THE SOURCE OF DR. PARR’S ELOQUENCE.
Some of Dr. Parr’s hearers, struck with a remarkable passage in his sermon, asked him “Whether he had read it from his book?” “Oh, no,” said he, “it was the light of nature suddenly flashing upon me.” He once called a clergyman a fool. The divine, indignant, threatened to complain to the Bishop. “Do so,” was the reply, “and my Lord Bishop will confirm you.”
To the same wit, when a student at Emanuel College, is attributed the celebrated—
ADDRESS TO HIS TEA-CHEST,
“Tu doces,” (thou tea-chest!) Others give the paternity to Lord Erskine, when a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge; n’importe, they were friends.
AS A SPICE OF THEIR JOINT VANITY,
It is related of them, that one day, sipping their wine together, the Doctor exclaimed, “Should you give me an opportunity, Erskine, I promise myself the pleasure of writing your epitaph.” “Sir,” was the reply, “it’s a temptation to commit suicide.” On another occasion more than one authority concur in the Doctor’s thus
ASSURING HIMSELF A PLACE AMONGST THE GREEK
SCHOLARS OF HIS DAY.
“Porson, sir, is the first, always the first; we all yield to him. Burney is the third. Who is the second, I leave you to guess.”