Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/452

 dream the greatness and pitifulness of human struggle throughout salient epochs in the world's history. Even his last orchestral symphony (1912) shares in the thought, for the first three of its four linked movements bear the titles ‘Work’, ‘Love’, and ‘Play’, and the whole is summed up in a mood of optimism by a finale labelled ‘Now’. Nor was this all, for in his last years he was much occupied with a book, Instinct and Character (unpublished, though typed copies have been deposited, and may be seen, in the British Museum, Bodleian, and Royal College of Music libraries), which endeavoured to examine the grounds of human action, reaction, and progress and to show where his hope lay for the future of mankind.

All this shows the impossibility of estimating Parry solely as the musical artist, even though it is through his music that he has done most towards ‘winning the way’. The joyous freshness of the ‘Ode on the Nativity’, his last work for a Three Choirs festival (Hereford, 1912), shows that his purely musical inspiration still ran clear, and the boyish sense of fun was ready to break out again in such things as ‘The Pied Piper’ and the music to ‘The Acharnians’. Nor must it be forgotten that during these years he so steeped himself in the mind of J. S. Bach, that he was able to produce the most intimately sympathetic study of ‘a great personality’ in music which the literature of this country possesses.

Parry's vivid interest in many things outside music, his love of the open air and the sea (he was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and sailing his own yacht was easily first among his favourite recreations), his sympathy with young people, his constant desire to explore new ways of thought, even those ways in modern music which were most antipathetic to him—all contributed to keep his nature sane and sweet. He could be intolerant, hasty, and even forbidding. He never ‘suffered fools gladly’, but only fools failed to get at the essential simplicity and truth of the man. It was primarily his example and presence as head of the musical profession which compelled that enlarged outlook on the part of musicians themselves and that favourable change in their position amongst their fellows which in the last generation has brought new life to the art in England. He made music a man's concern.

The ‘Songs of Farewell’, six motets for unaccompanied voices, together with some solo songs and organ preludes, are the product of Parry's last years. The European War had shattered everything most dear to him, and he did not see the end of it. Its shadow is cast on his music, yet in these motets he holds to the convictions he had so hardly won, and in ‘Never weather-beaten Sail’, ‘There is an old Belief’, and ‘Lord, let Me know mine End’, there is a serenity and confidence which places them among the really great achievements of music.

He died at Rustington 7 October 1918, and was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Parry was knighted in 1898, and was made a baronet on the occasion of King Edward's coronation in 1902. His wife and two daughters survived him, but he left no male heir. The estate of Highnam Court, which he inherited from his father, passed to his half-brother. A tablet to his memory, bearing an inscription by the poet laureate (Mr. Robert Bridges), has been placed by public subscription in Gloucester Cathedral.  PARSONS, ALFRED WILLIAM (1847–1920), painter and illustrator, was born at Beckington, Somerset, 2 December 1847, the second son of Joshua Parsons, surgeon, of Beckington. He was educated at private schools and entered the Savings Bank department of the Post Office as a clerk in 1865, but two years later (1867) he gave up his career in the civil service and devoted himself to painting. The first appearance of his work at a Royal Academy exhibition was in 1871, when he showed two pictures, ‘A Half Holiday’ and ‘In a Copse, November’. Subsequently Parsons was a frequent exhibitor at Burlington House as also at the Grosvenor, the New, and other galleries. In 1887 his picture of an orchard, ‘When Nature Painted All Things Gay’, was purchased by the trustees of the Chantrey fund; it is now in the National Gallery of British Art at Millbank (Tate Gallery). In 1892–1894 Parsons paid a visit to Japan; he published his impressions of that country, with illustrations, in his book, Notes in Japan (1896). He was elected A.R.A. in 1897 and R.A. in 1911. A member of 426