abate much of my younger assurance, nor do my later thoughts venture so far into the particular modes of explaining the sacred distinctions in the Godhead."
His sole aim in his prose works, as in his psalms and hymns, was Christian usefulness. In addition to his theological treatises his works include that already mentioned on " Logic." This had reached a seventh edition in 1740 ; one on " Astronomy ;" one on the "Improvement of the Mind;" his "Art of Reading and Writing English ;" an " Essay to encourage Charity Schools ;" a " Guide to Prayer" (1716), containing the substance of what he had addressed to the younger members of his church in a society for prayer and religious conference he formed for their benefit (sixth edition, 1735); his "Improvement of the Mind" (second edition, 1743); his "World to Come" (second edition, 1745); his " H amble Attempt towards the Revival of Religion" (third edition, 1742), and some others.
Dr. Watts did not claim to be a poet. He says : "I make no
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