I've no wish to topple Richard Cockle Lucas's statue of Isaac Watts.
What does need replacing is the false image it conveys of Watts as only an elderly hymn-writer.
Marilyn Madigan (Echo 29 June) calls the BLM generation a cult.
But they have exactly the qualities ascribed to Watts by his American biographer:
"He planned his work in the ardour of youth - in its singleness of conviction, in its preference of radical remedies over compromise."
Lucas's statue ignores Isaac's thwarted wish to share his life with Thomas Gunston; his homo-erotic epic poem "The Dacian Battle" (praised by Samuel Johnson); and his admiration for Charles Wesley's very carnal hymn 'Wrestling Jacob'.
So it's not a question of current beliefs versus "ages past" .
Some 17th and 18th century people thought like persons today. Their voices have been ignored, but they deserve to be heard.
Adrian Risdon
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