The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 371, May 23, 1829

Concluded from page 334

Parr was evidently fond of living in troubled waters; accordingly, on his removal to Colchester, he got into a quarrel with the trustees of the school on the subject of a lease. He printed a pamphlet about it, which he never published; restrained perhaps by the remarks of Sir W. Jones, who constantly noted the pages submitted to him, with "too violent," "too strong;" and probably thought the whole affair a battle of kites and crows, which Parr had swelled into importance; or, it might be, he suppressed it, influenced by the prospect of succeeding to Norwich school, for which he was now a candidate, and by the shrewd observation of Dr. Foster, "that Norwich might be touched by a fellow feeling for Colchester; and the crape-makers of the one place sympathize with the bag-makers of the other." If the latter consideration weighed with him, it was the first and last time that any such consideration did, Parr being apparently of the opinion of John Wesley, that there could be no fitter subject for a Christian man's prayers, than that he might be delivered from what the world calls "prudence." However it happened, the pamphlet was withheld, and Parr was elected to the school at Norwich.

At Norwich, Parr ventured on his first publications, and obtained his first preferment. The publications consisted of a sermon on "The Truth of Christianity," "A Discourse on Education," and "A Discourse on the Late Fast;" the last of which opens with a mistake singular in Parr, who confounds the sedition of Judas Gaulonitis, mentioned in Josephus, (Antiq. xviii. 1. 1.) with that under Pilate, mentioned in St. Luke, (xiii. 1, 2, 3.); whereas the former probably preceded the latter by twenty years, or nearly. The preferment which he gained was the living of Asterby, presented to him by Lady Jane Trafford, the mother of one of his pupils; which, in 1783, he exchanged for the perpetual curacy of Hatton, in Warwickshire, the same lady being still his patron neither was of much value. Lord Dartmouth, whose sons had also been under his care, endeavoured to procure something for him from Lord Thurlow, but the chancellor is reported to have said "No," with an oath. The great and good Bishop Lowth, however, at the request of the same nobleman, gave him a prebend in St. Paul's, which, though a trifle at the time, eventually became, on the expiration of leases, a source of affluence to Parr in his old age. How far he was from such a condition at this period of his life, is seen by the following incident given by Mr. Field. The doctor was one day in this gentleman's library, when his eye was caught by the title of "Stephens' Greek Thesaurus." Suddenly turning about and striking vehemently the arm of Mr. Field, whom he addressed in a manner very usual with him; he said, "Ah! my friend, my friend, may you never be forced, as I was at Norwich, to sell that work, to me so precious, from absolute and urgent necessity."

But we must on with the Doctor in his career. In 1785, for some reason unknown to his biographer, Parr resigned the school at Norwich, and in the year following went to reside at Hatton. "I have an excellent house, (he writes to a friend,) good neighbours, and a Poor, ignorant, dissolute, insolent, and ungrateful, beyond all example. I like Warwickshire very much. I have made great regulations, viz. bells chime three times as long; Athanasian creed; communion service at the altar; swearing act; children catechized first Sunday in the month; private baptisms discouraged; public performed after second lesson; recovered a 100l. a year left the poor, with interest amounting to 115l., all of which I am to put out, and settle a trust in the spring; examining all the charities."

Here Warwickshire pleases Parr; but Parr's taste in this, and in many other matters, (as we shall have occasion to show by and by,) was subject to change. He soon, therefore, becomes convinced of the superior intellect of the men of Norfolk. He finds Warwickshire, the Boeotia of England, two centuries behind in civilization. He is anxious, however, to be in the commission of the peace for this ill-fated county, and applies to Lord Hertford, then Lord Lieutenant; but the application fails; and again, on a subsequent occasion, to Lord Warwick, and again he is disappointed. What motives operated upon their lordships' minds to his exclusion, they did not think it necessary to avow.

Providence has so obviously drawn a circle about every man, within which, for the most part, he is compelled to walk, by furnishing him with natural affections, evidently intended to fasten upon individuals; by urging demands upon him which the very preservation of himself and those about him compels him to listen to; by withholding from him any considerable knowledge of what is distant, and hereby proclaiming that his more proper sphere lies in what is near;—by compassing, him about with physical obstacles, with mountains, with rivers, with seas "dissociable," with tongues which he cannot utter, or cannot understand; that, like the wife of Hector, it proclaims in accents scarcely to be resisted, that there is a tower assigned to everyman, where it is his first duty to plant himself for the sake of his own, and in the defence of which he will find perhaps enough to do, without extending his care to the whole circuit of the city walls.

The close of Parr's life grew brighter, The increased value of his stall at St. Paul's set him abundantly at his ease: he can even indulge his love of pomp—ardetque cupidine currûs, he encumbers himself with a coach and four. In 1816, he married a second wife, Miss Eyre, the sister of his friend the Rev. James Eyre; he became reconciled to his two grand-daughters, now grown up to woman's estate; he received them into his family, and kept them as his own, till one of them became the wife of the Rev. John Lynes.

In the latter years of his life, Parr had been subject to erysipelas; once he had suffered by a carbuncle, and once by a mortification in the hand. Owing to this tendency to diseased action in the skin, he was easily affected by cold, and on Sunday, the 16th of January, 1825, having, in addition to the usual duties of the day, buried a corpse, he was, on the following night, seized with a long-continued rigor, attended by fever and delirium, and never effectually rallied again. There is a note, however, dated November 2, 1824, addressed by him to Archdeacon Butler, which proves that he felt his end approaching, even before this crisis.

"Dear and Learned Namesake,—This letter is important, and strictly confidential. I have given J. Lynes minute and plenary directions for my funeral. I desire you, if you can, to preach a short, unadorned funeral sermon. Rann Kennedy is to read the lesson and grave service, though I could wish you to read the grave service also. Say little of me, but you are sure to say it well."

Dr. Butler complied with his request, and amply made good the opinion here expressed. He spoke of him like a warm and stedfast friend, but not like that worst of enemies, an indiscreet one; he did not challenge a scrutiny by the extravagance of his praise, nor break, by his precious balms, the head he was most anxious to honour. Dr. Parr's death was tedious, and his faculties, except at intervals, disturbed. He took an opportunity, however, afforded him by one of these intervals, of summoning about his bed his wife, grand-children, and servants; confessed to them his weaknesses and errors, asked their forgiveness for any pain he might have caused them by petulance and haste, and professed "his trust in God, through Christ, for the pardon of his sins." One expression, which Dr. Johnstone reports him to have used on this occasion, is extraordinary—that "from the beginning of his life he was not conscious of having fallen into a crime." Far be it from us to scrutinize the words of a delirious death-bed—These must have been uttered (if, indeed, they are accurately given) either in some peculiar and very limited sense, or else at a moment when a man is no longer accountable to God for what he utters. The latter was, probably, the case: for in the same breath in which he declares "his life, even his early life, to have been pure," he sues for pardon at the hands of his Maker, and acknowledges a Redeemer, as the instrument through which he is to obtain it.

That quickness of feeling and disposition to abandon himself to its guidance, which made Parr an inconsistent man, made him also a benevolent one. Benevolence he loved as a subject for his contemplation, and the practical extension of it as a rule for his conduct. He could scarcely bear to regard the Deity under any other aspect. He would have children taught, in the first instance, to regard him under that aspect alone; simply as a being who displayed infinite goodness in the creation, in the government, and in the redemption of the world. Language itself indicates, that the whole system of moral rectitude is comprised in it—[Greek: energetein], benefacere, beneficencethe generic term being, in common parlance, emphatically restricted to works of charity. Nor was this mere theory in Parr. Most men who have been economical from necessity in their youth, continue to be so, from habit, in their age—but Parr's hand was ever open as day. Poverty had vexed, but had never contracted his spirit; money he despised, except as it gave him power—power to ride in his state coach, to throw wide his doors to hospitality, to load his table with plate, and his shelves with learning; power to adorn his church with chandeliers and painted windows; to make glad the cottages of his poor; to grant a loan, to a tottering farmer; to rescue from want a forlorn patriot, or a thriftless scholar. Whether misfortune, or mismanagement, or folly, or vice, had brought its victim low, his want was a passport to Parr's pity, and the dew of his bounty fell alike upon the evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust. It is told of Boerhaave, that, whenever he saw a criminal led out to execution, he would say, "May not this man be better than I? If otherwise, the praise is due, not to me, but to the grace of God." Parr quotes the saying with applause. Such, we doubt not, would have been his own feelings on such an occasion.

—Quarterly Review

THE GATHERER

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.

SONG FROM THE ITALIAN OF P. ROLLI

Babbling current, would you know
Why I turn to thee again,
'Tis to find relief from woe,
Respite short from ceaseless pain.

I and Sylvio on a day
Were upon thy bank reclin'd,
When dear Sylvio swore to me,
And thus spoke in accents kind:

First this flowing tide shall turn
Backward to its fountain head,
Dearest nymph, ere thou shall mourn,
Thy too easy faith betray'd.

Babbling current, backward turn,
Hide thee in thy fountain head;
For alas, I'm left to mourn
My too easy faith betray'd.

Love and life pursu'd the swain,
Both must have the self-same date,
But mine only he could mean,
Since his love is turn'd to hate.

Sure some fairer nymph than I,
From me lures the lovely youth,
Haply she receives like me,
Vows of everlasting truth.

Babbling current should the fair
Stop to listen on thy shore,
Bid her, Sylvio, to beware,
Love and truth he oft had sworn.

T.H

THE SPRING AND THE MORNING,

A Ballad. Written by Sir Lumley Skeffington, Bart. Inscribed to Miss Foote

When the frosts of the Winter, in mildness were ending,
To April I gave half the welcome of May;
While the Spring, fresh in youth, came delightfully blending
The buds that are sweet, and the songs that are gay.
As the eyes fixed the heart on a vision so fair,
Not doubting, but trusting what magic was there;
Aloud I exclaim'd, with augmented desire,
I thought 'twas the Spring, when In truth, 'tis Maria.

When the fading of stars, in the regions of splendour,
Announc'd that the morning was young in the East,
On the upland I rov'd, admiration to render,
Where freshness, and beauty, and lustre increas'd.
Whilst the beams of the morning new pleasures bestow'd,
While fondly I gaz'd, while with rapture I glow'd;
In sweetness commanding, in elegance bright,
Maria arose! a more beautiful light!

Gentleman's Magazine

UNEXPECTED REPROOF

The celebrated scholar, Muretus, was taken ill upon the road as he was travelling from Paris to Lyons, and as his appearance was not much in his favour, he was carried to an hospital. Two physicians attended him, and his disease not being a very common one, they thought it right to try something new, and out of the usual road of practice, upon him. One of them, not knowing that their patient knew Latin, said in that language to the other, "We may surely venture to try an experiment upon the body of so mean a man as our patient is." "Mean, sir!" replied Muretus, in Latin, to their astonishment, "can you pretend to call any man so, sir, for whom the Saviour of the world did not think it beneath him to die?"

IRELAND

The following is the territorial surface of Ireland:—