man, and, therefore, great and unfeigned is my delight to find that I have some share of his esteem; permit me to assure you, that his Life of Dr. Davies has not lessened the opinion which I have long had of his ardour in friendship, and his habitual sympathy with the very best feelings of enlightened and virtuous men. The whole heart of Dr. Davies is laid open by his biographer.

"I am pleased both with the Latin and the English verses, and the air of singularity which runs through the letters is not only agreeable, but interesting. He was an Etonian of the old school, and there is no man living who has a livelier concern than I have in hearing and reading the stories of Etonian worthies.

"Once only Mr. Hardinge displeased me, and with perfect good humour and good manners I have recorded my dissent. His commendations of Dr. Barnard are extravagant, and not always well-founded. But my chief dissatisfaction arose from his censure of Dr. John Foster, who was both a profound scholar, and a truly honest man. I have not the smallest doubt upon the merits of the conjectural reading in Horace, and you will give me leave to add, that Mr. Bowyer's old and learned friend Dr. Taylor has communicated another most happy conjecture upon another passage, for which we are indebted to Hardinge. A great foreign scholar, who does not seem to have read Taylor's Elements of Civil Law, proposed the same emendation, and supported it by some of the passages which Taylor adduced. Can you tell me where I can obtain the volume of Latin poems which Mr. Hardinge's father wrote, and to which the son adverts in your inestimable collection? From scholars who are no more, I in my early youth have met with much instructive and much delightful information about Mr. Hardinge, the Fellow of King's, and if your friend had ever honoured me with a visit at my parsonage, we should have passed days and nights without any languor in our conversation.

"Depend upon it, that I shall insert in the book which you gave me such a kind of memorial as would not be un

satifactory to yourself or the biographer of Dr. Davies. Yesterday I consulted with my solicitor about some corrections in my will, and the learned person who now writes for me will bear witness to the affectionate and honourable mention which I have made of you, where I bequeath to you a mourning ring. The same person knows that between two or three hundred folio pages are now lying in my library, and must continue to lie there, till I can get a diligent and faithful scribe. The floor of my upper library is covered with books to which I must have recourse; and I am sure that with the materials which I have collected, and with my habits of rapid composition, I could in six or seven days complete my Memoirs of Robert Sumner. I should suppose that seventy or eighty additional pages would be sufficient. Alas! I am at a dead stand! I shall interweave something not unfavourable to the memory of George Hardinge. He that writes for me has often heard me say, that from your two quarto volumes about Mr. Bowyer, your curious and copious communications to the Gentleman's Magazine, and above all, from that noblest of your works, the Literary Anecdotes, you have rendered more important services to the cause of learning in this country, and to the learned men of whom it boasts, than any writer now living. May Heaven lengthen your life, and grant you health, prosperity, fame, and every other blessing which can sweeten it. Remember me kindly and respectfully to all your children, and their relations, and believe me, dear Mr. Nichols, with unfeigned regard and respect, your friend and obedient servant,

"SAMUEL PARR."

It is to be hoped that these rich materials are among those which, as we have already stated, are at present arranging for publication.

Perhaps the reader may wish to know in what manner Dr. Parr conducted his instructions from the pulpit. He wrote many of his sermons; but in Middlesex, at Colchester, and at Norwich, he often preached extempore: and it must be

unnecessary to say, that the ardour of his temper, the fallness of his knowledge, and the strength of his understanding, always readily supplied him with matter pertinent, forcible, and abundant. He preached without any preparation whatsoever, and his custom was to select his subject from that which struck him in the lessons, epistle and gospel, or psalms of the day. There was always method in these extemporaneous effusions. They were frequently accompanied with critical remarks; and they were delivered with an earnestness of manner, and a correctness and vigour of diction, most interesting to the hearers, and equal to the highest expectations which could be formed of his powers, even by men most prejudiced in his favour, and most accustomed to his conversation. At Hatton he generally took up a sermon written by Clarke, Balguy, or Jortin, or by some other distinguished divine of the Established Church. But his own observations were always introduced; and from the peculiarity of his thinking and his style, the difference was easily discerned by an intelligent hearer. Such, indeed, were his readiness and copiousness, that of sermons which continued for half an hour or forty minutes, the parts which he merely read occupied scarcely five or six pages. He has been heard to attribute this talent partly to the habit which he had formed, when a young man, of speaking with the late Sir William Jones and the late Bishop of Cloyne, in a fictitious character, upon various subjects of history, ethics, and politics; and partly to the necessity which had been imposed upon him of communicating oral instruction in his schools. The same talent often appeared with great lustre, when he threw out his thoughts upon any intricate and important topic in the presence of his friends.

His views were most comprehensive, his arguments most acute; his diction was correct without stiffness, and his imagery splendid without glare. It was the vulgar notion of those who did not know Dr. Parr, that his information was confined to the structure of sentences, the etymology of words, the import of particles, and the quantity of syllables.

But those who intimately knew and appreciated his singular mental acquirements, were struck alike with their variety and with their depth. In classical erudition he was without a rival, and was one of the few surviving devotees of the old school of learning. His knowledge of ecclesiastical history, particularly as connected with the church history of Britain, was most extraordinary: all the minute and illustrative facts connected with the liturgies, forms, doctrines, and creeds of the establishment, were most accurately known to him. As he idolized the memories of those who had fallen martyrs in the cause of political truth, so, in his own words, he "loved to soar in the regions of religious liberty." His religious sentiments were formed on the most mature reflection, the most accurate balance of evidence, the most extensive, bold, and impartial results. There were no doubts he dared not investigate, no difficulties he did not grapple with. But although there was no polemical question which he did not analyze, yet he entertained the most profound contempt for established bigotry, and sectarian dogmatism. Above all, he early discovered the limitation of the human understanding; the folly of diving after hidden knowledge. To use his own quotation from Johnson, "by the solicitous examination of objections, and judicious comparisons of opposite arguments, he attained what inquiry never gives but to industry, and perspicuity, a firm and unshaken settlement of conviction; but his firmness was without asperity, for knowing with how much difficulty truth was sometimes found, he did not wonder that many missed it."

Dr. Parr was extensively read in history and legislation, and was well acquainted with what are called the constitutional writers. His character as a politician was most manly and consistent. His own words, in the contrast of the characters of Warburton and Hurd, may be applied to himself; "he never thought it expedient to expiate the artless and animated effusions of his youth by the example of a temporising and obsequious old age; he began not his course, as others have done, with speculative republicanism; nor did he

end it, as the same persons are now doing, with practical toryism." It has already appeared, that he was indebted for all his preferment to the affection of private friends; for though he was animated by an ardent but liberal and enlightened attachment to our Civil and Ecclesiastical Constitution, though he was distinguished by unparalleled learning, gigantic strength of intellect, the most unblemished morals, Christian humility, and profound unaffected piety,— he was never patronised by the government of his country. This is a circumstance which many will perhaps consider explained by the passage in his Character of Mr. Fox, in which Dr. Parr truly states of himself, that, "from his youth upward, he never deserted a private friend, or violated a public principle; that he was the slave of no patron, and the drudge of no party; that he formed his political opinions without the smallest regard, and acted upon them with an utter disregard, to personal emoluments, and professional honours." He adds (what his friends must rejoice to recollect was the truth), " that although for many and the best years of his life, he endured very irksome toil, and suffered very galling need, he eventually united a competent fortune with an independent spirit; and that, looking back to this life and onward to another, he possessed that inward peace of mind which the world can neither give nor take away." Nor will this be wondered at by those who know that his long residence at Hatton was spent by him in diligently performing all the duties of a parish priest; in assisting, advising, and befriending the poor; in the exercise of a generous hospitality; in encouraging and patronising merit; in communicating knowledge, whenever required, from his own inexhaustible stores; in contributing, by a most extensive correspondence, to the general illumination of the literary world; in manifesting by his words and deeds, that he cultivated a spirit of unbounded philanthropy, as the practical essence of our holy religion; and in endeavours to promote from the pulpit and by the press, whatever is most conducive to the public and private welfare of mankind.