be little doubt that, for the republican direction which they took, his indiscreet tutor was nearly altogether answerable.

Joseph Gerrald was a man of great talents: his defence upon his trial shews it and we have the assurance of an able critic, who was himself present at its delivery, in March 1794, that no piece of forensic eloquence on record better deserved the profound attention with which it was received: "you might," as he assured us, "during the whole time, have heard a pin drop." Under happier auspices than Dr Parr's, how distinguished a citizen might this man have become! As to Mr Oliver, it is Dr Parr's own statement of the case, (a statement which, at this day, we presume, few persons will be found to believe,) that he was condemned and executed for drinking Mr Fox's health, and reading Tom Paine's writings; in short, for being a Jacobin. The little trifling circumstance that he was also a murderer, with Dr Parr weighs nothing at all. Take then his own representation: who was it that countenanced the reading of Tom Paine, criticizing his infamous books as counterpoises to those of Burke, and as useful in bringing out a neutral product? Who was it that gave to Warwickshire, (Mr Oliver's part of the country,) nay, to all England, the one sole example of a budge doctor," arrayed in the scarlet robes of the English universities, and a public instructor of the young English aristocracy, speaking cautiously and respectfully of this shallow dogmatist, who, according to his power, laid the axe to all civil government throughout the world ? Who, but one man, clothed in the character of a Christian minister, could have been blinded by party violence to the extent of praising in a qualified manner, and naming

amongst creditable writers, the most insolent theomachist and ruffian infidel of ancient or modern times ? If Dr Parr's friends acted upon Mr Paine's principles, propagated Mr Paine's principles, and suffered in public estimation, even to the extent of martyrdom, as champions of those principles-nobody can suppose that in selecting and professing a faith so full of peril, they could be other than greatly influenced by the knowledge that a learned doctor in the Church of England, guide and tutor to themselves, had publicly spoken of that Mr Paine as an authority not altogether without his claims to consideration.

But we have insensibly wandered into political considerations at a point of our review, where the proper object before us was-Dr Parr as a man of letters. For this we have some excuse, considering that politics and literature so naturally blended in Dr Parr's practice of authorship, that perhaps not one of his most scholarlike performances, but is richly interveined with political allusions and sarcasms, nor one of those most professedly political, which did not often turn aside to gather flowers from the fields of the muses, or herbs "of med'cinable power" from the gardens of philosophy. The truth is, the Doctor wrote as he lived; bending to momentary gusts of passion; recovering himself by glimpses to a higher standard of professional duty; remembering by fits that he was officially a teacher, spiritual and intellectual; forgetting himself too often into a partisan and a zealot.

However, as we shall consider Dr Parr's politics under a separate and peculiar head, we will, for the present, confine ourselves more rigorously to his literary character, difficult as we really find it to observe a

line of strict separation, which the good doctor himself is for ever tempting or provoking us to forget.

As a man of letters, then, what was it-what power, what accomplishment, what art, that Dr Parr could emblazon upon his shield of pretence, as characteristically his own? Latin; Latin quoad knowledge; Latin quoad practical skill. "Reading," said he, "reflection, the office of a teacher, and much practice in composition, have given me a command over the Latin sufficient for the ordinary purposes of a scholar." This was his own estimate of himself: and it was a modest one-too modest and possibly he would not have made it had he been addressing any body but a Whig lord, taught from his earliest youth to take his valuation of Dr Parr from a party who regarded him as their champion and martyr. Yet again, it is not impossible that he was sincere for the insincere will make a general profession of humility in the abstract, and yet revolt from the test of individual comparisons: they confess how much they fall short of their own ideal; but as to John, Thomas, or William, they would spurn a claim of superiority for them. Now, Dr Parr sometimes goes so far in his humility as to name names:" Sir William Jones, Sir George Baker

these we are sure of, and we think Bishop Lowth, were amongst the masters of Latinity, to whom he somewhere concedes the palm for this accomplishment, on a question of comparison with himself.

We

must profess our own hearty dissent from such a graduation of the honours. Sir George Baker, from his subjects, is less generally known. He was an Etonian, and wrote at least with facility: but to speak of the other two, who are within every body's reach, we contend that, maugre their reputation, they do not write good Latin. The kind of Latin they affect is in bad taste: too florid, too rotund, too little idiomatic: its structure is vicious, and evidences an English origin. Of Lowth we say this even more determinately than of

Sir W. Jones.* Some day or other we shall make a great article on this subject; and we shall then illustrate largely: for without illustration, such a discussion is as empty and aerial as a feast of the Barmecide.

Meantime, whatsoever the mechanic hounds may say who now give the tone to education, the art of writing Latin finely is a noble accomplishment; and one, we will take upon us to say, which none but a man of distinguished talent will succeed in. All the scholarship in the world will not avail to fight up against the tyranny of modern idioms and modern fashions of thought-the whole composition will continue to be redolent of lamps not fed with Attic oil, but with gas-base gas-unless in the hands of a man vigorous and agile enough to throw off the yoke of vernacular custom,

"Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."

No custom cramps and masters a man's freedom so effectually as the household diction which he hears from all around him. And that man, who succeeds (like Dr Parr) in throwing his thoughts into ancient moulds, does a greater feat than he that turned the Euphrates into a new channel for the service of his army.

This difficulty is in itself a sufficient justification of modern Latincoupled, as it is, with so useful an activity of thought. But, apart from that, will any man contend that the establishment of a great commonwealth can be complete without artists in Latinity?-Even rogues, swindlers, hangmen, are essential to the proper mounting of a great metropolis: a murderer or two perhaps, in the complete subdivision of employments, would not be amiss in casting the parts for a full performance of civil life. Not that we approve of murder for murder's sake: far from it! It is scandalous, and what every good man must decidedly condemn and pointedly discourage. But still, if murders are to be, and murders will be, and murders must be, then of course we might as well have them executed in an artist-like

manner, as in the horrid bungling style so offensive in rude countries to the eye of delicate taste, and the mind of sensibility. Assuredly, it cannot be denied, that all sorts of villains, knaves, prigs, and so forth, are essential parts in the equipage of social life. Else why do we regard police as so indispensable a function of organized society? for without corresponding objects in the way of scoundrels, sharks, crimps, pimps, ring-droppers, &c.,-police-officers would be idle superfluities, and liable to general disgust.

But, waving the question as stretched to this extent,-for artists who work in Latin we may plead more reasons than Mr Blackwood is likely to allow us scope for in one article, we shall press but one argument, and that applied to our just national pride. Is it not truly shameful that a great nation should have occasion to go abroad for any odd bit of Latin that it may chance to want in the way of inscription for a triumphal monument, for a tomb, for a memorial pillar, for a public or official gift? Conceding (as, under the terrors of Mr Blackwood's pruning knife, we do concede for the moment) that Latin is of little other application-is it to be endured that we should be reduced to the necessity of importing our Latin secretary ?* For instance, we will mention one memorable case. The Czar Alexander, as all the world knows, one fine day, in the summer of that immortal year 1814, went down to Oxford in company with our own Regent, the King of Prussia, the Het man of the Cossacks, and a long roll of other princely personages, with titles fatiguing to the memory, and names from which orthography recoils aghast. Some were entertained at one college-some at another.

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The emperor's billet fell upon Merton College; and in acknowledgment of the hospitality there shewn, some time afterwards he sent to the warden and fellows, through Count Lieven, his ambassador to the court of London, a magnificent vase of Siberian jasper. This vase wanted an inscription- Latin inscription of course. This inscription was to be worked in Russia, and the workmen stood resting upon their tools until this should come out from England. Now, under these circumstances, John Bull! conceive the shame and the scandal-if Oxford, the golden seat of classical erudition, under the very eyes of the Czar and his ambassador, had been obliged to resort to some coxcomb on the continent for the small quantity of Latin required? What would Mrs Grundy have said? What would the Hetman have said? And Woronzoff, and Kutuzoff, and Doctoroff, and Tchitchzakoff? Indeed we cannot think it altogether becoming to Oxford, that Cambridge should have furnished the artistfor Dr Parr it was who undertook and executed the inscription, which, after all, exhibted too Spartan a nakedness to have taxed any man very severely, except for the negative quality of forbearance; and the scandal, as between the two universities, is actually on record and in print, of a chancellor of the one (Lord Grenville) corresponding with a doctor of the other, for a purpose which exclusively concerned Oxford. Perhaps the excuse may be, that Oxford was not interested as a body in an affair which belonged personally to the warden and fellows of one society. And at all events, the national part of the scandal was averted.+

On this subject, which furnished so many a heart-ache to a loyal hearted Englishman, we would beg to

throw a hasty glance. John Bull, who piques himself so much and so justly on the useful and the respectable, on British industry, British faith, British hardware, British morals, British muskets (which are by no means the best specimens of our morals, judging by the proportion that annually bursts in the hands of poor savages)-and, generally speaking, upon British arts, provided only they are the useful and the mechanical arts-this same John Bull has the most sheepish distrust of himself in every accomplishment that professes a purpose of ornament and mere beauty. Here he has a universal superstition in favour of names in ano and ini. Every foreigner indeed, but more especially every Italian-it is John's private faith-is by privilege of nature a man of taste, and, by necessity, a knave. Were it only of music that he thought this, and only of Italian foreigners, perhaps he might not be so far amiss. Oh! the barbarous leaning of British taste as regards music! oh, the trashy songs which pollute our theatres, and are allowed to steal into the operas of Mozart! Strange that the nation whose poetry and drama discover by degrees so infinitely the most passion, should in their music discover the least! Not merely, however, in arts, technically so called, but in every branch of ornamental knowledge, every thing that cannot be worked in a loom, weighed on a steel-yard, measured by an ellwand, valued by an auctioneer, John Bull secretly distrusts himself and his own powers. He may talk big when his patriotism is irritated; but his secret and sincere opinion is, that nature has made him a barbarian as regards the beautiful; if not for sensibility, at any rate for performance; and that in compensation of this novercal usage, fortune has given him a long purse to buy his beauty ready made. Hence it is, that, whilst openly disavowing it, John is for ever sneaking privately to foreigners, and tempting them with sumptuous bribes, to undertake a kind of works which many times would be better done by domestic talents. Latin, we may be sure, and Greek, fall too much within the description of the ornamental to be relished of home manufacture. Whenever, therefore,

a great scholar was heard of on the continent, him John Bull proceeded to buy or to bargain for. Many were imported at the Reformation. Joseph Scaliger was courted in the succeeding age. A younger friend of his, Isaac Casaubon, a capital scholar, but a dull man, and rather knavish, was caught. Exultingly did John hook him, play with him, and land him. James I. determined that he would have his life written by him: and, in fact, all sorts of uses were meditated and laid out for their costly importation. But he died without doing any thing that he would not have done upon the continent; the whole profit of the transaction rested with the Protestant cause, which (but for English gold) Casaubon would surely have abandoned for the honours and emoluments of Rome. Cromwell again, perfect John Bull as he was in this feature, also preserved the national faith; he would have his martial glories recorded. Well: why not? Especially for one who had Milton at his right hand. But no; he thought little of him-he would buy a foreigner. In fact, he was in treaty for several; and we will venture to say that Salmasius himself was not more confounded upon finding himself suddenly seized, bound, and whirled at Milton's chariot wheels, in a field where he was wont to career up and down as supreme and unquestioned arbiter, and at most expecting a few muttered insults, that would not require notice,-than Cromwell was on hearing that his own champion, a Londoner born, and manufactured at Cambridge, had verily taken the conceit out of the vainglorious, but all-learned Frenchman. It was just such another essay as between Orlando and the Duke's wrestler-as well for the merits of the parties, as for the pleasant disappointment to the lookers-on. For even on the continent all men rejoiced in the humiliation of Salmasius. Charles II., again, and his favourite ministers, had heard of Des Cartes as a philosopher and Latinist, but apparently not of Lord Bacon, except as a lawyer. King William, though in the age of Bishop Pearson, and Stillingfleet, and Bentley, in the very rare glances which he condescended to bestow on literature,

squinted at Grævius, Gronovius, and other Dutch professors of humanity on a ponderous scale. And, omitting scores of other cases, we could bring in illustration, even in our own day, the worthy George III., thinking it would be well to gain the imprimatur of his own pocket university of Göttingen, before he made up his mind on the elementary books used in the great schools of England, dispatched a huge bale of grammars, lexicons, vocabularies, fables, selections, exercise-books, spelling-books, and Heaven knows what all, to that most concinnous and most rotund of professors-Mr Heyne. At Cæsar's command, the professor slightly inspected them; and having done so, he groaned at the quality of the superb English paper, so much harder, stiffer, and more unaccommodating to domestic purposes than that soft German article, prepared by men of feeling and consideration in that land of sentiment, and thereupon (we pretend not to say how far in consequence thereof) he drew up an angry and vindictive verdict on their collective merits. And thus it happened that his Majesty came to have but an indifferent opinion of English school literature. Now, in this instance, we see the John Bull mania pushed to extremity. For surely Dr Parr, on any subject whatever, barring Greek, was as competent a scholar as Master Heyne.* And on this particular subject, the jest is apparent, that Parr was, and Heyne was not, a schoolmaster. Parr had cultivated the art of teaching all his life; and it were hard indeed, if labours so tedious and heavy might not avail a man to the extent of accrediting his opinion on a capital question of his own profession. Speaking seriously, since the days of Busby-that great mant who flogged so many of our avi-abavi atavi-and tritavi, among the school

masters of Europe, none could, in those days, stand forward as competitors in point of scholarship with Parr. Scholars more eminent, doubtless, there had been, but not among those who wielded the ferule; for the learned Dr Burney, junior, of Greenwich, and the very learned Dr Butler of Shrewsbury, had not then commenced their reigns. How pointed, then, was the insult, in thus transferring the appeal from a golden critic at home to a silver one abroad: or rather, how strong the prejudice which could prompt such a course to one who probably meditated no insult at all. And let no man say, on this occasion, that Parr, being a Jacobin, could not be decently consulted on the scruples of a king; for Heyne was a Jacobin also, until Jacobinism brought danger to his windows. If the oracle at Hatton philippized, the oracle of Göttingen philippized no less, and perhaps with much less temptation, and certainly with less conspicuous neglect of his own interest. Well for him that his Jacobinism lurks in ponderous Latin notes, whilst Dr Parr's was proclaimed to the world in English!

It is fitting, then, that we people of England should always keep a man or two capable of speaking with our enemies in the gate, when they speak Latin; more especially when our national honour in this particular is to be supported against a prejudice so deep, and of standing so ancient. These, however, are local arguments for cultivating Latin, and kept alive by the sense of wounded honour. But there are other considerations more permanent and intrinsic to the question, which press equally upon all cultivated nations. The language of ancient Rome has certain indestructible claims upon our regard: it has a peculiar merit sui generis in the

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