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the lord Mayor. The church, though large, was crowded to excess, and the doctor gratified the more intelligent portion of his hearers by a discourse, in which he happily combated the delusive dogmas of those philosophers who ascribe all benevolence and justice to a selfish principle. This sermon was soon afterwards printed, with a number of curious notes: which induced the author of "Political Justice" to publish, in the same year an octavo pamphlet, entitled "Thoughts occasioned by the perusal of Dr. Parr's Spital sermon, being a reply to the attacks of Dr. P., Mr. Mackintosh, and others." A suspension of intercourse between Dr. Parr and Mr. Godwin was the consequence; but a few months previous to his death, Dr. Parr sent Mr. Godwin a message of peace, and invitation to Hatton. In 1801, Dr. Parr was offered by Alexander Baring, esq., but declined the vicarage of Winterbourne Stoke, in Wiltshire. In 1802 he was presented by sir Francis Burdett to the rectory of Graff ham, in Huntingdonshire. The following is the correspondence which passed on the occasion :— 66 Sir; I am sorry that it is not in my power to place you in a situation which would become you -I mean in the Episcopal palace at Buckden: but I can bring you very near to it; for I have the presentation to a rectory now vacant, within a mile and a half of it, which is very much at Dr. Parr's service. It is the rectory of Graffham, at present worth 2001. a year, and, as I am inform ed, may soon be worth 270l.; and I this moment learn that the incumbent died last Tuesday.

"Dr. Parr's talents and character might well entitle him to a

better patronage than this from those who know how to estimate his merits; but I acknowledge that a great additional motive with me to the offer I now make him, is, that I believe I cannot do any thing more pleasing to his friends, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Knight; and I desire you, Sir, to consider yourself obliged to them only.-I have the honour to be, Sir, with the greatest respect, your obedient servant,

"FRANCIS BURDETT." "Vicarage-House, Buckden, Sept. 26, 1802.

"Dear Sir; After rambling in various parts of Norfolk, I went to Cambridge, and from Cambridge I yesterday came to the parsonage of my most respectable friend, Mr. Maltby, at Buckden, where I this morning had the honour of receiving your letter. Mrs. Parr opened it last Friday at Hatton, and I trust that you will pardon the liberty she took in desiring your servant to convey it to me in Huntingdonshire, where she knew that I should be, as upon this day.

"Permit me, dear Sir, to request that you would accept the warmest and most sincere thanks of my heart for this unsolicited, but most honourable, expression of your good will towards me. Nothing can be more important to my worldly interest than the service you have done me, in presenting me to the living of Graffham. Nothing can be more exquisitely gratifying to my very best feeling, than the language in which you have conveyed to me this mark of your friendship. Indeed, dear Sir, you have enabled me to pass the years of declining life in comfortable and honourable independence. You have given me additional and unalterable conviction, that the firm◄

ness with which I have adhered to my principles has obtained for me the approbation of wise and good men. And when that approbation assumes, as it now does, the form of protection, I fairly confess to you, that the patronage of sir Francis Burdett has a right to be ranked among the proudest, as well as the happiest, events of my life. I trust that my future conduct will justify you in the disinterested and generous gift which you have bestowed upon me: and sure I am, that my friends, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Knight, will not only share with me in my joy, but sympathize with me in those sentiments of respect and gratitude which I shall ever feel towards sir Francis Burdett.

"Most assuredly I shall myself set a higher value upon your kindness, when I consider it as intended to gratify the friendly feelings of those excellent men, as well as to promote my own personal happiness.

"I shall wait your pleasure about the presentation: and I beg leave to add, that I shall stay at Buckden for one week only, and shall have reached Hatton about this day fortnight, where I shall obey your commands. One circumstance, I am sure, will give you great satisfaction, and therefore I shall beg leave to state it. The living of Graffham will be of infinite value to me, because it is tenable with a rectory I now have in Northamptonshire; and happy I am, that my future residence will be fixed, and my existence closed upon that spot where sir Francis Burdett has given me the power of spending my old age with comforts and conveniences quite equal to the extent of my fondest

wishes, and far surpassing any expectations I have hitherto ventured to indulge.

"I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect and most unfeigned thankfulness, dear Sir, your very obedient, faithful servant, "S. PARR."

For this preferment, which relieved him as to pecuniary matters, Dr. Parr always expressed a due sense of the kindness of the worthy baronet. Still, however, he continued attached to his residence at Hatton, where he had secured, and ever continued to maintain, the esteem of all his parishioners, had greatly embellished the church by painted windows, &c. and had given it a peal of bells. Nor would he have quitted Hatton for any preferment short of a mitre, which, in 1807, had nearly adorned his brows. "Had my friends," he once said to Mr. John Nichols, "continued in power one fortnight longer, it would have been all settled: Dr. Huntingford was to have been translated to Hereford, and I should have had Gloucester. My family arrangements were made; and I had determined that no clergyman in my diocese, who had occasion to call upon me, should depart without partaking of my dinner." After a momentary pause he observed, "in the House of Peers I should seldom have opened my mouth, unless— unless (he added with some warmth) any one had presumed to attack the character of my friend Charles Fox-and then I would have knocked him down with the full torrent of my impetuosity. Charles Fox was a great man; and so is your friend William Pitt; and I can tell you, that if I had them both in this room, and only we three had been together, I would

have locked the door but first would have had plenty of wine on the table and depend upon it we should not have disagreed!" In 1803, Dr. Parr published another 4to sermon, "preached on the late Fast, Oct. 19, at the Parish-church of Hatton." A letter of the doctor's to the late lord Warwick, on some electioneering disputes, was also printed, but was suppressed; though, as a specimen of the vituperative style, it is worthy of preservation.

Twenty years since, Dr. Parr reprinted some metaphysical tracts: "Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis;" "Conjecturæ quædam de Sensu, Motu, et Idearum Generatione;” “An Inquiry into the Origin of the Human Appetites and Affections, showing how each arises from Association;" and "Man . in Quest of Himself, or a Defence of the Individuality of the Human Mind, or Self." These he intended to republish, probably with original remarks, but the whole impression is stored up in the printer's warehouse.

In 1808 Mr. Coke, of Holkham, made Dr. Parr an offer of the rectory of Buckingham. This, however, did not tempt the doctor to leave the spot to which he was so attached.

On the death of Mr. Fox, Dr. Parr announced his intention of publishing a Life of his celebrated friend and political favourite. The expectations of the public were excited, but were certainly disappointed in a publication of two octavo volumes, entitled "Characters of the late Charles James Fox; selected, and in part written, by Philopatris Varvicensis," 1809. A collection of characters from the various public journals occupies 175 pages; an original character,

in the form of an epistle to Mr. Coke, 135; and the second volume is filled with notes on the amelioration of the penal code and religious liberty, plentifully inlaid with citations from the classics. Considering the grotesque arrangement of matter and subjects, it is not surprising that this work should have experienced unmerited neglect.

On December 27, 1816, after about six years widowhood, Dr. Parr married secondly, Mary, sister of Mr. Eyre, of Coventry, who survives him.

Two small publications, one of which was printed by his especial request (containing a critical essay by Dr. Parr on the character of Dr. Taylor, the learned editor of Demosthenes and Lysias); and of the other of which he was the immediate editor, must not pass unnoticed. They were,-1st."Two Music Speeches at Cambridge, in 1714 and 1730, by Roger Long, M. A., and John Taylor, M.A., to which are added, a Latin Speech of Dr. Taylor; several of his juvenile Poems; some Minor Essays in prose; and Specimens of his Epistolary Correspondence; with Memoirs of Dr. Taylor and Dr. Long." 8vo. 1819. 2ndly. “Four Sermons: first and second by Dr. Taylor; third by Bishop Lowth; and fourth by Bishop Hayter; with a preface suggested by remarks of Dr. Parr."

A variety of Dr, Parr's minor literary productions appeared in "The Gentleman's Magazine;" to which he was a frequent and valuable correspondent. Among these are two letters on the subject of Howard's statue, a learned letter to the rev. Mr. Glasse, on the word Cauponari, and several letters to lord Chedworth (inserted in a report of the trial on the will of that

*

nobleman). Many biographical notices from his masterly pen have also graced the pages of Sylvanus Urban, viz. Memoirs of Mr. John Smitheman, Bishop Bennett, the Rev. John Dealtry, Miss Euphemia Brown, Bishop Horne, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. W. H. Lunn, the bookseller, his daughter, Catharine Jane Parr, his last surviving daughter, Sarah Anne Wynne, his companion and occasional amanuensis, the rev. J. Bartlam, &c. In "The Gentleman's Magazine" may likewise be found most of his Latin epitaphs (amounting to upwards of thirty), for the production of which he was well prepared, having spent much of his time in studying the Latin inscriptions in Sponius, Fabretti, Gruter, Muratorius, and Reinesius. One of the most celebrated of Dr. Parr's epitaphs is that which is inscribed on the monument of Dr. Johnson, at St. Paul's. He undertook the office of writing it with great reluctance, and on the express condition of being left to act according to his own judgment; and he frequently and loudly complained of the unhandsome treatment which he received on the occasion from some of Dr. Johnson's friends. Several times he was on the point of withdrawing his inscription wholly; and, indeed, he certainly would have done so, but for the interposition of sir William Scott. In speaking of Johnson as a poet, the doctor had used the words "probabili poeta," and had congratulated himself,

* On that occasion it was thought the doctor had been too anxious in procuring for himself a piece of plate from the late lord, particularly as he had consented to write the Latin inscription himself; but from this accusation he was satisfactorily defended by Mr. Eyre, of Solihull, who, it was proved, really

composed it.

on the combined propriety, and felicity of the expression; but neither the strength of his own conviction, nor the erudition with which he supported it by various passages from classical writers, was sufficient to overcome the prejudice of some of Johnson's admirers, who seem neither to have understood the propriety, nor to have felt the beauty of the expression. The doctor at length substituted a passage, which, however splendid in itself, was supposed by the best critics to mar the whole composition. At the request of lord Sheffield, Dr. Parr also wrote an epitaph on Mr. Gibbon; but, conscious of the danger to which an ecclesiastic must be exposed in attempting to do justice to the literary and intellectual merits of that celebrated infidel, he called in the advice of his friends Mr. Fox and the learned Dr. Routh, upon his choice both of topics and of phraseology. Parr likewise wrote epitaphs on Richard Porson, Charles Fox, Edmund Burke, and William Pitt, which have not hitherto been presented to the public. Connected with this subject is an anecdote, which has been related of Dr. Parr and lord Erskine. It is said, that at a dinner some years since, Dr. Parr, in ecstacies with the conversational powers of lord Erskine, called out to him (though his junior), "My lord, I mean to write your epitaph!" "Dr. Parr," replied the noble lawyer, “it is a temptation to commit suicide!" Of Dr. Parr's lapidary compositions we insert the two following; because they afford specimens of very different and almost opposite styles; and because they serve to show the real state of his feelings in the important relations both of pupil and of preceptor.

H. S. P.

Robertus Sumner, S. T. P.
Coll. Regal. apud Cantab. olim Socius.
Scholæ Harrovensis, haud ita pridem,
Archididaskalus.

Fuit huic præstantissimo Viro
Ingenium Natura peracre, optimarum
Disciplinis Artium sedulo excultum,
Usu diuturno confirmatum, et quodam,
Modo subactum.

Nemo enim

Aut in reconditis sapientiæ Studiis illo
Subtilior exstitit,

Aut in humanioribus literis limatior.
Naturæ egregiis cum dotibus tum
Doctrinæ prædito
Insuper accedebant

In Sententiis, vera ac perfecta eloquentia,
In Sermone, facetiarum lepos, plenè
Atticus,

Et gravitati aspersa urbanitas ;
In moribus singularis quædam
Integritas et fides;

Vitæ denique ratio constans sibi, et ad
Virtutis normam diligenter
Severeque exacta.

Omnibus qui vel amico essent eo
Vel magistro usi,

Doctrinæ, Ingenii, Virtutis justum
Reliquit Desiderium,

Subite, eheu, atque immatura morte correptus,
Prid. Id. Septemb.

Anno Domini M.DCC.LXXI.

Et. suæ 41.

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Joanni. Smitheman.

Qui. vix. Ann. xv. Mens. vi. Dieb.
Decessit. VIII. Id. Mart. Anno. sacro.
CIO. IOCCLXXXXIIII.

Joannes. et. Margareta. Smitheman.
Parentes. infelicissimi.
Unico. et. charissimo. filio,
Contra. Votum. posuerunt.

The doctor was always anxious to have it understood that he never aspired to the character of a collector, and that in his purchase of VOL. LXVII.

books he was uniformly attentive to their use rather than to their rarity; and to the importance of their contents rather than to the

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