Note 54 — No. XI.
Reading edition
Line 25.—[The Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D., was not only a great scholar, but an uncompromising Whig, and one of Fox’s most enthusiastic supporters. His conversational powers were great, and his arguments were enforced by boldness, dogmatism, and arrogance, which qualities, however, did not always exempt him from stinging retorts even from the fair sex. The following, among other attacks, appears in Crabb Robinson’s interesting Diary, ii. 457:—
A RECIPE.
To half of Busby’s skill in mood and tense
Add Bentley’s pleasantry, without his sense:
Of Warburton take all the spleen you find,
And leave his genius and his wit behind.
Squeeze Churchill’s rancour from the verse it flows in,
And knead it stiff with Johnson’s heavy prosing.
Add all the piety of St. Voltaire,
Mix the gross compound—Fiat Dr. Parr.
His person, in full canonicals, with capacious wig, unfailing tobacco pipe and tankard, is, with the effigies of many other noted politicians of the period, introduced into a spirited bacchanalian scene by Gillray, published in 1801, entitled The Union Club.]