Star.
London, England, 1830-09-07 00:00:00

MT CHART INTELLIGENCE.

PARRIAXA : or Notices of Ilse kiln. Samuel Parr, LL.D. By EH.
Barker, E.g. vol. 2. pp. zed. 768.
Our limits will not permit us to attempt to give our readers any thing
like an adequate idea of the great variety of useful information, curious
literary anecdote, and learned criticisms, contained in this interesting.
but very miscellaneous volume; we must therefore content omelets
with merely pointing out some of the more important and striking por
tions, referring the reader to the work itself for further particulars,
which we do by asserting that we have rarely perused a work which
united, in so eminent a degree, the agreeable and the instructive.
This volume, which is in every respect decidedly superior to its m-
anta, commences with a very interesting biographical sketch ofJottx
Limo, the talented but eccentric author of the once celebrated Letters
lessacerning the present state of Poland, from the pen of our great
lying Jurist--amictu lanniani ye/IM4B--.IEREMIT BENTHAM. This
admirable and truly graphic sketch the additional recommen.
dation of being the only biographical notice hitherto published of this
wary singular and gifted person. Lind, when a young man, accompanied
our Ambassador to Constantinople in the capacity of chaplain to the
embassy ; be had not been long, however, in this situation, before it was
discovered that the ambassador's mistress regarded the young divine
with too favourable an eye, and Mr. Lind was ordered forthwith back
to England. Upon his return to London, he doffed the clerical habit,
spotted a mistress, whom he afterwards married, assumed the airs, dress,
and vices of a man of fashion, and was subsequently called to the bar:
Shortly after his arrival the public were presented with his far-famed
Letters on Poland ; a second edition of which was very speedily called
for. At the breaking out of the American war he was employed by the
Ministry of that day to draw up a manifesto in justification of that most I
unjust, impolitic, and ruinous measure. His next publication was a
Itsvieuqof Me Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament; a work to which
Mr. Bentham contributed, and which Dr. Parrcharaaerised as the ablest
book be ever read In defence of the American war. He also wrote a
quarto volume in defence of Lord Pigoes Madras Government, and for
which be received one thousand pounds. Mr. Lind died on March
1781. His English style was highly commended by &lguy, Lomb,
mid Lord Grenville; yet bad he taken a very strange grammatical no-
tion into his head : where any body else would any biasses{ f, he wrote
his eel f. Mr. Bentham has in this communication favoured us with
several interesting anecdotes of his own situation and opinions in
Uri, life.
The second article comprises various notices of the a profoundly pU.
Ilasepifear Dr. NATHANIEL Foarres, of Colchester. He was en.
zeole/itrenal years in compiling an Index to the House of Comeau'sad was remunerated with three thousand
At p. ID the author has a long and able note in pounds.
defence Dr. Paris
pialsaleses, Bishop PORTIUS, in reply to an abusive and illogical tirade,
equally evisarkable foe its illiberal spirit and the incorrectness of its
statement, inserted In the Barrint Carrtc,for January 1928. This
article is no less deserving of commendation for the soundness of its
views and opiates, than for the eloquence and ability with which they
are develspfl end enforced. The Rev. Reviewer's virulent and malig.
neat attack richly merited the severe and Archllochean castigation it has
received from die justly indignant Mr. Barker.
Prassow.—See p. 83 for a curious and valuable extract from his pro.
hand work on the Creed, by which it appears that thirty-one years be..
Are the publication of Locke's gnat work, he had briefly but ably pro.
Navigated the doctrine, that all our ideas proceed from sensation and
Deflection.
Weasontow..—By indefatigable research Mr. Barker has collected
a large mass of very curious matter relative to this mitred Sophist, and
which throws considerable light both on his moral and literary character:
" The eloquent passage In the Introduction to WASBURTON'S Jo.
Ilan, was probably suggested to the Bishop by a passage equally elo-
quent in Sir WALTER RALEIGH'S MAIM where he is speaking of
the fall of the Roman Empire." p. 117. It is something more than pro.
lab* since Warburton himself quotes this identical passage in Isis
=into the Canoes of Prodigies and Miracles, and exclaims,
strength of colouring ! What grace, what nobleness of eapres.
den 1 With what a majesty does he close his immortal labours ! A
wore serious charge,lhowever„ may be safely urged against Warburton;
be did not rest satisfied with closely imitating his great predecessors, but
sewMlwa pillaged from them in the most audacious manner. He thus
deem the above quoted treatises " Methinks I see her, like the mighty
ogle, renewing her immortal youth, and purging he opening sight, at
the unobstructed beams of our benign meridian sun ; which some pre.
tend to say had been dazzled and abused by an inglorious pestilential
meteor; while the ill.affected birds of night would, with their envious
bootings, prognosticate a length of darkness and decay." Now
bear the immortal Republican ;—" Methinks I see in my mind
a noble and puissant nation musing herself like a strong man after
sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle
muting her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the
'full mid-day beam ; purging and unsealing her long.abused sight at the
fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous
and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about,
amazed at what she seems." Blivrox's Prose Works, vol. 1. p. 318.
At p. 297, Warburton is accused of having borrowed his phastasy
about the sixth Anicd. from a curious but now almost forgotten book,
entitled Cleanings from Antiquity, by Joss BEAUMONT, 1724. See
also p. 330, where his whimsical delineation of Puritanism is ?hewn to
1 have been borrowed from fludibras ; and p. 330, where be is charged
with stealing from The Life of Mhos, and from Ls Geese. And
yet this is the man who says in his Letter to Loath, " 1 will venture to
beast again to you, that 1 believe no author was ever more averse to take
te Mosel( any thing that belonged to soother." [! I]
I remember (says Air. Barker, p. 112) that Dr. Parr once observed
tome, that Bishop Warburton was the only great literary character of
'his day, who was personally unknown to him." We also learn from
gossiping Boswell, that Johnson and Warburton only met once. " lf,"
said Johnson, " I had written with hostility of Warburton in my Shalt-
speare, I should have quoted this couplet (nom Savage) :

" Here learning blinded first and then bcguill,
" Looks Jerk as lgnoranu, as Frenzy wild."
Both Parr and Chalmers erroneously attributed Remarks we Humes
Natural History of Reliyios to Iluid's pen. Mr. Barker very sada-
factorily proves that Hurd only wrote the rrarodudion and the 'lna-
elusion, and that the acrimonious Remark: were the composition of the
great Dictator himself. Hu :—The mean, dastaftliy, and nauseous
cooduct of this wily and sycophantic Bishop, is circumstantially re.
corded ; and the truth, so often doubted, and not untrequently denied
in the most positive terms, is established and confirmed beyond the pow-
s bility of future contradiction. Mr. Barker has [p. 310-420] most
completely and triumphantly justified Dr. Parr's treatment of this cle.
rival toad-eater—a term most appropriately applied to Hurd, in the
first instance, by a shrewd writer in the Critical Review, and subse-
quently by ?Jr. D7araeli. For specimens of hie fawning adulation,
see p. 100, where he tells Warburton that he equals Longinus and
Aristotle. See also p. 318, for a sketch of his character u drawn by
himself, in which his perverseness, spite, apiece, and prejudice. is proved
under his own hand; and which must, as Mr. Barker both justly and
eloquently observes, satisfy every unprejudiced mind " that Hued was
perfectly incorrigible, and that he could deliberately 'tin beyond she
grave, and seek to immortalise malignity."
Osstax.—Mr. Barker is one of the most able and ddantined of all
the advocates for the genuineness of the Oasiank Poems. He has en.
toned vety minutely into the subject, and brought forward many pow.
erful and novel arguments in support of their authenticity --See pp.
420-474, 747-768. •
We have only room to add, that Mr. Barker bas collected, from va-
rious mums, very carious and valuable particulars relating tO
LELAND, LOWTIt, TAYLOR' 'rocas', SUMMAND, POTT KR,
l ' TOUT, BRYANT, CAPRL 6LorT MARINADE, MONTRIQUIE V,
Poison, kintrutv, Weisner"atrLST, and other eminent literary elk..
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