elegance of their binding and of their type. For the best editions of classical writers, for the most useful and learned works in philosophy, metaphysics, and biblical criticism, for general taste in selection, and wide range of literature, a more valuable collection has probably never been made by any single scholar. His manuscripts are said to be very numerous, and upon various subjects of verbal criticism, theology, and metaphysics. He often declared during his lifetime, that they were not in a state fit for publication; that many of them were illegible, even to himself; and that he had most peremptorily desired his executors to destroy them after his death, without distinction, and even without inspection. Fortunately, however, Dr. Parr seems to have re-considered this subject; for he has left written directions for the positive publication of some, and the discretionary publication of other parts of his works. It is understood, that some of his manuscripts are already in the hands of his most confidential and judicious friends, with a view to this selection; which is likely to be rich, varied, and extensive beyond general expectation. In the earlier part of his life he intended to publish an edition of Sophocles, and the matter which he prepared for that purpose was the result of his inquiries for many years. It was written in four volumes octavo, interleaved, and three volumes quarto; all crowded with observations; and containing, not only explanations of particular words and phrases, but general remarks on the Greek drama; on the style and metre of Sophocles, as distinguished from those of Eschylus and Euripides; and of the causes, progress, and variations of the dialects employed by the Greek tragedians. Of Dr. Parr's intended publications another is thus described in a letter to Mr. Nichols, dated April 16, 1786 "Henry Stephens's "Treatise on the Dialects' is become exceedingly scarce and dear; it can be bought only with the glossary, and generally costs two guineas. Now, the great excellence and great utility of this work would, I am confident, procure very numerous purchasers, and the re-publication of it would be considered as a very high and important service to the literary world. In this opinion my learned friend Mr. Burgess concurs, and I have reason to think that our first luminary in Greek learning, Mr. Porson, is of the same opinion with us. "Will you undertake to re-publish it in an octavo form? My idea is, that it should be adapted not only to the use of scholars, but of schoolboys, and if you choose to undertake the work, I will write a small Latin preface, to recommend the publication, and to explain the purposes for which it is attempted. Of its rapid and extensive sale I am myself confident; and the only difficulty that ever hung on my mind was how to find a judicious, learned, and publicspirited printer? The successor of Mr. Bowyer is, on all accounts, the fittest person to pay tribute to the learning and genius of Stephens. this "I need not tell you how necessary it is for the press to be most carefully corrected. I am ready for my own part to revise once; and I will ask Mr. Burgess next week, at Oxford, to undertake the second revisal. The sheets can easily be conveyed by franks, I sup Milner, the Roman Catholic, has published an elaborate work, which cannot fail of having a very extensive and powerful effect on any person of his own religion. He has put forth all his strength, and let loose all his venom. Among other matter, he three times says that bishop Halifax died a Catholic, and this you see affords a glorious triumph to the Roman Catholics. I am determined to call him to a public account. I have all the matter and paper now lying before me. If you choose to insert it in your old Magazine; be it so. But you will observe, first, that it will occupy twenty-five or thirty pages; secondly, that it must not be divided; thirdly, that I must be permitted to revise one proofsheet, and to give directions to the printer about italic lines, &c. &c. "The whole bench of bishops will have their eye upon me, and a whole army of Catholic Polemics may fall upon me. This I regard not. "If you refuse admission to so long an article, I will offer it to one more periodical publication, and if it be thought too long there, I shall print a pamphlet, and put my name." In a second letter, only five days after, the Doctor observed: "Some how or other my matter has crowded upon me so fast, that I must give up all thoughts of introducing it into any periodical publication, and, therefore, I shall make a pamphlet, and print it at Warwick. There again my vexations about a scribe are almost intolerable; I must submit to the torments of delay!" From some causes, hitherto unexplained, this tract never appeared during Dr. Parr's life. Since his decease, however, it has been published by the Rev. John Lynes, the grandson by marriage, and one of the executors of Dr. Parr. It is called "A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Milner, occasioned by some passages contained in his book, entitled The End of Religious Controversy. By the late Rev. S. Parr, LL.D.” Dr. Parr wrote many of his sermons; but in Middlesex, at Colchester, and at Norwich, he often preached extempore: and it must be unnecessary to say, that the ardour of his temper, the fulness of his knowledge, and the strength of his understanding, always readily supplied him with matter pertinent, forcible, and abundant. He preached without any preparation, and his custom was, to select his subject from that which struck him in the lessons, epistle and gospel, or psalms of the day. There was always method in these extemporaneous effusions. They were frequently accompanied with critical remarks; and they were delivered with an earnestness of manner, and a correctness and vigour of diction, most interesting to the hearers, and equal to the highest expectations which could be formed of his powers, even by men most prejudiced in his favour, and most accustomed to his conversation. At Hatton he generally took up a sermon written by Clarke, Balguy, or Jortin, or by some other distinguished divine of the Established Church. But his own observations were always introduced; and from the peculiarity of his thinking and his style, the difference was easily discerned by an intelligent hearer. Such, indeed, were his readiness and copiousness, that of sermons which continued for half an hour or forty minutes, the parts which he merely read occupied scarcely five or six pages. He has been heard to attribute this talent partly to the habit which he had formed, when a young man, of speaking with the late sir William Jones and the late bishop of Cloyne, in a fictitious character, upon various subjects of history, ethics, and politics; and partly to the necessity which had been imposed upon him of communicating oral instruction in his schools. The same talent often appeared with great lustre when he threw out his thoughts upon any intricate and important topic in the presence of his friends. In classical erudition Dr. Parr was without a rival, and was one of the few surviving devotees of the old school of learning. His knowledge of ecclesiastical history, particularly as connected with the church history of Britain, was most extraordinary: all the minute and illustrative facts connected with the liturgies, forms, doctrines, and creeds of the establishment, were most accurately known to him. As he idolized the memories of those who had fallen martyrs in the cause of political truth, so, in his own words, he "loved to soar in the regions of religious liberty." He was extensively read in history and legislation, and was well acquainted with what are called the constitutional writers. His character as a politician was most manly and consistent. His own words, in the contrast of the characters of Warburton and Hurd, may be applied to himself; "he never thought it expedient to expiate the artless and animated effusions of his youth by the example of a temporising and obsequious old age; he began not his course, as others have done, with speculative republicanism; nor did he end it, as the same persons are now doing, with practical toryism." It has already appeared, that he was indebted for all his preferment to the affection of private friends; for, though he was animated by an ardent but liberal and enlightened attachment to our civil and ecclesiastical constitution, though he was distinguished by unparalleled learning, gigantic strength of intellect, the most unblemished morals, christian humility, and profound unaffected piety he was never patronised by the government of his country. He truly states of himself, that, "from his youth upward, he never deserted a private friend, or violated a public principle; that he was the slave of no patron, and the drudge of no party; that he formed his political opinions without the smallest regard, and acted upon them with an utter disregard to personal emoluments and professional honours." He adds (what his friends must rejoice to recollect was the truth), "that although for many and the best years of his life he endured very irksome toil, and suffered very galling need, he eventually united a competent fortune with an independent spirit; and that, looking back to this life, and onward to another, he possessed that inward peace of mind which the world can neither give nor take away." Nor will this be wondered at by those who know that his long residence at Hatton was spent by him in diligently performing all the duties of a parish priest; in assisting, advising, and befriending the poor; in the exercise of a generous hospitality; in encouraging and patronising merit; and in communicating knowledge, whenever required, from his own inexhaustible stores. So careful a guardian did the doctor prove of the different bequests belonging to the poor of his parish at Hatton, that one of them has been tripled, after having been recovered from thirty-six years' loss. Another is made to produce clothes for the poor in two townships, nearly in a threefold proportion. Another, left for the decoration of the church, has been rescued from an inferior class of trustees, who formerly misapplied the revenue; and the revenue itself is increased in value, as well as employed to the purpose for which it was originally designed. To the latest period of his life the vigour of Dr. Parr's mind remained unimpaired. In his 77th year he wrote to Mr. Brougham"Animo quem nulla senectus, say I, triumphantly, in the words of Statius." His last illness was long protracted. In the course of it appearances were, more than once, so favourable as to excite the strongest hopes of his recovery; but about a fortnight before his decease all these flattering ideas took their flight. From that time he gradually declined, the vital powers slowly and almost imperceptibly wasting, until exhausted nature sunk, and in the evening of the 6th of March, 1825, he gently expired, having completed his 78th year on the 26th of January. He was to the last serene and placid; calmly, even cheerfully resigned. With that greatness of mind which can anticipate with perfect composure the last awful change of mortal man, he gave minute directions respecting his funeral. His remains were deposited near those of his late wife and her daughters, in a vault in Hatton church. They were attended on foot by nearly forty gentlemen in mourning, consisting of the clergy of the surrounding parishes, &c. The pall-bearers were seven clergymen, and one dissenting minister; and the coffin was borne by parishioners of Hatton appointed by himself. Agreeably to his express instructions, the burial service was read by the rev. Rann Kennedy, minister of St. Paul's chapel, Birmingham. After the reading of the lessons, a sermon was preached, "in obedience to his own request," by the rev. Dr. Butler, archdeacon of Derby, and head master of Shrewsbury school, from the text which Dr. Parr directed to be inscribed on his monument, viz. "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" On the following Sunday, the rev. Dr. Wade, vicar of St. Nicholas, Warwick, there preached a funeral sermon for him, which was attended by an immense concourse of all ranks. Another was delivered the same day at the High-street dissenting chapel. ·ANECDOTES of the EARLY LIFE of SHERIDAN. [From Moore's Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Rich. Brinsley Sheridan.] RICHARD BRINSLEY * SHERIDAN was born in the month of September, 1751, at No. 12. Dorset-street, Dublin, and baptized in St. Mary's church, as appears by the register of the parish, on the fourth of the following month. His grandfather, Dr. Sheridan, and his father, Mr. Thomas Sheridan have attained a celebrity, independent of that which he has conferred on them, by the friendship and correspondence with which the former was honoured by Swift, and the competition and even rivalry which the latter so long maintained with Garrick. His mother, too, was a woman of considerable talents, and affords one of the few instances that have occurred, of a female indebted for a husband to her literature; as it was a pamphlet she wrote concerning the Dublin theatre that first attracted to her the notice of Mr. Thomas Sheridan. Her affecting novel, Sidney Biddulph, could boast among its warm panegyrists Mr. Fox and lord North; and in the tale of Nourjahad she has employed the graces of Eastern fiction to inculcate a grave and important moral, putting on a fairy disguise, like her own Mandane, to deceive her readers into a taste for true happiness and virtue. Besides her two plays, the Discovery and the Dupe, the former of which Garrick pronounced to be "one of the best comedies he ever read" she wrote a comedy also, called the Trip to Bath, which was never * He was christened also by the name of Butler, after the earl of Lanesborough, either acted or published, but which has been supposed by some of those sagacious persons, who love to look for flaws in the titles of fame, to have passed, with her other papers, into the possession of her son, and, after a transforming sleep, like that of the chrysalis, in his hands, to have taken wing at length in the brilliant form of the Rivals. The literary labours of her husband were less fanciful, but not, perhaps, less useful, and are chiefly upon subjects connected with education, to the study and profession of which he devoted the latter part of his life. Such dignity, indeed, did his favourite pursuit assume in his own eyes, that he is represented (on the authority, however, of one who was himself a schoolmaster) to have declared, that "he would rather see his two sons at the head of respectable academies, than one of them prime minister of England, and the other at the head of affairs in Ireland." At the age of seven years, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was, with his elder brother, Charles Francis, placed under the tuition of Mr. Samuel Whyte, of Graftonstreet, Dublin-an amiable and respectable man, who, for nearly fifty years after, continued at the head of his profession in that metropolis. The young Sheridans were little more than a year under his care-and it may be consoling to parents who are in the first crisis of impatience, at the sort of hopeless stupidity which children exhibit, to know, that the dawn of Sheridan's intellect was as dull and unpromising as its meridian some |