Isaac Watts' parents, though poor, did not see poverty as an obstacle to knowledge. They valued knowledge and understanding. They made every effort to provide books for their children from the time they were small, and what books! Little Isaac Watts was learning Latin at home by the time he was four years old.
Thanks to a preacher who taught a free school, Isaac Watts was able to learn more Latin, as well as greek and Hebrew. he went on to become the "Father of English Hymnody." His Psalter became the most influential hymnbook in early America.
He wrote Logick, or the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as Well as in the Sciences, which became a standard textbook in universities including Harvard and Yale and was used at Oxford for some 100 years. The short sketch below of Isaac Watts' childhood comes from the 1785 biographical essay by Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame:
"Isaac Watts was born July 17, 1674, at Southampton, where his father of the same name kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, though common report makes him a shoe-maker. He appears, from the narrative of Dr. Gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor illiterate.
Isaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his infancy; and began, we are told, to learn Latin when he was four years old, I suppose at home. He was afterwards taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, by Mr. Pinhorne, a clergyman, master of the freeschool at Southampton, to whom the gratitude of his scholar afterwards inscribed a Latin ode.
His proficiency at school was so conspicuous, that a subscription was proposed for his support at the University; but he declared his resolution to take his lot with the Dissenters. Such he was, as every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted..."