The unctuous dewlips of a snail, The verses on " Charms and Ceremonies" are interesting, apart from their poetry, inasmuch as they reflect a number of pleasant old customs and superstitious practices, which were still followed, in town and country, during the days of Herrick. Among the epitaphs, also, there are some pretty ideas and lines, especially those on the deaths of children. But neither any of those, or Ben Jonson's lines commencing- "Weep with me all you that read And know for whom a tear you shed 'Twas a child that did so thrive, In grace and features," &c. though very natural, can be compared, for beauty and finish, to those of the French poet, Parny, "On the Death of a Young Girl," inscribed on her tomb, which exhibit the delicacy of the French sense of beauty :"Son age échappait à l'enfance, Riante comme l'innocence; Elle avait les traits de l'amour, Quelques mois, quelques jours encore, Dans ce cœur pur et sans détour Le sentiment allait éclore. Mais le ciel avait au trépas Condamne ses jeunes appas. Au ciel elle a rendu sa vie Ainsi meurt sans laisser de trace Among English lyrists and minor poets of fancy, Herrick, both for the versatility, sparkle, and beauty of his verses, will always be treasured. He is more natural than either Carew or Jonson, and though devoid frequently of the fine taste of the latter, his verses exhibit in their diction the presence of an imagination sensitive and picturesque, which is not to be found among song-writers since the age of Elizabeth until the present, and in the present in scarcely the lyrics of any other poet except Tennyson. Though he has not composed any song equal to any of the best of Moore or Beranger, the natural spontaneity and scintillation of fancy which his verses display, gives them a charm hardly inferior to the masterpieces of art; and the warm, brilliant, airy, and simple soul of the modern Anacreon, instinct with May, embalmed in his Hesperides, will always invite the leisure of poetic students to his volume-a little monument of his genius, on which might be fitly inscribed the lines of Shelly: "Music, when sweet voices die, SPRING. WHEN with its perfumes rare and lively light, The winds and rain of winter wild surceasedPours fruit and flower, and herb, and foliage bright, On the spring world; when fair Ponentes' bowers Unite all charms of the reoreant hours As thou, my Laura sweet, all beauties' charms, STILL, though such a pleasant afterdinner impression was left on Mr. Hoole, there was a growing belief abroad that something was wrong. The extravagance, the entertaining of the "noble pupils," and the city feasting, were spoken of; but in that day public opinion in reference to the cloth was in a state of utter unsoundness, and so far from attempting to check, seemed rather to encourage a degraded tone among the men who wore the gown. A coarse jest, or a broad scoff, was, at most, the only reproof uttered by the lax society of "fine" ladies and gentlemen of the time. A popular print of him about this time, which I have seen, is, in itself, significant for it exhibits him as a smooth, smirking fulllength, in a studied attitude, dressed, not in gown and bands, but in a richly flowered dressing-gown, and elegant smalls; while one ruffled hand rest ostentatiously on a tremendous volume, which may be assumed to represent his Bible Commentary. Sir John Hawkins had a tenant who was brother to Mrs. Dodd; and it may be conceived that, for the knight, such a conduit pipe of information, would have been very welcome. Through this channel he obtained some particulars about the Doctor, about his habits of expense and extravagance. Mr. Perkins said he was the most importunate suitor for preferment ever known, and that he himself had been the bearer of endless letters and messages to all manner of great men, and had often " narrowly escaped being kicked down stairs." One of Dodd's most faithful friends, who did not desert him in his extremity, Governor Thicknesse, owns he "was as good and pleasant a tempered rascal as ever lived, or ever was hanged;" and gives him such commendation as one would give to a free, jovial, easy-mannered friend, who was amusing, but not very strict in principle. "An excellent companion," says Governor Thicknesse, "when he fell into such company he could trust, as he called it. I have heard him often making all the old women cry at church in the morning, and make his trusty friends laugh as much in the evening, with his song of Adam and Eve on 666 'Stopping in the Land of Nod To have their horses shod." It was known, too, that the gay divine was in the habit of frequenting a tavern with his wife, and dining there "tête-à-tête in the most voluptuous manner;' and afterwards, on the very same day, would sup at a second tavern in the same style. These were not heinous transgressions in themselves: but they are sure marks and tokens, which the skilful in reading character and moral descent can readily interpret, as significant of more fatal delinquency. To Horace Walpole, who disliked him as he did the bishops, and as he did Sterne, had drifted some stories, which he set down in certain entries in his recently published diary. His pen is sharper and his ink mixed with more gall than usual, as he deals with the luckless Doctor. He raked into his chiffonnier's scandal-basket, some shameful stories that Mary Perkins, the verger's daughter, had been a handsome woman, for whom Lord Sandwich had been anxious to provide. She had an incurable passion for drink, which the Doctor encouraged, in order that he might have opportunity of the evening to go forth upon town and entertain himself in his own way without hindrance. The same authority found out and jotted down an uncharitable remark of Bishop Newton, when the Doctor was in his last sore distress. "I am sorry for him," said the prelate. Some one asked, "Why ?" "Because he is to suffer for the least of all his offences." The behaviour of Mrs. Dodd, all through her husband's dreadful probation, and his testi mony to her merits, does not square with Walpole's bit of scandal. True or untrue, the town were in possession of these stories. Whether he feasted at taverns or no, he was still busy, at what might be called his religious hack-work for the booksellers. Presently came out the huge three volumes of sermons to the young men, his translation of sermons from Massillon, and other "job work" of the same order. It was indeed no other, and he and his faithful Weedon Butler laboured at this duty with great industry. His name was in good esteem with the booksellers. It was now come to the end of the year 1772, and this year brought with it an encouraging bit of preferment. He obtained the rectory of Hockliffe, in Bedfordshire, which was worth about £160 a year; and with this came a little later the vicarage of Chalgrove. The two together went a little in ease of the devouring annuities, and the "voluptuous" tavern dinners. But this preferment brought with it also, an adventure which had near been fatal. He was coming up in his postchaise with Mrs. Dodd, from his new living, when he was stopped near the Tottenham-road turnpike, by a mounted highwayman. This was the common probation for travellers making London; but this freebooter, who had some reputation, and was called William Griffith, as he was riding away, turned back and discharged his pistol full at the windows of the chaise. The ball did no more damage than breaking the window of the chaise "happily, as it was then thought," adds an editor" of one of the Doctor's books. Personal courage was said not to be one of his qualities; and in his evil day, when men with a strange lack of charity went about raking from corners and sewers, and dust-bins-and publishing, too-every degraded rumour and vulgar story that could be found, some one came with a legend of boyish London days, when he was in his teens. That he had attended a "Robin Hood" debating society, and that on one occasion, when a false alarm of fire had been given, he quite lost his wits, and was with difficulty restrained from dashing himself from the window. CC 'This,' 66 says the person who reports the incident, 'strikingly shows the imbecility of his character." Doctor Dodd was, however, able to identify Mr. William Griffith, who was taken not long after, and brought to trial. The Doctor appeared in the witness box, on December the 17th, and on his evidence the prisoner was found guilty. Twelve more were "capitally convicted" on the same day. A "long day" was allowed to Mr. Griffith, and on the 20th January, the following year, he went forth in one of the usual Monday morning dismal processions to execution. "When the malefactors," says the reporter who attended, "stopped opposite St. Sepulchre's to hear the dying words from the bellman, Bird," (one of Griffith's companions), "threw his face on the shoulders of the clergyman, and his form was agitated in a manner not to be described." These horrible spectacles, reaching almost to barbarity, had affected Doctor Dodd very seriously, as indeed they had affected every good and thinking man in the kingdom. These human sacrifices were a disgrace to the age, and a greater disgrace to the country-for it was truly stated at the time, that there was no country in the world where such savage exhibitions were tolerated. Doctor Dodd, whose nature was all through amiable and philanthropic, put together a sermon on the subject; but curious to say it was in the very year that he had suffered from the attack of Mr. Griffith, and only a few months before the dismal procession, to which his evidence had contributed Mr. Griffith, had stopped before St. Sepulchre's. This sermon was On the Frequency of Capital Punishment;" and even in the introduction there is something very characteristic. "The following sermon," he says, was intended to have been preached in the Chapel Royal, St. James, but was omitted on account of the absence of the Court, during the author's month of waiting." Thus, everything he did was more or less to be marked with. a little discolouration; and this flourish of court-plaster was only another instance of that weakness in all the purposes of life, which was side by side with all his good intentions. He said justly that "it may seem strange, if not incredible, that of all the nations upon earth the laws of England are the most sanguinary; there being in them, as I am credibly informed, over a hundred and fifty capital cases. In a note he adds oddly, "See Ruffhead's Index to the Statutes." Then follows one of these curious passages in which he seems to anticipate his own crisis, and appears to plead pathetically for himself. If a civic crown was the reward of a Roman who saved a fellow-creature from death, what shall be his "who by such a reformation, shall save from an ignominious end numbers of subjects and citizens, hurried into eternity in the very bloom and flower of life, with all their sins and imperfections upon their heads, and cuts them off at once from all power of reformation, from all possibility of making amends to the state they have injured, to the friends they have alienated, and the God they have so daringly offended!" This was indeed the substance of that bitter cry, that was to come from his Newgate cell not half-a-dozen years later. II. THE following year Lord Chesterfield, of manners and deportment celebrity, died, and the "young Stanhope," over whose training Doctor Dodd had watched, became an earl. One of his first acts was to make his tutor his chaplain another office of honour, in addition to the long roll of titles he already enjoyed. But mere honours were not sufficient for one of his tastes-moneys were what he required. At the very height of his popularity he yet scarcely knew what side to turn. Walpole, peeping out as it were from his private box upon the London theatricals-the paint, powder, patches-and prying even to the wings and the coulisses corners, with a powerful double glass, wrote down about this date, the estimation he was held in by men of the world, who had no scruples of giving things their right names "a precise, affected, and popular preacher-an enemy but mimic of the Methodists-director of the Magdalen Chapel, and Chaplain at Court for his hypocrisy and popularity." If Walpole thought this, and wrote it down, we may be sure he did not scruple to speak what he thought. --- With this character, then, at the beginning of the year 1774, and with those who ministered to his pleasures pressing terribly and clamorously for food, he was at his wits' end for money. Suddenly, in January of that year, a Doctor Moss was advanced to the Bishopric of Bath and Wells, and the rich and fashionable living of St. George's, Hanover-square, became vacant. Nothing could be more suited for one who was a fashionable preacher and embarrassed in his means. It was given out to be worth £1,500 ayear. It was not certain in whose gift was this prize-it being claimed by Lord North the minister, by the Bishop of London, and by the Chancellor, Lord Apsley. It was assumed, however, as it eventually proved to be, that it was in the gift of the latter. One day the Chancellor's wife, Lady Apsley, received a letter-of the kind known as anonymous-asking her to exert her influence about this living, and offering her £3,000 down, with an annuity of £500 ayear out of the living, if she would procure it for a person to be named later. She showed it to the Chancellor, who, thinking it a more sericus affair than either she or the writer imagined it to be, had inquiries set on foot. It must have been a clumsily done affair, for it was easily traced to a common law-clerk, and from the common law-clerk to Mrs. Dodd, the verger's daughter, and wife of the Rev. William Dodd, LL.D., one of his Majesty's Chaplains. Mrs. Dodd, said the law-clerk, had dictated the whole to him. At first the Doctor denied it boldly, and said he was not privy to the "officious zeal of his consort." Then, when he found the Chancellor in earnest, begged delay, and offered to go abroad. Lord Apsley, however, went to the King, and laid the whole matter before him, who indignantly ordered his chamberlain to strike the name of the Rev. W. Dodd, LL.D., from the list of his chaplains. Then the scandal became public. The news flew from coffee-house to coffee-house. When Lord Hertford told him of what he had been ordered to do, he complained bitterly of the cruelty with which he had been treated, and denied the whole charge again. In truth, his best excuse was the rude mechanism of the trick; and only for the fatal evidence of previous indiscretions, it is Mrs. Simony, put for unhappy he might have successfully-had he chosen to brazen out his denial-tided over the accusation. But the public feeling became so angry and noisy against him, that he actually addressed a weak, piteous letter to the public journals, begging for indulgence. It was dated on Feb. 10, 1774, and ran thus : "SIR,-May I earnestly entreat, through the channel of your paper, that the candid public will suspend their sentence in my case? Under the pressure of circumstances exceedingly adverse, and furnished with no proofs of innocence, but which are of a negative nature, there is left for me at present no mode of defence, but that of an appeal to a life passed in the public service, and an irreproachable attention to the duties of my function. How impossible it is to oppose the torrent of popular invective the world will judge. It is hoped, however, that time will, ere long, put some circumstances in my power which may lead to an elucidation of this affair, convince to the satisfaction of mankind my integrity, and remove every ill impression with regard to the proceedings which have justly incensed a most respectable personage, and drawn such misfortunes upon me. "WILLIAM DODD." Strange to say, he succeeded in dividing the jury, as it were. One half of the town took his side. The congregations of the Charlotte Chapels were a good constituency. The city people held to him; and strange to say, the Methodists, whose enemy he was said to be, but whose style he mimicked, were coming round to his party. But for the present the current was too strong for him, and he thought it prudent to retire abroad, and hide his head for a while. But when he was away he was to suffer a heavy penalty for his offence. Foote was then pouring forth that stream of farces which are mirrors for the manners of the day, and to which he gave a vitality and vigour, by imparting a rough coarse satire on all the weaknesses and follies. He dashed these sketches in boldly, and with much force and personality; and being at work on The Cozeners" introduced a "Doctor Simony" and a Mrs. Simony," whom there was no mistaking. It has been said always, and repeated pretty often, that in this piece Doctor Dodd was introduced upon the stage, but this was not so. He is merely spoken of; and 66 66 Mrs. Dodd, who was brought before the audience. Mrs. Fleec'em, an intriguing lady, negotiates such delicate matters as the procuring of places, at her house of business. Mrs. Simony, Doctor Dodd's lady, comes to pay her a visit, fresh from "Cox's Museum," where Sir Antony Absolute saw the bull whose eye "rolled" so terribly. "The Doctor knows nothing about it," she says, and then gives a sort of portrait which the pit knew and roared at. แ "The Doctor's powers are pretty well known about town; not a more popular preacher within the sound of Bow Bells; I do not mean for the mobility only-these every canting fellow can catch; the best people of my fashion arn't ashamed to follow Doctor. Not one, madam, of the hundred drawling, long-winded tribe; he never crams congregations, or gives them more than they can carry away-not more than ten or twelve minutes at most. Even the Duchess Dowager of Drowsy was never known to nod at my Doctor; and then he doesn't pore with his eyes close to the book like a clerk that reads the first lesson; not he, but all extemporary, madam; with a cambric handkerchief in one hand and a diamond ring on the other; and then he waves this way and that way, and he courtsies, and he bows, and he bounces, that all the people are ready to But then his wig, madam! I am sure you must admire his dear wig; a not with the bushy brown buckles hanging and dropping like a Newfoundland spaniel, but short, rounded off at the ear to show his plump cherry cheeks, white as a curd, feather-topped, and the curls as close as a cauliflower. "Mrs. F.-Why, really, madam "Mrs. Simony.-Then my Doctor is none of your schismatics, madam; believes in the whole thirty-nine, and so he would if there were nine times as many. Not a step I beseech you. Lord bless me! I had like to have forgot. Besides all I have said, my Doctor, madam, possesses a very pretty little poetical vein. I have brought you here a little hymn in my pocket. "Mrs. F.-Hymn! Then the Doctor sings, I presume. "Mrs. Simony.-Not a better pipe at the playhouse; he has been long notorious for that; then he is as cheerful, and has such a choice collection of songs; why he is constantly asked to the great city feasts, and does, I verily believe, more indoor christening than any three of the cloth." This is gay and very amusing; but, after all, it was an unwarrantable freedom. Doctor Dodd was fair |