his pulpit the sermons of Tillotson and other divines, and explain the meaning as he went along, a process as requisite surely when he delivered his own compositions. For the vices of his style are prominent—foreign, pompous, sesquipedal words, a want of easy natural diction, grandiose periods and balanced antitheses, redundant imagery and laboured epithets, with a measured rhythmical arrangement, returning as uniformly as the vibrations of a pendulum. With a superfluity offeree, there is not much originality or depth. The fruit is often hidden and overlaid by the foliage. Dr. Parr did not rise in the church, for even the whigs as a party did nothing for him, though Sir Francis Burdett presented him at a late period of his life to the rectory of Graffham in Huntingdonshire; and he had an annuity of £300, raised by subscription among his political friends. Lord Grenville when in office declined to promise him a bishopric, the courtly phrase being that he was not a "producible" man. A mitre was long the object of his ambition, and he seems to have valued the episcopate only for its equipage and emoluments. As Porson said, three things kept him from success—"his trade, his politics, and his wife." His library, begun by him when a boy, amounted at length to ten thousand volumes, though he was content "with half bindings and old bindings." In short, as Sydney Smith said of him (Edinburgh Review, 1802), Parr "would have been a more considerable man if he had been more knocked about among his equals. He lived with country gentlemen and clergymen, who flattered and feared him." His works have been edited by Dr. J. Johnstone in eight thick octavo volumes, 1828.—J. E.
PARR, Thomas, the son of John Parr of Winnington in the parish of Alderberry, Salop, was born in February, 1483, the last year of the reign of King Edward IV., and died in November, 1635, the tenth year of Charles I.'s reign. This long life of one hundred and fifty-two years is the only memorable fact relating to him. The robustness of his constitution is further illustrated by his marriage at eighty-two to his first wife, who bore him two children that died young. Twenty years afterwards he was compelled to do penance in the church for an amorous indiscretion with one Catherine Milton, whom he married in his one hundred and twentieth year. While he kept to the coarse rustic diet of his early life, his strength and activity seemed scarcely to abate. In 1635 he was taken by Thomas, earl of Arundel, to London, to be presented to the king, and being afterwards admitted into my lord's household, he fell a victim to the more generous regimen which he indulged in there. After death his body was dissected by Dr. Harvey, and found to be in a remarkably healthy condition. Taylor, the water poet, tells an anecdote of Parr, which shows that old age had not dimmed his native shrewdness.—R. H.
PARRHASIUS of Ephesus, a Greek painter, who lived 400 b.c., and was allowed to have surpassed his great contemporary, Zeuxis of Heraclea. His works were remarkable both for invention and execution, and he so circumscribed the powers of art, says Quintilian, that he was called the "Legislator." Pliny terms him the most insolent and arrogant of artists, so great was his self-assertion. As an instance of his insolence, it is recorded that he painted himself as Mercury, dedicated the picture in a temple, and so received the adoration of the multitude. Among the most celebrated of his works was an allegorical figure of the Athenian people, or Demos, which is said to have represented equally all the good and bad qualities of the Athenians. A picture also of the feigned insanity of Ulysses was among his most remarkable pictures. He painted also a Theseus, which Euphranor the Isthmian, comparing with another painted by himself, criticised as having been fed on roses, while his own had been brought up on beef; implying that the figure of Parrhasius was too delicate for the Athenian hero. In a prize competition at Samos, Parrhasius was beaten by Timanthes of Cythnos, the subject being the duel between Ulysses and Ajax for the arms of Achilles; and the indignant Ephesian painter exclaimed, that for a second time the unfortunate son of Telamon was defeated in the same cause by an unworthy rival.—(Wornum, Epochs of Painting.)—R. N. W.
PARRHASIUS, Aulus Janus, the literary name assumed by Giampaolo Parisio, author, grammarian, and founder of the Cosentine Academy, born at Cosenza, kingdom of Naples, 1470; died in the same place about 1533. His principal work is "Liber de Rebus per Epistolam Quæsitis," a series of letters addressed to learned men, and throwing light on passages in ancient authors, as well as on other antique matters.—C. G. R.
PARROCEL, Joseph, French painter, was born at Brignoles in Provence in 1648. After receiving some instruction from his brother Louis, a painter of little ability, he went to Paris, and after a time to Rome, where, and at Venice, he stayed several years. In the latter city he narrowly escaped assassination. He returned to Paris in 1675. He had already become celebrated for his battle-pieces, and he was now commissioned to decorate a room in the Invalids with paintings of the conquests of Louis XIV. This led to his being employed at Versailles and on other royal commissions, and he came to be the king's favourite painter. Parrocel's battle-pieces are designed with great spirit, and cleverly painted. In other historical subjects he was less successful. He was elected a member of the Academy in 1675, and died in 1704. Parrocel left nearly a hundred etchings, chiefly from his own designs. His son, Charles Parrocel, also obtained some distinction as a painter of battle and hunting pieces, and as an engraver. He was born in 1688, and died in 1753.—J. T—e.
PARRY, Sir William Edward, a distinguished officer of the royal navy of Britain, was born in 1790 at Bath, Somersetshire. He entered the navy in his thirteenth year, and thence down to within a few weeks of his death in 1855, excepting during a brief interval, was actively engaged in the service of his country, either on sea or on land. His duties during the earlier half of his active and honourable life—a large portion of it passed on ship-board—extended over a wide range, the Baltic and Northern seas, the North American coasts, and the icy waters of the Arctic ocean, being successively his field of action. Between 1825 and 1829, except during the intervening period devoted to his latest polar voyage in 1827, Parry filled the post of hydrographer to the admiralty, the duties of which he had already discharged as acting hydrographer during part of the years 1823-24. In May, 1829, immediately before the close of his services as hydrographer, he received the honour of knighthood. A period of labour in the southern hemisphere succeeded, and four years of his life (1829-34) were passed in the neighbourhood of Port Stephens, New South Wales, where he ably performed the duties of resident commissioner to the Australian Agricultural Company. Returning to England, Sir Edward Parry was employed during a year, 1835-36, in the active duties of assistant poor-law commissioner in the county of Norfolk; and during the chief part of the succeeding ten years, 1837-46, in the post of comptroller of the steam department of the navy. Thence he passed to the post of superintendent of Haslar hospital, Portsmouth, which he held until 1852. In the succeeding year he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Greenwich hospital. While holding the last-named office, failing health compelled his seeking to recruit his strength by a visit to the continent, where he died at Ems on the 8th July, 1855. The eminent abilities, earnest zeal, and untiring perseverance of Parry, united as they were with the highest moral qualities and softened by a deep sense of religious duty, which latter formed a conspicuous element in his character, rendered his labours, throughout the varied career above glanced at, in the highest measure successful, and he deservedly filled a high place in his country's esteem. It is as an arctic discoverer that his name will be longest remembered. His first service of this kind was in 1818, when he acted as lieutenant under Captain Ross in the voyage of the Isabella and Alexander, the last-named of which vessels was under his command.—(See Ross, John.) In the succeeding year, 1819, still holding the rank of lieutenant, he was intrusted with the command of a renewed expedition, in which the ships Hecla and Griper were employed for the purpose of accomplishing the often-sought North-west passage. This voyage forms a marked epoch in the records of arctic discovery. Sailing through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait, Parry advanced nearly six hundred miles further west than any preceding navigator, reaching in that direction the extremity of Melville island, long. 113° 46´, on the shore of which he passed a long and dreary winter, returning to England in the summer of the following year. By passing the meridian of 110° west, the expedition had become entitled to a parliamentary reward of £5000, and numerous honours were deservedly bestowed upon its commander. In 1821, Parry, promoted in the interim to the rank of commander, sailed on his second arctic voyage, in the course of which his ships, the Fury and Hecla, the latter commanded by Captain Lyon, passed two successive winters in the arctic regions—the former at Winter island, beyond the
