Note 146 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

“Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, not admitted into the collections of their respective works,” itself a collection which our shelves could ill spare, though maliciously republished by Dr. Parr. The dedication by Parr stands unparalleled for comparative criticism. It is the eruption of a volcano; it sparkles, it blazes, and scatters light and destruction. How deeply ought we to regret that this Nazarite suffered his strength to be shorn by the Delilahs of spurious fame. Never did this man, with his gifted strength, grasp the pillars of a temple, to shake its atoms over Philistines; but pleased the childlike simplicity of his mind by pulling down houses over the heads of their unlucky inhabitants. He consumed, in local and personal literary quarrels, a genius which might have made the next age his own. With all the stores of erudition, and all the eloquence of genius, he mortified a country parson for his politics, and a London accoucheur for certain obstetrical labours performed on Horace; and now his collected writings lie before us, volumes unsaleable and unread. His insatiate vanity was so little delicate, as often to snatch its sweetmeat from a foul plate; it now appears, by the secret revelations in Griffith’s own copy of his “Monthly Review,” that the writer of a very elaborate article on the works of Dr. Parr, was no less a personage than the Doctor himself. His egotism was so declamatory, that it unnaturalized a great mind, by the distortions of Johnsonian mimicry; his fierceness, which was pushed on to brutality on the unresisting, retreated with a child’s terrors when resisted; and the pomp of petty pride in table triumphs and evening circles, ill compensated for the lost century he might have made his own!

Lord o’er the greatest, to the least a slave, Half-weak, half-strong, half-timid, and half-brave; To take a compliment of too much pride, And yet most hurt when praises are denied. Thou art so deep discerning, yet so blind, So learn’d, so ignorant, cruel, yet so kind; So good, so bad, so foolish, and so wise;— By turns I love thee, and by turns despise. MS. Anon. (said to be by the late Dr. Homer.)