24 OCTOBER 1829, Page 11

THE LOVES OF DR. DODDRIDGE.*

IT was not with any expectation of entertainment that we took up the bulky volumes which form the first lirmison of the correspondence of the celebrated author of the Family 1..1.psilor. Learning and piety We looked for ; but not humour, not pleasantly, nor yet gallantry Combined with simplicity and ingenuousness; in short, we did not an- ticipate that the. main subject of this learned divine-sprivate correspon- dimice would be found to be woman, lovely woman. And yet so it DI: the only two things mainly discussed in these voluminous letters, are the choice of a wife, and the selection of a congregation ; and so intimately connected, that one never comes on the lapis without bringing along with it the other.

The Correspondence and Diary of Philip Doildridge, P.D.; illustrative of various particulars in his Life hitherto unknown, with notices of many of his Contemporaries, :ma sketch of the Ecclesiastical History of the Times in which be lived. Edited from the original MSS. by his great grandSon, Johu DOadridge Iliunnhreys, Vol, 1 and Lsadua, Iss.S4 Volburn aucU3sutley• There is no lover like a young Nonconformist divine : he combines all the elements of a passionate adorer in far greater perfection than the poet ; and we own that the Loves of the Nonconformists would aftbrd a better subject for a book than the Loves of the Poets. if Mrs. JAMESON had known as much of divines as she does of poets, we make no doubt she would have abandoned the fieldlof verse for that of prayer. Educated in strictness, sedentary, virtuous, and with the faculties of devotion largely expanded, the imagination of a young Nonconformist divine is in a state of wonderful inflammability. He knows little or nothing of woman as she is ; but he sees enough to suppose her an angel, and his dreams become filled with beatific visions. Marriage is a duty in his station: he can marry early, for he is provided for—scantily it is true, but he has been habituated to fru- gal fare. Two images, therefore, in the meting of life, naturally pre- sent themselves to his mind—both the objects of devotion—the one heavenly, and the other to his feelings not earthly; it is not to be mucli wondered at if he should confound them. Dr. DODDRIDGE in one of these letters, maintains that one is convertible into the other; and proves, by Ins rapturous delight in imagining the charms of Miss KITTY, that he is capable of a inure pious flame. The success of young Nonconformist divines, including also the par- sons of Evangelical sects generally, has become a matter of general remark. The cause may lie deteeted in Dr. DonoR1DGE : they are better lovers ; they are trained to the business of devotion ; they ex- press their feelings more glowingly ; they transfer the fervour of the pulpit to the tea-table. The squeeze of a hand from a Nonconformist is vigorous in the flesh, it is true ; but that is not half its charm. When is it communicated ?—Proleibly after sonic exalting act of de votion, when the parties rise up " rapt, inspired," from a glowing detail of seraphic glories, not perhaps always very discriminate's ap- plied, but nevertheless poured out from the heart—when the frames of both are trembling with sympathetic passion, which, though its ob- ject is divine, is not hard to be diverted. What a moment is this for contact of either hands or knees ! How fearful are the advantages of a Dissenting clergyman ! When we remember, too, the seclusion in whirls he has been brought up—the few opportunities he has had to waste health and strength—we may conceive the violence of the united force of his celestial and terrestrial feelings when they first find an outlet.

The solitary student of divinity, debarred from sensual pleasures, seeks those of the imagination nearest akin to them. Of this necessity the young- DODDRIDGE speaks in his own ease.

" I told you," says he, in one of his curly letters, " that my heart was an uninhabited box. 1 am afraid the phrase may want a little explanation. Allow me, then, to inform you, that though I have not pitched upon any particular lady, yet I find it absolutely necessary to have some subject of amorous contemplation; and so my imagination has dressed up a very pretty piece oh pageantry, which, in my scholastic language, I call the idea of—(the word in the original MS. is obliterated). It is true some parts of it are a little con. fused, as a bachelor's conception always must be; but yet, upon the whole, I am grown so fond of it, that I carry it to bed with me every night, and when -I rise in the morning it takes its place in my thoughts till some graver employment obliges it to ietire."—Vol. i. 212.

It is quite clear that this was a box not long to continue uninhabited. We soon hear of the charming Miss KITTY, in terms of admiration. At first he talks of her soberly, and speaks of driving the idea of her away by means of his books : he even contrives to be violently in love only half an hour in the day, and he specifies the interval between half-past nine and ten as the hour of rapture (after prayers) ; but this moderation does not long continue. The mention of her name creeps into every letter ; and then we have all the passion of the lover, and, what is more, the quarrels. Dr. DonnP.incE's piece of perfection seems to have been as wayward and as capricious as if she had been intended for a woman of fashion instead of a minister's wife. When she found her lover at her feet, the susceptible Donomint-E. at her mercy, she began to exact conditions : slit' made out a list of proscrip- tions, and insisted that with the unfortunat e Feseribeel her hus- band should never hold intercourse: these v.ere Is most par:ictilar friends. The man got the better of the lover, and lie refused. Jea- lousy, too, disturbed the course of his true love ; which is not so re- markable as the consolation which he draws from the reflection of his unhappiness. After one of these lovers' quarrels, he writes to a friend- " The advantage is, that I have a much more exquisite relish of num!, tine passages in. the classics than I ever had before, or could have enjoyed '.without this painful experience. I mean particularly those satirical strokes by which they expose the vanity and the mischief of love, when it presses to an unmanly degree. I have lately been reading Lucretius ; and I can pardon a hundred fooleries in his philosophy, for the judicious resections he has made upon love in the conclusion of his fourth book. But no passage affects sue more than those lines referring to a mistress, jealous of her lover's bestow- ing a look or a smile on any woman but herself ! I have known the time when Flavia's (Miss Kitty's) resentment of a smile has almost distracted me for days. Perhaps my next mistress may turn the tables on me, and make me jealous."—Vol. ii. p. 21d.

It was not Miss KITTY alone who inspired the hear! of Donor.: oftlii with pleasure—his was a kind and susceptible DM delLtlited in the virtuous society of the whole sex : we will defy all the poets that ever wrote about either women or love. to express themselves with more beauty of sentiment or style than does frequently the grave author of the Family Kipositor. What can be more elegant or more beautiful than the following praise of girls ?—it is a young minister that speaks. " There are many innocent moments in life, in which we lose our relish for books, business, and argumentative conversation, and may find an enter- tainment in the playlni society of young girls, which nothing besides is Ca- pable of giving. There is something in every innocent look, and in every gesture, when they are in good humour, which plays about the heart with ZaietY and Pleasure; 4114 a man must be cieaci indeed, if their lips and eyes

cannot inspire him with something which it may he agreeable for him to say and for them to hear."

By way of practical comment, on this abstract sentiment, the

preacher adds-

" I had sent you this packet on Wednesday, but was detained at North- ampton, where I preached last Lord's day, by a downfal of snow without doors, and two charming girls within ; and then, who would ride twelve miles merely to serve a friend ? "—Vol. ii. p. 232.

Miss KITTY, otherwise Miss CATHERINE FREEMAN, was, however, the great loadstone of the young divine's affections, in spite of her un- worthiness. She appears to have been neither more nor less than a brisk flirt, whose pride was in jilting. DoonainoE himself tells us she was famous for breaking the hearts of young ministers, six of whom she had discarded before himself. It is almost painful to read the noble and impassioned complaints which a man of DODDRIDGE'S powers and attainments was reduced to make of the capricious con- duct of this pious and provincial belle. What vanities and caprices may lie perdue under a lead-coloured gown and plain kerchief! The coquette is as common in a meeting-house as at the opera ; and the preacher, the philosopher, and the man of fashion, is each in his turn brought to do homage for the heart he holds by but a frail tenure. The humiliation of none of these characters is however so striking as that of the divine : it partakes somewhat of the spirit of profanation to see the representative of Heaven and the teacher of the word of God entangled in the meshes or drunk with the cup of some saintly Circe, who sports with his passion or spurns his devotion. In what a strain of humiliating apology is DODDRIDGE obliged to address his saucy mistress, because he had felt himself called upon to turn his thoughts to the business of his profession with more sedulousness than his pas- sion had lately suffered !

" You complain," he writes to Miss Kitty," of late, of a change in my con- duct. Permit me in one word to tell you what it is, and to give you an ac- count of the occasion and degree of it. My heart for a considerable time had been so entirely swallowed up with affection for you, that you became in a manner my all. In every moment of leisure, you engrossed my thoughts and my discourse. Even when you were absent, you mingled yourself with all my studies. You determined by your smile or your frown, whether I should be either sprightly and cheerful, or distracted with care and anxiety, unfit for devotion, for study, for conversation, or usefulness ; nay, God forgive me, when I confess that macro his blessed self, and the most iiliPortant °Idea of reli- gion and the brightest hopes a creature can fount had one thought, you at least had TEN. The hope of obtaining you, and the fear of losing you, affected me more sensibly than the thoughts of a happy or a miserable eternity. And was this, madam, the temper of a Christian or a minister ? Was this a pro- per course to engage the favourable interposition of Providence to determine this dear affair according to my wishes ?"

By a perusal of BAXTER'S treatise on Self-Denial, lie finds out his real state, and condemns himself that he had

" almost put you (Miss Kitty) in the place of Heaven, and thus clouded the evidences of my own sincerity, and sacrificed the pleasures of an habitual communion with God, to at hest an inferior happiness, and too frequently to those tormenting agonies that arose from the suspicion of your love to me or the fear of being otherwise deprived of you."

Miss KITTY, however, at length wore him out : he broke her chains by a violent effort, and with much pain—but he broke them. The

sorrowful triumph is thus announced to his brother .

"March 10, A.D. 172G.

" Restoration ! Peace ! Liberty ! I !

" Dear Brother—These few lines come to let you know that I am well ; and li that I lost my mistress yesterday about twenty minutes after four in the af- ternoon: and that I am, your very affectionate brother and servant, " PHILIP DonrunnE."

The two volumes which are published do not carry us, like the end of a novel, to the denouement of its main subject—the Doctor's mar- riage. They tell us of several other flirtations, and, what is more, of the renewal of the affair with Miss Kerry : but whom and how the amorous PHILIP at last wedded, we are not yet informed. We wait impatiently for a continuation of the amours of Dr. PHILIP DOD- DRUDGE, the Family Expositor.