living from me. If you do not accept it, I particularly request that you will not make the offer known. How far this vicarage may be tenable with your present preferment, I know not; but if it should suit you to take it, you may resign it whenever your convenience may require it. The place is situated about nine miles to the north-west of Salisbury. I really feel greatly alarmed when I consider my presumption, and shall be anxious to be assured of your forgiveness. I have the honour to remain, with the most profound respect, dear Sir, your very faithful and obedient servant, CHEDWORTH.

DEAR SIR,

June 1, 1802.

I cannot adequately express my thanks for the signal mark of your kindness with which you intend honouring me. You will, however, I trust, believe that I feel most strongly the value and importance of your favour, and that I shall carefully attend to your injunction. I am sure Mr. Green will be highly gratified by your obliging message; he has left Ipswich on a tour westward, and intended being absent three or four months.

Had I not received your letter it was my intention to write to you by this post, to inform you that the little rectory of Nettleton, in Wiltshire, which is in my gift, is on the point of becoming vacant by the promotion of the present incumbent to a living not tenable with it. I am afraid it will be impossible to bring Nettleton within forty-five miles of your living in Warwickshire; but it is considerably within that distance of Winterbourne Stoke; and I should have the greatest pleasure in presenting Mr. Eyre to it, provided he can qualify to hold it with his vicarage by becoming a Master of Arts in time to prevent any risk of my incurring a lapse. I have a chaplainship at Mr. Eyre's service, in order to entitle him to a dispensation, but he must, you know, be also a Master of Arts. As I would on no account raise hopes which are not likely to be realized, I must request that you would not mention this matter to Mr. Eyre at present, but do me the favour to inform me how soon he can obtain a Master's degree. I would most gladly advance him £50 for his expences on that occasion.

Nettleton is situated in the N. W. part of Wiltshire, near Chippenham, and (as I believe) about twelve miles from Bath. The gross receipt of the present incumbent is somewhere about £190 a year, but I suppose it may be improvable, though perhaps not very much; but of this I speak from a very loose conjecture. It is rated in the King's books at £18. 12s. Id. The parsonage house I have understood to be small and incommodious. As I am desirous of learning as soon as possible whether Mr. Eyre can obtain a degree in time, I shall address this to Hatton, with a direction to be forwarded to you if from home, and shall esteem myself particularly obliged to you if you will favour me with as early an answer as you can, directing to me at No. 9, Henrietta-street, Covent-Garden. I feel much interest about Mr. Eyre, and shall consider myself as particularly fortunate if I can be the instrument of rendering him comfortable. I will not intrude longer on your time than while I assure you that I am, with the deepest sentiments of respect and gratitude, dear Sir, your very faithful and much obliged friend and servant, CHEDWORTH.

DEAR SIR,

I hope you will believe that I am fully sensible of the honour you confer on me, and that I shall have great pleasure in obeying your commands. I am sure your candour will not interpret delay as neglect.

I believe I shall hardly be in town before May, and I shall, with your permission, defer the execution of my design till I get thither. One difficulty which you have brought on me, and which distresses me a little, I will not conceal from you. The plate must have an inscription, and though, as the ingenious Governor Malcolm once said to you at Yarmouth, “I know a little of Latin," no consideration could induce me to put two Latin words together if I knew they were likely to meet your eye. I would not have the plate blemished by barbarism; and were I to attempt to write an inscription myself, it would be much in the manner of an honest gentleman of this county, who, intending to build a mausoleum for himself and his family, gave out that he had fixed on a motto for it, which

nothing could induce him to alter. "Pro sibi et suis;" but the mausoleum was not built, and the gentleman lost the opportunity of recording his skill in Latinity.

I received a letter from Mr. Eyre on Friday last, in which he informs me that his neighbour, Mr. Lewis, the High Sheriff of the county, had appointed him his chaplain; he lamented your absence, as he had much wished for your advice and assistance respecting his Assize Sermon. Ludicrous as it will appear to you, he asked my opinion, and I presumed to tell him, that I thought in an Assize Sermon it was by no means necessary that he should advert to what you have somewhere called "the fleeting politics of the day;" that to avoid offence was extremely desirable; that though an honest man would never say what he did not think, a prudent man would not always say what he thought; that general recommendations of mutual forbearance and charity were never unseasonable e; and I took the liberty of recalling to his memory the following passage, which is towards the end of Archdeacon Balguy's first charge: "In obedience to law, and submission to lawful authority, all reasonable men will unite; in other matters let us be content to differ. It is scarce probable that the points for which we contend are of more importance than the reciprocal good offices of private friendship, and the preservation of the public peace; neither of which can be long maintained among men whose affections are mutually alienated by the rage and violence of party spirit."

I regret very much that I have missed the pleasure of meeting you in town, and am very sorry to learn that you have been oppressed by the prevalent disorder. I have for some time been much indisposed. I remain, with all possible respect, dear Sir, your very faithful friend and much obliged humble servant, CHEDWORTH.

The Rev. James Eyre, to whom Lord Chedworth gave the livings in Wiltshire, was one of those friends in whom Dr. Parr placed his greatest confidence. He became acquainted with him soon after his abode in Warwickshire, and it appears by the

Sequel that in the year 1791 there was confidential intimacy. In many places he has praised the uprightness and the learning of Mr. Eyre. He calls him, "My sensible, honest, clear-headed, and well-informed friend;" and there are letters in which he asks preferment for him: for Mr. Eyre was burdened with a large family, without any provision except that which depended on his own exertions as a schoolmaster and a curate. Mr. Eyre published no regular work: but his interleaved copy of Johnson's Dictionary, containing some corrections and additions, after his death was given up to the booksellers who published Todd's edition, and procured from them the sum of £50 for his family. He also printed in the Gentleman's Magazine a statement concerning the plate given to Dr. Parr by Lord Chedworth. Dr. Parr's patronage of Mr. Eyre's family continued long after his death ; he might be styled their second father, and in the year 1817 became more closely connected to them by his union with the amiable sister of his old friend. Moreover, his benevolence lasted beyond the grave. He left handsome legacies to the excellent and accomplished eldest daughter, and other children of Mr. Eyre.

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CHAPTER XIV.

Philopatris Varvicensis-Letters from Dr. Parr, to Mr. Coke-Letters from Mr. Fox, to Dr. Parr.

From the time of Mr. Fox's death, Dr. Parr meditated some composition in honour of the statesman, his personal friend and his intended patron. He had praised him in the Preface to Bellendenus, and now acknowledged himself to be the author of that panegyric. He collected materials for biography, but found that politics were so mixed with any composition of the kind, that it would be impossible for him to write historically without writing voluminously; it was therefore his choice rather to publish the compilations of other men than a discourse of his own. Perhaps the demise of Mr. Fox was too recent for his life or his character to be the subject of history: perhaps he who would have collected materials for his biography, was too much implicated in the matter, and his own fortunes were too much interested, to permit him to write impartially. Whatever were the causes, Dr. Parr did not fulfil his original intention, but has collected a series of accounts, all of them