Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/169

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Doddridge
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Doddridge

(with an inscription by Gilbert West) in the meeting-house at Northampton. His tomb at Lisbon was cleaned and recut, at the expense of Miller, the British chaplain, in 1814. In June 1828 it was replaced by a new marble tomb at the cost of Thomas Tayler (mentioned above); this was renovated in 1879, along with the tomb of Henry Fielding, by the then chaplain, the Rev. Godfrey Pope.

Doddridge was tall, slight, and extremely near-sighted. His portrait was several times painted, and has often been engraved. The engraving by Worthington, prefixed to the ‘Correspondence,’ is from a portrait finished 10 Aug. 1750, and regarded by his family as the best likeness. He married, on 22 Dec. 1730, Mercy Maris, an orphan, born at Worcester, but brought up by an uncle, Ebenezer Hankins, at Upton-on-Severn; she died at Tewkesbury, 7 April 1790, aged 82. In his letters to his wife, Doddridge, after many years of married life, writes with all the warmth and sometimes with all the petulance of a lover. Among his manuscripts is a letter (1741) superscribed ‘To my trusty and well-beloved Mrs. Mercy Doddridge, the dearest of all dears, the wisest of all my earthly councellors, and of all my governours the most potent, yet the most gentle and moderate.’ For the dates of birth of his three sons and six daughters see ‘Correspondence,’ v. 531 n. Five of his children died in infancy. He left one son, Philip, ‘his unhappy son’ (Orton, Letters, ii. 56), who died unmarried on 13 March 1785, aged 47; and three daughters, Mary, who became the second wife of John Humphreys of Tewkesbury, and died on 8 June 1799, aged 66; Mercy, who died unmarried at Bath on 20 Oct. 1809, aged 75; and Anna Cecilia, who died at Tewkesbury on 3 Oct. 1811, aged 74.

Doddridge's will (dated 11 June 1741) with codicils (dated 4 July 1749) is printed with the ‘Correspondence.’ The original document is entirely in Doddridge's hand, and there are interlineations in the will, made subsequent to 1741. Of these the most important is the substitution of Ashworth for Orton as his nominated successor in the academy and (if approved by the congregation) in the pastoral office.

His works were collected in 10 vols. Leeds, 1802–5, 8vo; reprinted 1811, 8vo. The chief items are the following:

  1. ‘Free Thoughts on the most probable means of reviving the Dissenting Interest,’ 1730, 8vo (anon.)
  2. ‘Sermons on the Religious Education of Children,’ 1732, 12mo (preface by D. Some).
  3. ‘Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children,’ 1737, 8vo (sermon on 2 K. iv. 25, 26, said to have been written on the coffin of his daughter Elizabeth).
  4. ‘The Family Expositor,’ 1739–56, 6 vols. 4to (the last volume was published posthumously by Orton; Doddridge finished the exposition on 31 Dec. 1748, and the notes on 21 Aug. 1749; he had prepared a similar exposition of the Minor Prophets, which was completed 5 June 1751, and is still in manuscript).
  5. ‘The Evil and Danger of Neglecting the Souls of Men,’ 1742, 8vo (sermon on Prov. xxiv. 11, 12, prefaced by his plan of a home and foreign mission).
  6. ‘The Principles of the Christian Religion, expressed in plain and easy verse,’ 1743, 12mo.
  7. ‘The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,’ 1745, 8vo and 12mo (the 8vo is the earlier issue); in French, by J. S. Vernede, Bienne, 1754, 8vo; Welsh, by J. Griffith, 1788, 12mo; Gaelic, Edinb. 1811, 12mo; Italian, 1812, 12mo; Tamil, Jaffna, 1848, 12mo; Syriac, by J. Perkins, Urumea, 1857, 4to; also in Dutch, German, and Danish.
  8. ‘Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of the honourable Colonel James Gardiner … with an appendix relating to the antient family of the Munros of Fowlis,’ 1747, 8vo (with portrait of Gardiner [q. v.]).

Posthumous were

  1. ‘Hymns,’ Salop, 1755, 12mo (contains 370 hymns, edited by Orton); reissued by Humphreys, as ‘Scriptural Hymns,’ 1839, 16mo (some copies have title ‘The Scripture Hymn-book,’ and no date); Humphreys gives 397 hymns; he claims to have restored in some places the true readings from Doddridge's manuscripts, but in others he admits having made what he considers improvements, but no suppressions.
  2. ‘A Course of Lectures on Pneumatology, Ethics, and Divinity,’ 1763, 4to (edited by S. Clark); 2nd edit. 1776, 4to; 3rd edit. 1794, 8vo, 2 vols. (edited by Kippis).
  3. ‘Lectures on Preaching’ (edited from four manuscript notebooks; another recension was printed in the ‘Universal Theological Magazine,’ August 1803 and following issues, by Edmund Butcher [q. v.]; the first separate issue is 1821, 8vo).

Not included in the collected works are

  1. ‘A Brief and Easy System of Short-hand: first invented by Jeremiah Rich, and improved by Dr. Doddridge,’ 1799, 12mo (in this first edition the characters are ‘made with a pen’).
  2. ‘The Leading Heads of Twenty-seven Sermons,’ Northampton, 1816, 8vo (transcribed from a hearer's notes by T. Hawkins).
  3. ‘The Correspondence and Diary of Philip Doddridge,’ 1829–31, 8vo, 5 vols. (edited by his great-grandson, John Doddridge Humphreys, who has been attacked for his mode of editing; he details his plan, iv. 570 n.; he claims to have omitted no passage bearing on Doddridge's personal history or theological opinions).