[q. v.] He was brought up to his father's craft, but from about 1763 to his death he kept a drawing academy at 10 Strand (on the site now occupied by Simpson's restaurant and cigar divan), which had been founded by William Shipley, the main originator of the Society of Arts. Thither students went to be prepared for the academy in St. Martin's Lane, and it was long known by the name of Pars's school. He died on 7 May 1806, and was buried in the churchyard of Pentonville Chapel, Islington.
His brother, Albert Pars, was a successful modeller in wax.
[Roget's ‘Old’ Water-colour Society; Ackermann's Repository of Arts; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iv. 109; Redgrave's Dict.]
PARS, WILLIAM (1742–1782), portrait-painter and draughtsman, born in London on 28 Feb. 1742, was the son of a chaser. He studied at the St. Martin's Lane academy, and also in the Duke of Richmond's Gallery. In 1761 he exhibited a portrait and miniatures at the Incorporated Society of Artists, and became a member of the Free Society of Artists in 1763. In 1764 he obtained the Society of Arts' medal for an historical painting, and in June of the same year he was selected by the Dilettanti Society to accompany, as draughtsman, Dr. Chandler and Mr. Revett to Greece. The result was published in ‘Ionian Antiquities,’ which was illustrated from Pars's drawings [see Chandler, Richard, 1738–1810]. He returned on 2 Dec. 1766, and soon after accompanied Henry Temple, second viscount Palmerston [q. v.], to the continent, making drawings in Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Rome. In 1769 he contributed seven views from Greece to the first exhibition of the Royal Academy. He was elected an associate in 1770, and in the following year he sent eight European views, chiefly of Switzerland and the Tyrol, together with one portrait. He contributed regularly (chiefly portraits) to the academy exhibitions till 1776. In the summer of the previous year he had started for Rome on the students' pension of the Dilettanti Society, and he remained there till the autumn of 1782, when he died of fever.
A selection of his Greek drawings was engraved by William Byrne for the Dilettanti Society; five of his Swiss drawings, including the ‘Mer de Glace,’ were engraved by Woollett; and several others of his drawings were aquatinted by Paul Sandby.
Many of his drawings made for the Dilettanti Society are in the British Museum, and others are to be found at the South Kensington Museum, the Whitworth Museum at Manchester, and in other collections of the English School of Water-colours, of which he may be regarded as one of the founders.
[Redgrave's Dict.; Roget's ‘Old’ Water-colour Society; Catalogues of Royal Academy, &c.]
PARSELL, THOMAS (1674–1720), head-master of Merchant Taylors' School, son of Thomas Parsell, was born on 23 Aug. 1674. He was admitted into Merchant Taylors' School on 11 Sept. 1684. In June 1693 he was elected to a scholarship at St. John's College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. 1697, M.A. 1701, B.D. and D.D. 1706. In 1701 he was appointed first under-master of his old school, and in 1707 head-master, being then described as ‘an eminent grammarian.’ He died in July 1720, and was buried at St. Mary Abchurch in the city of London.
Parsell's chief literary work was a translation of the Book of Common Prayer into Latin. The first edition, in 1706, 12mo, bears the title of ‘Litvrgia, seu Liber Precum Communium in Ecclesia Anglicana receptus.’ The Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels are described as being taken from Castellio's version, the rendering of the rest being Parsell's own. The work is dedicated to John [Williams], bishop of Chester, and the author is described in it as fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. A second edition appeared in 1713, a third in 1720, and by 1759 it had reached its seventh edition.
Parsell also edited, for school use, the ‘Panegyricus’ of the younger Pliny, 1716, 8vo, chiefly from the Delphin edition; and, according to Greenwood (English Grammar, 1722, p. 228), he wrote ‘An Explanation of the Syntax in our Common Grammar,’ printed for Bonwick in St. Paul's Churchyard, which is possibly identical with the anonymous ‘Enchiridion Syntaxis Lilianæ constrictius,’ London, 1705, 12mo.
[Wilson's History of the Merchant Taylors' School; Robinson's Registers of Merchant Taylors' School, i. 313; Marshall's Latin Prayer-Book of Charles II, p. 37; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. viii. 148.]
PARSLEY or PERSLEY, OSBERT (1511–1585), musical composer, born in 1511, and for fifty years singing master at Norwich Cathedral, was quoted by Morley in 1597 with qualified approval for his ingenuity in composing a canon upon a subject in plain song. His treatment of the hymn ‘Salvator Mundi’ is the example especially noted (Plain Introduction to Practicall Musick, pp. 96–8). William Jackson has commented upon this pas-
