in the habit of displaying themselves, they have the more unequivocal testimony of a good conscience, and of having nothing to conceal. Virtue is more delightful in their hands, because it is borne with a suitable grace and cheerfulness; and vice is not so vicious, because we cannot attribute to it its worst and most deliberate qualities. As to the charge of foppery, which is so often made against people of animal spirits, and to which their open self-satisfaction undoubtedly subjects them, four things might as well be considered before the accusation is harshly or hastily brought; first, whether the self-satisfaction is more than proportionate to the satisfaction which every body else feels according to the measure of the happiness within him; whether the possessor makes others more satisfied with themselves, and is therefore more inclined to share the pleasures arising from self-love, than his accuser; whether he is really so vain as his accuser, and does not more willingly acknowledge merits above his own, and a greater variety of them; and lastly, whether the accusation is not made out of pure spleen and jealousy.

Women have been charged with having a natural inclination for coxcombs. The charge is idle, and itself a coxcombry. Let the solemn fops that make it, see if they can succeed. The truth is, that where a woman likes a coxcomb, she does not like him on that account, but because he mingles with his folly those lively and more agreeable qualities, which nature has made to be liked by every body. She likes the cheerfulness of his blood, the flow of his conversation, the spirit of his mien and behaviour,-evidences of a nature capable of entertaining and of protecting her. Let a man have these, and be no coxcomb, and she will prefer him to one that is. If she prefers a coxcomb to a formalist, or to one whose egotism is so great, as to drown and make desolate his commonest behaviour, in the despair of acting up to his excessive notion of himself, she is wise, and has only chosen the happier fop.

We will conclude this paper with a copy of verses by Sir John Vanbrugh, in which the reader may take the portrait of the officer, either for the airy coxcomb, properly so called, or for a portrait of Sir John himself, who was a captain with a feather in his hat. In either case, it will give a relish to the perusal, if we suppose one of the graver fops just mentioned looking on.

But prate, and talk, and play the fool.
He said, 'twas wealth gave joy and mirth,
And that to be the dearest wife

Of one, who labour'd all his life
To make a mine of gold his own,

And not spend sixpence when he'd done,
Was heaven upon earth.

When these two blades had done, d'ye see,
The Feather (as it might be me)

Steps out, Sir, from behind the screen
With such an air and such a mien,-
Look'ye, old gentleman,-in short,
He quickly spoil'd the statesman's sport.
It proved such sunshine weather,
That, you must know, at the first beck
The lady leap'd about his neck,
And off they went together.

Vanbrugh was a good fellow, and besides his feather, had "books," and "morals" too for that matter. "Garth, Vanbrugh, and Congreve," said Pope, (and Tonson, the bookseller, who was sitting by, and knew them all well, agreed with him) "were the three most honesthearted, real good men, of the poetical members of the Kit-Kat Club." A feather may carry it against formality, as it ought to do; but a feather on a head full of wit and generosity will beat all other feathers, let the sullen say what they will. Nor, we will venture to affirm, whatever the sullen or the superficial may think to the contrary, was there ever a sound and generous head, feathered or not, that had not its counterpart in the other sex, ready to believe in its honest eyes, and take its pains and its pleasures into her bosom, if it had but the luck to meet with her.

FAIR IDA.

A Ballad.

"His boat is on the waters-hark!

I hear the splashing oar,

What though the wave be wild and dark,

I'll venture from the shore;

Love hath a light for deep midnight,

A compass for the sea,

For him I'll fear not ocean's might,

He is my all to me.

"And must I leave my father's hall,
Where I was gently bred,
And climb'd the knee and lisp'd to all,
Unconscious what I said-
Where doatingly a mother's eye-
(Alas that it is closed!)

Gazed on me in my infancy

And watch'd while I reposed!

"Yes-there's a dearer home for me
Within a lover's arms;

And there my head shall cradled be
In safety from alarms.

I cannot wed the man I hate-
I cannot falsely play,

Though father's threat may not abate-
Though I be spurn'd away.

My love-he is my life to me,

My nurse, my sire, my home,
He looks upon me smilingly,
And beckons me to come.
He hath his nest of down for me,
His little timorous maid,

Where I shall cower in shelter free,
Nor fluttering nor afraid."

Thus at her window o'er the wave

That gentle maid bested,

The hour was silent as the

No star was overhead.

grave,

The sea curl'd softly on the shore,

And said, or seem'd to say:

"I've hush'd for thee the billows' roar,

Come, Ida, come away!"

Her lover's bark is on the strand,

His foot upon the beach,

And they are hurrying, hand in hand,

The little skiff to reach:

Her foot is on the floating plank,
Her lover close behind,

And they have left the pebbly bank,
And every fear behind.

There's light within her father's hall,
There 's hurrying to and fro,
And voices from her window call,
And from the beach below-

Along the wave a carbine shot

Sings shrilly with its speed ;Her love-for fate so drew the lotHer love alone must bleed.

Frantic fair Ida hears his groan;

Her hand is on the wound;

His heart's blood on her hand hath flown

With that last dying sound.

Back to the shore, go, boatmen, go;

Finish'd is your employ;

But she, the fair, what is she now,
So late the bride of joy!

A maniac on that oozy shore
At times seen wandering wild,
Addressing the rude ocean's roar,
In accents of a child;

Or from her window, at deep night,
Asking athwart the gloom,
In fancy of her lover's sprite,
The mysteries of his tomb!

PARRIANA.-NO. 1.

I REMEMBER Dr. Parr at an early period, when he was Master of the Free School at Norwich. It was a Gothic structure near the cathedral, endowed by Henry the Sixth. As you advanced along its spacious floor, you heard the buzzings of the boys plying their various tasks, as they sat within a sort of railed pew, which extended from the bottom to the top of the chamber, half lost and overpowered by the overwhelming tones of our venerable Ofellus, who was hearing, from an elevated chair, to which you approached by steps, the higher classes at their Greek play, and pouring out a loud torrent of parallel passages to elucidate the author. It was at this time a favourite theory of Parr, that the progress of learning towards the understanding was in an upward direction; for, in subservience to that theory, he was a systematic devotee of the birch. It was done, however, in perfect good-humour; never sudden, nor under the instantaneous impulse of passion. It was a cool, judicial sentence, the execution of which was generally postponed till the rising of the school, when there was often a whimsical kind of contest for precedency in submitting to the infliction. It was so slight, except for very grave offences, that it was never a subject of much apprehension. Come, and bring the bats for a game at cricket!" was the exclamation of one boy to another, as they all rushed out at twelve o'clock. "I can't come immediately," was the reply: "I'll be with you in six or seven minutes. I am only going to be flogged."

Parr composed his celebrated preface to "Bellendenus" whilst he was Master of this school. It is a laboured piece of Latinity; not a phrase that has not its sanction in the best authorities. But it is a whimsical Mosaic, "here a bit of red stone, there a bit of black." It has always struck me as wanting that flow and that ease of expression, which are the happiest graces of composition. It is, moreover, open to exception, as a species of cento from writers living in different periods of literary taste-Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Tacitus, and even Seneca. I think it by no means equal to the Latin rhetoric of Parr's friend, Sir William Jones. Perhaps the latter was too Ciceronian, and would have come in for his share of the ridicule applied by Erasmus, in his " Anti-Ciceronianus," to too studious an affectation of the style and manner of the Roman orator. The Preface to Bellendenus is ushered in with a series of dedications to Lord North, Fox, and Burke, in the lapidary Latin, which Parr, through his whole life, was proud of excelling in. Beloe was at that time the under-master. He gave some offence to the Doctor by translating the Preface. It was, however, soon forgiven; and in after-life, Parr rendered him many essential services; amongst others, that of writing for him a learned preface to his Translation of Aulus Gellius; but these services, it is now a matter of notoriety, were not returned with gratitude.

Headley, a favourite pupil, was before my time. I have a distinct recollection of him, for he afterwards lived in the precincts of the Cathedral. His dark, handsome features, and his wan complexion, for he was then wasting under a consumption that carried him off at the age of twenty-five, will never be effaced from my memory. In 1784 he published a Collection of Original Poetry, in which there are several exquisite pieces. One or two after the antique manner of our elder poets, with whom Headley was particularly conversant, are beautiful. But his reputation at present rests on his "Beauties of Antient English Poetry," which appeared with a laboured preface in Parr's manner, but still more turgid and redundant. The short notices of each poet prefixed to his extracts, are in better taste. Bowles's Elegy upon the premature fate of Headley is truly pathetic.

Dr. Maltby, perhaps the most accomplished Greek scholar amongst us, was the head-boy in my time. I was then an urchin, but I well remember that Parr had a decided predilection for this clever pupil, which did not, however, exempt him from occasional visitations of the birch.

It is much to be regretted, that several of the earliest of Parr's writings are out of print. In 1783 he preached a charity sermon at Norwich, from the text in the Proverbs-" Train up a child," &c. This discourse, though now almost forgotten, was one of those compositions which were digna cedro, and ought to be republished. The first part is a kind of historical deduction, from its earliest beginnings, of the wisdom conveyed by the ancient, particularly by the Oriental writers, in the form of proverb or of apophthegm. He then proceeds to a masterly disquisition upon Education, in the large and moral acceptation of the word, and on the relative duties of parents and children, masters and disciples. It is a trite subject, but not so as Parr treats it; for he seems to have expended all the resources of his rich flourishing intellect to render familiar topics new and impressive. It is, I think, superior to his famous Spital Sermon: certainly, its manner is less controversial, which is some advantage; for, where Parr had any doctrine to refute, he was a staunch polemic, full as anxious to get the victory as to discover the truth. In the discourse, however, upon Education, he appears bent upon rendering those common and admitted truths attractive, which are in danger of losing their hold on the mind, from mere universality of reception.

Apropos of the Spital Sermon. It gave birth to a tolerably facetious remark of Harvey Coombe, albeit unused to the facetious mood. As they were coming out of church, after the delivery of that long discourse, "Well," says Parr to Coombe," how did you like it?"-always anxious for well-merited praise, from whatever quarter it proceeded,—“ let me have the suffrage of your strong and honest understanding."-" Why, Doctor," returned the Alderman, "there were four things in your sermon that I did not like to hear." - "State them," replied Parr eagerly. Why, to speak frankly then," said Coombe," they were the quarters of the church clock, which struck four times before you had finished it." The joke was goodhumouredly received. Harvey Coombe, though of quiet, gentlemanly manners, could now and then say something good. He was conversing one day at Brookes's with Jack Stepney. A little variation of opinion occurring, Jack intimated his dissent by exclaiming, "I don't know that, Mr. Coombe; I don't know that!"-" Don't know that!" retorted the other; "if you could put down in writing every thing you did not know, Mr. Stepney, you would soon make a very large book."

Parr's memory, from nature and from application, was very capacious. In reading a Greek or Latin author, a stream of illustration issued from it. When we were up at Virgil with him, he thundered out, ore rotundo, all the passages which the poet had borrowed, and, whilst he borrowed, adorned, from Homer and Apollonius the Rhodian. His knowledge of the Greek metres, a branch of scholarship in which Burney afterwards excelled him, was profound. It was equally accurate as to the metres of Horace. Reading a play of Plautus with him, I think the Aulularia, I came to the word affatim abundantly, the second syllable of which I made long, naturally concluding that an adjective derived from the word affari, would retain the same quantity. He corrected me instantly, by scanning the very difficult and anomalous Iambic in which the word occurred. There was a constant tendency, he observed, going on in all languages actually in use, to shorten accentuation, for the celerity of discourse which the common occasions of life require; and the comic poets were obliged to adopt the common and conventional pronunciation. He was decidedly of opinion that the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter was of a later age than Nero's, and not the work of the Petronius recorded by Tacitus as the Arbiter Elegantiarum of that emperor.

The characteristics of the first Mrs. Parr were natural acuteness and good sense; and these qualities Parr readily conceded to her. With all this, however, she was an apt student in the art of ingeniously tormenting, and occasionally influenced by a spirit of contradiction which made large