EXTRACTS FROM A PAMPHLET PUBLISHED IN 1795, INTITULED, "REMARKS ON THE STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES COMBE," A STATEMENT RELATIVE TO THE VARIORUM HORACE, EDITED BY H. HOMER AND DR. COMBE. 2 H VOL. III. These Extracts are all that could fairly be detached from the immediate subject of the pamphlet. They are referrible chiefly to purposes of self-defence,-to Dr. Parr's share in the Variorum Horace, to the origin and history of the Preface to Bellendenus, to the character and labours of Henry Homer, his coadjutor in the publication of Bellenden's tracts,-to the Doctor's Critiques in the Reviews of the day, and, finally, to several persons of literary and political distinction, whose names were incidentally mentioned. Over the whole pamphlet are liberally scattered observations of great pith and moment, but most of them are too closely involved with the controversial part to be separated; and that controversial part, by Dr. Parr's desire, is not republished. EXTRACTS FROM A PAMPHLET PUBLISHED IN 1795, BY DR. PARR. I. PERSONAL. IN the course of an active, and, I hope, not an useless life, I have owed, and I continue to owe, so much of my happiness to the esteem and the gratitude of those whom I have endeavoured to serve, that I am not apt to be ruffled very violently, or galled very severely, by a few straggling instances of ungracious and unmerited treatment. My own spirit is, indeed, too intrepid to recede from my own claims, because they are depreciated by the selfish or slighted by the vain. But my observations upon mankind have been spread through so wide an extent, and exercised upon objects so various, that I have little difficulty in distinguishing between the marks of weakness and guilt in other men-between the effects of temporary situation and habitual principle-between action, which is inconstant, and character, which is more stable. Among those who know me best, I am not exceedingly notorious for professing the regard which I feel not, or dissembling the dislike which I do feel. My bosom may glow with resentment, but seldom or never rankles with malignity. Upon facts which have passed long ago, and of which no traces have been renewed by impressions from intervening events, or by the anxieties of immediate interest, recollection in me, as in other men, may stand in need of succour from judgment. It will owe something to accident, and something to effort. It will be invigorated by the sudden discovery of facts, and corrected by the careful comparison of circumstances. It will often give occasion for surprize to the mind, on a retrospect of its own operations, both where it fails and where it succeeds. Seldom is it more treacherous than when lulled asleep by the silence of a foe-more helpless than when confused by his obscurity-or more exact than when roused by his contradiction. There are complex cases, in which the understanding gradually exchanges the weaker probability for the stronger; and there are lucky situations, too, in which it pushes at once from the dim and tremulous twilight of uncertainty, to the full and steady brightness of conviction. Observations such as the foregoing naturally occurred to me, as I reflected on the different state of my own mind at different times, while the transactions between the late Mr. Henry Homer and myself were passing in review before it. I erred, and emerged from error-I advanced from forgetfulness to remembrance, with more or less rapidity-I have been sometimes guided by the clear, and sometimes stimulated even by the imperfect, recollection of |