Born at Harrow, 26 Jan. 1747. At Harrow School, Easter 1752 to 1761. Assisted his father in business of apothecary and surgeon, 1761–64. Began to study Divinity, 1764. To Emmanuel Coll., Camb., as Sizar, Oct. 1765; left Cambridge, 1766. Assistant-master at Harrow, Feb. 1767 to 1771. Ordained Deacon, Dec. 1769; Priest, 1778. M.A., Camb., 14 Dec. 1771. Failed in candidature for Head-mastership of Harrow, and started a school at Stanmore, Oct. 1771. Married (i) Jane Morsingale, Nov. 1771. Head-master of Colchester Grammar School, 1777–79; of Norwich Grammar School, 1779–85. Rector of Asterby, Lincs., 1780–83. LL.D., Camb., 1781. Perpetual Curate of Hatton, Warwickshire, 1783–89. Prebendary of Wenlock Barnes, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, March 1783; removed to Hatton, 1785; took pupils there; resided there till his death. Rector of Wadenhoe, Northamptonshire, 1789. Rector of Graffham Hunts, 1802. Wife died, 9 April 1810. Married (ii) Mary Eyre, 17 Dec. 1816. Died, at Hatton, 6 March 1825. Buried in Hatton Church. Works: “Two Sermons preached at Norwich,” 1780; “Discourse on the late Fast” (under pseud.: “Phileleutherus Norfoliciensis”), 1781; “Discourse on Education,” 1786; “Præfatio ad Bellendenum de Statu,” 1787; “Letter from Irenopolis to the Inhabitants of Eleutheropolis” (anon.), 1792 (2nd edn. same year); “Sequel to the Printed Paper late circulated in Warwickshire,” 1792; “Remarks on the Statement of Dr. C. Combe” (anon.), 1795; “Spital Sermon,” 1801; “A Sermon preached on the late Fast Day,” 1804; “Fast Day Sermon,” 1808; “Characters of the late Charles James Fox” (under pseud. “Philopatris Varvicensis,” 2 vols.), 1809. Posthumous: “Letter to … Dr. Milner,” ed. by J. Lynes, 1825; “Sermons preached on Several Occasions” (4 vols.), 1831. He edited: G. Bellendenus’s “De Statu,” 1787; “Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian,” 1789; “Four Sermons,” 1822; “Metaphysical Tracts,” 1837. Collected Works: in 8 vols., 1828. Life: “Memoirs,” by W. Field, 1828.

Personal

  Having spent an evening at Mr. Langton’s with the Reverend Dr. Parr, he was much pleased with the conversation of that learned gentleman; and after he was gone, said to Mr. Langton, “Sir, I am obliged to you for having asked me this evening. Parr is a fair man. 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.”

  Is there no one among you who can throw a Congreve rocket among the gerunds and supines of that model of pedants, Dr. Philopatris Parr? I understand your foreign lingos too little to attempt it, but pretty things might be said upon the memorable tureen which he begged of Lord Somebody, whom he afterwards wished to prove to be mad.

  What did Parr mean by “haughtiness and coldness?” I listened to him with admiring ignorance, and respectful silence. What more could a talker for fame have?—they don’t like to be answered. It was at Payne Knight’s I met him, where he gave me more Greek than I could carry away. But I certainly meant to (and did) treat him with the most respectful deference.

  In domestic life, Parr was too great a scholar, and too studious a man, to be the exact favorite of the drawing-room. All was to yield to his wishes, all was to be regulated by his habits. The ladies were obliged to bear his tobacco, or to give up his company; and at Hatton now and then, he was the tyrant of the fire-side. But he was so good humoured in his disposition, and was so easily led by kindness, that the cloud never lasted long, and the thunder was soon succeeded by sunshine and by calm. At table he has been called an Epicurean glutton. In society he has often been denominated a bear, and his moroseness, and impracticability, and severity, were the terror of many weak and effeminate spirits. It is not true that he was a glutton. He only loved a good dinner, as all healthy men with good appetites, and many studious men without them, love it…. His pipe was so necessary to his comfort, that he always left the table for it, and the house of the person he visited, if it was not prepared…. To the lady of the house, though a ceremonious Dr. Parr was sometimes a troublesome guest. When he was thwarted or attacked, or in company of those he disliked or suspected, he certainly had the power of being most exquisitely disagreeable.

  It may be said with truth that never was the liturgy of the church read with more exact propriety, or with more impressive energy, than by the officiating minister of Hatton. The most careless hearer could scarcely fail to be roused to attention, and struck with awe, when, with his majestic air, his devout looks, his deep and solemn tones, he repeated such admirable prayers as the confession, the general supplication, and the general thanksgiving; or when he recited that beautiful and animated, though not wholly unexceptionable form, the litany; or when, from the communion table, he delivered the decalogue, with a voice which seemed to speak his sense of that high and holy authority, under which it was originally promulgated.

  In smoke the Doctor’s day commenced; in smoke it closed; smoke literal and abominable to his ox and his ass, to his man-servant and his maid-servant, and to the stranger that was within his gates. But to me there seemed always to settle a smoke symbolical upon the whole sum of the Doctor’s life—all that he did, and all that he tried to do…. His person was poor, and his features were coarse and ignoble, with an air, at the same time, of drollery, that did not sit well upon age or the gravity of his profession. Upon one feature, indeed, Dr. Parr valued himself exceedingly; this was his eye. He fancied that it was peculiarly searching and significant: he conceited, even, that it frightened people, and had a particular form of words for expressing the severe use of this basilisk function: “I inflicted my eye upon him,” was his phrase in such cases. But the thing was all a mistake; his eye could be borne very well; there was no mischief in it.

  “Dr. Parr,” said a young student once to the old linguist,—“let’s you and I write a book.”—“Very well,” replied the doctor, “put in all that I know, and all that you don’t know, and we’d make a big one.”

  Parr was frequently very tiresome in conversation, talking like a schoolmaster. He had a horror of the east wind; and Tom Sheridan once kept him prisoner in the house for a fortnight by fixing the weathercock in that direction.

  With all his bitterness at his neglect, his terrible powers of satire, and his torrents of rage and verbosity, no man seems to have had more friends or to have been more widely liked personally than Parr. Even Johnson enjoyed his society, and spoke in high terms of his personal qualities apart from his learning. His correspondence, which makes two volumes of his works, shows that he was on familiar terms with a greater number of distinguished people than probably any other author in the history of English literature. Thirty or forty noblemen, many bishops, and nearly every one who held any position in the world of scholarship and learning figure in it. The charm and power of his conversation were no doubt the chief cause of this long list of friendships. De Quincey and the next generation, who inhabited a different world from Parr’s, would not, it has been said, accept the verdict of the old scholar’s contemporaries on his extraordinary ability as a talker. They seem to have been too disappointed with his old-fashioned works to allow him any sort of excellence. Men like Johnson and Burke must, however, be allowed to be judges who could not have listened with admiration to the drivel which De Quincey has reported Parr’s conversation to have been made up of on the one occasion when he seems to have heard it.

General

  There is another just or unjust volume that makes its appearance not composed of milk and honey: the object, Bishop Hurd; the author Dr. Parr. The vehicle, like his “Bellendenus,” an old carriage on new wheels. The title “Tracts by a Warburtonian.” It is desperately well written; but probably not of the amusing kind to your Ladyship.

  What has Dr. Parr written? A Sermon or two, rather long; a Latin Preface to Bellendenus (rather long too), consisting of a cento of Latin and Greek expressions applied to political subjects: another preface to some English tracts, and two or three English pamphlets about his own private quarrels. And this is the man to be compared with Dr. Samuel Johnson!!!

  Whoever has had the good fortune to see Dr. Parr’s wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the anterior parts, it scorns even Episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless convexity of frizz, the μεγα θανμα of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man, since the beginning of the world.

  Of flexibility Parr’s style has none; it is totally deficient in the grand secret and capital charm of first-rate composition, light and shade, intention and remission. Instead of treating common things in a common way, and reserving great efforts for great occasions, Parr’s mind seems always on the stretch. Nihil solet leniter, nihil definate, nihil explicate dicere.

  The dedication of Parr [“Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian”] stands unparalleled for comparative criticism. It is the eruption of a volcano; it sparkles, it blazes, and scatters light and destruction. How deeply ought we to regret that this Nazarite suffered his strength to be shorn by the Delilahs of spurious fame. Never did this man, with his gifted strength, grasp the pillars of a temple, to shake its atoms over Philistines; but pleased the child-like simplicity of his mind by pulling down houses over the heads of their unlucky inhabitants. He consumed, in local and personal literary quarrels, a genius which might have made the next age his own.

  An excellent clergyman in his parish, an excellent schoolmaster in his school, but in his character of a wit and an author one of the most genuine featherbeds of humbug that ever filled up a corner in the world.

  Of his sermons, those on education,… though the first he published, are among the most valuable. They will be read with interest by every parent and instructer. They present the results of long experience, the matured reflections of a wise preceptor, a lover of virtue, and a friend of youth, who, though from temperament and principle a disciplinarian of the straitest sect, believing that much goodness and learning came with the rod, was eminently skilful and kind in discerning and cherishing, in guarding and correcting the various tendencies of youth.

  One word on the style of Dr. Parr. That it is stately, measured, copious, abundant in fine diction, none can deny, but we confess that we should like it better, were it less perfect, less laboured, less rhythmical. In its structure it is weakened by antithesis; in its terms it is not the mother-tongue in which we were born.

  Dr. Parr as an author! And what, now, might happen to be the Doctor’s works? For I protest upon my honour, that I never heard their names. Was ever case like this? Here is a learned doctor, whose learned friend has brought him forward as a first-rate author of his times, and yet nothing is extant of his writing, beyond an occasional preface, or a pamphlet on private squabbles…. Certainly the world had never before seen so great a pomp of pretension rising from so slight a ground. The delusion was absolutely unrivalled, and prevailed throughout Dr. Parr’s long life. He and his friends seemed constantly to appeal to some acknowledged literary reputation, established upon foundations that could not be shaken, and notorious to all the world. Such a mistake, and in that extent, was never heard of before. Dr. Parr talked, and his friends listened, not only as giving and receiving oracles of moral wisdom, but of wisdom owned to be such by all the world; whereas, this auctoritas (to borrow a Roman word for its Roman sense), whether secretly due to the Doctor or not, evidently could not exist as a fact, unless according to the weight and popularity of published works, by which the world had been taught to know him and to rank him. Starting originally from the erroneous assumption, insinuated by his preposterous self-conceit, that he was Johnson redivivus, he adopted Johnson’s colloquial pretentions—and that was vainglorious folly; but he also conceived that these pretensions were familiarly recognised—and that was frenzy.

  In some points of character there is a closer analogy between Parr and Bentley, yet at the same time almost as much dissimilarity. Parr’s strength lay not so much in critical skill and penetration, as in the metaphysics of language and morals. He would have been more likely to rival the “Boyle Lectures,” or the “Letters of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” than the “Epistle to Mill,” or the “Dissertation on Phalaris.” But both were equally arrogant and overbearing in literature and conversation; in private, good-natured, and often kind-hearted men. Both were fully possessed with the conviction that a great scholar is the greatest of men. But the different effect of their self-confidence and haughtiness on their writings is not without interest. The pride of Bentley betrayed him to negligence and haste; whatever came from him, whatever he condescended to communicate to the world, must be worthy of his high name; he could strike out, while the anxious printer waited for the proofs, notes which would set the world right on the most abstruse points. With Parr, on the other hand, nothing but what was most elaborate could be worthy of coming from so consummate a scholar; his style is swollen, as it were, with the conscious dignity of its master. Parr must not demean himself to the familiar tone of ordinary men. Even in his bitterness Parr abstains from the vulgar tongue, not from mildness of temper or courtesy of manners, but his sarcasms, not to do discredit to his page, must be as highly wrought as the rest of his style…. It was probably the same proud jealousy of his reputation which prevented Parr from contributing more largely to our instruction and knowledge; for few, with such powers of understanding, notwithstanding the number and bulk of the volumes to which his works have grown, have added less to the standard stock of our literature.

  The late Dr. Parr, whose erudition was as unexclusive as profound.

  A vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation; but still precious, massive, and splendid.

  He certainly was a man of learning and talent, but was as far from being a man of genius as any man of learning and talent ever was. He has not left on paper a single thought that can be called original. He has produced abundance of declamation, but declamation composed of material from other writers. An author he can scarcely be called. If we compare a page of Addison, or Locke, or Bacon, with a page of Parr, we see the difference between the productions of a writer who thinks for himself, and those of a writer who draws his supplies from the fountains of others. No man can say that he has gathered nutriment for his mind, or added to his intellectual stores, from the writings of Parr. Nor was his language more original than his matter; if he praised Burke, or abused Pitt, he delivered his praises or abuse in the phrase of Cicero or Johnson. His Preface to Bellendenus is but a cento, and his English efforts are of a similar nature. His sentences are full of sound, and sometimes of fury, but the effect is altogether disproportionate to the rage and noise.

  Parr was a man of unquestionable ability, and the oblivion that has overtaken his name is due to his having left no great work on any great subject.

  Dr. Parr swelled with pride at the very thought of his own Life of Johnson, had he ever written it. “I once intended,” he said, “to write Johnson’s life; and I had read through three shelves of books to prepare myself for it. It would have been the third most learned work that has ever yet appeared. It would have come next to Bentley on the Epistles of Phalaris and Salmasius on the Hellenistic Language. Mine should have been not the droppings of Johnson’s lips, but the history of his mind.” It would have been so uniform in its stately ponderosity, that even the famous stamp would most certainly have been passed over in silence, which he gave that evening when he argued with Johnson about the liberty of the press. “Whilst Johnson was arguing, I observed that he stamped. Upon this I stamped. Dr. Johnson said, ‘Why did you stamp, Dr. Parr?’ I replied, ‘Because you stamped; and I was resolved not to give you the advantage even of a stamp in the argument.’” It would have added one, or perhaps two more, to that pile of eight thick volumes in which Parr’s learning has been buried past all hopes of a resurrection by the piety of his friend and executor.

  Parr’s mannerism and his verbosity make his English writings generally unreadable. He complains on his return to Combe that his duties as a teacher and parish priest, his correspondence, and frequent consultations upon the affairs of friends, left him no leisure. He meditated lives of his old colleague Sumner, of Dr. Johnson, of Fox and of Sir W. Jones; but never got beyond the stage of collecting material. His personal remarks are pointed, though necessarily laboured; but in his general discussions the pomposity remains without the point. He was admitted a fine Latin scholar, as scholarship was understood by the schoolmaster of his day, and perhaps did not assume too much in placing himself between Porson and Charles Burney.

  It may be said, without fear of contradiction, that of all the men who have enjoyed the highest fame in the world of English scholarship and literature not one is more faded in reputation to-day than Dr. Parr. To the lover of untrodden literary paths, his works, in eight volumes quarto, containing six thousand pages, offer an ideal retreat. There is no better way into the world of the last century, with all its forgotten thoughts and figures. In his own day, Parr’s name was as much on men’s lips as his friend Johnson’s. Now, in spite of his eight massive tomes, the doctor is only known to readers through the mention of him in Boswell, and has become, in common estimation, one of the least of that numerous class of writers who, in Southey’s words draw their fame from Johnson as the mistletoe draws its life from the oak. The reason why Parr’s works have thus gone the way to dusty death is not far to seek. Parr was great in two fields of knowledge, which are necessarily fenced off from nine out of ten readers—classical scholarship and metaphysics—and they are fields, besides, in which, since his day, explorations have been pushed so much further than he could carry them that his work has now little attraction even for the erudite.