unanimous vote of the Benchers of that learned society, to one of the most honourable, though by no means lucrative situations, in which any ecclesiastic in this or any other country can possibly be placed. That illustrious body, which has so often on former occasions distinguished itself by the choice of preachers, by the election of such men as Donne and Gataker, as Archbishops Usher and Tillotson, and as Bishops Gastrell, Warburton, and Hurd, no less than by its general patronage of merit, and its love of piety and learning, finally elected Dr. Maltby their preacher. For nearly five years has Dr. Maltby held a situation which has been constantly filled by the most distinguished scholars and divines who have adorned the annals of our Church; and if I may judge by the single specimen of his labours, which has yet been given to the public, and by the character which his Discourses have acquired, especially those on the Gospel of St. Luke, he has fully justified the choice of the Benchers, and the expectations of his venerable Master. In 1781 Parr took the degree of LL.D. in the University of Cambridge, having kept two Acts and supported two Theses before Dr. Hallifax, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, from whom he received the following letter: * See the Dedication of a Visitation Sermon, preached before the late Bishop of Lincoln in 1825, and published at the request of his Lordship and the Clergy. DEAR SIR, Warsop, Notts, 6th Jan. 1781. Your favour of the 2d instant, sent to me at my brother's in Albemarle-street, I did not receive till this day, and I hasten to acknowledge it by the return of the post. I left London on Monday last, the 1st inst. and mean to stay here till the end of the present month. On the 1st of February I hope to be completely settled at Cambridge, and shall then be ready to receive and obey your commands. In the mean time, I wish to accommodate myself to your conveniency as well as I can. If you have any particular questions on which you would choose to make your Theses (for I speak in the plural number, as there must be two of them), let me know. I am not ignorant of the merits of the person with whom I am to commit myself; and will endeavour not to disgrace you or myself when we come to closer quarters. I remember with pleasure the happy hours we have passed together at Stanmore and Brooks Hill, and shall indulge a conscious pride in shewing to the University, that I know how to distinguish between a man of real literary merit and a flimsy sciolist. If you favour me with a line, direct to me near Mansfield, Notts, without any other town's name. Fix your own time for your acts, and I will suit myself accordingly. With my compliments to Mrs. Parr, I am, dear Sir, very truly your most obedient servant, S. HALLIFAX. Parr's Acts in the schools excited a good deal of curiosity. His Theses were fine compositions; but not having a complete command over his papers, he bungled in referring to them, and thus embarrassed the disputations. "I must beg to have a sight of your Thesis, (says Dr. Forster, in a letter which has already been copied,) whether you print it or not, but I hope you will print it. I wish much to see a style in modern Latin. I hear from Roderick a most splendid account of your proceeding at Cambridge." He buried his daughter Jane in the cloisters of the Cathedral Church at Norwich. She was born Mrs. Parr, in a at Colchester, and died in 1782. letter to her husband, then about to quit Norwich for Warwickshire, entreats him not to forget the tomb in the cloisters before he takes his leave. His youngest daughter, Catharine, was born at Norwich in 1781. CHAP. III. From 1786 to 1790. What Dr. Parr's immediate motive was for resigning the school at Norwich, I do not find. In August 1785 he formally sent in his resignation, and went to reside at Hatton at Easter 1786. Whether the charms of a country life had fascinated his imagination, or whether his spirits wanted repose and retirement, from the noise and bustle of a public school, it is clear that he was not easy, and his letters to the Rev. H. Homer open to us some of the fancies which he then indulged. At Norwich, in a letter to Walter Pollard, Esq. of Furnival's Inn, he exposes with the greatest confidence, many of his private feelings and anxieties, and doubts about securing a moderate competency.* * Pollard had been his scholar at Stanmore, but was obliged to flee from England, and borrowed money from him in his embarrassments. Parr calls him a very acute, learned, and wrong-headed man. The following observations were extorted from * For a minute account of Pollard, see Memoirs of the Author of Indian Antiquities, part 1. pp. 62-82, &c. Parr by Pollard's representation of his own dis tresses. DEAR SIR, March 29th, 1782. Most sincerely do I lament the difficulties with which you have struggled, and most warmly do I applaud the fortitude with which you have sustained them. Let me beseech you, dear Sir, not to confound omission with neglect, nor to charge upon coldness towards your interest, or indifferenee about your friendship, a silence that was really the result of other causes. The fluctuating state of my body between health and sickness, and even between life and death, has produced a general relaxation of that activity with which I had been accustomed to attend to the affairs of my friends. You desire my confidence; and I therefore add, that the little progress I have made in worldly matters, the heavy losses I have sustained by the war, the inconsiderable advantages I have gained by a laborious and irksome employment, and the mortifying discouragements I have met in my Clerical profession, have all conspired to depress my spirits and undermine my constitution. I was content to give up ecclesiastical preferment, while I had a prospect of making some comfortable provision for my old age in my business as a teacher; but the best of my years have now elapsed, and I am, through a most vexatious and trying series of events, not a shilling richer than when I went to Stanmore. I have this very week closed an account on which I stood indebted near £2,000, which I was obliged to borrow when I launched into active life. My house at Stanmore I sold literally for less money than I expended on the repairs only. To this loss of more than a thousand pounds, I am to add near £700, which I may lose entirely, and must lose in a great measure, by the reduction of St. Vincent and St. Kitts. My patience, so far as religion prescribes it, is sufficient to support me under this severity of moral trial-but the hour is past in which I might hope to secure a comfortable independency, and I am now labouring under the gloomy prospect of toiling with exhausted strength for a scanty subsistence to myself and my family. It is but eighteen months that I could pronounce a shilling my own; now, indeed, meo sum pauper in ære—but my |