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1828.]

REVIEW.-Dr. Parr's Works.

upon, his only resource, he thought, was opposition." It was on this principle, and in this spirit, that he retired to Stanmore, in the immediate vicinity of Harrow. There the number of his scholars never exceeded sixty, and the profits of his labour were exhausted by the heavy outlay incurred by making proper accommodations for his pupils. His speculation was not prosperous. He was feebly contending against the influence of the neighbouring school; and in the spring of 1777 he retired to Colchester. But at Colchester, no more than at Harrow, was he at peace. His first dispute was with the trustees of the school; and he wrote an angry pamphlet relating to this difference, but which the better judginent of Sir William Jones, it is probable, induced him to suppress. His residence at Colchester was short, for in the summer of 1778 he became a candidate for the free school of Norwich, and succeeded. It was soon after his election that he received the following letter from Sir William Jones; a letter we have extracted, not more for the beauty of its expression, than for the soundness of the advice it contains:

"Worcester, 19th July, 1779.

"MY DEAR PARR,-I take up the pen, after a long interval, to answer your friendly letter of 4th April. Remember to reserve for me a copy of your book; and by the first opportunity to send me all of it that is priated, together with the preface. I shall value it for the sake of the writer, and for the intrinsic merit of the writing; besides, I am resolved to spheterize some passages of it, and to apply them in the continual war which I maintain against the unjust and the unprincipled. Isæus is highly honoured by you let me entreat you to take care of your observations on the work, as I shall want your friendliest assistance and freest censure on revising the next edition. In p. 20 the word mother is left out, and I have found many typographical errors which escaped the eyes of my clerk, and are not in the table of corrections. In the second edition the notes shall be, at your request, more numerous; but I cannot destroy the unity of my work by a minute examination of particles and points. Let me beg you at your leisure to read with attention the speeches of Demosthenes against Zenothemis, Apaturius, Phormio, Lacritus, and Dionysidorus, and inform me whether they have been ever translated, except by Wolfius and Augur. It is possible that I may amuse myself with translating and explaining them, as they all relate the fanus naucum of the civilians, or the bottomry of the

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modern commercial nations; and I wish to be informed whether any other speeches on the same subject are extant. I rejoice hat your situation is agreeable to you; and only grieve that you are at such a distance from London. You speak well in your letter of your Dean; yet I have been told that you my friend, remember and emulate Newton, are engaged in a controversy with him. Óh! who once entered into a philosophical con

test, but soon found, he said, "that he was parting with his peace of mind for a shadow." Surely the elegance of ancient poetry and rhetoric, the contemplation of God's works and God's ways, the respectable task of making boys learned and men virtuous, may employ the forty or fifty years you have to live more serenely, more laudably, and more profitably, than the vain warfare of controversial divinity, or the dark mines Whether the aporta have been assigned to and countermines of uncertain metaphysics*. me in Wales I know not; but the knowledge of men which I have acquired in my short forensic career, has made me satisfied with my present station, and all my pilotiμia is at an end. Now for your commission at Oxford. Do I perfectly understand you? The Duke of Grafton conferred on you a Master's degree by mandamus at Cambridge. I honour him for it—well, you desire to be admitted to the same degree at Oxford. Do you mean that such admission should give you the privilege of voting in our house for members of Parliament and academical honours or emoluments? In short, do you wish that the Duke of Grafton should confer on you a Master's degree by mandamus at Oxford ? ποιον ἐφρασω τοδί, says Archilochus. It is impossible, my dear friend. We do admit the validity of your degree when conferred, but not in our University. How can I insist upon the difference between an honorary and a mandamus degree, when that difference is unfavourable to you? It is clear, that your Chancellor cannot, by conferring the latter at Cambridge, give his friend the least title to the same privileges at Oxford. I have mentioned this case to several Oxonians, under the names of Caius and Titus; they all anticipate my objectious before I have fully stated my case. Scott, I believe, sees it in the same light. If I do misapprehend you, explain the matter more fully. On the whole I do not see what degree at Oxford can accelerate your doctorate, except a degree by diploma, which the University seldom will confer even on men of their own body. This is the plain manner in which I speak, and in which I desire others to speak to me; if it were in its uature offensive, it would be excused by you, who know how truly and sincerely I am,

"Your faithful friend, W. JONES." *These are golden sentences; and it is ever to be regretted that they were so often forgotten by our reverend friend."

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REVIEW.-Dr. Parr's Works.

His first publications at Norwich were two Sermons: the one, The Truth and Usefulness of Christianity; and the second, On the Education of the Poor. They are represented by his Biographer as eloquent compositions; and several letters are inserted, which show the opinions entertained of them by many of the first scholars of the day. "These two sermons," says Dr. Johnson, are not only an æra in Parr's life, but form an epoch in the history of education; they do honour to him as the advocate of the poor, and as a pioneer on the great work of general instruction, to his moral sensibilities and insight into human character, and to the foresight of that progress which intellect was making, and which demands in our days a repeal of every law which obstructs the access of the meanest individual to true and vital religion."

At Norwich also, Dr. Parr published a Fast Sermon, in which the cause of ra. tional freedom is advocated with much brilliancy of language and strength of argument; his character of the constitution of England is as just as it is eloquent.

"Venerable for its antiquity, and endeared to us by a long experience of its use, the Constitution of this Country may justly challenge the annals of the world to produce an equal. Founded on the solid rock of justice, cemented by duration, aud fortified by every expedient that policy could suggest, it has hitherto withstood all the shocks of external violence, and all the dark machinations that have been employed to undermine it. Complaints, I know, have been urged against the multiplicity of our civil and the rigour of our penal laws; but when these laws are compared with such as are established in other countries, their principles will be found equitable, their spirit mild, and their administration most impartial. Although the discipline of our arinies be excelled in some neighbouring States, where military strength is perverted into an engine of oppression, their valour in every just cause has long excited the admiration even of their enemies; and with regard to that force which forms the peculiar and firmest bulwark of our safety, the skill of our commanders, and the intrepidity of our seamen, are confessedly without example. Narrow, indeed, will be his views, and languid his satisfaction, who would confine the glory of this country to the wisdom of its laws and the vigour of its arms. Polite literature has been cultivated among us with a success that antiquity only has surpassed. The mechanic arts have been improved by us, not perhaps to the highest perfection of exterior elegance, but to the no less honourable purposes of general uti

[July,

lity. In this respect they have probably reached their summit; and it might be wished that the wantonness or innovation, and the debaucheries of refinement, should be in future controlled. As to the more ab→ stract sciences, so profound have been our investigations, and so important our dis coveries, that we are permitted to take the lead, I say not merely of Northern Europe, where civilization has scarcely dawned, nor of those Southern parts where superstition blasts every effort of genius; but of those brave and accomplished people who are alone entitled to dispute the palm of superiority with us, either in the achievements of war or in the arts of peace. But, amid the advantages that distinguish this country, a very illustrious rank must be assigned to that religion, which is alike exempt from the harshness of Calvinism and the corruptions of Popery: which preserves the sacred privileges of Revelation, without infringing the no less sacred rights of reason; which looks, I trust, with some degree of favour on the worthiest and the ablest of its teachers, who have been eminent as well for their en

larged sentiments of toleration as for their exemptary piety; aud which no longer lifts up the terrors of persecution over the manly and rational inquirer, who, without offering any wanton insult to prescription, asserts and enjoys the liberty of paying a larger share of homage to the superior authority of truth." P. 15.

It was at Norwich that those politics to which he had always shown a tendency were more openly declared, and which a frequent association with Mr. Windham may probably have confirmed; that these politics were directly opposed to our own, we need hardly to declare. Dr. Parr himself alludes fre

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quently to this difference, when speaking of the late amiable and accomplished Editor of this Journal; but, as politics never interrupted on either side that respect and affection which each entertained for the other, so will no political feeling prevent us the free exercise of our judgment in speaking of the great merits of one who, it is to be feared, gave up to party what was meant for mankind,' and impaired his usefulness as a Scholar, a Moralist, and a Divine, by an adherence, more than concientious, to opinions which candour must admit were dangerous in dangerous times. If there was too much of the zeal of a partizan's life, and if by this means Dr. Parr sought the road to preferment, grievously did he answer it; but it is our wish to tread as lightly as may be on the ashes of defunct politics, and it is refreshing to

1828.]

REVIEW.-Dr. Parr's Works.

know, that his last years were passed in delightful intercourse with men of kindred minds; and that amongst his later correspondents may be numbered almost every living ornament of Church and State, all who now dignify the highest stations by their learning, or adorn their sacred office by their piety; he outlived all political hostility, and he descended to a peaceful grave beloved and honoured by the wise, the learned, and the good; but we will return to the narrative.

At Norwich, Dr. Parr introduced many useful improvements in the institution and government of the School, and his sentiments on the subject of scholastic discipline are sound and liberal.

"He has often declared that, upon his intentions and exertions, as a teacher and governor of youth, he must to the latest hour of his life look back with the purest satisfaction. He professed himself an advocate for the old and salutary discipline of our public schools. He resisted all the specious arguments which are employed in vindicating those refinements which the partiality of parents, the ingenuity of experimentalists, and the growing luxury of the age, have introduced into the education of our youth. He stoutly appealed to his own personal experience, and to the established practice of our most celebrated seminaries, in favour of those rules, which for many ages have produced the best scholars-the finest writers

the most useful members of society in private life, and the most distinguished characters in public. Though strict in enforcing the laws, which appeared to him unnecessary for awakening attention in the indolent, and animating perseverance in the ingenious, he was always liberal of praise, and always anxious to rescue those who were placed under his care from all serious consequences of their juvenile indiscretions. He secretly respected the judgment, which young men might be disposed to form of his talents, principles, and temper. He encouraged in them the noblest sentiments of honour, and an unshaken regard to truth. He took in a wide, but accurate view of the courses, by which their future happiness might be promoted. He was not only a learned instructor, but a faithful adviser, and a steady friend."

"He thought that in composition, Etonians were distinguished for correctness, and Wykehamists by eloquence; and he, with marked approbation, would expatiate upon the Winchester practice, which directs boys frequently to recite very large portions of Greek and Latin verses. He maintained, that inquisitive and ingenious boys, after GENT. MAG. July, 1828.

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repeating passages which they have not regularly learnt, would be anxious to understand what they read, would remember with care what they, of their own accord, and by their own efforts have understood; and selves a copious and varied supply of poetical that by this process they laid up for themimagery and poetical expression. He suspected that the minds of very young boys were seldom improved by writing or reading epigrams; and he contended that the Psalms and Scriptural History were unfit to be translated by beginners, while their stock of Latin words was very small, and while the mechanical structure of hexameters and pentameters was not very familiar to their ears. But the chief defects which he imputed to our public seminaries were, that a sufficient portion of Latin prose, especially in Cicero and Cæsar, were not read; that too little time was bestowed upon prose composition in that language; and that boys were called upon to invent, before materials for invention could have been collected."

In the spring of 1780, Dr. Parr was presented to the small living of Asterby in Lincolnshire, by Lady Jane Trafford, the mother of one of his pupils; he resigned it, in 1783, for the perpetual curacy of Hatton, in Warwickshire; and about the same period he was presented, by Bishop Lowth, to_the_prebend of Wenlock's Barn, in St. Paul's Cathedral, which gilded the close of his life with affluence, though at the period at which it was conferred was not of greater value than about 1007. a year. He continued at Norwich until the year 1786, in the laborious duties of the school; training many good scholars who have been since distinguished for their talents; and amongst others the present fearned Dr. Maltby. The immediate motive for his removal from Norwich does not appear; it is more than probable that the noise and bustle of the school grew irksome of his feelings. Of himself, a few years previously, he says—

"The little progress I have made in worldly matters; the heavy losses I have sustained by the war; the inconsiderable advantages I have gained by a laborious and irksome employment; and the mortifying discouragement I have met in my clerical profession, have all conspired to depress my spirit, and undermine my constitution."

We omitted to notice in its proper place, the marriage of Dr. Parr with Miss Jane Marsingale; this important part of his domestic history, took place at Stanmore. He removed with his family to the Parsonage of Hatton in

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REVIEW.-Dr. Parr's Works.

1785; but with an income quite insufficient to support himself without labour. He therefore took pupils at a higher price, and the house at Hatton containing no room sufficiently large for his library," he built" says Dr. Johnstone," that square room which, for more than forty years, was one of the porches of the academy of England, and will not be forgotten whilst the present generation of learned men survives."

It was at this period that Dr. Parr, anxious to distinguish himself as a politician and a scholar, discovered in Bellendenus an opportunity of gratifying his feelings. Of this celebrated work, a criticism written by Dr. Bennet, Lord Bishop of Cloyne, gives a very clear account. It is too long for extract, but the following are the principal particulars of the writer, and of the treatises edited by Dr. Parr.

William Bellenden was a Scotch writer, who flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and is said to have been a Professor in the University of Paris. It was here he published his first work, entitled "Cicero Princeps," consisting of detached passages from the writings of Cicero, containing the rules of monarchical government. Four years afterwards he published another work of a similar nature, which he called "Cicero Consul," treating of the consular office, and the constitution of the Roman Senate. He had proceeded on a third work "De Statu Prisci Orbis," which was to contain a history of the progress of government and philosophy, from the times before the flood to their various degrees of improvement under the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, when it seems to have been suggested that his three Treatises being on subjects resembling each other, might be united in one work, and entitled "Bellendenus de Statu.' This work was completed, but the vessel in which the whole impression was embarked, foundered with all its cargo. A very few copies which had been preserved by the author for his own use, were preserved, and this work of Bellendenus has therefore from its scarcity, often escaped the notice of the most diligent collectors. It was this work, of which about six copies were then extant, that Dr. Parr edited. It seems that Bellenden, not discouraged at his loss, determined to

[July,

arrange his materials in another form.
He conceived the idea of a work
which he entitled "De Tribus Lumi-
nibus Romanorum," in which he de-
signed to have examined the characters,
and explained the merits, of Cicero,
Seneca, and Pliny.
He was pre-
vented by death from completing his
plan, and the circumstance_of_the
"tria lumina" suggested to Dr. Parr
the republication of the original trea-
tises of Bellendenus de Statu, and dedi-
cating them to the "tria lumina An-
glorum,"-Lord North, Mr. Fox, and
Mr. Burke. Such is the history of
this celebrated work. The preface
consists of eighty-six pages, written by
Dr. Parr in such Latin as to have se-
cured the admiration even of those
scholars who disliked his sentiments.
From two of the Lumina no thanks
are forthcoming; but by Burke the
compliment was acknowledged in a
letter, elegant in its expression and
moderate in its politics. The observa-
tions of Dr. Johnstone on that unna-
tural Coalition which was the subject
of Dr. Parr's classical praise, are sen-
sible and just:

"The Whig and Tory could never amalgamate; the principles of toleration and reform always professed by Mr. Fox, would never be associated with the system of passive obedience and non-resistance, and that ecclesiastical zeal which induced Lord

North to go down to the House, blind and
led like Sampson to the feast, to rivet the
chains of a profane test; and, lo! how few
were the years about to elapse, ere the third
of the luminaries, urged on by his own
pressing wants, or maddened by the French
Revolution, dissolved the closest friendship
of his whole political life with insulting
arrogance, and severed himself from the
above all others, on a discussion and dif-
man whom he had professed so long to love
ference about speculative opinions.
these were the three Luminaries, the bright
gods of Parr's political day, at whose shrine
he prostrated and sacrificed himself."

Yet

But it was the great fault of Dr. Parr to waste his great powers on unprofitable subjects, and Dr. Johnstone has done honour to his character by the fine tone of moral reprehension in which he speaks of the bitterness with which Parr was wont to assail his political opponents.

"Let his example," says he, "he a beacon and a warning to the scholar how he employs his talents and his learning in writing for a party. Every man ought to

1828.]

REVIEW.-Dr. Parr's Works.

belong to some party in a free state; but whatsoever freedom of opinion he may claim for himself, he ought not to monopolize, For deny it to another. He may be an antagonist without bitterness, and stand up for his own principles without outraging those of others. Thus, while I blame Parr for throwing away his time and talents on splendid declamation, I would not have it forgotten that his consistency maintained him in high station in the world, and the best credit among his friends; even those who did not think with him in politics, when the perilous times were past, courted him. His hopes of high preferment were blasted by his own petulance, not by the mildew of Bishop Hurd, uor the thunder and lightning of Chancellor Thurlow. His long vernacular sermons would have been listened to with delight from the mitred chair had he been quiet about political men, and not assailed them personally and insultingly."

He

The effect of these attacks was necessarily to provoke retaliation. was assailed by all the venom of political hostility and recrimination, to which he was not insensible.

Of Parr's connexion with Dr. White in the Bampton Lectures, we have a very full account. It was the subject of much discussion and of some investigation at the time, and the publication of Dr. White's Letters, in the volume before us, explain the whole process. It is evident, we think, that, in the division of labour, Dr. White employed no less than three very eminent scholars. It was part of his "dark management" to conceal from each the secret of his having recourse to any other auxiliary, and it is impossible on a perusal of the documents to resist the conclusion, that distrusting his own talents, he was "resolved to carry reputation by storm," and for this purpose he had recourse to the best allies. His own ungenerous conduct led to detection, and his audacity afterwards was not the least of his offences. The part assigned to Dr. Parr, by those who investigated the subject, is said to be one fifth of the whole, though his biographer is of opinion that he had a larger share in the composition of lectures, which, from their first publication until now, have commanded general admiration, and are a standard work, both for the eloquence of their style, and the great powers of mind they exhibit; and however their nominal author may have been displumed of his honours,

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they form part and parcel of the classical literature of the country.

was

It is again in the restless activity of his mind that we trace Dr. Parr engaged in controversy. That his object in the republication of the "Tracts of Warburton and of a Warburtonian," to gratify his spleen against Bishop Hurd, there can be no doubt; and his Biographer has treated this somewhat difficult subject with a candour that does him infinite credit. While he admits the great powers of the writer, he laments the spirit of the man. "Beautiful and excellent are these compositions," says he, "yet I must be allowed to wish that the Dedication at least had never been written." The following comparison of Warburton and Parr, is vigorously expressed, and conceived with nice discrimination.

"Mighty in learning and in critical acumen were both Warburton and Parr. Parr had more taste, more exactness, and more depth. Warburton had more rankness, more force, and more wit. Warburton delighted in wild theory and paradox. Parr in laboured elucidation and illustration. Warburton covered himself over with hieroglyphics and mystic figures. Parr with gaudy images and burton was boisterous, haughty, uncontrolinnumerable decorations. In temper, Warable, sometimes coarse. So was Parr when contradicted or opposed. Both required unconditional submission. Both were kind and placable to prostrate and repentant antagonists, and then, glowing with friendly feelings; both sincere, and honourable; both vain, and open to flattery. Warburton had less kindness of disposition, and a tendency to more general contemptuous

ness.

Parr had less magnanimity. WarParr burton had fewer personal friends. had as many political and theological enemies. Warburton had better tact and sought higher game. Parr was less settled in his views, and deficient in a grand aim for the establishment of his reputation. Both were hated at Court; both were neglected at Court: and the characters of both were influenced by that neglect. If Warburton had been imbued with a spirit of gentleness and humility; if Parr had been tutored and trammelled in the paths of peacefulness; both would have been greater and more useful to mankind. It was the fortune of Warburton to be placed early in Murray, were his companions; they regood society; Pope, Charles Yorke, and strained, or corrected his bad habits, they encouraged his lofty propensities, and they insured his ultimate station. Parr, when driven from Harrow, found few associates at Stanmore. At Colchester, Dr. Natha

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