mouth;" but most of us have a fortune to make a station to create. And the most general expression, by far the most absolute and final test, of the degrees in which men differ as to energy and ability, is to be found in the large varieties of success which they exhibit in executing this universal object. Taking

life as a whole, luck but little sway in controlling its arrangements. Good sense and perseverance, prudence and energy, these are the fatal deities that domineer over the stars and their aspects. And when a man's coffin knocks at the gates of the tomb, it is a question not unimportant, among other and greater questions, What was he on beginning life, what is he now? Though in this, as in other things, it is possible to proceed in a spirit of excess, still, within proper restrictions, it is one even of a man's moral obligations, to contend strenuously for his own advancement in life; and, as it furnishes, at the same time, a criterion as little ambiguous as any for his intellectual merits, few single questions can be proposed so interesting to a man's reputation, as that which demands the amount of his success in playing for the great stakes of his profession or his trade. What, then, was the success of Dr Parr?

The prizes which the Doctor set before his eyes from his earliest days, were not very lofty, but they were laudable; and he avowed them with a naïveté that was amusing, and a frankness that availed at least to acquit him of hypocrisy. They were two a mitre and a coach-and-four. "I am not accustomed," says he, (writing to an Irish bishop,) "to dissemble the wishes I once had" [this was in 1807, and he then had them more than ever] " of arriving at the profits and splendour of the prelacy, or the claims to them which I believe myself to possess." The bishopric he did not get; there he failed. For the coach-and-four, he was more fortunate. At the very latest period of his life, when the shades of death were fast gathering about him, he found himself able to indulge in this luxury-and, as his time was obviously short, he wisely resolved to make the most of it; and upon any or no excuse, the Doctor was to be seen flying over the land at full gal

lop, and scouring town and country with four clerical-looking long-tailed horses. We believe he even meditated a medal, commemorating his first ovation by a faithful portrait of the coach and his own episcopal wig in their meridian pomp; he was to have been represented in the act

of looking out of the window, and " inflicting his eye" upon some hostile parson picking his way through the mud on foot. On the whole, we really rejoice that the Doctor got his coach and his four resounding coursers. The occasional crack of the whip must have sounded pleasantly in his ears at a period when he himself had ceased to operate with that weapon-when he was no more than an emeritus professor and μαςιδοφορος no longer. So far was well; but still, we ask, how came it that his coach panels wanted their appropriate heraldic decoration? How was it that he missed the mitre? Late in life, we find him characterising himself as an unpreferred, calumniated, half-starving country parson;" no part of which, indeed, was true; but yet, we demand,How was it that any colourable plea existed, at that time of his career, to give one moment's plausibility to such an exaggeration? Let us consider.

Dr Parr was the son of a country practitioner in the humbler departments of medicine. Parr, senior, practised as a surgeon, apothecary, and accoucheur. From him, therefore, his son could expect little assistance in his views of personal aggrandizement. But that was not necessary. An excellent Latin scholar, and a man who brought the rare sanction (sanctification-we were going to say) of clerical co-operation and countenance to so graceless and reprobate a party as the Whigs, who had scarcely a professional friend to say grace at their symposia, must, with any reasonable discretion in the conduct of his life, have been by much too valuable an article on the Whig establishment to run any risk of neglect. The single clerk, the one sole reverend man of letters, who was borne upon their books, must have had a priceless value in the eyes of that faction-when "taking stock," and estimating their alliances. To them he must have been what the Emperor of Morocco is to the collector of butterflies. To have lost this value, to have forfeited his hold upon their gratitude, and actually to have depreciated as he grew older, and better known to the world-implies too significantly some gross misconduct, or some rueful indiscretions. The truth is this; and for Parr's own honour, lest worse things should be thought of him than the case really warrants, his friends ought to make it known though a man of integrity, he could not be relied upon: in a muster of forces, he was one of the few that never could be absolutely reckoned and made sure of. Neither did his scruples obey any known law: he could swallow a camel, and strain at a gnat, and his caprice was of the most dangerous kind; not a woman's caprice, which is the mere mantling of levity, and readily enough obeys any fresh impulse, which it is easy to apply in an opposite direction. Dr Parr's caprices grew upon another stock; they were the fitful outbreaks of steady, mulish wrongheadedness. This was a constitutional taint, for which he was indebted to the accoucheur. Had the father's infirmity reached Dr Parr in his worldly career, merely in that blank neutral character, and affected his fortunes through that pure negative position of confessed incapacity to help him, which is the whole extent of disastrous influence that the biographical records ascribe to him -all would have been well. But the old mule over-ruled his son to the end of his long life, and controlled his reiterated opportunities of a certain and brilliant success, by the hereditary taint in the blood which he transmitted to him, in more perhaps than its original strength. The true name for this infirmity is, in the vulgar dialect, pig-headedness. Stupid imperturbable adherence, deaf and blind, to some perverse view that abruptly thwarted and counteracted his party, making his friends stare,

and his opponents laugh; in short, as we have said, pure pig-headedness, that was the key to Dr Parr's lingering preferment: and, we believe, upon a considerate view of his whole course, that he threw away ten times the amount of fortune, rank, splendour, and influence that he ever obtained; and with no countervailing indemnity from any moral reputation, such as would attend all consistent sacrifices to high-minded principle. No! on the contrary, with harsh opposition and irritating expressions of powerful disgust from friends in every quarter-all conscious that, in such instances of singularity, Dr Parr was merely obeying a demon, that now and then mastered him, of wayward-restive-moody self-conceit, and the blind spirit of contradiction. Most of us know a little of such men, and occasionally suffer by such men in the private affairs of life-men that are unusually jealous of slights, or insufficient acknowledgments of their personal claims and consequence: they require to be courted, petted, caressed: they refuse to be compromised or committed by the general acts of their party: no, they must be specially consulted; else they read a lesson to the whole party on their error, by some some shocking and revolting act of sudden desertion, which, from a person of different character, would have been considered perfidy. Dr Johnstone himself admits, that Parr was "jealous of attention, and indignant at neglect;" and on one occasion endeavours to explain a transaction of his life, by supposing that he may have been "hurried away by one of those torrents of passion, of which there are too many instances in his life." *-Of the father, Parr obstetrical, the same indulgent biographer remarks, (p. 10,) that he was " distinguished by the rectitude of his principles;" and, in another place, (p. 21,) he pronounces him, in summing up his character, to have been "an honest, well-meaning Tory; but, at the same time, confesses him to have been " the petty tyrant of his fireside," an "-an amiable little feature of character, that would go far to convince his own family, that "rectitude of principles" was not altogether incompatible with the practice of a ruffian.

Tory, however, Parr, senior, was not: he was a Jacobite, probably for the gratification of his spleen, and upon a conceit that this arrayed him in a distinct personal contest with the House of Hanover; whereas, once confounded amongst the prevailing party of friends to that interest, as a man-midwife, he could hardly hope to win the notice of his Britannic Majesty. His faction, however, being beaten to their heart's content, and his own fortune all going overboard in the storm, he suddenly made a bolt to the very opposite party: he ratted to the red-hot Whigs: and the circumstances of the case, which are as we have here stated them, hardly warrant us in putting a very favourable construction upon his motives. As was the father, so was the son: the same right of rebellion reserved to himself, whether otherwise professing himself Jacobite or Whig; the same peremptory duty of passive obedience for those of his household: the same hot intemperances in politics: the same disdain of accountableness to his party leaders; and, finally, the same "petty tyranny of the fireside." This last is a point on which all the biographers are agreed: they all record the uncontrollable ill temper and hasty violence of Dr Parr within his domestic circle. And one anecdote, illustrating his intemperance, we can add ourselves. On one occasion, rising up from table, in the middle of a fierce discussion with Mrs Parr, he took a carving knife, and applying it to a portrait of that lady hanging upon the wall, he drew it sharply across the jugular, and cut the throat of the picture from ear to ear, thus murdering her in effigy.

This view of Parr's intractable temper is necessary to understand his life, and in some measure to justify his friends. Though not (as he chose himself to express it, under a momentary sense of his slow progress in life, and the reluctant blossoming

of his preferment) "a half-starved parson, yet most unquestionably he reaped nothing at all from his long attachment to Whiggery, by comparison with what he would have reaped had that attachment been more cordial and unbroken, and had he, in other respects, borne himself with more discretion; and above all, had he abstained from offensive personalities. This was a rock on which Parr often wrecked himself. Things, and principles, and existing establishments, might all have been attacked with even more virulence than he exhibited, had his furious passions allowed him to keep his hands off the persons of individuals. Here lay one class of the causes which retarded his promotion. Another was his unbecoming warfare upon his own church. "I am sorry," said one of his earliest, latest, and wisest friends, (Bishop Bennet,)-"I am sorry you attack the church, for fear of consequences to your own advancement." This was said in 1792. Six years after, the writer, who had a confidential post in the Irish government, and saw the dreadful crisis to which things were hurrying, found it necessary to break off all intercourse with Dr Parr; so shocking to a man of principle was the careless levity with which this minister of peace, and his immediate associates, themselves in the bosom of security, amongst the woods of Warwickshire, scattered their firebrands of inflammatory language through the public, at a period of so much awful irritation. Afterwards, it is true, that when the Irish crisis had passed, and the rebellion was suppressed, his respect for Parr as a scholar led him to resume his correspondence. But he never altered his opinion of Parr as a pol politician: he viewed him as a man profoundly ignorant in politics; a mere Parson Adams in the knowledge of affairs, and the real springs of political action, or political influence; but unfortunately with all the bigotry and violent irritability that belong to the most excited and interested partisan; having the passions of the world united with the ignorance of the desert; coupling the simplicity of the dove with the fierce instincts of the serpent.

The events of his life moved under this unhappy influence. Leaving college prematurely upon the misfortune* of his father's death, he became an assistant at Harrow under the learned Dr Sumner. About five years after, on Dr Sumner's death, though manifestly too young for the situation, he entered into a warm contest for the vacant place of headmaster. Notwithstanding the support of Lord Dartmouth and others, he lost it; and unfortunately for his peace of mind, though, as usual, he imagined all sorts of intrigues against himself, yet the pretensions of his competitor, Benjamin Heath, were such as to disabuse all the world of any delusive conceit, that justice had not been done. Parr, it must be remembered, then only twenty-five years old, had, in no single instance, distinguished himself; nor had he even fifty years after-no, nor at the day of his death-given any evidences to the world that he was comparable to Heath as a Grecian. The probable ground of Heath's success was a character better fitted to preside over a great school, (for even the too friendly biographers of Parr admit that he did not command the respect of the boys,) and his better established learning. Naturally enough, Parr was unwilling to admit these causes, so advantageous to his rival, as the true ones. What, then, is his account of the matter? He says, that he lost the election by a vote which he had given to John Wilkes, in his contest for Middlesex. To John Wilkes -mark that, reader! Thus early had this "gowned student" engaged his passions and his services in the interest of brawling, intriguing faction.

This plan failing, he set up a rival establishment in the neighbourhood of Harrow, at Stanmore; and never certainly did so young a man, with so few of the ordinary guarantees to offer-that is to say, either property, experience, or connexions-meet

with such generous assistance. One friend lent him two thousand pounds at two per cent, though his security must obviously have been merely personal. Another lent him two hundred pounds without any interest at all. And many persons of station and influence, amongst whom was Lord Dartmouth, gave him a sort of countenance equally useful to his interests, by placing their sons under his care. All came to nothing however; the establishment was knocked up, and clearly from gross defects of management. And, had his principal creditor pressed for repayment, or had he shewn less than the most generous forbearance, which he continued through a space of 21 years, (in fact, until the repayment was accomplished without distress,) Parr must have been ruined; for in those days there was no merciful indulgence of the laws to hopeless insolvents; unless by the favour of their creditors, they were doomed to rot in prison. Now, in this one story we have two facts illustrated, bearing upon our present enquiry-first, the extraordinary good luck of Parr; secondly, his extraordinary skill in neutralizing or abusing it.

What young man, that happens to be penniless at the age of twentyfive, untried in the management of money, untried even as the presiding master in a school, would be likely to find a friend willing to intrust him, on his personal responsibility, (and with no prospect for the recovery of his money, except through the tardy and uncertain accumulation of profits upon an opposition school,) with so large a sum as two thousand pounds? Who, in an ordinary way, could count upon the support of a nobleman enjoying the ear and confidence of royalty? Lastly, who would so speedily defeat and baffle, by his own unassisted negligence and flagrant indiscretions, so much volunteer bounty? At this time of his life, it strikes us, in fact, that Dr Parr was mad. The students at Stanmore were indulged in all sorts of irregularities. That, perhaps, might arise from the unfortunate situation of the new establishment-too near to its rival; and in part, also, from the delicate position of Parr, who, in most instances, had come under an unfortunate personal obligation to the young gentlemen who followed him from Harrow. But in his habits of dress and deportment, which drew scandal upon himself, and jealousy upon his establishment, Parr owed his ill success to nobody but himself. Mr Roderick, his assistant, and a most friendly reporter, says, that at this time he "brought upon himself the ridicule of the neighbourhood and passengers by many foolish acts; such as riding in high prelatical pomp through the streets on a black saddle, bearing in his hand a long cane or wand, such as women used to have, with an ivory head like a crosier, which was probably the reason why he liked it:" We see by this he was already thinking of the bishopric. "At other times he was seen stalking through the town in a dirty striped morning-gown: Nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi." When we add, that Dr Parr soon disgusted and alienated his weightiest friend amongst the residents at Stanmore, Mr Smith, the accomplished rector of the place, we cannot won

der that little more than five years saw that scheme at an end. *

The school at Stanmore he could not be said to leave; it left him: such was his management, that no fresh pupils succeeded to those whom the progress of years carried off to the universities. When this wavering rushlight had at length finally expired, it became necessary to think of other plans, and in the spring of 1777 he accepted the mastership of Colchester school. Even there, brief as his connexion was with that establishment, he found time to fasten a quarrel upon the trustees of the school in reference to a lease; and upon this quarrel he printed (though he did not publish) a pamphlet. Sir William Jones, his old schoolfellow, to whom, as a lawyer, this pamphlet was submitted, found continual occasion to mark upon the margin such criticisms as these, "too violent-too strong." The contest was apparently de lanâ caprina: so at least Sir William thought. +

But, luckily, he was soon called away from these miserable feuds to a more creditable sort of activity. In the summer of 1778, the mastership of the public grammar-school at Norwich became vacant: in the autumn, Parr was elected: and in the beginning of 1779, he commenced his residence in that city. Thus we see that he was unusually befriended in all his undertakings. As a private speculator at Stanmore, as a candi