_Concluded from page 334_.
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. He printed a pamphlet about it,
which he never published; restrained perhaps by the remarks of Sir
W. Jones, who constantly noted the pages submitted to him, with "too
violent," "too strong;" and probably thought the whole affair a battle
of kites and crows, which Parr had swelled into importance; or, it might
be, he suppressed it, influenced by the prospect of succeeding to
Norwich school, for which he was now a candidate, and by the shrewd
observation of Dr. Foster, "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." If the latter consideration weighed
with him, it was the first and last time that any such consideration
did, Parr being apparently of the opinion of John Wesley, that there
could be no fitter subject for a Christian man's prayers, than that he
might be delivered from what the world calls "prudence." However it
happened, the pamphlet was withheld, and Parr was elected to the school
at Norwich.
At Norwich, Parr ventured on his first publications, and obtained his
first preferment. The publications consisted of a sermon on "The Truth
of Christianity," "A Discourse on Education," and "A Discourse on the
Late Fast;" the last of which opens with a mistake singular in Parr,
who confounds the sedition of Judas Gaulonitis, mentioned in Josephus,
(_Antiq_. xviii. 1. 1.) with that under Pilate, mentioned in St. Luke,
(xiii. 1, 2, 3.); whereas the former probably preceded the latter by
twenty years, or nearly. The preferment which he gained was the living
of Asterby, presented to him by Lady Jane Trafford, the mother of one of
his pupils; which, in 1783, he exchanged for the perpetual curacy of
Hatton, in Warwickshire, the same lady being still his patron neither
was of much value. Lord Dartmouth, whose sons had also been under his
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 him a prebend in St. Paul's, which, though a trifle at the time,
eventually became, on 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 the following incident given by Mr. Field. The
doctor was one day in this gentleman's library, when his eye was caught
by the title of "Stephens' Greek Thesaurus." Suddenly turning about and
striking vehemently the arm of Mr. Field, whom he addressed in a manner
very usual with him; he said, "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."
But we must on with the Doctor in his career. In 1785, for some reason
unknown to his biographer, Parr resigned the school at Norwich, and in
the year following went to reside at Hatton. "I have an excellent house,
(he writes to a friend,) good neighbours, and a Poor, ignorant,
dissolute, insolent, and ungrateful, beyond all example. _I like
Warwickshire very much_. I have made great regulations, viz. bells chime
three times as long; Athanasian creed; communion service at the altar;
swearing act; children catechized first Sunday in the month; private
baptisms discouraged; public performed after second lesson; recovered a
100_l_. a year left the poor, with interest amounting to 115_l_., all of
which I am to put out, and settle a trust in the spring; examining all
the charities."
Here Warwickshire pleases Parr; but Parr's taste in this, and in many
other matters, (as we shall have occasion to show by and by,) was
subject to change. He soon, therefore, becomes convinced of the superior
intellect of the men of Norfolk. He finds Warwickshire, the Boeotia of
England, two centuries behind in civilization. He is anxious, however,
to be in the commission of the peace for this ill-fated county, and
applies to Lord Hertford, then Lord Lieutenant; but the application
fails; and again, on a subsequent occasion, to Lord Warwick, and again
he is disappointed. What motives operated upon their lordships' minds
to his exclusion, they did not think it necessary to avow.
Providence has so obviously drawn a circle about every man, within
which, for the most part, he is compelled to walk, by furnishing him
with natural affections, evidently intended to fasten upon individuals;
by urging demands upon him which the very preservation of himself and
those about him compels him to listen to; by withholding from him any
considerable knowledge of what is distant, and hereby proclaiming that
his more proper sphere lies in what is near;--by compassing, him about
with physical obstacles, with mountains, with rivers, with seas
"dissociable," with tongues which he cannot utter, or cannot understand;
that, like the wife of Hector, it proclaims in accents scarcely to be
resisted, that there is a tower assigned to everyman, where it is his
first duty to plant himself for the sake of his own, and in the defence
of which he will find perhaps enough to do, without extending his care
to the whole circuit of the city walls.
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 can even indulge his
love of pomp--_ardetque cupidine currûs_, he encumbers himself with a
coach and four. In 1816, he married a second wife, Miss Eyre, the sister
of his friend the Rev. James Eyre; he became reconciled to his two
grand-daughters, now grown up to woman's estate; he received them into
his family, and kept them as his own, till one of them became the wife
of the Rev. John Lynes.
In the latter years of his life, Parr had been subject to erysipelas;
once he had suffered by a carbuncle, and once by a mortification in the
hand. Owing to this tendency to diseased action in the skin, he was
easily affected by cold, and on Sunday, the 16th of January, 1825,
having, in addition to the usual duties of the day, buried a corpse,
he was, on the following night, seized with a long-continued rigor,
attended by fever and delirium, and never effectually rallied again.
There is a note, however, dated November 2, 1824, addressed by him to
Archdeacon Butler, which proves that he felt his end approaching, even
before this crisis.
"Dear and Learned Namesake,--This letter is important, and strictly
confidential. I have given J. Lynes minute and plenary directions for my
funeral. I desire you, if you can, to preach a short, unadorned funeral
sermon. Rann Kennedy is to read the lesson and grave service, though I
could wish you to read the grave service also. Say little of me, but you
are sure to say it _well_."
Dr. Butler complied with his request, and amply made good the opinion
here expressed. He spoke of him like a warm and stedfast friend, but not
like that worst of enemies, an indiscreet one; he did not challenge a
scrutiny by the extravagance of his praise, nor break, by his precious
balms, the head he was most anxious to honour. Dr. Parr's death was
tedious, and his faculties, except at intervals, disturbed. He took
an opportunity, however, afforded him by one of these intervals, of
summoning about his bed his wife, grand-children, and servants;
confessed to them his weaknesses and errors, asked their forgiveness for
any pain he might have caused them by petulance and haste, and professed
"his trust in God, through Christ, for the pardon of his sins." One
expression, which Dr. Johnstone reports him to have used on this
occasion, is extraordinary--that "from the beginning of his life he was
not conscious of having fallen into a crime." Far be it from us to
scrutinize the words of a delirious death-bed--These must have been
uttered (if, indeed, they are accurately given) either in some peculiar
and very limited sense, or else at a moment when a man is no longer
accountable to God for what he utters. The latter was, probably, the
case: for in the same breath in which he declares "his life, even his
early life, to have been pure," he sues for pardon at the hands of his
Maker, and acknowledges a Redeemer, as the instrument through which he
is to obtain it.
That quickness of feeling and disposition to abandon himself to
its guidance, which made Parr an inconsistent man, made him also a
benevolent one. Benevolence he loved as a subject for his contemplation,
and the practical extension of it as a rule for his conduct. He could
scarcely bear to regard the Deity under any other aspect. He would have
children taught, in the first instance, to regard him under that aspect
alone; simply as a being who displayed infinite goodness in the
creation, in the government, and in the redemption of the world.
Language itself indicates, that the whole system of moral rectitude is
comprised in it--_[Greek: energetein], benefacere_, beneficencethe
generic term being, in common parlance, emphatically restricted to works
of charity. Nor was this mere theory in Parr. Most men who have been
economical from necessity in their youth, continue to be so, from habit,
in their age--but 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 evil 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 to the grace of
God." Parr quotes the saying with applause. Such, we doubt not, would
have been his own feelings on such an occasion.--_Quarterly Review_.
* * * * *