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if reading a book, the hands representing the book; and the ceremony ended by the Tartars stroking each his face and beard.

The Russians, who make more salams to a candle, providing it lights some daub of a picture, than the Tartar does prostrations in good earnest, seemed not a little amused and attentive, but stood uncovered, and shook their long tallow-candle-like even-cut curls, which being assisted by the wind, gave a wildness to the scene, which I never before remember to have witnessed.

DODDRIDGE'S CORRESPONDENCE.*

DODDRIDGE was one of those marked and foremost men that alone deserve to be remembered among posterity, and of whom details, apparently the most inconsiderable, are strictly matters of interest to all who delight in analysing the characters and tracing the conduct of men of superior powers. Of what advantage is it to contemplate the course of mediocrity, or study the effusions of those whose career and whose influence are scarcely distinguishable from thousands of their contemporaries-but to encourage indolence, foster prejudice, and obstruct the progress of intelligence? There is nothing exciting about such persons; while the men, whose native energies, struggling into light, gave them priority and power among their equals, and commanded their esteem and admiration, infuse, by their example and success, fresh stimulus into a thousand generations. But then it is not enough to be toldhere they were born, and there they were taught this was their field of action, and those were their associates-such and such were their productions, composed under such circumstances and on such occasions; we desire to know the individual more intimately, more familiarly-in all his relations, at home and abroad, in the bosom of his family, and the intercourse of his friends, in his undress as well as his state-dress; and wherever the means of communicating such information exist, it is surely a moral and sacred duty in the possessor to produce them fully and frankly. To act thus would indeed enlighten; whereas, to conceal one half of the man is only to keep us in the dark, and deprive us of the real benefit to be gathered from the closer knowledge of such as, endowed with higher abilities, are destined by nature to advance the course of moral knowledge. In the case of Doddridge, materials exist in abundance, and, luckily, they have at length fallen into the hands of a man—a great-grandson of the author's-with sense and spirit enough to present them to the world unmutilated. They consist of a considerable mass of correspondence, the greater part written in his earlier days, before he was involved in his more serious and pressing engagements; and a diary, descriptive not of daily and minute occurrences, but of the state of his private feelings, and the more striking incidents of his life. Why, it may be asked, have they been so long withheld? One reason probably was, the little value that was, till of late, set upon personal details by the public, and the consequent apprehension they would be welcome but to few; and some scruple, moreover, was felt, lest the publication of such familiar matters might derogate from the dignity of the author, unduly contrast with the gravity of a personage like Doddridge, and exhibit him in a light scarcely becoming his theological character. But, thanks to the more liberal, or at least more inquisitive spirit of our times, original and personal documents are sought after with increasing ardour, and are prompted, we are disposed to think, by an unquenchable desire to know the truth, and the whole truth, relative to the great of by-gone days. It is one of the best signs of the intelligence of our times, that while profession and perhaps hypocrisy are more justly charge

The Diary and Correspondence of Philip Doddridge, D.D. &c. &c. Edited by his great-grandson, John Doddridge Humphreys, Esq.

Oct.-VOL. XXVI. NO. CVI.

Y

able on society than ever they were, and more concealments are aimed at, discovery and exposure with respect to the past are almost universally pursued; a sort of passion urges numbers to strip off old disguises of all kinds, and get precisely at things as they were. This, in spite of all obstruction, will lead us inevitably to judge correctly of things as they are; the application of past experience to the analysis and estimate of the present, is irrepressible; and we thus shall at once instruct ourselves, and establish surer principles for the guidance of those who come after us.

The portion of Doddridge's correspondence now published is exclusively that of his youth, extending only to his twenty-seventh year, and containing little of the grave matters and graver discussions the reader might haply anticipate from so venerable a name. The topics are chiefly relative to matters of personal interest-to the course of his education-to the subjects of his lighter readings-the affairs of his friends--the state of his feelings and affections-his solitude in the obscure village he resides in, and the unlicked and unintelligent society his intercourse with the world is confined to. He was not yet in conflict with much of the important business of life. In a subsequent portion, we shall find him in correspondence with all the more influential of his own class, and with many of the distinguished personages of the day, appealed to as authority, and respected as a sage and a saint; but with this we have nothing at present to do. If the reader be disappointed by lack of incidents, or the absence of weighty topics, he will be amply repaid by the truth and nature that reign through the whole of his communications with his familiar friends. He writes with all the warmth and vivacity of youth; free from all affectation, and unrestrained by any mistrust He has no misgivings, no apprehension of misconstruction, in the midst of what has occasionally an air of levity. Light-hearted and unsophisticated, he indulges his natural gaiety and turn for humour, and gives expression to the promptings of a playful fancy, in a tone of innocent badinage, that must be felt at once to be perfectly guileless. Mr. Humphreys has clipped away none of this exuberance; he is too wise a man to comply with the fastidious and sectarian admirers of Dr. Doddridge. "Should the gaiety of expression," says he, "conspicuous in much of the correspondence, be to any a source of offence, I wish them warmer hearts and sounder heads."

Doddridge was of the class of dissenters known by the name of Non-conformists, and advantageously distinguished from the dissidents of the day, usually termed dissenters. The ministers were men of a more learned cast, most of them of respectable family connexion, and of more liberal society— men whose ancestors had sacrificed interest to integrity, and themselves refusing to temporize from the same honourable motive. In this class Doddridge was born and bred; and piety and principle were among the first feelings excited and confirmed in him. His grandfather had been ejected from the living of Shepperton, by the Act of Uniformity, in 1662; and his father, a man engaged in mercantile pursuits in London, married the only daughter of a German, who had fled from Prague to escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia, after the expulsion of Frederick, the Elector Palatine, when to abjure or to emigrate were the only alternatives. The family connexion was thus on both sides of the same character, and he himself was, moreover, educated by Non-conformist ministers, at a period when the party narrowly escaped the fate of the Catholics. A bill had actually passed, forbidding the education of their children, and was only prevented from going into operation by the return of the Whigs to power on the accession of George the First. In the year 1712, then ten years of age, he was sent to Kingston-upon-Thames, to a school which had been kept by his mother's father, and which is by some mistake called the Grammar-school. While at this place, he attended the ministry of a Mr. Mayo, whose grandfather also had been ejected from the very living of this very Kingston-uponThames. To this gentleman's pious counsels he considered himself, in afterlife, deeply indebted. About three years after he had been thus placed at

Kingston, he lost both his parents; and some expressions of resignation, written by him on that melancholy occasion, show how carefully his religious duties had been inculcated, and how habitually and easily religious thoughts rose in his young mind. By the persons under whose guardianship he fell on the death of his parents, he was removed to a school at St. Alban's, where he was also introduced to the notice and regard of Mr. Samuel Clark, the pastor of the Non-conformist congregation of the town, himself the son of an ejected minister of some distinction; and into this gentleman's church, according to the custom of those days and of the party, after due preparation, he was solemnly admitted a member, in his sixteenth year. While at this school, his piety and benevolence were early conspicuous; when only fourteen, though still mingling eagerly in the amusements of his age, he was, for the most part, quite a little man-methodizing his time, and keeping exact accounts of the disposal of it. He assisted his school-fellows, selecting those especially who he knew had not the same advantages as himself, and visited the neighbouring cottages, reading the bible to the inmates, and expending his pocket-money for the relief of their necessities.

At this period the desire of devoting himself to the "ministry" became the settled purpose of his soul, and he accordingly set himself-for he needed no prompting to a more diligent study of Greek and Latin, wrote commentaries on a portion of scripture night and morning, and made abstracts of the sermons he heard, and occasional reflections on them. Scarcely, however, had he entered upon this course of preparation, when it was suddenly broken in upon by the failure of his guardian, in whose bankruptcy was involved, and utterly wrecked, the whole of the family property. In this ruin of his fortunes, he took refuge with his only sister, the wife of a non-conformist minister, at Hampstead, where his thoughts were necessarily turned towards the means of future subsistence. While thus in anxious suspense, the Duchess of Bedford, to whom his misfortunes became known through her steward, Doddridge's uncle, offered to place him at either of the Universities, if he would adopt the Church as his future profession. This offer, though coming at so tempting and critical a moment, he magnanimously declined on the ground of subscription, to which he already felt he could never bring himself to accede. The ministry, however, was still the first object of his wishes, and his hope of assistance for the accomplishment of it naturally rested upon the dissenters. An appeal was accordingly made to Dr. Edmund Calamy, the head of that body, and one who well knew the stock from which the youth sprang. From that gentleman, unhappily, he met with nothing but a cold repulse, and advice to turn his attention to something else. Mr. Humphreys speculates upon Calamy's motives for thus discouraging an ardent youth like Doddridge, and at last kindly, but gratuitously, concludes he must have been influenced by the delicate and frail appearance of his health;-he was tall and singularly slender, with a languid fulness of eye, and a mantling flush upon his cheekthe common heralds of early death. Checked thus in the attainment of his wishes, the law seemed his only source, and through the recommendation of a friend of the family, an advantageous proposal was made him in a solicitor's office, with which he was just on the point of closing, when he received a letter from Mr. Clark, of St. Alban's, with a frank offer, if he chose the ministry upon Christian principle, to take him under his own care. To Doddridge this generous offer was like a message from heaven, and he eagerly expressed his acceptance.

To this gentleman he accordingly hastened, and by him, at the end of a few months, was placed, in 1719, at an academy established at Kibworth, near Harborough, in Leicestershire-a leading place of education among Dissenters, ably conducted by Mr. John Jennings, a man of learning, piety, and candour. Here were nearly three years admirably spent in the steady and unflinching prosecution of his studies, under the friendly guidance of a man of no common attainments, in the simple society of his tutor's family, and a few fellow-students of the same class and the same views, apart from

all that could distract or corrupt. His incomparable friend Mr. Clark, though himself in the narrowest circumstances, undertook the discharge of his expenses, which, small as they were, was a matter of considerable difficulty, but cheerfully borne. The influence of his tutor now and then obtained him a guinea or two, for books, from dissenting societies and private friends; and occasionally came a trifle from Lady Jane Russell, who lived within a few miles of Kibworth, to whom at stated seasons he paid formal visits, and with whom, in after-life, he kept up a frequent and confidential intercourse by letters.

During his residence at Kibworth begins the correspondence now published, which is continued with one or other of his correspondents so uninterruptedly, that it presents a full account of his fortunes and course of life for ten years, the period of his final removal to Northampton, where he settled as the pastor of that congregation, and the principal of the dissenting academy. The correspondence from Kibworth is addressed chiefly to Mr. Clark, and a sister of that gentleman, and occasionally to his own sister, and two or three ladies, the friends of Mr. Clark or his own family, whom he usually styles his mamma or his aunt. The letters to Mr. Clark are descriptive of his studies and of his readings. His opinions of the books he was perusing, though at so early an age, are marked by the soundest judgment, but especially by that liberality of sentiment which characterised him through life, and which, indeed, distinguished most of the eminent men of his party, in his own age, and in that which immediately preceded. His letters to his sister are full, as occasion called forth his feelings, of affectionate sympathy, or playful complaint; while those which are addressed to his lady friends testify the warmth of his affections and the kindness of his nature, and exhibit him in the most amiable and attractive light, with a degree of gaiety and liveliness that seems never, in after-life, to have deserted him. Of this gaiety the reader shall have a specimen, and let no fastidious person turn up his or her nose-the evident naïveté may well excuse the apparent brusquerie. He is addressing the lady whom he calls Mamma, and whom he expects shortly to visit at Bethnal-green, and feeling a little perplexed on some points, asks her advice.

"I never walked with a lady but I am frequently at a loss to know whether I ought to go before or after her. I think, according to the rules of nature and philosophy, a man should lead the way. But there is one terrible objection against this that I cannot surmount, and that is, that when a lady is going down-stairs, the petticoat, emphatically so called, may discover charms it was perhaps her intention to conceal; and I must frankly confess, that though I look upon good-breeding as a very valuable accomplishment, yet I consider modesty as a quality of more importance, so that, to answer my own question, I had rather transgress the laws of etiquette than encounter so seductive a temptation, which I blush to own I might not always resist with the philosophy of St. Augustine. In the next place, madam, I would seriously know how far kissing is in fashion, and whether, when a young man is just come out of the country, he is actually obliged to kiss all his female acquaintance, or whether that ceremony be confined only to the nearest relations, as mothers, aunts, and sisters."

Connected with this is another epistle in the same style, addressed to a friend of the former lady, which friend he calls his Aunt.

"Your rules of behaviour are certainly very judicious. But the business of kissing wants a little farther explanation. You tell me, the ladies have resigned their claim to formal kisses at the beginning and end of visits. But I suppose they still allow of extemporary kissing; which you know a man may be led into by a thousand circumstances which he does not foresee. I cannot persuade myself that this pretty amusement is entirely banished out of the polite world, because, as the apostle says in another case, even nature itself teaches it. I would not for the world be so unmannerly as to ask my aunt, whether she has not been kissed within this fortnight; but I hope I may rely on her advice, and that she will not deceive me in a matter of such vast importance. For my own part, I can safely say, I look upon this, as well as the other enjoyments of life, with a becoming moderation and indifference. Perhaps, madam, I could give you such instances of my abstinence

as would make your hair stand on end! I will assure you, aunt, which is a most amazing thing, I have not kissed a woman since Monday, July 10th, 1721, about twelve o'clock at night; and yet I have had strong temptations both from within and from without. I have just been drinking tea with a very pretty lady, who is about my own age. Her temper and conversation are perfectly agreeable to mine, and we have had her in the house about five weeks. My own conscience upbraids me with a neglect of a thousand precious opportunities that may never return. But then I consider, that it may be a prejudice to my future usefulness, and help me into farther irregularities (not to say, that she has never discovered any inclination of that nature), and so I refrain. But to-morrow I am to wait upon her to a village about a mile and a half from Kibworth, and I am sensible it will be a trying time. However, I shall endeavour to fortify my mind against the temptations of the way by a very careful perusal of your letter, and my mamma's of the 31st of October."

Here is another specimen, in a style of compliment little to be expected from a raw lad under twenty, bred up in absolute seclusion, in a remote village, and in the absence of all courtly society:

"You see, madam, I treat you with rustic simplicity, and perhaps talk more like an uncle than a nephew. But I think it is a necessary truth, that ought not to be concealed, because it may possibly disoblige. In short, madam, I will tell you roundly, that if a lady of your character cannot bear to hear a word in her own commendation, she must rather resolve to go out of the world, or not attend to any thing that is said in it. And if you are determined to indulge this unaccountable humour, depend upon it, that with a thousand excellent qualities and agreeable accomplishments, you will be one of the most unhappy creatures in the world. I assure you, madam, you will meet with affliction every day of your life. You frown, when a home-bred, unthinking boy tells you that he is extremely entertained with your letters. Surely you are in a downright rage, whenever you converse with gentlemen of refined taste and solid judgment; for I am sure, let them be ever so much upon their guard, they cannot forbear tormenting you about an agreeable person, a fine air, a sparkling wit, steady prudence, and unaffected piety, and a thousand other things, that I am afraid to name, although even I can dimly perceive them; or if they have so much humility as not to talk of them to your face, you will be sure to hear of them at second hand. Poor aunt! profess I pity you; and if I did but know any one circumstance of your character that was a little defective, I would be sure to expatiate upon it out of pure good-nature."

With all this gaiety, which some will term levity, he was not only assiduous in the pursuits of learning, but zealous in the cultivation of his moral qualities, and the practice of his religious duties. The rules which he laid down for his own guidance, while a student, have all the self-severity of the stoic, and the rational humility of the Christian.

Doddridge was now in his twentieth year, when his tutor removed to Hinckley, whither he accompanied him. Within a week or two, he was prevailed upon by Mr. Jennings to make his appearance in the pulpit of a friend of his at Nuneaton. In a letter to his sister, he speaks of it in these terms:

"I preached my first sermon on Sunday morning, to a very large auditory, from 1 Cor. xvi. 22. It was a plain, practical discourse, and cost me but a few hours' study; but as I had the advantage of a very moving subject, and a good-natured, attentive people, it was received much better than I could have expected. There was one good old woman, that was a little offended to see such a lad get up into the pulpit; but I bad the good fortune to please her so well, that as soon as I had done, she told Mrs. Jennings, that she could lay me in her bosom."

Though preaching now almost every week, and sometimes oftener, he still continued for some months with his old tutor, to complete what was termed the theological course; and such was the reception his animated style of preaching met with, that he was quickly invited to so important a post as Coventry, and declined it only to avoid some probable conflict or jealousy with older men. In the mean while, Kibworth had had no regular minister since Jennings left it. Doddridge had often filled the pulpit, and the little society were earnest to have him settled among them. Thirty, or five-andthirty pounds was the utmost they could raise; but to this place Doddridge

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