Dr. Parr, to Dr. Copleston, now Bishop of Llandaff. 22, Newman-street, May 22, 1813. DEAR AND LEARNED SIR, Your most friendly letter, directed to me at Hatton, was forwarded from thence to me in London, where I have been for more than a month, and where I yesterday received what I most highly value, the offer of presenting me with the book that you have lately published. Accept my most sincere and respectful thanks for the distinction which you have thus conferred upon me. I am eager to read what proceeds from a mind so richly furnished. Pray have the goodness to send me one very carefully packed up, and directed to me at Basil Montagu's, Esq. No. 22, Newman-street, Oxford-road, London. Mr. Copleston, you well know the just, and, therefore, most fixed and exalted opinion I have of your taste, judgment, and erudition; and pardon me for saying that, in my most serious moments, I reflect with deep satisfaction on those moral qualities and habits which throw additional lustre on your literary attainments and intellectual powers. Believe me, with unfeigned regard and respect, dear Sir, your well-wisher, and obedient servant, SAMUEL PARR. Dr. Copleston, to Dr. Parr. MY DEAR SIR, Oriel College, Dec. 20, 1816. Just before your obliging letter arrived I had seen Dugald Stewart's Appendix, and was highly gratified by the tribute of respect he pays to you. Will you forgive me, however, if I venture to dissent from your proposed etymology. Superum limen, which Festus gives, seems to me more probable. That limen and not limus is the source I have little doubt. In rude times most ideas borrow their names from homely objects. Thus I find in the oldest writers sublimis means standing erect, not soaring, a sense which came in afterwards. See Cato de re rusticâ, capp. 70, 71. Culmen from culmus, the thatch of the house, is another example of the same kind. I observe all your examples of sub in composition, derived from ro, denote motion, subjicio, subjecta, summitto, &c. Hence I am inclined to think that it means, in these cases, from beneath; like the well-known iπ' ex davaтolo pepovraι. Not that I doubt of the frequent change of p into b, euphoniæ causâ; but the meaning of these words seems more obviously deducible from sub than from super. Indeed, in my etymology of sublimis, such a change is supposed, and since the word grew up in a rude and primitive state of society, when the threshold was a kind of barrier, which must be surmounted on entering, a person in that act would appear to rise, and be higher than at other times. Hence superare limen, and hence, without having recourse to Festus's superius limen (for which I believe there is no authority), the word sublimis may still be derived from super limen. That it meant standing or rising on one's legs, before it meant soaring, is I think quite clear. Pardon, I beseech you, this impertinence, and believe me, my dear Sir, ever yours with sincere respect, MY DEAR SIR, E. COPLESTON. Oriel College, July 19, 1817. I ought long ago to have acknowledged the pleasure and instruction I received from the last sheets you were so kind as to send in support of your etymology of sublimis. After the ample proof you have given, both from authority and analogy, even the spirit of controversy itself, were I capable of being actuated by it, would not lead me to say another word in behalf of my own crude hypothesis. I acknowledge, my dear Sir, that you have fairly beat me out of doors; that limen has no pretensions to kindred with sublimis; and what is more to your honour than mine, that, although you are triumphant with limus, you have not covered me with mire; which, according to ancient usage in such cases, you had a full right to do. This delay on my part has not been without its use. It has led me, very recently, to peruse again your valuable philological remarks, for which I must again beg you to accept my best thanks. Will you forgive me if I venture to suggest that such stores as you possess, with a thorough and prompt command over them, are a vast advantage to a philosophical mind; and if employed in the service of metaphysics, might be the means of elucidating many a difficulty in the highest department of philosophy. An attempt of this sort, made with some of the most important words used in reasoning, has long been a favourite project with me; but whether I shall ever possess industry, spirits, leisure, and health sufficient for it, is a matter of great uncertainty. Accounts have reached me from various quarters of your good health and domestic happiness, in which be assured, my dear Sir, no one feels a truer interest than your sincere, and obedient humble servant, E. COPLESTON. MY DEAR SIR, Oriel College, Oct. 13, 1817. I am this moment returned from my summer excursion into Devonshire, and I hasten to answer your letter, which has, I fear, been waiting some days here. Thankful as I feel for the valuable dissertation you sent me, it would be an ill requital for so much kindness if I were to hesitate a moment in complying with the request you make. The papers shall be sent as soon as I receive your instructions as to the mode of conveyance. In the mean time let me repeat my own renunciation of the hypothesis I once ventured to send you on the subject. Mr. Stewart has in my opinion tarnished his work by reflections on this University, perfectly uncalled for and unfounded. "The University that expelled Locke!" Such is the periphrasis by which Oxford is described-a description false, in fact, and insulting, because irrelevant to his purpose, if it were true. He was not even expelled Christ Church. He was deprived of his studentship by Court influence, because of his politics and this, long before his great philosophical work appeared, although it is manifestly intended to convey to the world an impression, that Locke was expelled by the University of Oxford as a mark of disapprobation for his metaphysical writings. I own Mr. Stewart is the last Scotchman from whom I should have expected such a misrepresentation. I remain, dear Sir, with the greatest respect and esteem, your obliged humble servant, E. COPLESTON. Dr. Parr to Dr. Copleston. DEAR DR. COPLESTON, Hatton, Nov. 4, 1817. I thank you for your permission to let Dugald Stewart see the papers; and if you will have the goodness to send them. in two or three parcels, upon two or three successive days, to the Right Hon. Hiley Addington, Secretary of State's Office, he will protect them with franks. The direction is D. Stewart, Esq. Kinneil House, Boness, North Britain. You state with your wonted precision the mistakes into which Dugald has fallen about the University of Oxford. Having been told of some correspondence between your enlightened Chancellor and D. Stewart, I wrote to the latter, and pointed out to him the full extent of his misconceptions; and I referred him to several books, in which the real facts are stated correctly. Locke was vilely treated by Charles the Second, by Dr. Fell, and probably by some contemporary canons of Christ Church. I have told Dugald where he may find a very important extract from Fell's Letters. 1 told him also, that the book on the Human Understanding was not the cause, and in fact it had not been published at the time. I told him, too, that the University, as a body, had no concern in the transaction, and that the blame lies with the leading members of one college only. Scotchmen, you are aware, know none of our distinctions between colleges and the University, for with them the College of Aberdeen, or St. Andrew's, or Glasgow, or Edinburgh, is the same with the University of Aberdeen, &c. From the known candour and integrity of Dugald, I am confident that he will acknowledge and rectify all his mistakes. I have the honour to be, dear Sir, with the very greatest respect and regard, your friend and obedient servant. P.S. Dugald told me, that Lord Grenville had written not to him, but, after all, to the late Mr. Horner. Dear Sir, Locke's book upon the Understanding was not received favourably by the more orthodox ecclesiastics of the day. Your University did not pass any public decree against the book; but there are traces of confederacy to discourage the reading of it. We all know what was written by the Bishop of Worcester. Locke's most able antagonist was Lee, a Cantab, whose book is worth your reading. Locke was afterwards attacked with great severity, for his theology as connected with his metaphysics, by Brown, Bishop of Cork, who wrote the Divine Analogy. The charge of heresy and impiety is urged more vehemently by Poiret, in a Latin book. But the University took no public measure against Locke, whose politics were perhaps not less offensive to them than his philosophical and religious opinions. You and I hate all lies. Alas, truth itself will have as much to deplore in the prejudices and angry passions of mankind. Dr. Bennet, Bishop of Cloyne, to Dr. Parr. DEAR PARR, Eman. Coll. Feb. 9, 1766. If your grief for a loss, which reason persuades us to forget at the very time it is forcing us to remember, begins to live only in reflection and sinks into a transient melancholy,—if all the duties of religion are paid, and all the claims of duty satisfied, the friend may intrude on the prayers of the Christian, and epistolary correspondence declare what necessitated absence wishes. Armed, indeed, as you were, with precepts (which, as if conscious of their future assistance, you snatched amidst the menaces of authorized malignity), misfortune lost half its weight; and if sympathy can alleviate, if friendship can disarm affliction, the man who had Bennet and Archdale to commiserate him, is as far superior in ease to disconsolate virtue as to disappointed malice. To satisfy the inquiries of Cambridge friends, to clear truth from the clouds with which malignity and ignorance had joined to obscure it, to settle your affairs, and perform your commissions, was the task I accepted with pleasure, and, I may say, executed with fidelity. Nor had Archdale (for, notwithstanding the regard I have for him, or the respect he entertains for you, will I allow him a superiority in grief,) a more laborious or more affecting task. His troubles were at least alleviated by the melancholy pleasure of your attendance, of your participation; he could indulge the affliction I was denied to share, exhaust the arguments I was hindered from using, and boast the tears I was ashamed to manifest. The letters I received from him breathe all the |