334 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED, 



Parr was famous for his Latin epitaphs and sepulchral inscription's'.- 

 Those inscribed on the monuments of Gibbon, Johnson, Burke, Fox and 

 Sir John Moore are by him. At table once, Dr. Parr, in ecstasies at 

 the conversational powers of Lord Brskine, called out to him (though 

 his junior) : " My Lord, I mean to write your epitaph ! " " Dr. 

 Parr," replied the clever Chancellor, " it is a temptation to commit 

 suicide." 



The relic which I preserve of Dr. Parr is a thin volume consisting, 

 of three tracts on classical subjects, bound together. The Doctor has 

 written their respective titles on the first fly-leaf. " Spohn de Agro 

 Trojano. LipsisS) 1814. Curiae Criticse in Comicorum Pragment ab 

 Athengeo servata . Auctore Meneke . Berol . 1814. Gottlieb . Ernesti 

 Epistola ad Schleusnerum de Suidse Lexicographi usu ad Crisin- et 

 Interpretationem Librorum Sacrorum . Lipsise, 1875." To show, as- 

 I suppose, that he had minutely looked through these tracts, the 

 Doctor adds the characteristic observation : " Sphon's Latinity m 

 perplexed. In the note page 35, line 10th, I think Automedon et 

 Alcimus should be .in the accusative, as followed by dilectos." Parr's- 

 handwriting is very bad : it is slovenly and indefinite. " You 

 always wrote hieroglyphically," says Charles Lamb to George Dyer, 

 "yet not to come up to the mystical notations and conjuring, 

 characters of Dr. Parr," (Quoted in Porster's Life of W. S. Landor, 

 page 93.) 



We have seen the friendly relations subsisting between Dr. Parr 

 and Dr. Johnson. I suppose they were not brought much together. 

 When negatives and positives, so decided, approached each other, there 

 must always have been considerable risk of explosion. Disparity of 

 age may have helped to keep the peace. Dr. Parr maintained also 

 a life-long friendship with Walter Savage Landor, a character with 

 whom it required tact to keep on terms. Here again difierence of 

 age was probably advantageous. Landor was Parr's junior by many 

 years. " I think," writes Lander's brother, in Forster's Life, " they 

 were kept from quarrels by mutual i-espect, by something like, awe of 

 each other's temper, and a knowledge that, if war began at all, it- 

 must be to the knife." 



I have nothing to show of Landor's, but I give a sentence from a 

 note of the late Col. Walter O'Hara's, of Toronto, who at one time- 

 was intimately associated with Landor, and is named in Forster'* 

 Life at pp. 136, 199. Col. O'Hara says: "With respect to the; 



