The person, whose name he thus rashly and
criminally presumed to falsify, was the Earl of Chesterfield[407], to whom
he had been tutor, and who, he perhaps, in the warmth of his feelings,
flattered himself would have generously paid the money in case of an
alarm being taken, rather than suffer him to fall a victim to the
dreadful consequences of violating the law against forgery, the most
dangerous crime in a commercial country; but the unfortunate divine had
the mortification to find that he was mistaken. His noble pupil appeared
against him, and he was capitally convicted.
Johnson told me that Dr. Dodd was very little acquainted with him,
having been but once in his company, many years previous to this
period[408] (which was precisely the state of my own acquaintance with
Dodd); but in his distress he bethought himself of Johnson's persuasive
power of writing, if haply it might avail to obtain for him the Royal
Mercy. He did not apply to him, directly, but, extraordinary as it may
seem, through the late Countess of Harrington, who wrote a letter to
Johnson, asking him to employ his pen in favour of Dodd. Mr. Allen, the
printer, who was Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court,
and for whom he had much kindness[409], 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.
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