A most

I command you, that ye love one another.' elegant, sensible, serious, and pathetic discourse, enough to have warmed a heart not callous to the impressions of pity. I own my eyes flowed with tears of compassion."

The loyalist was of those who follow what the world follows. Only nine months later, the same hand made another entry, with an amusing forgetfulness of the "elegant, sensible, and pathetic discourse," and of the tears of compassion which he himself had shed. "A reverend," says the American, "known by the name of the Macaroni Doctor, is in the Poultry Compter for forgery. His real name Dodd. He figures in the tête-à-têtes in the Magazines, and, unless defamed, is a worthless character, though noted for some serious publications in the common routine. He has two chapels and the Magdalen under his care.”

This forgetfulness is charming, but only truly typical of the class of the Doctor's admirers and friends.

When John Taylor went to hear him, he found that another clergyman had been obliged to take his place, and had actually commenced the sermon when the Doctor arrived. The clergyman at once stopped and gave way to Dodd. Taylor remarked the energy in his manner, and the theatrical nature of his gestures and language. He had often seen him in the street, stepping along in a stately manner, with his head in the air, with no doubt the silk gown rustling and flapping behind him.

STILL at West Ham, he began to add a little to his income by taking a few young gentlemen as pupils— a practice he continued all his life. The year he published his Magdalen sermon he became the Reverend William Dodd, M.A.; and the following year presented the world with three volumes of Bishop Hall's works. A more inappropriate editor for such a book, or one less capable of apprehending the quaint language and rare "conceits" of this old writer, could not be well conceived. Sterne, on whom the eyes of the town were then resting, knew and relished-and even appropriated—the old divine far better. But even in this bit of task-work the editor could not steer clear of what was "unsound" and unwholesome.

With Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury—whom Walpole has described-was living a relation, Miss Talbot, and Dodd had introduced his book with an epistle to this lady, full of servile flatteries of the archbishop. "More especially," ran this fulsome panegyric, "as you live remarkably blest in having

daily before your eyes a lively copy of piety as exalted, sanctity as unaffected, and labour as unwearied, as shone in the life of good Bishop Hall." The archbishop heard of this intended exaltation in good time, and not relishing either the obligation, or, perhaps, the ridicule, of such inflated praise (which, if we may trust Walpole, he was far from deserving), insisted on the sheet being cancelled. After a "warm expostulation" this had to be done, and Mr. Dodd had the mortification of having his panegyric rejected, and what, perhaps, he felt more acutely, a profitable opening for patronage stopped up.

At every turn in the life of this "Macaroni Parson" we light on something thus awkward, "nasty," or at least suspicious.

From this sort of spasmodic range of subject, rushing from Shakspeare to sermons, and from sermons to odes, it seems as though the Reverend William Dodd, M.A., was doing genteel sort of hack-work for the booksellers. Still all these little engines were bearing a steady profit. His name was getting known, and he was attracting notice as one of those dramatic clergymen who in every age attract a certain amount of attention and admiration. Next year he sent out a book on Milton, and, a year later, the well-known "Dodd on Death," perhaps the most familiar to the public of all his writings. "First retailed," said the Monthly Review, the "slashing" journal of the day, "in the Christian Magazine, and now collected in a volume to frighten his Majesty's subjects with dismal ideas of death, and horrible pictures of damnation."

They were written, he tells us in the preface, with the odd "design to be given away by well-disposed persons at funerals, or on any other solemn occasion.” But the editors of a pious magazine induced him to give them the first use of the papers. They are good practical thoughts; perhaps a little too theatrical and sensational, but likely to be useful to minds of a certain order. Many of the most effective points were, however, taken from Hervey, Young, Watts, and others. He also introduced that round of characters which the essayists of the day were so fond of using to point their moral—a whole crowd of Negotios, Osianders, Misellas, Pulcherias, and others, who were the regular corps dramatique of the Ramblers and Guardians. In some of his illustrations there is a familiarity that almost borders on the Burlesque. In Negotio's instance, when "two more blisters were ordered to six he already had upon him," we are not surprised to hear that a "drowsy sleepiness, dire prognostic of death, at length terminated in strong convulsions, and the busy, active, sprightly Negotio died." In the character of "Bubulo," he "improved" some City acquaintance who "had incumbered for threescore and ten years the earth with his heavy load, who had devoted hours to his nice and enormous appetite. He was in this

respect a perfect animal."*

* One of the notes to Bubulo's history is truly Shandean: "N.B.-A friend of the writer is pleased to observe: "The "Reflections on Death" please me much. But don't you carry things rather too far when you say, "'tis an indispensable duty to go to our parish church?" Was I to live in London, I should rarely or never go to my parish church, if I had a stupid, humdrum minister. I long to live in

He also admitted into his collection a remonstrance made to poor Richard Nash, the M.C. of Bath, and which told that gentleman some very home truths. It is much to be suspected that it found admittance to the "Reflections" on the ground of their being written by Lady N; of course, the same Lady N to whom he wrote the pleasant copy of verses on her not coming to the Magdalen. "I take my pen," said Lady Nto Richard Nash, Esq., "to advise, nay, to request of you, to repent while you have an opportunity. I must tell you, sir, with the utmost freedom, that your present behaviour is not the way to reconcile yourself with God.

Your example and your life is prejudicial—I wish I could not say fatal-to many. For this there is no amends but an alteration of your conduct as signal and memorable as your person and name.”

as if

Doctor Dodd adds a comment on this statement which has a remarkable significance, and which I shall remind the reader of when I come to deal with the unfortunate clergyman's last declaration on the scaffold. "No man living," he says, in a note, "can have a higher regard for benevolence and humanity than the writer of these lines; tenderness of heart, and acts of charity, could atone for every other deficiency. It is hoped, therefore, that the writer of Nash's life will strike out that offensive and hurtful passage, wherever he asserts 'that there was nothing criminal in his (Nash's) conLondon, that I might hear clever men, &c. I disapprove, as much as you do, running after Methodist preachers and enthusiasts; but should I not prefer a Sherlock at the Temple, if I lived in Fleet-street?"" &c. &c.

D