* * * * *
DR. SAM. PARR AND DR. JOHN TAYLOR, OF SHREWSBURY AND SHREWSBURY
SCHOOL.
Looking at the Index to the _Memoirs of Gilbert Wakefield_, edit. of
1804, I saw, under the letter T., the following entries:--
"Taylor, Rev. Dr. John, Tutor of Warrington Academy, i. 226.
---- his latinity, why faulty, ii. 449."
But I instantly suspected an error: for it was my belief that those
two notices were designed for two distinct scholars. Accordingly, I
revised both passages, and found that I was right in my conjecture.
The facts are these:--In the former of the references, "The Rev. John
Taylor, D.D.," is pointed out. The other individual, of the same
name, was John Taylor, LL.D., a native of Shrewsbury, and a pupil of
Shrewsbury School: HIS _latinity_ it is which Dr. Samuel Parr [_ut
supr._] characterises as FAULTY: and for the defects of which he
endeavours, successfully or otherwise, to account. So that whosoever
framed the _Index_ has here committed an oversight.
In the quotation which I proceed to make, Parr is assigning causes of
what, as I think, he truly deemed blemishes in G. Wakefield's Latin
style; and this is the language of the not unfriendly censor:--
"--None, I fear, of his [W.'s] Latin productions are wholly
free from faults, which he would have been taught to avoid
in our best public seminaries, and of which I have seen many
glaring instances in the works of Archbishop Potter, Dr. John
Taylor, Mr. Toup, and several eminent scholars now living, who
were brought up in private schools."
But could Parr mean to rank Shrewsbury School among the "private
schools?" I am not old enough to recollect what it was in the times
of Taylor, J., the civilian, and the editor of Demosthenes. Its
celebrity, however, in our own day, and through a long term of
preceding years, is confessed. Dr. Parr's judgement in this case might
be somewhat influenced by his prepossessions as an _Harrovian_.