in height; but he cultivated these natural gifts very little, and was
seldom dressed to advantage. William Bankes once invited Porson to dine
with him at an hotel at the west-end of the town; but the dinner passed
away without the guest making his appearance. Afterwards, on Bankes's
asking him why he had not kept his engagement Porson replied (without
entering into further particulars), that he "had come;" and Bankes
could only conjecture that the waiters, seeing Porson's shabby dress,
and not knowing who he was, had offered him some insult, which made him
indignantly return home.
Late in life, Porson seems to have become a sad spectacle. "I saw him
once at the London Institution," says a writer in the _New Monthly
Magazine_, "with a large patch of coarse brown paper on his nose, the
skirts of his rusty black coat hung with cobwebs, and talking in a
tone of suavity approaching to condescension to one of the managers."
His face was described by an old acquaintance, who met him in 1807,
as "fiery and volcanic; his nose, on which he had a perpetual
efflorescence, was covered with black patches; his clothes were shabby,
his linen dirty."
Porson had a great contempt for physic and physicians, yet, curiously
enough, many of his most intimate friends were physicians. In a letter
written in 1802 to Dr. Davy, he says: "I have been at Death's door, but
by a due neglect of the faculty, and plentiful use of my old remedy
(powder of post), I am pretty well recovered."
In the good old days of coach travelling, an inside was occupied by
Porson, a young Oxonian, and two ladies. The Oxonian, fresh from
college, was amusing the ladies with a variety of talk, and amongst
other things, with a quotation from Sophocles. A Greek quotation, and
in a coach too, roused the slumbering Professor; and thereupon, waking
from a kind of dog sleep, in a snug corner of the vehicle; shaking
his ears, and rubbing his eyes, "I think young gentleman," said he,
"you favoured us just now with a quotation from Sophocles; I do not
happen to recollect it there." "Oh, sir," replied the Oxonian, "the
quotation is word for word as I have repeated it, and in Sophocles too;
but I suspect, sir, it is some time since you were at college." The
Professor applying his hand to his great-coat, and taking out a small
pocket edition of Sophocles, quietly asked him if he could be kind
enough to show him the passage in question, in that little book. After
rummaging the pages for some time, he replied, "Upon second thoughts,
I now recollect that the passage is in Euripides." "Then perhaps,
sir," said the Professor, putting his hand again into his pocket, and
handing him a similar edition of Euripides, "you will be so good as
to find it for me, in that little book." The young Oxonian returned
again to his task, but with no better success, muttering however
to himself, "Curse me if ever I quote Greek again in a coach." The
tittering of the ladies informed him that he was got into a hobble. At
last, "Bless me, sir," said he, "how dull I am: I recollect now--yes,
yes, I perfectly remember that the passage is in Æschylus." When our
astonished freshman vociferated, "Stop the coach--halloah, coachman,
let me out, I say, instantly--let me out! there's a fellow here has got
the Bodleian library in his pocket; let me out, I say--let me out; he
must be Porson or the devil!"
He sometimes put the Greek folio of Galen, the physician, under his
pillow at night; not, as he used to observe, because he expected
medicinal virtue from it, but because his asthma required that his head
should be kept high.
[Illustration: Dr. Parr.]
Parriana: Oddities of Dr. Parr.
In his boyhood, Parr is described, by his sister as studious after his
kind, delighting in "Mother Goose and the Seven Champions," and not
partaking much in the sports usual at such an age. He had had a very
early inclination for the Church, and the elements of that taste for
ecclesiastical pomp which distinguished him in after-life, appeared
when he was not more than nine or ten years old. He would put on one
of his father's shirts for a surplice; he would then read the Church
Service to his sister and cousins, after they had been duly summoned
by a bell tied to the banisters; preach them a sermon, which his
congregation was apt to think, in those days, somewhat of the longest;
and, even in spite of his father's remonstrances, would bury a bird or
a kitten (Parr had always a great fondness for animals) with the rites
of Christian burial.
Samuel was his mother's darling; she indulged all his whims, consulted
his appetite, provided hot suppers for him almost from his cradle. He
was her only son, and was at this time very fair and well-favoured.
Providence, however, seeing that at all events vanity was to be a large
ingredient in Parr's composition, sent him, in its mercy, a fit of
smallpox; and with the same intent, perhaps, deprived him of a parent
who was killing her son's character by kindness. Parr never was a boy,
says one of his friends and schoolfellows. When he was about nine years
old, he was seen sitting on the churchyard-gate at Harrow, whilst
his schoolfellows were all at play. "Sam, why don't you play with
the others?" cried one. "Do not you know, sir," said Parr, with vast
solemnity, "that I am to be a parson?" And Parr himself used to tell
of Sir William Jones, another of his schoolfellows, that, as they were
one day walking together near Harrow, Jones suddenly stopped short, and
looking hard at him, cried out, "Parr, if you should have the good luck
to live forty years, you may stand a chance of overtaking your face."
Between Dr. Bennet, Parr, and Jones, the closest intimacy was formed:
the three challenged one another to trials of skill in the imitation
of popular authors--they wrote and acted a play together--they got up
mock councils, and harangues, and combats, after the manner of the
classical heroes of antiquity, and under their names--till, at the age
of fourteen, Parr being now at the head of the school, was removed
from it, and placed in the shop of his father, who was a surgeon and
apothecary. The Doctor must have found, in the course of his practice,
that there are some pills which will not go down--and this was one.
Parr began to criticize the Latin of his father's prescriptions,
instead of "making the mixture." Accordingly, having tried in vain to
reconcile himself to the "uttering of mortal drugs" for three years,
he was sent to Cambridge, and admitted of Emmanuel College, where Dr.
Farmer was tutor. Of this proficient in black-letter we are told by
Archdeacon Butler, that Farmer was a man of such singular indolence as
to neglect sending in the young men's accounts, and is supposed to have
burnt large sums of money by putting into the fire unopened letters,
which contained remittances.
In 1791, when in his twenty-fifth year, Parr became a candidate for
the head-mastership of Harrow, though he was beaten by Dr. B. Heath.
A rebellion ensued among the boys, many of whom took Parr's part; and
he threw up his situation of assistant, and withdrew to Stanmore.
Here he was followed by forty of the young rebels, and with this
stock-in-trade he proceeded to set up a school on his own account. This
is thought to have been the crisis of Parr's life. The die had turned
against him, and the disappointment, with its immediate consequences,
gave a complexion to his future fortunes, character, and comfort. He
had already mounted a full-bottomed wig when he stood for Harrow,
anxious as it should seem to give his face a still further chance of
keeping its start. He now began to ride on a black saddle, and bore
in his hand a long wand with an ivory head, like a crosier, in high
prelatical pomp. His neighbours, who wondered what it could all mean,
had scarcely time to identify him with his pontificals before they saw
him stalking along the street in a dirty striped dressing-gown. A wife
was all that was now wanted to complete the establishment at Stanmore,
and accordingly, Miss Jane Marsingale, a lady of an ancient Yorkshire
family was provided for him; Parr, like Hooker, appearing to have
courted by proxy, and with about the same success. Thus Stanmore was
set agoing as the rival of Harrow. These were fearful odds, and it came
to pass that, in spite of "Attic Symposia," and grooves of Academus,
and the enacting of a Greek play, and the perpetual recitation of the
fragment in praise of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the establishment at
Stanmore declined; and at the end of five years, Parr was not sorry to
accept the mentorship of an endowed school at Colchester.
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; and he printed a pamphlet
about it, which was so violent that he never published it, probably
influenced by his prospect of succeeding to Norwich School. This
occasioned Dr. Foster to remark, "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." The pamphlet was
withheld, and Parr was elected to the school at Norwich. The preferment
which he gained was the living of Asterby, which he exchanged for the
perpetual curacy of Hatton, in Warwickshire. Neither was of much value.
Lord Dartmouth, whose sons had been under Parr's 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 Parr a
prebend in St. Paul's, which, though a trifle at the time, eventually
became, at 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 an incident related by Mr. Field. The Doctor
was one day in that gentleman's library, when his eye was caught by
the title of Stephens's Greek Thesaurus. Suddenly turning about, he
said to Field, vehemently, "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."
Dr. Parr and Dr. Johnson once had a sort of stand-up fight at argument.
After the interview was over, Johnson said, "I do not know when I have
had an occasion of such free controversy. It is remarkable how much
of a man's life may pass without meeting with any instance of this
kind of open discussion." Here is Dr. Parr's account of the meeting:
"I remember the interview well. I gave him no quarter. The subject of
our dispute was the liberty of the press. Dr. Johnson was very great;
whilst he was arguing, I observed that he stamped. Upon this I stamped.
Dr. Johnson said, 'Why did you stamp, Dr. Parr?' I replied, 'Sir,
because _you_ stamped; and I was resolved not to give you the advantage
of a _stamp_ in the argument.'" It is impossible to do justice to this
description of the scene. The vehemence, the characteristic pomposity
with which it was accompanied, may easily be imagined by those who knew
him, but cannot be adequately represented to those who did not.
In the party was Dr. ----, an Arian minister, and Mr. ----, a Socinian
minister. One of the party seeing Parr was on friendly terms with the
above gentlemen, said, "I suppose, sir, although they are heretics,
you think it is possible they may be saved?" "Yes, sir," said he,
adding with affected vehemence, "but they must be _scorched_ first."
Parr talked of economy; he thought that a man's happiness was secure,
in proportion to the small number of his wants, and said that all his
lifetime it had been his object to prevent the multiplication of them
in himself. Some one said to him, "Then, sir, your secret of happiness
is to _cut down_ your wants." _Parr._ "No, sir, _my_ secret is, _not to
let them grow_."
The doctor used, on a Sunday evening, after church, to sit on the green
at Hatton, with his pipe and his jug, and witness the exertions of his
parishioners in the truly English game of cricket, making only one
proviso, that none should join the party who had not previously been to
church. It is needless to say his presence was an effectual check on
all disorderly conduct. The skittle-grounds were deserted, and a better
conducted parish was rarely seen than the worthy Doctor's.
Dr. Parr was one of the enthusiastic admirers of Shakspeare, who fell
upon their knees before Ireland's MSS., and by their idolatry inspired
hundreds of others. Still, Parr attempts to explain this in a note
to the catalogue of his library at Hatton, as follows:--"Ireland's
(Samuel) Great and Impudent Forgery, called 'Miscellaneous Papers and
Legal Instruments, under the hand and seal of William Shakspeare,'
folio, 1796. I am almost ashamed to insert this worthless and
infamously trickish book. It is said to include the tragedy of _King
Lear_, and a fragment of _Hamlet_. Ireland told a lie when he imputed
to me the words which _Joseph Warton_ used, the very morning I called
on Ireland, and was inclined to admit the possibility of genuineness
in his papers. In my subsequent conversation I told him my change of
opinion. But I thought it not worth while to dispute in print with a
detected impostor.--S. P."
Parr, it will be recollected, was an everlasting smoker--he smoked
morning, noon, and night. Once at a Visitation dinner in Colchester,
he had the impudence to call for his pipe; but Dr. Hamilton, the
archdeacon, told him there were other rooms in the house where he might
enjoy himself without annoying others. Of a piece with this was his
behaviour at a literary club in Colchester. Knowing the temper of the
man, a pipe and bottle (contrary to the law of the club) were placed
on the table, and he did ample justice to both; for he smoked and
drank the whole night, and talked so incessantly that Dr. Foster, the
president, sat silent, like one who had lost the use of his tongue.
In July, 1818, Dr. Parr dined at Emmanuel (Cambridge), and met Dr.
Butler, of Shrewsbury, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. Dudley North
seemed to be very popular in his college, for they drank his health
after dinner. Parr spoke of him in very high terms. The principal
objections to the society of "the learned pig" were that he had a more
than Mahommedan fondness for tobacco, and the smoking of a pipe was
with him, as with the followers of the Prophet, a certain passport
to friendship. The chief objects of his detestation seemed to be a
Christchurch man, a Johnian, a Welshman, and the Regent, all of whom
suffered in turn under the lash of his invective. Harrow and Trinity
were the idols of his adoration. Butler appeared to be much more of
a civilized being than the Grecian Goliah. Parr took his breakfast
in the room of Charles Brinsley Sheridan. The breakfast was given on
Sunday. Parr never showed the slightest disposition to attend the
morning service, but when breakfast was over, said, "Charles, Charles,
where are the pipes?" and they had to be sent for from a neighbouring
public-house. And the room was uninhabitable for three hours after
Parr's _déjeûner_ fumigations.
Dr. Parr almost always spent his evenings in the company of his
family and his visitors, or in that of some neighbouring friends. At
such times his dress was in complete contrast with the costume of
the morning; for he appeared in a well-powdered wig, and always wore
his band and cassock. On extraordinary occasions he was arrayed in a
full-dress suit of black velvet, of the cut of the old times, when his
appearance was imposing and dignified.
Speaking of the honour once conferred upon him, of being invited to
dinner at Carlton House, Parr mentions, with evident satisfaction,
the kind condescension of the Prince of Wales, who was pleased to
insist upon his taking his pipe as usual after dinner. Of the Duke of
Sussex, at whose table Parr was not unfrequently a guest, he used to
tell that his Royal Highness not only allowed him to smoke, but smoked
with him. He often represented it as an instance of the homage which
rank and beauty delight to pay to talents and learning, that ladies of
the highest station condescended to the office of lighting his pipe.
He appeared to no advantage, however, in his custom of demanding the
service of holding the lighted paper to his pipe from the youngest
female who happened to be present; and who was often, by the freedom
of his remarks, or by the gaze of the company, painfully disconcerted.
This troublesome ceremony, in his later years, he wisely discarded.
The reader will probably recollect, in the well-known story, his reply
to the lady who refused to allow Parr the indulgence of his pipe. In
vain he pleaded that such indulgence had always been kindly granted
in the mansions of the nobility, and even in the presence and in the
palace of his sovereign. "Madam," said Parr to the lady, who still
remained inexorable, "you must give me leave to tell you, you are
the greatest--" whilst she, fearful of what might follow, earnestly
interposed, and begged that he would express no rudeness. "Madam,"
resumed Dr. Parr, speaking aloud, and looking stern, "you are the
greatest tobacco-stopper in England." This sally produced a loud
laugh; but Parr found himself obliged to retire, in order to enjoy the
pleasures of his pipe.
Dr. Parr was accustomed to amuse himself in the evening with cards, and
whist was his favourite game. He would only play for a nominal stake;
but, upon one occasion, he was persuaded to play with Bishop Watson for
a shilling, which he won. Pushing it carefully to the bottom of his
pocket, and placing his hand upon it, with a kind of mock solemnity,
"There, my Lord Bishop," said Parr, "this is a trick of the devil;
but I'll match him. So now, if you please, we will play for a penny;"
and this was ever after the amount of his stake. He was not, on that
account, at all the less ardent in the prosecution, or the less joyous
in the success of the rubber. He had a high opinion of his own skill
in the game, and could not very patiently tolerate the want of it in
his partner. Being engaged with a party, in which he was unequally
matched, he was asked by a lady how the fortune of the game turned;
when he replied, "Pretty well, madam, considering that I have three
adversaries."
Even ladies were not spared who incurred Parr's displeasure by their
pertinacity. To one who had held out in argument against him, not very
powerfully, and rather too perseveringly, and who had closed the debate
by saying, "Well, Dr. Parr, I still maintain my opinion;" he replied,
"Madam, you may, if you please, _retain_ your opinion, but you cannot
_maintain_ it."
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 could even
indulge his love of pomp, and he encumbered himself with a coach and
four.
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 bad 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 the
grace of God." Parr used to quote this saying with applause. Such, we
doubt not, would have been his own feelings on such an occasion.
The Doctor was fond of good living, but was not a _gourmet_. "There
are," he says, "certainly one or two luxuries to which I am addicted:
the first is a shoulder of mutton, not under-roasted, and richly
incrusted with flour and salt; the second is a plain suet-pudding;
the third is a plain family plum-pudding; and the fourth, a kind of
high-festival dish, consists of hot boiled lobsters, with a profusion
of shrimp-sauce."
Parr preached the Spital sermon, at Christ Church, on the invitation of
the Lord Mayor, Harvey Combe, and as they were coming out of the church
together, "Well," said Parr, "how did you like the sermon?" "Why,
Doctor," replied his lordship, "there were four things in it that I did
not like to hear." "State them." "Why, to speak frankly, then, they
were the quarters of the church-clock, which struck four times before
you had finished." But his Spital sermon, in 1799, occupied nearly
three hours in its delivery.
Oddities of John Horne Tooke.
The life of this strange person may almost be said to have been
commenced with a joke. He was the son of a _poulterer_, named
John Horne, in Newport Street, Westminster; or, as he told his
schoolfellows, his father was "a _turkey_ merchant." He was educated
for the Church, according to his father's wish, and took orders for the
bar.
What Tooke thought of the former profession may be seen in a letter
of his to Wilkes, whose acquaintance he made in Paris in 1765, and to
whom he thus wrote:--"You are now entering into correspondence with a
parson, and I am greatly apprehensive lest that title should disgust;
but give me leave to assure you, I am not ordained a hypocrite. It is
true I have suffered the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over
me, whose imposition, like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal
for the devil to enter. I hope I have escaped the contagion; and, if I
have not, if you should at any time discover the black spot under the
tongue, pray kindly assist me to conquer the prejudices of education
and profession."
Tooke was, upon one occasion, memorably outwitted by Wilkes, who was
then sheriff of London and Middlesex. Tooke had challenged Wilkes,
who sent him the following cutting reply:--"Sir, I do not think it my
business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of his
life; but as I am at present High Sheriff of the City of London, it may
happen that I shall shortly have an opportunity of attending you in my
official capacity, in which case I will answer for it that _you shall
have no ground_ to complain of my endeavours to serve you." We agree
with Mr. Colton, in his _Lacon_, that the above retort is a masterpiece
of its kind.
The violence of Tooke's political predilections, perhaps, was
heightened by an accidental circumstance in his early life. His father,
the poulterer, had for his neighbour, Frederick, Prince of Wales, at
Leicester House, who most unceremoniously had cut through the wall of
Horne's garden a doorway, as an outlet towards Newport Market, for
the convenience of the Prince's domestics. But the poulterer and his
son resisted the encroachment, and triumphed over the heir-apparent
to the English crown, and had the obnoxious doorway removed, and the
wall reinstated. This victory, it is reasonable to suppose, fanned the
political aspirations of Horne Tooke.