benefited by that advantage: Parr, writing in Latin prose, and writing purely as a rhetorician, was taxed in the severest degree for a command over the idiomatic wealth of the language, and, for what is still less to be obtained from dictionaries, for a command over a Latin structure of sentence, and over the subsidiary forms of connexion and transition. In the preface to Bellenden, he answered the demand upon him, and displayed very unusual skill in the accomplishments of a Latin scholar. Latin composition, in fact, if we except bellringing, was the one sole thing, in the nature of accomplishments, which Dr Parr seems to have possessed. Among the fine arts, certainly, we admit, that he understood bell-ringing thoroughly; and we were on the point of forgetting to add, that in the art of slaughtering oxen, which he cultivated early as an amateur, his merit was conspicuous. Envy itself was driven to confess it; and none but the blackest-hearted Tory would go about at this time of day to deny it.* Still, of these three accomplishments, one only seems available to a biography of Dr Johnson; and that would barely have sufficed for the least important chapter of the work.

After all, was Parr really intimate with Johnson? We doubt it: for he must in that case have submitted to a kind of dissimulation bitter to a proud spirit. He was a Jacobite by inheritance that would have pleased Dr Johnson well; but then by profession he was a Whig-a sort of monster which the Doctor could not abide; and (worse than that!) he was a Whig renegado-such a combination of monstrous elements in a man's character as none of us can abide. To be a Whig is bad-to be a traitor is bad-but to be a Whig and a traitor is too much for humanity. Such features of his character Parr must have dissembled; and this would at

once pique his self-love, and limit his power. One anecdote, rich in folly and absurdity, is current about an interview between Johnson and Parr, in which the latter should have stamped whenever the other stamped; and being called upon to explain this sonorous antiphony, replied, that he could not think of allowing his antagonist to be so much as a stamp ahead of him. Miss Seward, we think, was in the habit of telling this story: for she was one of the dealers in marvels, who are for ever telling of "gigantic powers" and "magnificent displays," in conversation, beyond any thing that her heroes were ever able to effect in their writings. We remember well that she used to talk of a particular dispute between Johnson and Parr, which in her childish conceit (for she had not herself been present) was equal to some conflict between Jupiter and one of the Titans. Possibly it was the stamping dispute, which we may be assured was a fiction. No man, falling into any gesticulation or expression of fervour from a natural and uncontrollable impulse, would bear to see his own involuntary acts parodied and reverberated as it were in a cool spirit of mimicry; that would be an insult; and Johnson would have resented it by flooring his man instanter-a matter very easy indeed to him-for in every sense he was qualified to "take the conceit" out of Dr Parr. Or perhaps, though we rather incline to think that Miss Seward's dispute turned upon some political question, the following as recorded by Parr himself, (Parriana, p. 321) might be the particular case alluded to:-" Once, sir, Sam. and I" [i. e. Sam. Johnson] "had a vehement dispute upon that most difficult of all subjects the origin of evil. called forth all the powers of our minds. No two tigers ever grappled with more fury; but we never lost

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sight of good manners. There was no Boswell present to detail our conversation. Sir, he would not have understood it. And then, sir, who do you think was the umpire between us? That fiend Horsley."

Miserable fudge! "Grappling like tigers" upon the origin of evil! How, but by total confusion of mind, was that possible upon such a question? One octavo page would state the outline of all that has ever been accomplished on this subject;-and the German philosopher, Kant, whom Dr Parr professed to have studied, and from whom he borrowed one polysyllable, and, apparently, one solitary idea, has in a short memoir sketched the outline of all past attempts (especially that of Leibnitz), and the causes of failure. Libraries may be written upon any question; but the whole nodus of this, as of most questions, lies in a single problem of ten words: and, as yet, no real advance has been made in solving it. As to Dr Johnson, we all happen to know what he could do in this matter; for he has given us the cream of his meditations in a review of Soame Jenyns. Trifling more absolute, on a philosophic subject, does not exist. Could Dr Parr do better? Had he one new idea on the question? If so, where is it? We remember obscurely some sentence or other of purest commonplace on this point in one of his sermons. Further on we may have an occasion for producing it. At present it is sufficient to say that, as philosophers only, could Parr and Johnson ever converse upon equal terms; both being equally blind by natural constitution of mind, and equally unprepared by study or reading in that department, there was no room for differences between them, except such as were extra-essential or alien to the subject. On every other topic that could have arisen to divide them, Johnson, with one grasp of his muscular hand, would have throttled the whole family of Parrs. Had Parr presumed to talk that sort of incendiary politics in which he delighted, and which the French revolution ripened into Jacobinism, Johnson would have committed an assault upon him. As that does not appear to have happened, we venture to suppose that their intercourse was but

trifling; still, for one who had any at all with Johnson, many of his other acquaintance seem a most incongruous selection. The whole orchestra of rebels, incendiaries, state criminals, all who hated the church and state, all who secretly plotted against them, or openly maligned them, the faction of Jacobinism through its entire gamut, ascending from the first steps of disaffection or anti-national feeling, to the fullblown activity of the traitor and conspirator, had a plenary indulgence from the curate of Hatton, and were inscribed upon the roll of his correspondents. We pause with a sense of shame in making this bold transition from the upright Sam. Johnson, full of prejudice, but the eternal champion of social order and religion, to the fierce Septembrizers who come at intervals before us as the friends, companions, or correspondents, (in some instances as the favourites,) of Dr Parr. Learning and good morals are aghast at the association!

It is singular, or at first sight it seems so, that brigaded with so many scowling republicans are to be found as occasional correspondents of Dr Parr, nearly one half of our aristocracy-two or three personages of royal blood, eight dukes, five marquesses, six-and-twenty earls, thirteen viscounts, one-and-thirty barons, or courtesy lords; to say nothing of distinguished women—a queen, several duchesses, countesses, and daughters of Earls, besides baronesses and honourables in ample proportion. Many of these, however, may be set down as persons altogether thoughtless, or as systematically negligent of political principles in correspondents of no political power. But what are we to think of ten judges (besides Lord Stowell) addressing, with the most friendly warmth, one who looked upon all their tribe as the natural tools of oppression; and no fewer than forty bishops, and four archbishops, courting the notice of a proud priest, who professed it as an axiom that three out of every five on the Episcopal bench were downright knaves. Oh! for a little homely consistency; and, in a world where pride so largely tyrannizes, oh for a little in the right place! Dr Parr did not in so many words proclaim destruction to their

order as a favourite and governing principle: but he gave his countenance to principles that would, in practice, have effected that object, and his friendship to men that pursued no other.

His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex opens the correspondence, according to the present arrangement of the letters; if that may be called arrangement, where all is anarchy. At first we anticipated, from this precedency granted to a Prince, that the peerage and the Red Book would dictate the principle of classification; this failing, we looked to the subject, and next to the chronology. But at length we found that pretty much the same confusion obtains as in a pack of cards, that has first of all been accurately arranged in suits, and then slightly shuffled in such a case, symptoms occur of the sorting continually disturbed by symptoms of the shuffling; two or three hearts, crossed by two or three spades; and a specious promise of diamonds, suddenly thrown into the shade by a course of clubs. Letters from the same person are usually thrown together, and sometimes a vein of the same subject prevails through a considerable tract of pages. But, generally speaking, a printer's devil seems to have determined the order of succession.

The Duke of Sussex, who has actually placed the bust of a hack dissenting book-maker, (Dr Rees, to wit,) rather than of Aristotle or Lord Bacon, as the presiding and tutelar genius of his fine library in Kensington palace, could not, of course, find any objections to Dr Parr in his hostility to the Church of England. His Royal Highness is probably indifferent on this point; whilst others, as Mr Jeremy Bentham, can hardly fail to esteem a defect in " Church of Englandism" one amongst the Doctor's very positive recommendations to their favour. The Duke's letters are amiable and pleasing in their temper, but otherwise (for want of specific subject) not very interesting. Mr Bentham, in more senses than one the Lucifer of the radical politicians, is still less so; and simply because he affects the humorous, in a strain of very elaborate and very infelicitous trifling, upon the names of Parr and Fox, (which he supposes to have

been anticipated by Homer, in the address to Paris, Ausap, &c., and in the description of Thersites, ges env κεφαλην, &c.) In a second letter, (Feb. 17, 1823,) which abundantly displays the old gentleman's infirmity, who (like Lord Byron) cannot bear a rival in the public interest, no matter whether otherwise for good or for bad, there is one passage, which, amusing on its own account, furnishes also an occasion for bringing forward one of Parr's most extravagant follies in literature. It is this:-"The 1st of March," says Mr Bentham," or the 1st of April, comes out a number of the European Magazine, with another portrait of ME by another hand; considerable expectations are entertained of this likewise. When you see a copy of a print of the House of Lords, at the time of the Queen's Trial, in the hand of Bowyer, and expected to come out in a month or two, you will (if Bowyer does not deceive me) see the phiz of your old friend" [Jeremy, to wit]" among the spectators; and these, how small soever elsewhere, will, in this print, forasmuch as their station is in the foreground, be greater than lords. Oddly enough made up the group will be. Before me he had got an old acquaintance of mine of former days

Sir Humphrey Davy: he and I might have stood arm in arm. But then came the servile poet and novelist; and then the ultra-servile sackguzzler. Next to him, the old radical. What an assortment!" Certainly a strange lot of clean and unclean beasts were in that ark at that time; what with Mr Bentham's "assortment"-what with the non mi ricordo Italians-the lawyers, pro and con-and some others that we could

name.

But with regard to Mr Jeremy's companions in Bowyer's print, does the reader take his meaning? We shall be " as good as a chorus" to him, and interpret:-The "servile poet and novelist" is Sir Walter Scott; the "ultra-servile sack-guzzler," Mr Southey, a pure and highminded man; the old radical," Mr Corporal Cobbett. Now, with regard to the last of these, Dr Parr considered him a very creditable acquaintance: he visited the Corporal at Botley; and the Corporal wrote him a letter, in which he talked of

gaciously touching his forehead with his finger. I tell you again, it is here. As to Walter Scott, his jingle will not outlive the next century. It is namby-pamby.'" Dr Parr is here made to speak of Sir Walter merely as a poet; but for the same person, in any other character, he had no higher praise in reserve. In the heroic and chivalrous spirit of the poetry of Sir Walter, we pardon the Doctor for taking little interest. But what must be the condition of sense and feeling in that writer, who, without participating probably in the Doctor's delusions, could yet so complacently report to the world a body of extravagances, which terminated in placing himself, an author unknown to the public, conspicuously above one of the most illustrious writers of any age! Dr Parr might perhaps plead the privilege of his fire-side, kindness for a young friend, and a sudden call upon him for some audacity to give effect and powerful expression to his praise, as the apology for his share in such absurdities; but Mr Stewart, by recording them in print, makes himself a deliberate party, under no apology or temptation whatsoever, to the whole injustice and puerility of the scene.

Mr Bentham, Dr Parr, and Mr Douglas of Glasgow, are probably the three men in Europe, who have found Sir Walter Scott a trifler. Literature, in fact, and the fine arts, hold but a low rank in the estimate of the modern Utilitarian republicans. All that is not tangible, measurable, ponderable, falls with them into the account of mere levities, and is classed with the most frivolous decorations of life: to be an exquisite narrator is tantamount to dressing well; a fine prose style is about equal to a splendid equipage; and a finished work of art is a showy piece of upholstery. In this vulgarity of sentiment, Dr Parr could not entirely accompany his coarsest friends; for he drew largely on their indulgence himself as a trespasser in the very worst form-he was guilty of writing Latin with fluency and striking effect. It is certain, however, that the modern school of reformers had an injurious effect upon Dr Parr's literary character, by draw ing out and strengthening its hardest features. His politics became harsh

er, and his intellectual sensibilities coarser, as he advanced in years. How closely he connected himself with these people, we shall shew in the sketch we propose to give of his political history. For the present we turn with pleasure to his more elegant, though sometimes not less violent, friends, amongst the oldestablished Whig leaders. These, in their very intemperances, maintained the tone, breeding, and cultivation of gentlemen. They cherished and esteemed all parts of elegant letters: and, however much they have been in the habit of shocking our patriotism or constitutional principles, seldom offered annoyance to our tastes, as scholars and men of letters.

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Foremost amongst these, as foremost in politics, stood Charles Fox. His letters in this collection are uniformly in the unpretending manner which he courted: what we have too generally to regret-is the absence of Dr Parr's answers, especially to those letters of Mr Fox or his friends, which communicated his jeux d'esprit in Greek verse. of these we shall notice. Meantime, as perhaps the most interesting pas sage in the whole collection of Dr Parr's correspondence, we shall make the following extract from a letter, in which Mr Fox states the final state of his feelings with regard to Edmund Burke: the immediate occasion was a plan, at that moment agitated, for raising a monument to his memory. The date of this memorable letter is Feb. 24, 1802:—

"Mackintosh wrote to me upon the subject you mention; and I think he took my answer rather more favourably than he was strictly war ranted to do. When he said I would second the proposition, I told him support was my word.

"The truth is, though I do not feel any malice against Burke, nor would I have in any degree thwarted any plan for his advantage or honour: though I feel the greatest gratitude for his continued kindness to me during so great a part of our lives, and a strong conviction that I owe to his friendship and conversation, a very great portion of whatever either of political or oratorical merit my friends suppose me to have displayed; notwithstanding all this, I must own, that there are some parts