PARR, Samuel, the eminent scholar, was born 15th January, 1747, at Harrow-on-the-Hill, where his father was a surgeon of some repute. At the age of four he was placed at the public school of Harrow, and at fourteen he was declared the head-boy. Taken from school he for some time assisted his father, who was ultimately induced to send the promising youth to Emanuel college, Cambridge, in the autumn of 1765. After a residence of only a year poverty obliged him to leave; for his father had died, and his stepmother was suspected by him of appropriating an undue share of the paternal property. He then became usher to Dr. Sumner, head master of Harrow school, and remained in this situation for about five years. In 1769 he was admitted into deacons' orders. Dr. Sumner died in 1771, and Parr became a candidate for the vacant mastership. Every boy in the school signed a petition in his favour; but his application, possibly from his youth and partly from his political leanings, was unsuccessful, and followed by no less than forty-five of the Harrow pupils he set up a rival seminary at Stanmore, and married a lady from Yorkshire. This institution soon declined for various reasons, and Parr removed to Colchester in the spring of 1777. At this period he was ordained priest by bishop Lowth, and served two curacies. His fame was extending, and he was elected master of the grammar-school at Norwich, principally, it is said, at the suggestion of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Next year he published two sermons delivered at Norwich, which were highly applauded, especially by his friend Sir William Jones. In 1781 appeared his "Discourse on the late Fast by Phileleutherus Norfolciensis." The American war was alluded to in condemnatory terms, and the sermon served to bar him from preferment. In 1780 the mother of one of his pupils presented him to the living of Asterby, which he resigned on being presented to the perpetual curacy of Hatton in Warwickshire, a curacy of the annual value of £80. Lord-chancellor Thurlow refused to listen to any application for his advancement, but Bishop Lowth gave him a prebendal stall in St. Paul's worth £250 a year. In 1781 the university of Cambridge created him doctor of laws, and in 1786 he took up his permanent residence at Hatton. In addition to his parochial duties, he received a few pupils. Henceforward to the end of his life—"to smoke, talk Greek, and debate politics," were his favourite exercises. His church held only twenty families, and he was obliged to build an additional room to his house where he might put his library, which even at this period was of large dimensions. In 1787 he published a Latin preface to the De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum of Bellenden—(see Bellendenus)—the work to which Conyers Middleton was so largely indebted in his Life of Cicero. The preface was dedicated to Lord North, Fox, and Burke. It was written in a vigorous style, the Latinity was unrivalled, and while the "Tria Lumina" were extolled to extravagance, Pitt was assaulted with ponderous violence. Dr. Parr had no little hand in the composition of White's Bampton Lecture, which met with extraordinary applause; and had been preached before the university in 1784. White in a letter had not only coolly asked him for assistance, but also for a "brilliant passage or two," while he was applying to a Mr. Badcock for similar assistance. A controversy at length ensued, for Parr was rarely without some fray upon his hands; the matter was discovered, and more than a fifth part was found to have been contributed by Parr. In 1789 he published "Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian." The tracts were early pieces of Warburton not admitted into the collected edition of his works, and the Warburtonian was Bishop Hurd. The dedication is a terrible onslaught on Bishop Hurd, who had been full of adulation to Warburton, and as full of insult to Warburton's antagonists. It is of virulent and scornful energy, as sonorous as Johnson, and in some places as bitter and pointed as Junius. "It stands unrivalled," says D'Israeli, "for comparative criticism." On the question of the regency which agitated the country Parr sided with Fox, and his advocacy of Fox's unconstitutional doctrine was, as usual, inconsiderate and vehement. He aspired on the strength of such political excesses to a bishopric, but the king's recovery put an end to his hopes. In 1791, as his house was in danger of a visit from the parties in Birmingham who had burned the dwelling of Priestley, and his library had been removed to Oxford for safety, he published a masterly and seasonable tract, "A Letter from Irenopolis to the inhabitants of Eleutheropolis." The object of the letter is to dissuade the dissenters of Birmingham from a second commemoration of the French revolution or destruction of the Bastile; their first celebration having been made the occasion of those disgraceful scenes of tumult and wanton outrage. In 1800 by appointment of the lord mayor of London Dr. Parr preached the "Spital Sermon"—one of the most famous of his productions. The sermon was directed against Godwin's theory of universal benevolence, and was published with an immense farrago of notes on an immense variety of subjects, three amanuenses having been employed in their preparation. On the death of Fox, whom he had long and intensely admired. Parr published "Characters of the late Right Honourable Charles James Fox, selected and in part written by Philopatris Varvicensis." Parr long cherished the idea of writing a biography of Fox, and these papers contain many eloquent and merited eulogies on the great whig statesman, whose political zeal had not eaten out his love of classic literature. In 1819 Parr republished speeches by Roger Long and John Taylor of Cambridge, and there appeared after his death a pamphlet defending Bishop Halifax from the charge of having become a papist in his last illness. Dr. Parr was seized with fatal sickness in January, 1825. He had been subject to fever and erysipelas for years, but at this time the disease broke out without the hope of remedy. He became delirious from the first, and after fifty days of helpless suffering he died on the 6th of March, at the advanced age of seventy-eight. Dr. Parr was twice married. His second wife and two granddaughters survived him.
The learning of Dr. Parr was immense, and it is to be regretted that he spent so much of his erudition and power on ephemeral objects. He has left nothing worthy of his fame. His famous review of Combe's Horace is occupied very much with mere minutiæ. He had a familiar mastery of the whole field of Greek and Roman literature, but lavished his treasures on comparative trifles, such as epitaphs and éloges. In the "Lapidarian" style his skill and taste are often exquisite. Perpetually involved in controversy, he wanted leisure for sustained labour. Having become a literary celebrity during the latter half of his life, his correspondence was large. Fifteen hundred persons are numbered among his correspondents, including royal princes, peers, prelates, statesmen, philosophers, and scholars; and more than eight thousand letters were found among his papers at his death. The curate of Hatton had also a constant influx of visitors, such men as Burney, Porson, and many others of political renown.—(See Porson.) Parr's reputation rests now to a great extent on his conversational powers, reported to have been great , he boasted of his Parr-esia—a play upon the Greek terra and his own name; but like other famed talkers, he was self-sufficient, occasionally overstepping the limits of social courtesy by rude objurgation and contemptuous retort. What he calls his "archididaskalian authority" was on no occasion put aside. His vanity was excessive. Writing to Henry Homer about the composition of the preface to Bellendenus, he says of one portion, "It is a most splendid effort, a mighty and glorious effort;" it contains, he again records, "all the phraseological beauties I know of in Latin;" and writing to Dr. Maltby about three of the notes to the "Spital Sermon," he says, "I was half frantic with ecstacy three times." His personal appearance was not, if De Quincey is to be credited, either prepossessing or awe-inspiring.; and his Johnsonian magniloquence was marred by an incurable lisp. But he prided himself on his dignified look, and it was no uncommon thing for him to describe his victory over some inferior antagonist by saying, "Sir, I inflicted my eye upon him." His views on social problems are neither very acute nor profound, and his whiggism is more that of a violent partisan than of a calm and sound political thinker. At an early period of his life he went in clerical costume to vote for Wilkes at Brentford, and taking offence at Burke, Windham, and Paley, he inverted their portraits on his walls. His mind was ever prone to excess, as indeed were his gastronomic habits. Moderate views of men and things he scorned as a kind of weakness, and his opinions were pronounced with summary and unqualified roundness and despatch. Yet with all his vanity and arrogance, he had a kind and generous heart. Parr's theology was of no special type; indeed he had never studied theology as a science. On primary doctrinal points his sermons show that he was orthodox in a general sense, and that it seems wholly groundless to suspect him of any sympathy with Priestley's creed. Liberal in politics, he was, however, conservative in ecclesiastical matters, and as sternly opposed the repeal of the test act as any of the high church party. Of all externals, as bell-ringing, painted glass, clerical robes, he was passionately fond. He used to read from
