No man in Ireland has, since Archbishop Ussher, shown equal skill in bibliography, accuracy of knowledge, or devotion to the development of Irish literature. About 1850 Todd was asked by a London publisher to write the lives of the archbishops of Armagh on a scale similar to that of Hook's 'Archbishops of Canterbury.' The publisher failed when the first volume, dealing with the life of St. Patrick, was in the press, and Todd brought it out in 1864 as an independent book, bearing the title 'St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.' Another important work was 'Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh. The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or the Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen,' published in 1867 in the Rolls Series. This book contains the Irish text (from two manuscripts, one of which was written about 1150), with translation, notes, genealogical tables, and an able historical introduction.
Todd, who had graduated B.D. in Dublin in 1837 and D.D. in 1840, was given an ad eundem degree at Oxford in 1860. He died, unmarried, in his house at Rathfarnham on 28 June 1869, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Todd was one of the best known Irishmen of his day, consulted both by statesmen and theologians. When quite a young man his opinion was held in much esteem by that stately prelate, Lord John George de la Poer Beresford [q. v.], and in later life Mr. Gladstone, Lord Brougham. Newman, and Pusey were among his correspondents. He was conservative in politics, but too independent in his views to get high preferment from any party. His friends founded in his memory the Todd lectureship of the Celtic languages in connection with the Royal Irish Academy. Besides the works already mentioned, Todd edited: 1 . 'The Last Age of the Church. By John Wycliffe, D.D., now first printed from a manuscript in the University Library, Dublin,' with notes, Dublin, 1840. 2, 'An Apology for Lollard Doctrines: a work attributed to Wycliffe, now first printed from a manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin,' with introduction and notes (Camden Society), London, 1842. 3. 'Three Treatises. By John Wycliffe, D.D., now first published from a manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin,' with notes, Dublin, 1851. 4. 'The Books of the Vaudois: a descriptive List of the Waldensian Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin,' 1865. 5. 'A List of the Graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, from its Foundation,' 1869. Todd was a frequent contributor to 'Notes and Queries' from the sixth number onwards.
[Private papers; information from Mr. Whitley Stokes; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vi. 362, 433, 477, vii. 362; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ.]
TODD, ROBERT BENTLEY (1809–1860), physician, second son of Charles Hawkes Todd, an Irish surgeon of high reputation, and younger brother of James Henthorn Todd, D.D. [q.v.], was born in Dublin on 9 April 1809. He was educated with his elder brother at a day school, and under a tutor, the Rev. W. Higgin, afterwards bishop of Derry, and entered Trinity College in January 1825, intending to study for the bar; but in 1826, on his father’s death, he adopted the medical profession. He became a resident pupil, at the House of Industry hospitals in Dublin, and for two years availed himself to the utmost of the opportunities of study afforded by those hospitals. Chief among his teachers was Robert Graves [q.v.], professor of physiology in the university. Todd graduated B.A. at Trinity College in the spring of 1829, and on 16 May 1831 became licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland.
In the summer of 1831, at the age of twenty-two, he first came to London. An invitation to lecture on anatomy in the Aldersgate Street school of medicine determined him to settle there. For three sessions he lectured in Aldersgate Street, and attracted the kindly notice of Sir Astley Cooper, Sir Benjamin Brodie, and other well-known men in the profession; but, although his own class was generally well attended, the school did not prove a pecuniary success. He afterwards joined Guthrie and others in setting on foot a medical school in connection with Westminster Hospital, and about the same time he became physician to the Western Dispensary, where he also lectured.
He was incorporated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 15 March 1832, and kept a term or two, proceeding M.A. on 13 June 1832, B.M. on 2 May 1833, and D.M. in 1836. In 1833 Todd was in Paris for some weeks to confer with the foreign contributors to the ‘Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology’ which he had projected a year before, and he then became acquainted with Milne-Edwards and other distinguished men of science. In 1838 he was again abroad, visiting the hospitals in Holland and Belgium with (Sir) William Bowman. In 1833 took the license of the College of Physicians and became a fellow in 1837 and censor in 1839-1840. He gave the Gulstonian lectures in May 1839, and the Lumleian in 1849. In
