Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/170

 The ‘Works’ contain only such of the letters as had been edited by the Rev. Thomas Stedman of Shrewsbury, 1790, 8vo.



DODDS, JAMES (1813–1874), lecturer and poet, was born in 1813 at Softlaw, near Kelso, and, having lost his father in childhood, was brought up under his grandfather, a devout seceder, of the same type of character as James Carlyle. From his earliest years he showed great abilities, a very impulsive nature, and a daring spirit, which sometimes prompted wild and foolish freaks. He was enabled by the kindness of friends to attend the university of Edinburgh, where he became well known among his companions for his remarkable powers of speech. Determined, in a moment of offended vanity, to earn his own living, he attached himself to a company of strolling players, but being rescued by his friends from this mode of life, he settled down to quieter pursuits. He was in succession schoolmaster at Sandyknowe; apprentice for five years to a Melrose lawyer, who seems to have tried the experiment how to extract from a clerk the largest amount of work for the smallest amount of pay; then in the employment of a high-class Edinburgh firm; and finally in successful business in London as a solicitor, chiefly in connection with railway bills and cases of appeal. The freakishness of his early youth was well subdued by hard toil and many sufferings both of mind and body. In early manhood, after much tossing on the sea of doubt, he settled down to the calm, steady faith of his grandfather; and in his maturer years he was eminent for the sobriety of his judgment and the steadfastness of his whole character.

Throughout life Dodds was intensely devoted to literature, and for many years was in relations of intimacy with many of our foremost literary men. In Edinburgh he served in the office of a firm of which the late Mr. John Hunter, W.S., a connection of Lord Jeffrey, and well known in the literary circles of Edinburgh, was a member. Mr. Hunter treated him as a friend, and introduced him to many literary men. About the beginning of his clerkship in Edinburgh he communicated his literary ambition to Thomas Carlyle, and asked advice as to his chances in London. Carlyle entered most cordially into his case, but advised him not to sacrifice an assured salary for the uncertain gains of a littérateur. The friendship with Carlyle continued for many years, and on removing to London Dodds was often at Cheyne Row. With Leigh Hunt his relations were very intimate. Hunt being constantly in pecuniary and other difficulties found in Dodds a most valuable friend. ‘More than once he took the management of his affairs, giving him legal advice, conferring with his creditors, and arranging about the payment or partial payment of his debts.’ ‘Hunt,’ wrote Dodds, ‘is a glorious creation. … As he speaks to you, what he says is all so momentarily inspired, so pure and simply flowing, but all so ethereal, so wise of the world, yet not mere worldly wise, and so heavenly tinctured, that one sometimes feels as if he were about to unveil his radiant wings, and, with a farewell look of enchanting sweetness, fly to the orb which is his home.’

From an early period he was fascinated by the struggle of the Scottish covenanters. His first contributions to literature were ‘Lays of the Covenanters,’ which appeared first in the ‘Free Church Magazine’ and other journals, and after his death were gathered into a volume, edited by his cousin, the late