* * * * *


DR. SAM. PARR AND DR. JOHN TAYLOR, OF SHREWSBURY AND SHREWSBURY
SCHOOL.


Looking at the Index to the _Memoirs of Gilbert Wakefield_, edit. of
1804, I saw, under the letter T., the following entries:--

"Taylor, Rev. Dr. John, Tutor of Warrington Academy, i. 226.
---- his latinity, why faulty, ii. 449."

But I instantly suspected an error: for it was my belief that those
two notices were designed for two distinct scholars. Accordingly, I
revised both passages, and found that I was right in my conjecture.
The facts are these:--In the former of the references, "The Rev. John
Taylor, D.D.," is pointed out. The other individual, of the same
name, was John Taylor, LL.D., a native of Shrewsbury, and a pupil of
Shrewsbury School: HIS _latinity_ it is which Dr. Samuel Parr [_ut
supr._] characterises as FAULTY: and for the defects of which he
endeavours, successfully or otherwise, to account. So that whosoever
framed the _Index_ has here committed an oversight.

In the quotation which I proceed to make, Parr is assigning causes of
what, as I think, he truly deemed blemishes in G. Wakefield's Latin
style; and this is the language of the not unfriendly censor:--

"--None, I fear, of his [W.'s] Latin productions are wholly
free from faults, which he would have been taught to avoid