ii 197. To Dr. Taylor Johnson wrote:--'Sadness only multiplies self.' Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 461.
[398] 'There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved, nor will by me at least be thought worthy of esteem.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 198. Against this Baretti has written in the margin:-- 'Johnson never grieved much for anything. His trade was wisdom.' See ante, ii. 94.
[399] See ante, iii 19. Mr. Croker gives a reference to p. 136 of his edition. Turning to it we find an account of Johnson, who rode upon three horses. It would seem from this that, because John=Jack, therefore Johnson=Jackson.
[400] Mr. Croker remarks on this:--'Johnson evidently thought, either that Ireland is generally mountainous, or that Mr. Burke came from a part which was: but he was mistaken.' The allusion may well be, not to Burke as a native of Ireland, but to him as a student of national politics and economy, to whom any general reflections on the character of mountaineers would be welcome. In Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 201, it is stated that 'it was the philosophy of the book that Burke thought well of.'
[401] Mr. Langley, I have little doubt, is the Mr. L---- of the following passage in Johnson's letter, written from Ashbourne on July 12, 1775:--'Mr. L---- and the Doctor still continue at variance; and the Doctor is afraid and Mr. L---- not desirous of a reconciliation. I therefore step over at by-times, and of by-times I have enough.' Piozzi Letters, i. 267.
[402] See ante, ii. 52.
[403] George Garrick. See Murphy's Johnson, p. 141.
[404] See ante, March 26, 1776, and post, Sept. 21, 1777.
[405] 'While Lord Bathurst held the Great Seal, an attempt was in vain made to corrupt him by a secret offer to Lady Bathurst of three thousand guineas for the living of St. George's, Hanover Square. The offer was traced to the famous Dr. Dodd, then a King's Chaplain, and he was immediately dismissed.' Campbell's Chancellors, v. 464. See Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 298.
[406] Horace Walpole, who accompanied Prince Edward to a service at the Magdalen House in 1760, thus describes the service (Letters, iii. 282): --'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 both for Jane Shores. The confessor then turned to the audience, and addressed himself to his Royal Highness, 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.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 503) heard Dodd preach in 1769. 'We had,' he says, 'difficulty to get tolerable seats, the crowd of genteel people was so great. 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.' Goldsmith in 1774 exposed Dodd as a 'quacking divine' in his Retaliation. He describes Dr. Douglas as a 'The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,' and he continues,--
'But now he is gone, and we want a detector, Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture.'
See post, April 7, 1778.
[407] The fifth earl, the successor of the celebrated earl. On Feb. 22, 1777, Dodd was convicted of forging a bond for L4,200 in his name; Ann. Reg. xx. 168. The earl was unfortunate in his tutors, for he had been also under Cuthbert Shaw (ante, ii 31 note 2).
[408] Mr. Croker quotes the following letter of Dodd, dated 1750:--'I spent yesterday afternoon with Johnson, the celebrated author of The Rambler, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable and dissatisfactory.