The rights of MAN, being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French
Revolution.[386] By Thomas Paine.[387] In two parts. 1791-1792. 8vo.
(Various editions.)[388]
A vindication of the rights of WOMAN, with strictures on political and
moral subjects. By Mary Wollstonecraft.[389] 1792. 8vo.
A sketch of the rights of BOYS and GIRLS. By Launcelot Light, of
Westminster School; and Laetitia Lookabout, of Queen's Square,
Bloomsbury. [By the Rev. Samuel Parr,[390] LL.D.] 1792. 8vo. (pp.64).
When did we three meet before? The first work has sunk into oblivion: had
it merited its title, it might have {174} lived. It is what the French call
a _piece de circonstance_; it belongs in time to the French Revolution, and
in matter to Burke's opinion of that movement. Those who only know its name
think it was really an attempt to write a philosophical treatise on what we
now call socialism. Silly government prosecutions gave it what it never
could have got for itself.
Mary Wollstonecraft seldom has her name spelled right. I suppose the O! O!
character she got made her W_oo_lstonecraft. Watt gives double insinuation,
for his cross-reference sends us to G_oo_dwin.[391] No doubt the title of
the book was an act of discipleship to Paine's _Rights of Man_; but this
title is very badly chosen. The book was marred by it, especially when the
authoress and her husband assumed the right of dispensing with legal
sanction until the approach of offspring brought them to a sense of their
child's interest.[392] Not a hint of such a claim is found in the book,
which is mostly about female education. The right claimed for woman is to
have the education of a rational human being, and not to be considered as
nothing but woman throughout youthful training. The maxims of Mary
Wollstonecraft are now, though not derived from her, largely followed in
the education of girls, especially in home education: just as many of the
political principles of Tom Paine, again not derived from him, are the
guides of our actual legislation. I remember, forty years ago, an old lady
used to declare that she disliked girls from the age of sixteen to
five-and-twenty. "They are full," said she, "of _femalities_." She spoke of
their behavior to women as well as to men. She {175} would have been
shocked to know that she was a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft, and had
packed half her book into one sentence.
The third work is a satirical attack on Mary Wollstonecraft and Tom Paine.
The details of the attack would convince any one that neither has anything
which would now excite reprobation. It is utterly unworthy of Dr. Parr, and
has quite disappeared from lists of his works, if it were ever there. That
it was written by him I take to be evident, as follows. Nichols,[393] who
could not fail to know, says (_Anecd._, vol. ix, p. 120): "This is a
playful essay by a first-rate scholar, who is elsewhere noticed in this
volume, but whose name I shall not bring forward on so trifling an
occasion." Who the scholar was is made obvious by Master Launcelot being
made to talk of Bellendenus.[394] Further, the same boy is made to say,
"Let Dr. Parr lay his hand upon his heart, if his conscience will let him,
and ask himself how many thousands of wagon-loads of this article [birch]
he has cruelly misapplied." How could this apply to Parr, with his handful
of private pupils,[395] and no reputation for severity? Any one except
himself would have called on the head-master of Westminster or Eton. I
doubt whether the name of Parr could be connected with the rod by anything
in print, except the above and an anecdote of his pupil, Tom Sheridan.[396]
The Doctor had dressed for a dinner visit, and {176} was ready a quarter of
an hour too soon to set off. "Tom," said he, "I think I had better whip you
now; you are sure to do something while I am out."--"I wish you would,
sir!" said the boy; "it would be a letter of licence for the whole
evening." The Doctor saw the force of the retort: my two tutelaries will
see it by this time. They paid in advance; and I have given liberal
interpretation to the order.
The following story of Dr. Parr was told me and others, about 1829, by the
late Leonard Horner,[397] who knew him intimately. Parr was staying in a
house full of company, I think in the north of England. Some gentlemen from
America were among the guests, and after dinner they disputed some of
Parr's assertions or arguments. So the Doctor broke out with "Do you know
what country you come from? You come from the place to which we used to
send our thieves!" This made the host angry, and he gave Parr such a severe
rebuke as sent him from the room in ill-humor. The rest walked on the lawn,
amusing the Americans with sketches of the Doctor. There was a dark cloud
overhead, and from that cloud presently came a voice which called _Tham_
(Parr-lisp for _Sam_). The company were astonished for a moment, but
thought the Doctor was calling his servant in the house, and that the
apparent direction was an illusion arising out of inattention. But
presently the sound was repeated, certainly from the cloud,
"And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before."
There was now a little alarm: where could the Doctor have got to? They ran
to his bedroom, and there they discovered a sufficient rather than
satisfactory explanation. The Doctor had taken his pipe into his bedroom,
and had seated himself, in sulky mood, upon the higher bar of a large and
deep old-fashioned grate with a high mantelshelf. Here he had {177} tumbled
backwards, and doubled himself up between the bars and the back of the
grate. He was fixed tight, and when he called for help, he could only throw
his voice up the chimney. The echo from the cloud was the warning which
brought his friends to the rescue.