ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

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

[ocr errors]

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 some children exhibit, to know, that the dawn of Sheridan's intellect was as dull and unpromising as its meridian

day was bright; and that in the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence, and audiences fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and preceptor, pronounced to be "a most impenetrable dunce."

From Mr. Whyte's school the boys were removed to England, where Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan had lately gone to reside, and in the year 1762, Richard was sent to Harrow -Charles being kept at home as a fitter subject for the instructions of his father, who, by another of those calculations of poor human foresight, which the deity, called Eventus by the Romans, takes such wanton pleasure in falsifying, considered his elder son as destined to be the brighter of the two brother stars. At Harrow, Richard was remarkable only as a very idle, careless, but, at the same time, engaging boy, who contrived to win the affection, and even admiration, of the whole school, both masters and pupils, by the mere charm of his frank and genial manners, and by the occasional gleams of superior intellect, which broke through all the indolence and indifference of his character.

Harrow, at this time, possessed some peculiar advantages, of which a youth like Sheridan might have powerfully availed himself. At the head of the school was doctor Robert Sumner, a man of fine talents, but, unfortunately, one of those who have passed away without leaving any trace behind, except in the admiring recollection of their contemporaries. His taste is said to have been of a purity almost perfect, combining what are seldom seen together, that critical judgment which is alive to the errors of genius, with the warm

sensibility that deeply feels its beauties. At the same period, the distinguished scholar, Dr. Parr, who, to the massy erudition of a former age, joined all the free and enlightened intelligence of the present, was one of the under masters of the school; and both he and Dr. Sumner endeavoured, by every method they could devise, to awaken in Sheridan a consciousness of those powers, which, under all the disadvantages of indolence and carelessness, it was manifest to them that he possessed. But remonstrance and encouragement were equally thrown away upon the good-humoured but immovable indifference of their pupil; and though there exist among Mr. Sheridan's papers some curious proofs of a degree of industry in study for which few have ever given him credit, they are probably but the desultory efforts of a later period of his life, to recover the loss of that first precious time, whose susceptibility of instruction, as well of pleasure, never comes again.

One of the most valuable acquisitions he derived from Harrow was that friendship, which lasted throughout his life, with Dr. Parr;

which mutual admiration very early began, and the "idem sentire de re publica" of course not a little strengthened.

In a letter, dated from Hatton, August 3, 1818, the doctor says, "With the aid of a scribe I sit down to fulfil my promise about Mr. Sheridan. There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was inferior to many of his school-fellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do not remember any one instance in which he distinguished himself by Latin or English composition, in

prose or verse. Nathaniel Halhed, one of his school-fellows, wrote well in Latin and Greek. Richard Archdall, another schoolfellow, excelled in English verse. Richard Sheridan aspired to no rivalry with either of them. He was at the uppermost part of the fifth form, but he never reached the sixth, and, if I mistake not, he had no opportunity of attending the most difficult and the most honourable of school business, when the Greek plays were taught -and it was the custom at Harrow to teach these at least every year. He went through his lessons in Horace, and Virgil, and Homer well enough for a time. But, in the absence of the upper master, doctor Sumner, it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek grammar. Knowing him to be a clever fellow, I did not fail to probe and to teaze him. I stated his case with great good-humour to the upper master, who was one of the best tempered men in the world; and it was agreed between us, that Richard should be called oftener, and worked more severely. The varlet was not suffered to stand up in his place; but was summoned to take his station near the master's table, where the voice of no prompter could reach him; and, in this defenceless condition he was so harassed, that he at last gathered up some grammatical rules, and prepared himself for his lessons. While this tormenting process was inflicted upon him, I now and then

Dr. Parr was not aware of the circumstance, Sheridan did try his talent at English verse before he left Harrow.

upbraided him. But you will take notice that he did not incur any corporal punishment for his idleness: his industry was just sufficient to protect him from disgrace. All the while Sumner and I saw in him vestiges of a superior intellect. His eye, his countenance, his general manner, were striking. His answers to any common question were prompt and acute. We knew the esteem and even admiration, which, somehow or other, all his school-fellows felt for him. He was mischievous enough, but his pranks were accompanied by a sort of vivacity and cheerfulness, which delighted Sumner and myself. I had much talk with him about his apple-loft, for the supply of which all the gardens in the neighbourhood were taxed, and some of the lower boys were employed to furnish it. I threatened, but without asperity, to trace the depredators, through his associates, up to their leader. He, with perfect good-humour, set me at defiance, and I never could bring the charge home to him. All boys and all masters were pleased with him. I often praised him as a lad of great talents, often exhorted him to use them well; but my exhortations were fruitless. I take for granted that his taste was silently improved, and that he knew well the little which he did know. He was removed from school too soon by his father, who was the intimate friend of Sumner, and whom I often met at his house. Sumner had a fine voice, fine ear, fine taste, and, therefore, pronunciation was frequently the favourite subject between him and Tom Sheridan. I was present at many of their discussions and disputes, and sometimes took a very active part in them-but Richard

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »