losophical as you and I are, the word right will be equivocal and delusive. I quite agree with you in condemning Mr. Pitt's violence of taxation. Quocunque modo rem is his maxim in every part of his political conduct. I do not mean rem in the beggarly sense of money' for himself, but in twenty other senses, which I shall not enumerate.

But

"Have no fears about Latin; for it would be against all sort of propriety in the present affair. English, and plain English too, will be the vehicle of my ideas. I am full of allusion to the Warburtonian writings, and this may with common readers create a little obscurity. I have written chiefly for divines and learned men. the general force of the composition, and the general scope of the attack will be obvious to every body. You will give me credit for my pleasantry, my audacity, and my justice, when we come to the use I have made of that impertinent, impotent, impudent book, which he wrote against Hume, and yet I am so prudent that no divine can put his claw upon me. It will be out by the beginning of February. You must know that in my revenge I have shewn all the subtlety and implacability of a genuine priest. Pray, mind- Dr. Warburton published two books, which he was foolishly ashamed of, and tried to suppress, though in fact they must, when com

pared with his other writings, exalt him in the estimation of men of sense. They sell the one for half a guinea, and the other for a guinea. These I have republished, because Hurd did not republish them in a grand, and, as he says, complete edition of Warburton's Works. They are precious morsels, and I have embalmed them. But the worst is here: this prim, priggish, proud priest,* Dr. Hurd attacked, you know, Jortin

*[This alliteration, as well as the previous one, impertinent, impotent, impudent, gives great probability to a story, which has been already told in the first Volume of the Parriana p. 321, and which I will now give in a more circumstantial form from a book entitled - Facetia Cantabrigienses, consisting of Anecdotes, Smart Sayings, Satirics, Retorts, etc. by or relating to celebrated Cantabs, dedicated ta the Students of Lincoln's Inn, by Socius, Lond. 1825. 12mo. p. 134. :-"Among the best specimens of alliteration may be ranked the well-known lines on the celebrated Cardinal Wolsey:

'Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred,

"How high his honour holds his haughty head!'

But the following unpublished sally, by the erudite Dr. Parr, is not a whit inferior. In a company consisting principally of divines, the conversation naturally turned on the merits of the late head of the Church, who was thus characterised by the learned and eccentric Doctor, in reply to one of the gentlemen:Sir, he is a poor paltry Prelate, proud of petty popularity, and perpetually preaching to petticoats.' In the Probationary Odes, if I remember rightly, Bishop Pretyman is called —

Pembroke's pale pride, in Pitt's præcordia plac'd.' The words, here attributed to Dr. Parr, are represented, by my

and Leland, and then suppressed his pamphlets, which are very able and very diabolical. I have republished them with a bitter, biting Dedication to Dr. Hurd, who is, but dare not own that he is, the author. You see what a fine field lies open before me. I have entered it boldly, and

correspondent in the passage cited, to have been said of Porteus; and it is very certain that Dr. Parr entertained no good opinion of that Prelate, not because he was orthodox, or because he was heterodox, (for Dr. Parr respected many orthodox, as well as many heterodox churchmen,) not because he was a changeling, turncoat, or apostate from his early principles, (for, though Dr. Parr loved honest consistency in thought, word, and deed, he did not and could not reproach any man for a conscientious renunciation of former opinions, without any hope or prospect of advantage from that renunciation,) but because he saw sufficient reason to doubt the sincerity of those, who held one language before their elevation to episcopal dignity, and after their elevation held a different language. They might be sincere, it is true, but in the circumstances Dr. Parr thought that silence best became them; in their officious and forward zeal he discerned the latent workings of ambition,-the desire to please a patron in the expectation of higher preferment; in their severe reflections on the opinions and the conduct of men, who still adhered to the sentiments and the doctrines, which they had themselves abandoned, Dr. Parr marked the uncharitableness or the malignity of their nature, and with the proud consciousness of his own independence, his own consistency, and his own integrity, it is no wonder that he, in dealing with such persons, emptied the phials of his wrath, and launched forth the thunders of his invective, and hewed down with his Turkish cymetar. In a volume of tracts on subscription to articles of faith,

in my plans and manœuvres you will see no want of skill. If Milton killed Salmasius, the Curate of Hatton, aided by the cold, will be the killer of his Diocesan. I forgot to tell you that I have written a Preface to Hurd's Tracts, and that I have most wickedly, most wickedly collected

mentioned in the Bibliotheca Parriana p. 610, of which tracts the first is Dr. Powell's celebrated Sermon in Defence of the Subscriptions required in the Church of England, preached before the University of Cambridge, on the Commencement-Sunday, 1757, (third edn. 1759,) and the fourth is-An Address to the Clergy of the Church of England in particular, and to all Christians in general, for Relief in the Matter of Subscription, by Dr. F. Wollaston, 1772. Dr. Parr has the following note:

"Powell's Sermon stirred up the dispute. Dr. Wollaston, Vicar of Chislehurst; Porteus, then Rector of Lambeth, afterwards Bishop of London; and Yorke, then Dean of Lincoln, afterwards Bishop of Ely, waited upon Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain his support for a reveiw of the 39 Articles, and a reform of the Church Service on Dr. Clarke's plan. They failed; but Porteus, many years after, attacked the Socinians in a pamphlet without his name, which I have not, and which was lent to me by the late worthy and learned Dr. Matthew Raine of the Charter-House. I smiled at the conversion

of Porteus, when he wore a mitre. S. P."

Conduct of this sort was exactly that description of conduct, which was calculated to rouse the honest indignation, and to provoke the pointed sarcasms of Dr. Parr. It will, however, be right to give to the accused Bishop the advantage of his own statement, with the comments of a friendly pen: :

"In 1773, a circumstance occurred, which then excited con

all the reproaches cast upon these two works, which reproaches I have with editorial accuracy and solemnity, prefixed under the classical title of Testimonia Auctorum. In short, dear Doctor, the whole is what Dr. Glynn calls a d-ble wapper; what the Greeks would call the πλŋyn kaiρía

siderable interest, and in which the part, that Dr. Porteus took, has been much misinterpreted and misunderstood. The following statement in his own words will place the fact in its true point of view:-'At the close of the year 1772, and the 'beginning of the next, an attempt was made by myself and a 'few other clergymen, among whom were Mr. Francis Wol'laston, Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore, and Dr. Yorke, 'now Bishop of Ely, to induce the Bishops to promote a review 'of the Liturgy and Articles, in order to amend in both, but 'particularly in the latter, those parts, which all reasonable per'sons agreed stood in need of amendment. This plan was not "in the smallest degree connected with the petitioners at the "Feathers-Tavern, but, on the contrary, was meant to counte'ract that and all similar extravagant projects; to strengthen ' and confirm our ecclesiastical establishment; to repel the at'tacks, which were at that time continually made upon it by 'its avowed enemies; to render the 17th Article on Predesti'nation and Election more clear and perspicuous, and less liable 'to be wrested by our adversaries to a Calvinistic sense, which <has been so unjustly affixed to it; to improve true Christian 'piety among those of our own communion, and to diminish 'schism and separation by bringing over to the national Church 'all the moderate and well-disposed of other persuasions. On 'these grounds we applied, in a private and respectful manner, 'to Archbishop Cornwallis, requesting him to signify our wishes '(which we conceived to be the wishes of a very large proporVOL. II.

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