duced him to throw up his eye-brows, and exhibit his eyes. Thus have I seen him sometimes fascinate with a bewitching smile-sometimes you gazed in amaze, while he laughed outright-his whole frame then shook in convulsive motion-he did not, as somebody observed of Johnson, "laugh like a rhinoceros;" no, it was all good-humour without any sarcastic sneer. Sometimes when thus with brows elevated, he appeared absorbed in some secret admiration-the sentiment, which he then inspired, was awe-it forbade a word, or a breath-but the flash of his anger was inexpressibly terrific.'-vol. i. pp. 354, 355. But would any of our readers like to peruse a composition which, for the matchless ability which it evinces, would do honour, as we are here assured, to the pen of the Devil himself? Our anonymous letter-writer had frequently alluded in his previous epistles to a certain testimonial to his character and talents, which had been drawn up by Dr. Parr, but which at the same time he seemed to consider as a document almost too precious and too sacred for general perusal. At last, however, he is prevailed upon to trust Mr. Barker with a copy of the invaluable lines, the communication being prefaced after the following fashion:- Imprimis,' says he, the Testimonial from the great Doctor in my favour. As a composition it possesses such superlative excellence, and so great is my own interest in the preservation of so highly flattering a paper, that I cannot prevail upon myself to trust a document, to me of infinite value, to the precarious mode of conveyance by coach, or through the medium of friends. I therefore, to satisfy my own fears, and to ensure its security, shall in this sheet send you an exact and literal copy.' Our readers are by this time, we dare say, burning with impatience to behold this prodigy of a certificate, and we shall not longer torture their natural anxiety. Here is the inimitable effusion: Gentlemen, Though I have not the honour to be personally acquainted with you, yet I trust that you will excuse the liberty I take in bearing my sincere and decided testimony to the character of Mr. who is now a candidate for the vacant Chapel of H. I am happy and proud to call him my friend; for I have heard his public instructions,-I have been pleased by his private conversation; therefore I know the purity of his principles upon subjects the most interesting to the honour of the Established Church, and to the influence of religion upon the understandings and the hearts of those, by whom it is reverentially considered as the rule of their actions, and the foundation of their hopes. • With unfeigned and serious approbation I have long observed his diligence and zeal in the discharge of his clerical duties. They have impressed me more strongly, because they were unaccompanied with selfish views, or ostentatious display; because they were uniformly directed to the improvement both of the rich and of the poor; and, above all, because they were enforced by the authority of virtuous example. Few clergymen have more deservedly and more extensively obtained the esteem of their hearers, and the confidence of their friends; and sure I am, that if Mr.. should be thought worthy of your support, his good sense, his good manners, the uprightness of his intentions, and the activity of his exertions, will amply justify your choice, as well as my own recommendation. 'I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, with great respect, 6 SAMUEL PARR. To the Trustees of the Chapel of H. S.-vol. i. p. 370. We cannot for the life of us, we confess, see any thing extraordinary in these plain sentences. But 'There, sir,' exclaims the delighted possessor of the treasure, though it be only a transcript, its internal evidence testifies its authenticity. For the author must be aut Parr aut Diabolus!' Seeing the sort of character we have here to deal with, we must take his anecdotes of course, cum grano salis. With regard to his principal one, indeed-that, we mean, about the well known case of Oliver-which he calls a glorious historical anecdote,' and professes to give as he heard it from the lips of Dr. Parr himself, we have abundance of evidence to prove that his version is very nearly a fiction from beginning to end. It is quite impossible, in fact, that Dr. Parr could have told him the story which he pretends to have heard from him, and which he repeats in so very fluent a style. For any thing that we know, his imagination may have played him the same trick in other cases which it has done in this; but the character described in the following paragraph is at the same time so new and so ludicrous, that, whether it be delineated from nature or from fancy, our readers, we think, will thank us for giving it. Kett was my tutor, a strange compound,-his Classical Lectures excellent, his Bampton Lectures of the first order. His gravity was unnatural for his years. When not thirty years of age, he was called "Father Kett." He was industrious, and very persevering in his study. Thus far all was well. But, as he advanced in years, he advanced in folly; he affected to be a man of the world, the gay Lothario, and to dance attendance upon the ladies. We were amused at beholding trophies of gallantry suspended about his paintings and prints-here a piece of green, there blue, and there a piece of pink ribband. To add to the Judicrous, he put himself in London under the tuition of a dancing-master. You may trace the same graduation of folly; for, after his Bampton and other Lectures, and his three Volumes on Prophecies, he published Juvenile Poems, his Novel of Emily, and his Flowers of Wit. He lost his former character, was an object of general ridicule, despised in his own College. He was senior fellow. Twice the headship became vacant, and twice he lost his election. This mortification was too much for his mind: for some time he was under the care of a medical friend; but he was miserable in the head and heart. At length he married. I never knew why he had not a College living, for he rejected many. He had no preferment, and no fortune but what he had saved and got from his works. He had not been married long, when he destroyed himself. This I was told by a bookseller in Paternoster-row. Poor man vanity and the world gained an undue ascendancy-at length reason tottered, and the anchor of the soul was lost! Alas, poor Kett! I often think of him with amazement and pity.'-vol. i. pp. 424, 425. But we must conclude. We have not entered into any detail respecting the life and character of Dr. Parr, in examining Mr. Barker's pages, both because his rambling and declamatory correspondents do, in fact, supply us with very little matter of any novelty or interest in illustration of these topics, and because they have already occupied our attention at considerable length in a recent number. Dr. Parr was a great scholar, but had little or no pretencion to any other species of greatness. His extraordinary memory and command of language, aided by certain tricks of manner and deportment, enabled him to show off as a man of splendid genius in the eyes of the very shallow persons by whom he was generally surrounded, and whose admiration, too, he took pains to bribe by requiting them abundantly in kind for the flatteries they lavished on him. That he was, in truth, nothing more than we have thus described him, is evident to all the world, except Mr. Barker and his association, who would make a god of one who was only a very ordinary mortal. As for the present volume, it will be merely read, laughed at, and forgotten. The only portion of its contents that can be considered as of any real value or importance, is the account furnished by Mr. Fearn of his correspondence with the late Professor Dugald Stewart, which might certainly, however, have been laid before the world through the medium of any other publication of the season, with quite as much appropriateness as through that of the present. We shall be glad, however, if even this rather awkward proclamation of his existence should have the effect of calling any measure of public attention to the speculations of a philosopher, who has shown at least as high powers and as much originality as any other metaphysical inquirer of the age, while he has had to prosecute his investigations under the discouragement of a neglect that is any thing but creditable to the taste and discrimination of his countrymen. This is not the place to enter into any discussion of Mr. Fearn's peculiar opinions; but we cannot help saying, that the treatment he experienced from Mr. Stewart, as here detailed, reflects no honour upon the memory of that distinguished writer. His claim to originality, in regard to the particular position which Mr. Stewart affected to consider as having so little merit in point either of novelty or importance, was long ago maintained in this Journal, and is put beyond the reach of controversy by the statements here published. ART. VIII.-Duranti ou la Ligue en Province. Par M. Baour-Lormian, Membre de l'Academie Française. 4 vols. 12mo. Paris: Delangle. 1828. BAOUR-LORMIAN is the poet-laureat of France. Births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, peace, war, and congresses, are all by turns the subject of his muse. He has praised in three different pieces, and in a different style, the Emperor and the Bourbons. The funeral hymn on the death of General Hoche; the epithalamium on the marriage of Napoleon and Maria Louisa, and the epistle to Louis XVIII., show with what flexibility of talent he could celebrate the republic, the empire, and the monarchy. M. Baour-Lormian has passed through these three epochs without suffering the excesses of the revolution, the wars of the empire, or the saturnalia of the restoration, to injure his fortune, affect his courage, or menace his liberty. The son of a publisher at Toulouse, he cultivated poetry from his boyhood, and whilst his father, Baour, made a fortune in the book-trade, his son played the fine gentleman, and despising the name of Baour, which he thought too short, too common, and unsonorous for a poet, he added to it that of Lormian, the name of a little estate possessed by his ancestors; and still further to play the gentleman, he gave dinners to some complaisant friends, who praised his verses which nobody bought. His conduct gave rise to the following epigram: "Baour libraire de province, Dans son commerce a fait un joli gain; Dans le même traffic se ruine à grand train. Satire was at first the favourite pursuit of the young poet. The attacks of the new Juvenal were directed against his fellow-townsmen, and the Satires Toulousaines, in which he criticises the greater part of the members of the Athenæum of Toulouse, and some of the literary men of the south of France, obtained him some notice on the banks of the Garonne. Emboldened by this first attempt, M. Baour-Lormian believed himself able to write an epic. In 1797 he published a translation in verse, of the " Jerusalem Delivered." The work was detestably bad. He afterwards revised, corrected, improved, and enlarged it; he added some notes, and a commentary by M M. Buchon and Troguon; but unfortunately he made it not a whit the better to read. It was, indeed, a newer volume; but if we find in it more of Baour, we find less of Tasso; if we see in it a skilful and somewhat melodious versification, we find so little agreement with the original, that we are tempted to believe the report in Paris, that M. Baour-Lormian is ignorant of Italian. The icy reception which the first edition of the translation of the "Jerusalem Delivered" received, brought the author back to his original style of composition-the satirical. He had come to try his fortune in Paris. He published, one after the other, the satires since known under the title of the Troismots, and addressed them to a journalist of the name of Despaze, a satirist and Gascon like himself. It must be confessed, that the unjust censures, the undeserved sarcasms, with which they are filled, are often expressed in very smart verses. Led on by his epigrammatic style, he ventured to attack the celebrated Le Brun; but he found his master in him, and he fell crushed under the blows which were returned. The poet of Toulouse had ventured to say of Le Brun 'Lebrun de gloire se nourrit, Aussi voyez comme il maigrit.' His redoubtable adversary immediately replied "Sottise entretient l'embonpoint The imitations in verse, of Ossian's poems, are infinitely better than the productions just mentioned. This version of the Celtic bard has many noble features. The following extract has some true poetical grandeur : 'HYMNE AU SOLEIL. 'Roi du monde et du jour, guerrier aux cheveux d'or, Et traça dan l'azur ta route accoutumée ? Et ses rayons douteux dans les flots s'engloutissent. |