Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/329

 PARNY

PARTON

Europe. He was expert investigator for the Russell Sage Foundation at Boston in 1907-1908, professor of economics at Syracuse University in 1909, assistant professor of sociology and economics at the University of Kansas in 1909-1910, assis tant professor of sociology at the Uni versity of Minnesota from 1910 to 1913, at Michigan in 1913, and at the University of the City of New York in 1913-14 and 1917. In 1915 he was awarded the Grant Squires prize for social research by Columbia University, and he represented the United States War Trade Board in 1918-19. Professor Parmelee is a member of the American Sociological Society and an associate of the International Institute of Sociology. He is a member of the R. P. A., and often expresses his Rationalist views in his works. His Science of Human Behaviour (1913) is &quot; an attempt to explain human behaviour on a purely mechanistic and materialistic basis.&quot; See, also, his Personality and Conduct (1918).

PARNY, Evariste Desire de Farges,

Vicomte de, French poet. B. Feb 6, 1753. Ed. College de Rennes. Parny entered the lower grades of the Catholic clergy, but he presently quitted the Church for the army. In 1777 he began to write in the Almanack des Muses, and in the following year he published his Poesies erotiques, which prompted Voltaire to address him as &amp;lt;l Mon cher Tibulle.&quot; The Revolution ruined his fortune, but he continued to produce poetry breathing a passionate and rebellious joy in life. In 1803 the Viscount was admitted to the Academy, and Napo leon granted him a pension. His long poem La guerre des dieux (1799) is an extremely free parody of the Bible, and his disdain of religion is not less open in his Paradis perdu (1805). D. Dec. 5, 1814.

PARRY, Professor Sir Charles Hubert Hastings, M.A., D.C.L., first baronet, com poser. B. Feb. 27, 1848. Ed. Eton and Oxford (Exeter College). Parry began to compose at an early age, and three years 585

after leaving Oxford he devoted himself entirely to music. In 1883 he was ap pointed Choragus at Oxford University, and in 1891 professor of composition and musical history at the Royal College of Music. He succeeded Sir George Grove as Director in 1894, and from 1899 to 1908 was professor of music at Oxford. From 1880 onward Sir Hubert Parry he was knighted in 1898 and created baronet in 1902 wrote an immense number of oratorios, concertos, choral odes, etc. Many authorities regarded him as the first composer of his time, and he was certainly the most accomplished student of music. A great deal of his music was sacred, and found a text in the words of the Bible ; but he was a Rationalist. As the Times (Oct 8, 1918) observed in its obituary notice : &quot; From his earliest years Parry had had no sympathy with dogmatic theology, but as his mind concentrated more and more upon the problem of human struggle and aspiration, of life and death, failure and conquest, he found his thoughts most perfectly expressed in the language of the Bible.&quot; One might add that, like the other great Rationalist musicians, he purveyed what the musical public seemed to want. D. Oct. 7, 1918.

PARTON, James, American biographer. B. (Canterbury, England) Feb. 9, 1822. Ed. New York. Parton had been taken to New York in 1827. After teaching for some years in Philadelphia and New York he turned to journalism, and worked on the staff of the Home Journal. In 1855 his Life of Horace Greeley was so well received that he devote d himself to litera ture and literary lecturing. His best work is his very able Life of Voltaire (2 vols., 1881), and he wrote also lives of Benjamin Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and other Deists. Parton was himself an Agnostic. W. D. Howells, who was familiar with him, says : &quot; In the days when to be an Agnostic was to be almost an outcast, he had the heart to say of the Mysteries that he did not know &quot; (Literary Friends and 586