court, and for
whom he had much kindness, was one of Dodd's friends, of whom to the
credit of humanity be it recorded, that he had many who did not desert
him, even after his infringement of the law had reduced him to the state
of a man under sentence of death. Mr. Allen told me that he carried Lady
Harrington's letter to Johnson, that Johnson read it walking up and down
his chamber, and seemed much agitated, after which he said, 'I will do
what I can;'--and certainly he did make extraordinary exertions.

He this evening, as he had obligingly promised in one of his letters,
put into my hands the whole series of his writings upon this melancholy
occasion.

Dr. Johnson wrote in the first place, Dr. Dodd's Speech to the Recorder
of London, at the Old-Bailey, when sentence of death was about to be
pronounced upon him.

He wrote also The Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren, a sermon
delivered by Dr. Dodd, in the chapel of Newgate.

The other pieces mentioned by Johnson in the above-mentioned collection,
are two letters, one to the Lord Chancellor Bathurst, (not Lord North,
as is erroneously supposed,) and one to Lord Mansfield;--A Petition
from Dr. Dodd to the King;--A Petition from Mrs. Dodd to the
Queen;--Observations of some length inserted in the news-papers, on
occasion of Earl Percy's having presented to his Majesty a petition for
mercy to Dodd, signed by twenty thousand people, but all in vain. He
told me that he had also written a petition from the city of London;
'but (said he, with a significant smile) they MENDED it.'

The last of these articles which Johnson wrote is Dr. Dodd's last solemn
Declaration, which he left with the sheriff at the place of execution.

I found a letter to Dr. Johnson from Dr. Dodd, May 23, 1777, in which
The Convict's Address seems clearly to be meant.

'I am so penetrated, my ever dear Sir, with a sense of your extreme
benevolence towards me, that I cannot find words equal to the sentiments
of my heart. . . .'

On Sunday, June 22, he writes, begging Dr. Johnson's assistance in
framing a supplicatory letter to his Majesty.

This letter was brought to Dr. Johnson when in church. He stooped down
and read it, and wrote, when he went home, the following letter for Dr.
Dodd to the King:

'SIR,--May it not offend your Majesty, that the most miserable of men
applies himself to your clemency, as his last hope and his last refuge;
that your mercy is most earnestly and humbly impl