would have been shocked to know that she was a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft, and had packed half her book into one sentence.
The third work is a satirical attack on Mary Wollstonecraft and Tom Paine. The details of the attack would convince any one that neither has anything which would now excite reprobation. It is utterly unworthy of Dr. Parr, and has quite disappeared from lists of his works, if it were ever there. That it was written by him I take to be evident, as follows. Nichols,[[393]] who could not fail to know, says (Anecd., vol. ix, p. 120): "This is a playful essay by a first-rate scholar, who is elsewhere noticed in this volume, but whose name I shall not bring forward on so trifling an occasion." Who the scholar was is made obvious by Master Launcelot being made to talk of Bellendenus.[[394]] Further, the same boy is made to say, "Let Dr. Parr lay his hand upon his heart, if his conscience will let him, and ask himself how many thousands of wagon-loads of this article [birch] he has cruelly misapplied." How could this apply to Parr, with his handful of private pupils,[[395]] and no reputation for severity? Any one except himself would have called on the head-master of Westminster or Eton. I doubt whether the name of Parr could be connected with the rod by anything in print, except the above and an anecdote of his pupil, Tom Sheridan.[[396]] The Doctor had dressed for a dinner visit, and
was ready a quarter of an hour too soon to set off. "Tom," said he, "I think I had better whip you now; you are sure to do something while I am out."—"I wish you would, sir!" said the boy; "it would be a letter of licence for the whole evening." The Doctor saw the force of the retort: my two tutelaries will see it by this time. They paid in advance; and I have given liberal interpretation to the order.
The following story of Dr. Parr was told me and others, about 1829, by the late Leonard Horner,[[397]] who knew him intimately. Parr was staying in a house full of company, I think in the north of England. Some gentlemen from America were among the guests, and after dinner they disputed some of Parr's assertions or arguments. So the Doctor broke out with "Do you know what country you come from? You come from the place to which we used to send our thieves!" This made the host angry, and he gave Parr such a severe rebuke as sent him from the room in ill-humor. The rest walked on the lawn, amusing the Americans with sketches of the Doctor. There was a dark cloud overhead, and from that cloud presently came a voice which called Tham (Parr-lisp for Sam). The company were astonished for a moment, but thought the Doctor was calling his servant in the house, and that the apparent direction was an illusion arising out of inattention. But presently the sound was repeated, certainly from the cloud,
"And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before."
There was now a little alarm: where could the Doctor have got to? They ran to his bedroom, and there they discovered a sufficient rather than satisfactory explanation. The Doctor had taken his pipe into his bedroom, and had seated himself, in sulky mood, upon the higher bar of a large and deep old-fashioned grate with a high mantelshelf. Here he had
tumbled backwards, and doubled himself up between the bars and the back of the grate. He was fixed tight, and when he called for help, he could only throw his voice up the chimney. The echo from the cloud was the warning which brought his friends to the rescue.
ATTACKS ON RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS.
Days of political paradox were coming, at which we now stare. Cobbett[[398]] said, about 1830, in earnest, that in the country every man who did not take off his hat to the clergyman was suspected, and ran a fair chance of having something brought against him. I heard this assertion canvassed, when it was made, in a party of elderly persons. The Radicals backed it, the old Tories rather denied it, but in a way which satisfied me they ought to have denied it less if they could not deny it more. But it must be said that the Governments stopped far short of what their partisans would have had them do. All who know Robert Robinson's[[399]] very quiet assault on church-made festivals in his History and Mystery of Good Friday (1777)[[400]] will hear or remember with surprise that the British Critic pronounced it a direct, unprovoked, and malicious libel on the most
sacred institutions of the national Church. It was reprinted again and again: in 1811 it was in a cheap form at 6s. 6d. a hundred. When the Jacobin day came, the State was really in a fright: people thought twice before they published what would now be quite disregarded. I examined a quantity of letters addressed to George Dyer[[401]] (Charles Lamb's G.D.) and what between the autographs of Thelwall, Hardy, Horne Tooke, and all the rebels,[[402]] put together a packet which produced five guineas, or thereabouts, for the widow. Among them were the following verses, sent by the author—who would not put his name, even in a private letter, for fear of accidents—for consultation whether they could safely be sent to an editor: and they were not sent. The occasion was the public thanksgiving at St. Paul's for the naval victories, December 19, 1797.