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, and I shall present my readers with the abstract which I made
from the collection; in doing which I studied to avoid copying what had
appeared in print, and now make part of the edition of _Johnson's
Works_, published by the Booksellers of London, but taking care to mark
Johnson's variations in some of the pieces there exhibited.
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[410].
According to Johnson's manuscript it began thus after the text, _What
shall I do to be saved?_[411]--
'These were the words with which the keeper, to whose custody Paul and
Silas were committed by their prosecutors, addressed his prisoners, when
he saw them freed from their bonds by the perceptible agency of divine
favour, and was, therefore, irresistibly convinced that they were not
offenders against the laws, but martyrs to the truth.
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