Vital Sparks: The enduring importance of Isaac Watts
Will Fitzgerald
My latest "Vital Sparks" essay, for those who didn't see it on the Facebook
Vital Sparks: The enduring importance of Isaac Watts
I haven’t been writing much in the way of essays under the rubric of Vital Sparks recently, but I hope to pick it up again. I want to do a series on Isaac Watts, in preparation for a class I hope to teach at Camp Fasola this summer. Here’s the blurb I pitched to David Ivey:
Isaac Watts: Poet, Hymnodist, Logician, Theologian, Preacher.
In The Sacred Harp, the poetry of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) is used for more songs than any other writer's. But who was Watts? We will look at Watts’s life and religious outlook that led to his prominence in our book, but also explore some of the less well-known aspects of his life and work.
In this essay, I want to focus on “Watts in popular culture,” that is, how his life and poetry have had an effect beyond the use of his poetry in The Sacred Harp and literally hundreds of other hymnbooks.
One of best-known anecdotes is how Lewis Carroll parodies Watts’s poem “Against Idleness and Mischief,” from his Divine and Moral Songs for Children, which starts:
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
Lewis Carroll’s version, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, goes:
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
Alice recites this when she is trying to figure out if she has changed into someone else overnight, and so tries to recite a poem she knows by heart that starts, “How doth the little—” and the crocodile poem comes out of her. “I'm sure those are not the right words," she says. In this case, the parody is more famous than the original.
And, it seems, this is Watts’s fate; when he or his work is referenced outside of hymnbooks, the reference is lost on most people.
For example, Watts’s textbook Logic was used long after his lifetime as a standard introduction to the topic, and was used at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Watts’s inductive approach to logic greatly influenced generations to follow, including how Arthur Conan Doyle developed the character of the “consulting detective,” Sherlock Holmes. Holmes himself is a “busy little bee,” prone to mischief and despair when he is idle. Doyle acknowledges his debt by naming Holmes’s doctor sidekick, John Watson, after Isaac Watts — a connection unknown to most people.
Another example in which acknowledgement of Watts is overshadowed, is in the naming of the standard units of power, watts. Even Wikipedia foregoes acknowledging this. Although Wikipedia correctly acknowledges that watts are named after inventor James Watts, when C. Williams Siemens proposed watts to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he did it to honor both James Watts and Isaac Watts. “The other unit I would suggest adding to the list is that of power.… They might be appropriately called Watts, in honour of Isaac Watts and James Watts, those master minds of logic and mechanical science, respectively.” Most people are only aware of the James Watts connection. By the way, there is a musical connection to the definition of watts: it turns out that one watt is exactly the amount of energy required to raise the sixth.
You don’t see them much anymore, except in retro candy stores like Rocket Fizz here in Kalamazoo, but when I was a kid, I loved Hershey’s Watts-Bars, a dark chocolate bar with bits of dried fruits. first marketed in New England and the Middle Atlantic States in around the time of the American Civil War. The motto was “From a land of pure delight,” which replaced the original, “A river of delight.” Do you remember Hayley Mills staring into the candy store, and mother asking, “What are you casting your wishful eye on, honey?”
A final surprising pop culture reference is in the turn of the millennium commercial for Budweiser beer, which ran from 1992 to 2002. The original ad featured a group of friends talking with one another about an upcoming musical event, repeatedly saying to one another, “Watts up???”
I hope you enjoyed these little insights into how the cultural impact of Isaac Watts has endured. Am I missing anything? Tell me!
Will Fitzgerald
April 1, 2025
Antonio James Higgins
How fun, Will! Have you read Douglas Bond's, "The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts?"
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Why do my foes insult and cry,
"Fly like a timorous, trembling dove,
To distant woods or mountains fly?"
(That firm foundation of our peace,)
And violence make justice void,
Where shall the righteous seek redress?
His eye surveys the world below:
To him all mortal things are known,
His eyelids search our spirits through.
To prove their love and try their grace,
What may the bold transgressors fear?
His very soul abhors their ways.
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