I cannot wed the man I hate-
I cannot falsely play,

Though father's threat may not abate-
Though I be spurn'd away.
My love he is. life to me,
my
My nurse, my sire, my home,
He looks upon me smilingly,
And beckons me to come.
He hath his nest of down for me,
His little timorous maid,

Where I shall cower in shelter free,

Nor fluttering nor afraid."

Thus at her window o'er the wave
That gentle maid bested,

The hour was silent as the grave,
No star was overhead.

The sea curl'd softly on the shore,

And said, or seem'd to say:

"I've hush'd for thee the billows' roar,

Come, Ida, come away!"

Her lover's bark is on the strand,

His foot upon the beach,

And they are hurrying, hand in hand,
The little skiff to reach:

Her foot is on the floating plank,
Her lover close behind,

And they have left the pebbly bank,
And every fear behind.

There's light within her father's hall,
There's hurrying to and fro,
And voices from her window call,
And from the beach below-

Along the wave a carbine shot

Sings shrilly with its speed ;Her love-for fate so drew the lotHer love alone must bleed.

Frantic fair Ida hears his groan;

Her hand is on the wound;

His heart's blood on her hand hath flown

With that last dying sound.

Back to the shore, go, boatmen, go;

Finish'd is your employ;

But she, the fair, what is she now,
So late the bride of joy!

A maniac on that oozy shore
At times seen wandering wild,
Addressing the rude ocean's roar,
In accents of a child;

Or from her window, at deep night,
Asking athwart the gloom,
In fancy of her lover's sprite,
The mysteries of his tomb!

PARRIANA.-NO. 1.

I REMEMBER Dr. Parr at an early period, when he was Master of the Free School at Norwich. It was a Gothic structure near the cathedral, endowed by Henry the Sixth. As you advanced along its spacious floor, you heard the buzzings of the boys plying their various tasks, as they sat within a sort of railed pew, which extended from the bottom to the top of the chamber, half lost and overpowered by the overwhelming tones of our venerable Ofellus, who was hearing, from an elevated chair, to which you approached by steps, the higher classes at their Greek play, and pouring out a loud torrent of parallel passages to elucidate the author. It was at this time a favourite theory of Parr, that the progress of learning towards the understanding was in an upward direction; for, in subservience to that theory, he was a systematic devotee of the birch. It was done, however, in perfect good-humour; never sudden, nor under the instantaneous impulse of passion. It was a cool, judicial sentence, the execution of which was generally postponed till the rising of the school, when there was often a whimsical kind of contest for precedency in submitting to the infliction. It was so slight, except for very grave offences, that it was never a subject of much apprehension. "Come, and bring the bats for a game at cricket!" was the exclamation of one boy to another, as they all rushed out at twelve o'clock. "I can't come immediately," was the reply: "I'll be with you in six or seven minutes. I am only going to be flogged.”

Parr composed his celebrated preface to "Bellendenus" whilst he was Master of this school. It is a laboured piece of Latinity; not a phrase that has not its sanction in the best authorities. But it is a whimsical Mosaic, "here a bit of red stone, there a bit of black." It has always struck me as wanting that flow and that ease of expression, which are the happiest graces of composition. It is, moreover, open to exception, as a species of cento from writers living in different periods of literary taste-Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Tacitus, and even Seneca. I think it by no means equal to the Latin rhetoric of Parr's friend, Sir William Jones, Perhaps the latter was too Ciceronian, and would have come in for his share of the ridicule applied by Erasmus, in his " Anti-Ciceronianus," to too studious an affectation of the style and manner of the Roman orator. The Preface to Bellendenus is ushered in with a series of dedications to Lord North, Fox, and Burke, in the lapidary Latin, which Parr, through his whole life, was proud of excel ling in. Beloe was at that time the under-master. He gave some offence to the Doctor by translating the Preface. It was, however, soon forgiven; and in after-life, Parr rendered him many essential services; amongst others, that of writing for him a learned preface to his Translation of Aulus Gellius; but these services, it is now a matter of notoriety, were not returned with gratitude.

Headley, a favourite pupil, was before my time. I have a distinct recollection of him, for he afterwards lived in the precincts of the Cathedral. His dark, handsome features, and his wan complexion, for he was then wasting under a consumption that carried him off at the age of twenty-five, will never be effaced from my memory. In 1784 he published a Collection of Original Poetry, in which there are several exquisite pieces. One or two after the antique manner of our elder poets, with whom Headley was particularly con versant, are beautiful. But his reputation at present rests on his "Beauties of Antient English Poetry," which appeared with a laboured preface in Parr's manner, but still more turgid and redundant. The short notices of each poet prefixed to his extracts, are in better taste. Bowles's Elegy upon the premature fate of Headley is truly pathetic.

Dr. Maltby, perhaps the most accomplished Greek scholar amongst us, was the head-boy in my time. I was then an urchin, but I well remember that Parr had a decided predilection for this clever pupil, which did not, however, exempt him from occasional visitations of the birch.

It is much to be regretted, that several of the earliest of Parr's writings are out of print. In 1783 he preached a charity sermon at Norwich, from the text in the Proverbs-" Train up a child," &c. This discourse, though now almost forgotten, was one of those compositions which were digna cedro, and ought to be republished. The first part is a kind of historical deduction, from its earliest beginnings, of the wisdom conveyed by the ancient, particularly by the Oriental writers, in the form of proverb or of apophthegm. He then proceeds to a masterly disquisition upon Education, in the large and moral acceptation of the word, and on the relative duties of parents and children, masters and disciples. It is a trite subject, but not so as Parr treats it; for he seems to have expended all the resources of his rich flourishing intellect to render familiar topics new and impressive. It is, I think, superior to his famous Spital Sermon: certainly, its manner is less controversial, which is some advantage; for, where Parr had any doctrine to refute, he was a staunch polemic, full as anxious to get the victory as to discover the truth. In the discourse, however, upon Education, he appears bent upon rendering those common and admitted truths attractive, which are in danger of losing their hold on the mind, from mere universality of reception.

Apropos of the Spital Sermon. It gave birth to a tolerably facetious remark of Harvey Coombe, albeit unused to the facetious mood. As they were coming out of church, after the delivery of that long discourse, "Well," says Parr to Coombe, "how did you like it?"-always anxious for well-merited praise, from whatever quarter it proceeded,—“ let me have the suffrage of your strong and honest understanding."-" Why, Doctor," returned the Alderman, "there were four things in your sermon that I did not like to hear.""State them," replied Parr eagerly. Why, to speak frankly then," said Coombe, " they were the quarters of the church clock, which struck four times before you had finished it." The joke was goodhumouredly received. Harvey Coombe, though of quiet, gentlemanly manners, could now and then say something good. He was conversing one day at Brookes's with Jack Stepney. A little variation of opinion occurring, Jack intimated his dissent by exclaiming, "I don't know that, Mr. Coombe; I don't know that !"-" Don't know that!" retorted the other; "if you could put down in writing every thing you did not know, Mr. Stepney, you would soon make a very large book."

Parr's memory, from nature and from application, was very capacious. In reading a Greek or Latin author, a stream of illustration issued from it. When we were up at Virgil with him, he thundered out, ore rotundo, all the passages which the poet had borrowed, and, whilst he borrowed, adorned, from Homer and Apollonius the Rhodian. His knowledge of the Greek metres, a branch of scholarship in which Burney afterwards excelled him, was profound. It was equally accurate as to the metres of Horace. Reading a play of Plautus with him, I think the Aulularia, I came to the word affatim abundantly, the second syllable of which I made long, naturally concluding that an adjective derived from the word affari, would retain the same quantity. He corrected me instantly, by scanning the very difficult and anomalous Iambic in which the word occurred. There was a constant tendency, he observed, going on in all languages actually in use, to shorten accentuation, for the celerity of discourse which the common occasions of life require; and the comic poets were obliged to adopt the common and conventional pronunciation. He was decidedly of opinion that the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter was of a later age than Nero's, and not the work of the Petronius recorded by Tacitus as the Arbiter Elegantiarum of that

emperor.

The characteristics of the first Mrs. Parr were natural acuteness and good sense; and these qualities Parr readily conceded to her. With all this, however, she was an apt student in the art of ingeniously tormenting, and occasionally influenced by a spirit of contradiction which made large

demands upon his patience. I remember he was once visiting his cousin, the Rev. Robert Parr, at Norwich. Before he left Hatton, he had given directions to Mrs. Parr to open the letters addressed to him during his absence, and to forward only such as she knew he would be most anxious to receive, and might be worth the expense of the transmission. One day, a heavy package arrived by the post. It consisted of several common unimportant letters, some of them circular letters of tradesmen soliciting custom, &c. with a note from Mrs. Parr, stating that she had exercised the discretion he had given her, by forwarding the letters he would be most anxious to see, and kept back some others, among which was a long letter from Mr. Payne Knight about Homer. Parr had been for some time busied in a sort of epistolary controversy with that gentleman, upon the use of the Eolic Digamma; and he at all times delighted in his correspondence, and placed the highest value upon his research and erudition.

In truth, there was some incompatibility in this union. Its commencement was far from being a romantic one. When Parr, who had been under-master at Harrow, applied for the head-mastership of Norwich school, which was in the gift of the Corporation, he was told that it was essentially necessary that the master should be a married man. In this difficulty Parr instantly wrote to his friend Jones, afterwards Sir William Jones, urging him with all possible diligence to look out for a wife for him, and to forward her by an early opportunity. The commission was faithfully executed, and Mrs. Parr duly arrived at Norwich.

On political subjects Parr reasoned and spoke with great animation and warmth. His politics, however, were those of an enthusiastic but constitutional Whig. When the late Right Honourable William Windham came, as he occasionally did on his way to Felbrigg, and at the season of the general elections, to Norwich, I recollect several very delightful conversa tions at which I was present, though then very young, between Parr and that accomplished statesman. They took place at the house of a common friend, Mr. Hudson. Parr uniformly did homage to the great talents and varied knowledge of Mr. Windham. Indeed, his conversation was an exquisite entertainment: it flowed gently, but it was an unfailing stream of eloquence and of reason. He had the peculiar talent of enforcing and illustrating his argument by playful anecdotes and amusing allusions, which, so far from being extraneous to what he was desirous of establishing, by some curious felicity became part of the argument itself.

There was something heroic and chivalrous in the character of Windham; but nothing could surpass the grace and elegance of his manners. He was the finished English gentleman. He was deeply read in Greek and Latin, mathematics, and even controversial divinity: his memory was unbounded. Burke, when he was writing his Reflections, alluded to a passage in Aristotle's book on Government from memory; but sent it to Windham, and asked him whether he could find it. The latter laid his finger on the passage in a few minutes, which Mr. Burke, for he was then printing off the sheets, inserted in a note. I transcribed the Greek at Mr. Windham's request. Mr. Windham told me, that very early in life he had read through all the Byzantine historians, and pointed out to me in Gibbon's notes a few instances of disingenuous citation from those authors. The conversation of such a man, which from early youth I have been permitted to hear, was a refection worthy of the gods.

It was upon one of these occasions, when Mr. Windham and Parr met, that I perfectly recollect the former's objecting to the pedantic habit, common to scholars, of profuse quotations, to show their learning. True learning, he said, was a result. Perpetual citation evinced an intrinsic poverty: it was like an ill-furnished shop, where the best articles were placed in the window. He illustrated the topic, I also remember, by a passage from Epictetus. "If," observes the philosopher, "any body wishes to convince you that he had good fare at home, and ate heartily, he would show it in

the vigour of his frame and the health of his complexion, not by emptying the contents of his stomach before you." It was upon this occasion that Mr. Windham enabled me to form some idea of the ease and pleasantry of Sir Joshua Reynolds's conversation. One of his off-hand sayings I thought very happy-The conversation had turned upon an old bachelor, who having been many years a malade imaginaire, took it at last into his head to marry, "Ah!" said Sir Joshua, when the event was announced to him, "Bwill now begin to know what is the matter with him."

Wind

When Mr. Windham, with the late Duke of Portland and Mr. Burke, seceded from the Foxite Whigs, Dr. Parr regarded the schism with horror. From that time his opinions of Windham underwent great change; and he expressed them, as I thought, occasionally with a vehemence and a severity inconsistent with the respect due even to the errors of a great man. ham was a man of high heroic honour, seated in a heart of courtesy. Nothing venal or sordid ever profaned its recesses. Coke, of Norfolk, betrayed the same intolerant spirit, when, just after that secession, he deposed the busts of Burke and Windham from the niches they had long occupied at Holkham with those of Fox, Lord North, and Lord Rockingham.

It was in one of the conversations I have alluded to, that Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses was mentioned. Parr said that it was a subtle argument constructed to refute the Free-thinkers,* by proving, that without the belief of future rewards and punishments no human society could exist; and that so essentially necessary was this principle in human affairs, that the Jews, who did not embrace this great tenet, were for that reason placed under a theocracy, the immediate government of the Supreme Being; and therefore, being an exception to all other human communities, stood in no need of that important sanction. Parr observed, that the foundation of Warburton's argument was false: that the Jews actually believed in the soul's immortality, from which a belief in a state of future happiness or suffering flowed as a corollary. They believed that Samuel's soul appeared after its separation from the body; and Solomon, in the Ecclesiastes, expressly states that the spirit returned to God that gave it. A state of separate souls hereafter, he contended, necessarily implied reward or punishment, in the greater or less degrees of happiness or misery which they had to undergo according to their different degrees of virtue or of vice in the body. Parr was a pious rational Christian, and, with a large and liberal spirit of toleration, a sincere Church of England man.

On different occasions I have conversed much with Parr upon the subject of metaphysics. He strongly condemned the material philosophy. Reid on the intellectual powers of Man he instanced as a satisfactory refutation of that debasing doctrine. The mortality of the soul, he said, was a necessary consequence from its materiality. The soul is a spirit, which must be immortal, because it is exempted from all the qualities which generate corruption. It is an uncompounded essence. How can that be dissolved which has no parts? For dissolution is only the separation of one part from another; but that which has no parts cannot be dissolved. The hope of futurity was infused into man at his creation; it is his earliest, his fondest, his last aspiration. Such a desire would not have been given us in vain. All the great lights of the ancient world believed in the immortality of the soul, from this inherent desire of beatitude. Hence the Pythagorean doctrine, the Elysian fields, and the Tartarus of the poets.

"Hac iter Elysium nobis, at læva malorum," &c.

I observed, that in some of his writings Aristotle seemed to doubt. He said, "No such thing, Sir." He quoted the treatise upon animals, to show that he had distinctly asserted the soul's distinct existence and immortality, and

* Bayle amongst others.