SOURCE: Pinto, V. de Sola. “Isaac Watts and the Adventurous Muse.” In Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, Vol. XX, collected by George Cookson, pp. 86-107. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1935.

In the following essay, Pinto examines the characteristics of Watts's poems and argues that his poetry should be more highly regarded.

It is often a great misfortune for a poet, as far as his literary reputation is concerned, to be renowned for the sanctity of his life. It is nearly as bad as being notorious for wickedness. If a poet is supposed to have been a rake, the public will read his works, not for their own merits but in order to discover something interesting about his depravity, but if a poet has the character of saint, his poetry usually becomes enveloped in a fog of conventional sentiment, and he is remembered less as...