Dr. Dodd was a clergyman of the Church of England. He was educated at Cambridge, and rose rapidly in church preferments. He was tutor to the young Earl of Chesterfield and one of the King’s chaplains. Being fond of display, and living beyond his means, he ran in debt and resorted to fraud to extricate himself. He wrote an anonymous letter to a lady of rank, offering her £3000 for her influence in obtaining for him an important rectory. The letter being traced to him caused him to be dismissed from the King’s list of chaplains. He forged the name of Lord Chesterfield to a bond for £4200, and, being convicted of the crime, he was executed for it at Tyburn. Works.—Dr. Dodd’s publications are numerous and valuable: “Discourses on the Miracles and Parables of Christ;” “Sermons to Young Men;” “The Visitor;” “Comfort for the Afflicted;” “Thoughts in Prison;” “Reflections on Death;” “Commentary on the Old and New Testament;” “Beauties of Shakespeare;” “Beauties of History,” etc.

Personal

  As soon as we entered the chapel the organ played, and the Magdalens sung a hymn in parts,—you cannot imagine how well. The chapel was dressed with orange and myrtle, and there wanted nothing but a little incense to drive away the devil, or—to invite him. Prayers then began, psalms and a sermon; the latter by a young clergyman, one Dodd, who contributed to the Popish idea one had imbibed, by haranguing entirely in the French style, and very eloquently and touchingly. He apostrophised the lost sheep, who sobbed and cried from their souls; so did my Lady Hertford and Fanny Pelham, till, I believe, the city dames took them for Jane Shores. The confessor then turned to the audience, and addressed himself to his Royal Highness (Prince Edward), whom he called most illustrious prince, beseeching his protection. In short, it was a very pleasing performance, and I got the most illustrious to desire it might be printed.

  Before I began my operations relative to the window-tax, I witnessed something memorable. It being much the fashion to go on a Sunday evening to a chapel of the Magdalen Asylum, we went there on the second Sunday we were in London, and had difficulty to get tolerable seats for my sister and wife, the crowd of genteel people was so great. The preacher was Dr. Dodd, a man afterwards too well known. The unfortunate young women were in a latticed gallery, where you could only see those who chose to be seen. The preacher’s text was, “If a man look on a woman to lust after her,” &c. The text itself was shocking, and the sermon was composed with the least possible delicacy, and was a shocking insult on a sincere penitent, and fuel for the warm passions of the hypocrites. The fellow was handsome, and delivered his discourse remarkably well for a reader. When he had finished, there were unceasing whispers of applause, which I could not help contradicting aloud, and condemning the whole institution, as well as the exhibition of the preacher, as contra bonos mores, and a disgrace to a Christian city.

  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 nobility only—those every canting fellow can catch; the best people of fashion arn’t ashamed to follow my Doctor. Not one, madam, of the hum-drum 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…. But then his wig, madam! I am sure you must admire his dear wig; not with the bushy, brown buckles, hanging and dropping like a Newfoundland spaniel, but short, rounded off at the ear, to shew his plump cherry cheeks, white as a curd, feather-topped, and the curls as close as a cauliflower.

  That which is appointed to all men is now coming upon you. Outward circumstances, the eyes and thoughts of men, are below the notice of an immortal being about to stand the trial for eternity, before the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted: your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude. It corrupted no man’s principles; it attacked no man’s life. It involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may God, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our death, accept your repentance, for the sake of his Son JESUS CHRIST our Lord. In requital of those well-intended offices which you are pleased so emphatically to acknowledge, let me beg that you make in your devotions one petition for my eternal welfare. I am, dear Sir,

  He had spent whole months with Mossop the actor, who drilled him into reading the Litany with such witching emphasis, that women went miles to hear him read the Litany. Mrs. Clive had made him pay rather dearly in dinners and suppers, and mulled claret and earrings, for instructing him in a pleasing delivery of the services for the solemnization of matrimony, the churching of women, and the private or public baptism of children. Palmer had taught him how to read a public notice from the pulpit with effect, and Woodward had enlightened him as to the achievement of distinctness with grace, in enunciating the “Dearly beloved,” and in reading an Epistle. For all this Will was indebted to the players at Drury Lane,—but the necessary money was well laid out. It returned cent. per cent. Covent Garden was not backward in lending him a sort of fitness for his calling.

  The wretched clergyman was the victim of the old British, stupid, mulish complacency, which has so often fancied it is doing something Spartan and splendid, when it is only cruel and ridiculous. It once shot an admiral “to encourage the rest,” and it hanged Doctor Dodd to show the surrounding world a spectacle of stern, unflinching morality. For the offence which Doctor Dodd committed, such a punishment was wholly unsuited—even unmerited. Degradation would have been, at most, the suitable penalty. Even weighing the moral delinquency accurately there was no tremendous guilt involved in the offence—for it is clear that if he used the name of his patron, he meant to restore the money eventually. In justice to the man, his story should be considered.

General

  For my own part, better and more important things henceforth demand my attention; and I here, with no small pleasure, take leave of Shakespeare and the critics. As this work was begun and finished before I entered upon the sacred functions in which I am now happily employed, let me trust this juvenile performance will prove no objection, since graver, and some very eminent members of the Church have thought it no improper employ to comment, explain, and publish the works of their own country’s poets.

  The “Prison Thoughts,” although written in blank verse, can scarcely be called poetry. They are the spasmodic, hysteric, and insincere utterances of a weak man under affliction. The power of self-deception in the writer is something to be wondered at. To read these thoughts without any other record of his life, you would gather that he had committed some crime, not perhaps a very black one; but that he was otherwise a good, pious, holy, persecuted man. He is constantly shrieking out his complaints against the world and its vices; and now that he can no longer participate in them and enjoy them, they have become the objects of his bitterest denunciations. You feel while reading “these wild and wayward cries,” that the grapes are sour; and the pity you would otherwise have is changed into something akin to contempt. The true tone of Christian meekness, and sorrow, and repentance are wanting. Surely he who had tasted of these so much denounced pleasures, who had fallen so often and so thoroughly under their fascinations, might have had a little more charity for those who were still slaves in the garden of the Syrens! His objurgations are not so much those of one disgusted with the sins, as of one unable to be a participator in them. So striking is this air of superficial and ostentatious piety; so vehement is the assertion of this horror at the doings of the world; so apparent is it that noise, and shrieks, and groans are no true measure of the writer’s true feelings; that all the time you read there is ringing in your ears the dreary, monotonous, and unpleasant old proverb:—

  His “Beauties of Shakespeare,” the work by which he is best known; which is reprinted down to this day, and which can boast of the honour of having been quoted by Schlegel.