But his wit was usually as mild as his dispositions; and it was seldom that he answered a fool according to his folly. His very essence was his kindness and charity; and one of the worst faults laid to his charge is a perilous sort of catholicity. The dissenters never liked his dealings with the Church of England; and both Episcopalians and Presbyterians have regretted his intimacy with avowed or suspected Arians. Bishop Warburton reproached him for editing Hervey's Meditations, and Nathaniel Neal warned him of the contempt he was incurring amongst many by associating with "honest crazy Whitefield;" whilst the "rational dissenters," represented by Dr. Kippis, have regretted that his superior intelligence was never cast into the Socinian scale. Judging from his early letters, this latter consummation was at one time far from unlikely; but the older and more earnest he grew, the more definite became his creed, and the more intense his affinity for spiritual Christianity. In ecclesiastical polity he never was a partisan, and for piety his attraction was always more powerful than for mere theology. But in that essential element of vital Christianity, a profound and adoring attachment to the Saviour of men, the orthodoxy of Doddridge was never gainsaid. Had any one intercepted a packet of his letters, and found one addressed to Whitefield and another to Wesley; one to the Archbishop of Canterbury and another to Dr. Webster of Edinburgh; one to Henry Baker, F.R.S., describing a five-legged limb and similar prodigies; and another to the Countess of Huntingdon or Joseph Williams, the Kidderminster manufacturer, on some rare phasis of spiritual experience; he might have been at a loss to devise a sufficient theory for such a miscellaneous man. And yet he had a theory. As he writes to his wife, "I do not merely talk of it, but I feel it at my heart, that the only important end of life, and the greatest happiness to be expected in it, consists in seeking in all things to please God, attempting all the good we can." And from the post-office could the querist have returned to the great house at the top of the town, and spent a day in the study, the parlor, and the lecture-room, he would have found that after all there was a true unity amidst these several forthgoings. Like Northampton itself, which marches with more counties than any other shire in England, his tastes were various and his heart was large, and consequently his borderline was long. And yet Northampton has a surface and a solid content, as well as a circumference; and amidst all his complaisance and all his versatility, Doddridge had a mind and a calling of his own.
The heart of Doddridge was just recovering from the wound which the faithless Kitty had inflicted, when he formed the acquaintance of Mercy Maris. Come of gentle blood, her dark eyes and raven hair and brunette complexion were true to their Norman pedigree; and her refined and vivacious mind was only too well betokened in the mantling cheek, and the brilliant expression, and the light movements of a delicate and sensitive frame. When one so fascinating was good and gifted besides, what wonder that Doddridge fell in love? and what wonder that he deemed the twenty-second of December (1730) the brightest of days, when it gave him such a help-meet? Neither of them had ever cause to rue it; and it is fine to read the correspondence which passed between them, showing them youthful lovers to the last. When away from home the good doctor had to write constantly to apprise Mercy that he was still "pure well;" and in these epistles he records with Pepysian minuteness every incident which was likely to be important at home; how Mr. Scawen had taken him to see the House of Commons, and how Lady Abney carried him out in her coach to Newington; how soon his wrist-bands got soiled in the smoke of London, and how his horse had fallen into Mr. Coward's well at Walthamstow; and how he had gone a fishing "with extraordinary success, for he had pulled a minnow out of the water, though it made shift to get away." They also contain sundry consultations and references on the subject of fans and damasks, white and blue. And from one of them we are comforted to find that the Northampton carrier was conveying a "harlequin dog" as a present from Kitty's husband to the wife of Kitty's old admirer—showing, as is abundantly evinced in other ways, how good an after-crop of friendship may grow on the stubble fields where love was long since shorn. But our pages are not worthy that we should transfer into them the better things with which these letters abound. Nor must we stop to sketch the domestic group which soon gathered round the paternal table—the son and three daughters who were destined, along with their mother, to survive for nearly half a century their bright Northampton home, and, along with the fond father's image, to recall his first and darling child—the little Tetsy whom "every body loved, because Tetsy loved every body."
SIR JAMES STONEHOUSE.
The family physician was Dr. Stonehouse. He had come to Northampton an infidel, and had written an attack on the Christian evidence, which was sufficiently clever to run through three editions, when the perusal of Dr. Doddridge's "Christianity Founded on Argument" revolutionized all his opinions. He not only retracted his skeptical publication, but became an ornament to the faith which once he destroyed. To the liberal mind of Doddridge it was no mortification, at least he never showed it, that his son in the faith preferred the Church of England, and waited on another ministry. The pious and accomplished physician became more and more the bosom friend of the magnanimous and unselfish divine, and, in conjunction, they planned and executed many works of usefulness, of which the greatest was the Northampton Infirmary. At last Dr. Stonehouse exchanged his profession for the Christian ministry, and became the rector of Great and Little Cheverell, in Wiltshire. Belonging to a good family, and possessing superior powers, his preaching attracted many hearers in his own domain of Bath and Bristol, and, like his once popular publications, was productive of much good. He used to tell two lessons of elocution which he had one day received from Garrick, at the close of the service. "What particular business had you to do to-day when the duty was over?" asked the actor. "None." "Why," said Garrick, "I thought you must from the hurry in which you entered the desk. Nothing can be more indecent than to see a clergyman set about sacred service as if he were a tradesman, and wanted to get through it as soon as possible. But what books might those be which you had in the desk before you?" "Only the Bible and Prayer-Book," replied the preacher. "Only the Bible and Prayer-Book," rejoined the player. "Why, you tossed them about, and turned the leaves as carelessly as if they were a day-book and ledger." And by the reproof of the British Roscius the doctor greatly profited; for, even among the pump-room exquisites, he was admired for the perfect grace and propriety of his pulpit manner. Perhaps he studied it too carefully, at least he studied it till he became aware of it, and talked too much about it. His old age was rather egotistical. He had become rich and a baronet, and, as the friend of Hannah More, a star in the constellation "Virgo." And he loved to transcribe the laudatory notes in which dignitaries acknowledged presentation copies of his three-penny tracts. And he gave forth oracles which would have been more impressive had they been less querulous. But with all these foibles, Sir James was a man of undoubted piety, and it may well excuse a little communicativeness when we remember that of the generation he had served so well, few survived to speak his praise. At all events, there was one benefactor whom he never forgot; and the chirrup of the old Cicada softened into something very soft and tender every time he mentioned the name of Doddridge.
COLONEL GARDINER.
Amongst the visitors at their father's house, at first to the children more formidable than the doctor, and by and by the most revered all, was a Scotch cavalry officer. With his Hessian boots, and their tremendous spurs, sustaining the grandeur of his scarlet coat and powdered queue, there was something to youthful imaginations very awful in the tall and stately hussar; and that awe was nowise abated when they got courage to look on his high forehead which overhung gray eyes and weather-beaten cheeks, and when they marked his firm and dauntless air. And then it was terrible to think how many battles he had fought, and how in one of them a bullet had gone quite through his neck, and he had lain a whole night among the slain. But there was a deeper mystery still. He had been a very bad man once, it would appear, and now he was very good; and he had seen a vision; and altogether, with his strong Scotch voice, and his sword, and his wonderful story, the most solemn visitant was this grave and lofty soldier. But they saw how their father loved him, and they saw how he loved their father. As he sat so erect in the square corner-seat of the chapel, they could notice how his stern look would soften, and how his firm lip would quiver, and how a happy tear would roll down his deep-lined face; and they heard him as he sang so joyfully the closing hymn, and they came to feel that the colonel must indeed be very good. At last, after a long absence, he came to see their father, and staid three days, and he was looking very sick and very old. And the last night, before he went away their father preached a sermon in the house, and his text was, "I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honour him." And the colonel went away, and their father went with him, and gave him a long convoy; and many letters went and came. But at last there was war in Scotland. There was a rebellion, and there were battles; and then the gloomy news arrived. There had been a battle close to the very house of Bankton, and the king's soldiers had run away, and the brave Colonel Gardiner would not run, but fought to the very last, and alas for the Lady Frances!—he was stricken down and slain, scarce a mile from his own mansion door.
JAMES HERVEY.
Near Northampton stands the little parish church of Weston Favel. Its young minister was one of Doddridge's dearest friends. He was a tall and spectral-looking man, dying daily; and, like so many in that district, was a debtor to his distinguished neighbor. After he became minister of his hereditary parish, and when he was preaching with more earnestness than light, he was one day acting on a favorite medical prescription of that period, and accompanying a ploughman along the furrow in order to smell the fresh earth. The ploughman was a pious man, and attended the Castle-Hill Meeting; and the young parish minister asked him, "What do you think the hardest thing in religion?" The ploughman respectfully returned the question, excusing himself, as an ignorant man; and the minister said, "I think the hardest thing in religion is to deny sinful self;" and, expatiating some time on its difficulties, asked if any thing could be harder? "No, sir, except it be to deny righteous self." At the moment the minister thought his parishioner a strange fellow, or a fool; but he never forgot the answer, and was soon a convert to the ploughman's creed. James Hervey had a mind of uncommon gorgeousness. His thoughts all marched to a stately music, and were arrayed in the richest superlatives. Nor was it affectation. It was the necessity of his ideal nature, and was a merciful compensation for his scanty powers of outward enjoyment. As he sat in his little parlor watching the saucepan, in which his dinner of gruel was simmering, and filled up the moments with his microscope, or a page of the Astro-Theology, in his tour of the universe he soon forgot the pains and miseries of his corporeal residence. To him "Nature was Christian;" and after his own soul had drunk in all the joy of the Gospel, it became his favorite employment to read in the fields and the firmament. One product of these researches was his famous "Meditations." They were in fact a sort of Astro and Physico-Evangelism, and, as their popularity was amazing, they must have contributed extensively to the cause of Christianity. They were followed by "Theron and Aspasio"—a series of Dialogues and Letters on the most important points of personal religion, in which, after the example of Cicero, solid instruction is conveyed amidst the charms of landscape, and the amenities of friendly intercourse. This latter work is memorable as one of the first attempts to popularize systematic divinity; and it should undeceive those who deem dulness the test of truth, when they find the theology of Vitringa and Witsius enshrined in one of our finest prose poems. It was hailed with especial rapture by the Seceders of Scotland, who recognized "the Marrow" in this lordly dish, and were justly proud of their unexpected apostle. Many of them, that is, many of the few who achieved the feat of a London journey, arranged to take Weston on their way, and eschewing the Ram Inn and the adjacent Academy, they turned in to Aspasio's lowly parsonage. Here they found a "reed shaking in the wind:"—a panting invalid nursed by his tender mother and sister; and when the Sabbath came, James Erskine, or Dr. Pattison, or whoever the pilgrim might be, saw a great contrast to his own teeming meeting-house in the little flock that assembled in the little church of Weston Favel. But that flock hung with up-looking affection on the moveless attitude and faint accents of their emaciated pastor, and with Scotch-like alacrity turned up and marked in their Bibles every text which he quoted; and though they could not report the usual accessories of clerical fame—the melodious voice, and graceful elocution, and gazing throng—the visitors carried away "a thread of the mantle," and long cherished as a sacred remembrance, the hours spent with this Elijah before he went over Jordan. Others paid him the compliment of copying his style; and both among the Evangelical preachers of the Scotch Establishment and its Secession, the "Meditations" became a frequent model. A few imitators were very successful; for their spirit and genius were kindred; but the tendency of most of them was to make the world despise themselves, and weary of their unoffending idol. Little children prefer red sugar-plums to white, and always think it the best "content" which is drunk from a painted cup; but when the dispensation of content and sugar-plums has yielded to maturer age, the man takes his coffee and his cracknel without observing the pattern of the pottery. And, unfortunately, it was to this that the Herveyites directed their chief attention, and hungry people have long since tired of their flowery truisms and mellifluous inanities; and, partly from impatience of the copyists, the reading republic has nearly ostracized the glowing and gifted original.
OTHER FRIENDS.
Gladly would we introduce the reader to a few others of Dr. Doddridge's friends; such as Dr. Clarke, his constant adviser and considerate friend, whose work on "The Promises" still holds its place in our religious literature; Gilbert West, whose catholic piety and elegant taste found in Doddridge a congenial friend; Dr. Watts, who so shortly preceded him to that better country, of which on earth they were among the brightest citizens; Bishop Warburton, who in a life-long correspondence with so mild a friend, carefully cushioned his formidable claws, and became the lion playing with the lamb; and William Coward, Esq., with cramps in his legs, and crotchets in his head—the rich London merchant who was constantly changing his will, but who at last, by what Robert Baillie would have termed the "canny conveyance" of Watts and Doddridge, did bequeath twenty thousand pounds towards founding a dissenting college. At each of these and several others we would have wished to glance; for we hold that biography is only like a cabinet specimen when it merely presents the man himself, and that to know him truly he must be seen in situ and surrounded with his friends; especially a man like Doddridge, whose affectionate and absorptive nature imbibed so much from those around him. But perhaps enough has been already said to aid the reader's fancy.