As A. D. Barker remarks, “Dodd was truly unfortunate in the composition of the Privy Council,” who were to decide on a pardon or commutation of his sentence. Dodd had satirized the Earl of Sandwich in his novel, The Sisters, and later married his former mistress. Bathurst was the Lord Chancellor whom Dodd tried unsuccessfully to bribe in 1774. In addition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was pledged to uphold the dignity of the church, there was the notoriously stern Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield. Johnson was deputed to write to Bathurst and Mansfield.1 A manuscript of Johnson’s letter to Bathurst, in his own hand, survives in the Hyde Collection (MS Hyde 37 [9]). Our copy-text is the version in Occasional Papers, but we note differences in the manuscript, and we present two clauses of the manuscript omitted in the printed version.

I have committed a capital crime,a for which the sentence of the law has passed upon me;b and whether that sentence shall be executed in its full rigour,c may perhaps depend upon the suffrage of your lordship, from whom I have less claim to mercy than from any other.d

Thee shame and self-reproach with whichf I now solicite your commiseration, I hope no man will ever feel, who has not deserved to feel them like myself. But I will not despair of being heard with pity when under the terrours of a speedy and disgraceful death, I most humbly implore your lordship’s forgiveness both of my former and my late offence.g,1

Myh life has not been wholly useless;i I have laboured in my calling diligently and successfully;j but success inflamed my vanity, and my heart betrayed me.k Violent passions have exposed mel to violent temptations, but I am not the first whom temptation has overthrown. I have,m inn all my deviations, kept right always in view, and have invariably resolved to return to it. Whether,o in a prosperous state,p I should have kept my resolution,q publicr justice has not suffered me to know.

My crime has been indeed atrocious, but my punishment has not been light. From a heighths of reputation which perhapst raised envy in others, and certainly produced pride in myself, I have fallen to theu lowest and grossest infamy; from an income which prudence might have made plentiful,v I am reduced to live on those remains of charityw which infamy has left me.

Whenx so much has been given to justice, I humbly intreaty that life, such as it must now be, mayz be given to mercy;a and that your lordship’sb influence mayc be employed in disposing our sovereign to look with compassion, on