but wrongly, supposed that he would now take orders. On 14 July 1730 he died at Oxford, either of the dropsy or, as his friends declared, of overwork. He married the daughter of Mr. Clements, a bookseller at Oxford, and his younger son Richard founded the publishing house in Oxford, which still remains in one branch of his family [see Parker, John Henry].
Parker's ablest work is the ‘Censura Temporum, or the Good and Ill Tendencies of Books,’ a monthly periodical issued in the interest of the high-church school of Queen Anne's reign, begun January 1708 and continued to March 1710, in which Locke and Whiston are repeatedly attacked with much warmth. On his ‘Bibliotheca Biblica, or Patristic Commentary on the Scriptures’ (1720–35), which was left incomplete and only covered the Pentateuch, his friends thought his reputation chiefly rested; but it was a work that ‘showed his good intentions rather than his judgment.’ He was partially responsible for the first eight volumes of the ‘History of the Works of the Learned; being an Account of Works printed in Europe 1699–1707,’ which was continued in yearly volumes to 1711. In ‘A Letter to Mr. Bold on the Resurrection of the Body,’ 1707, he argues for the literal resurrection of the material body and boldly attacks Locke's attempted explanation of the ‘resurrection of the man;’ this tract contains a plain statement of his belief, which resembled that of the tractarians.
Parker also attempted to popularise, by translations and abridgments, the early church historians. In this endeavour he published an abridged translation of Eusebius, 1703, dedicated to Robert Nelson [q. v.]; ‘An Abridged Translation of the Church Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret,’ 1707–12; and ‘An Abridgment of Evagrius,’ 1729. His other works included ‘A Translation of “Cicero de Finibus,” with the Annals of Thucydides and Xenophon,’ 1702. He left an ‘Essay on the Duty of Physicians,’ 1715; ‘Homer in a Nutshell, or his War between the Frogs and Mice, paraphrastically translated, in three cantos,’ 1700; and an edition of his father's historical work, with the title ‘Reverendi admodum in Christo patris Samuelis Parkeri, episcopi, de rebus sui temporis commentariorum Libri IV,’ afterwards translated. A fierce attack was made upon Parker from the dissenting side in the pamphlet ‘A Rod for Trepidantium Malleus, or a Letter to Sam Reconcileable,’ 1700.
[Parker's Bibliotheca Biblica, 1735, with notice of his life; Lathbury's History of the Nonjurors, especially pp. 374–5; Noble's Continuation of Granger, iii. 321; Darling's Cyclopædia, ad lit; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict. xxiv. 120; Rawlinson, i. 400, ii. 86; Hearne's Collections (Oxf. Hist. Soc. edit.), i. 37, 132, 261, ii. 10, 73, 108, 116, 338, iii. 77, 139, 159, 198, 244, 275; Hazlitt's Collections, ii. 443; Crosby's English Baptists.]
PARKER, SAMUEL WILLIAM LANGSTON (1803–1871), surgeon, son of William Parker, a medical practitioner in the Aston Road, was born in Birmingham in 1803. He received his early education in the school of the Rev. Daniel Walton in Handsworth. He afterwards attended the medical and surgical practice of the Birmingham General Hospital, his more strictly scientific training being obtained in the school of medicine at the corner of Brittle Street, Snow Hill. He then came to London and entered St. Bartholomew's Hospital for the purpose of attending the lectures of John Abernethy (1764–1831) [q. v.] He afterwards went to Paris to complete his studies. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1828, and he became a fellow of that body honoris causâ in 1843, the year in which the fellowship was established. He assisted his father for a short time after he obtained his qualification to practise, but in 1830 he married and began to practise on his own account in St. Paul's Square, Birmingham.
Parker took a keen interest in the development of Queen's College, Birmingham, becoming, at an early period of its history, professor of comparative anatomy, and of descriptive anatomy and physiology—posts which he held for a quarter of a century. His services to the Associated Hospital date from the foundation of that important charity in 1840, and he discharged the duties of honorary surgeon for five-and-twenty years. On his retirement he became consulting surgeon, an appointment which he held till his death. He was also consulting surgeon to the Leamington Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. He was an active promoter for many years of the Birmingham Philosophical Institution in Cannon Street. In 1835–6 he delivered in this institution a remarkable course of lectures ‘On the Effects of certain Mental and Bodily States upon the Imagination.’
Parker began life as a general practitioner of medicine, subsequently he became a surgeon, and eventually devoted his best energies to the treatment of syphilis. In this department of practice he soon obtained a world-wide reputation; but, although he introduced new methods of treatment, he failed
