Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/368

 might have been a Scotsman; he was a priest—he might have been a lawyer; he was a traitor—he might have been an apostate’ (, i. 395). Parr, to use his accustomed formula, had Johnson's pomposity without his force of mind, Johnson's love of antithesis without his logical acuteness, and Johnson's roughness without his humour.

Parr's mannerism and his verbosity make his English writings generally unreadable. He complains on his return to Combe that his duties as a teacher and parish priest, his correspondence, and frequent consultations upon the affairs of friends, left him no leisure. He meditated lives of his old colleague Sumner, of Dr. Johnson, of Fox, and of Sir W. Jones; but never got beyond the stage of collecting material. His personal remarks are pointed, though necessarily laboured; but in his general discussions the pomposity remains without the point. He was admittedly a fine Latin scholar, as scholarship was understood by the schoolmasters of his day; and perhaps did not assume too much in placing himself between Porson and Charles Burney. De Quincey praises his command of Latin in the preface to ‘Bellendenus,’ and in the monumental inscriptions for which his friends were always applying. These, perhaps, show more skill, as De Quincey remarks, in avoiding faults of taste than in achieving pathos. Among the best known subjects are Johnson, Burke, Fox, Gibbon, and Charles Burney.

Sir William Hamilton, though a personal stranger, appealed to him in 1820 to give an opinion that might influence the town council of Edinburgh in electing a successor to Brown (Works, vii. 199). Parr was supposed to be an authority upon metaphysics, but his knowledge was confined to the ordinary classical authorities and the English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He tried Kant (Works, i. 712), but the irksomeness of reading through an interpreter (French being his only modern language) made him give it up as a bad job. He admired Hume, Hartley, Butler, Hutchison, and Adam Smith; but agreed most with the utilitarians. He ‘exulted’ (, ii. 176) with pride and delight in the friendship of Bentham, who made his acquaintance at Colchester. Bentham visited him at Hatton in 1803, asked him in 1823 to translate into classical language a code meant for modern Greeks, and to Bentham Parr left a mourning ring, as the ‘ablest and most instructive writer’ upon jurisprudence who ever lived. He sympathised very heartily with Bentham's desire for improvements in the criminal code, reform of the poor laws, and the extension of schools. He argued in his earliest sermons that the poor ought to be taught, ‘though the Deity himself had fixed a great gulph between them and the rich,’ a liberal sentiment for the time. He got over his early fondness for the Test Acts, and was a steady supporter of catholic emancipation. His religious views were those of Paley, Watson, Hey, and the other whig divines of his day, who, without becoming unitarians, seem to have considered differences of opinion upon mysteries as chiefly verbal. His unitarian biographer, Field, gives an account of his views (ii. 374, &c.), but notes (i. 54) that when Parr had discovered truth for himself he did not always feel bound to communicate it to others. He professed a warm regard for the establishment, but he held that the best age of the church was in the early part of the eighteenth century, when it represented the ‘mild and heavenly temper which breathes through the works of Hoadley’ (Works, iii. 686). He was on friendly terms with many dissenters. He had a rather odd weakness for the Roman catholics, and he heartily detested the evangelicals.

Parr was active in his parish. He built a vestry, in which he took a pipe in the ‘intervals of service’ (, ii. 310). With the help of subscriptions he presented painted windows and a peal of bells to his church, and in 1823 nearly rebuilt it. He was on most friendly terms with his parishioners, visited the sick, smoked pipes with the healthy, and celebrated May-day with a good dinner to the villagers and a dance round the maypole. A May-day at Hatton is described in the ‘New Monthly’ (1826, i. 581). He frequently visited Warwick gaol, attended prisoners condemned to death, and often gave money to provide them with legal advice. He generously helped one Oliver, a surgeon who was convicted of murder in spite of the plea of insanity. Oliver was an old pupil, like Gerrald; and Parr says that he could not get a fair trial because he was suspected of having imbibed similar principles, and become a disciple of Paine. This very credible statement is inexcusably misrepresented by De Quincey (, i. 373; Parriana, i. 380, 393). This is only one of many cases of similar good deeds (, ii. 64–5). He seems to have pushed forgiveness of criminals to weakness (ib. p. 56).

Parr was equally liberal in other relations of life, and had a vast number of friends. His correspondence was enormous. He was known to a great many distinguished men, especially upon his side of politics; to