There must have been a decent tune to carry it, for it pleased the
worshippers greatly, when it was sung in meeting--and that was the
beginning of Isaac Watts' career as a hymnist.

So far as scholarship was an advantage, the young writer must have been
well equipped already, for as early as the entering of his fifth year he
was learning Latin, and at nine learning Greek; at eleven, French; and
at thirteen, Hebrew. From the day of his first success he continued to
indite hymns for the home church, until by the end of his twenty-second
year he had written one hundred and ten, and in the two following years
a hundred and forty-four more, besides preparing himself for the
ministry. No. 7 in the edition of the first one hundred and ten, was
that royal jewel of all his lyric work--

When I survey the wondrous cross.

Isaac Watts was ordained pastor of an Independent Church in Mark Lane,
London, 1702, but repeated illness finally broke up his ministry, and
he retired, an invalid, to the beautiful home of Sir Thomas Abney at
Theobaldo, invited, as he supposed, to spend a week, but it was really
to spend the rest of his life--thirty-six years.

Numbers of his hymns are cited as having biographical or reminiscent
color. The stanza in--

When I can read my title clear,

--which reads in the original copy,--