Mr. E. H. BARKER, the gatherer of the Parriana which
we quoted last week, is a compiler of great bulk. In our notice of this his last work, we slightly referred to the jiirraginous nature of the gentleman's literary productions : some further examination of its contents leads us to considerthe Parriana as a matchless specimen, not of bookmaking, but of bookbinding : those bonds of leather and string which the coverers of books contribute to the literary productions of the age, require far more intellectual exertion than goes to the share of such book-compacters as Mr. EDMUND HENRY BARKER. We last week permitted ourselves to he amused by his compilation ; but the promise of his shortly playing Boswell with the "ferocious" Doctor has been weighing upon our imagina- tion, These grovelling bone-pickers follow a poor human being to his last home, and pick up every wretched fragment which in either haste or necessity he may have let drop ; and then, after he is dead and gone, they present it to the public in a museum of paper and print, at a shilling a head, to fill their own dirty pockets. And we last week, as we have said, permitted ourselves to sit down with the wretched anecdute-mongers that club the contemptible contents of their wallets at the precious feast where the illustrious blunderhead Mr. E. H. BARKER presides as master. Ko man on earth—no man who ever walked through a mortal career—could stand the test of these biographunculi, who pick up a nasty little practice in the life of a man, as those minute Dutch painters love to represent the crawling louse on the gar- ment of a hero. We were led into laughing at Dr. Parr, when we ought to have been lashing Mr. E. H. BARKER. We are not, and never were great admirers of Dr. Parr' s genus either of eloquence or learning : nevertheless, let us not thrget the real Dr. Parr in the picture which these microscopic artists have drawn of him. They and their scavenger are aptly met these biographers of lingers and toes, of wigs and shoe-latches, count nothing too small, too common, or too vulgar, for their faithful fingers to pick up ; and where is that other man in England but Mr. E. H. BARKER, who could be found to open a receptacle for such a miserable omnium-gatherum ? Where is the man so destitute of taste, as to admit numerous topics which only disgust ? —so destitute of judgment, as not to be able t o discriminate between what related to his subject and what did not ?—so wholly incapable of digestion or arrangement, as to heap up all together every thing he receives by post, coach, or waggon, without comment (for that we are not sorry), without order, without even lopping off the words of ceremony and the introducm ions of course ? Dr. Parr used to talk of overturning his pickle-tub of wrath upon his enemies ; but here is a man who empties his filthy pig-tub, the universal recipient of scraps and leavings, the refuse of the kitchen and the scullery, upon the honoured remains of the man he presumes to call his friend.
If a man undertakes the task of printing the writings of others in a form to which he prefixes his own name, he should at least perform the poor office of erasing the formalities of intercourse, of omitting episodes, and digressions, and erasing those passages in_ which his correspondents simply commit themselves. We alluded, to the insertion of long papers from the Spectator and the Ram- bler, and because Dr. Parr spoke of dreams, to the quotation of numerous pages from the writings of a Mr. Green of Ipswich on the same subject : these had the merit of being incidental at beast —but why a hundred pages about a metaphysical dispute between. Dugald Stewart and Mr. Fearn ? Why poor Mr. George Dyee..-e wretched twaddle, beginning with a declaration that he knew 1:itt1 of Dr. Parr except that the doctor had called him friend. in print, and ending, after thirty pages of feeble stuff about, every, timing and nothing, with " Mrs. Dyer unites with me in kind re- spects ; and I remain, Dear Sir, yours faithfully, George Dyer " ? By the relativeness of this letter, the reader may judge of the whole book. Mr. Dyer in this letter, which was doubtless extorted from him by a man anxious to get others to write his book, shows in a sentence of curious simplicity, how little qualified he was to write of Dr. Parr ; and Mr. E. H. BARKER ought immediately to have put his letter into the fire. " I may perhaps just add in passing," says the erudite simpleton, " that I have known, more or less, in the course of my life, several of the Doctor's ac- quaintance; and probably sovietizing may have passed in conversa- tion relative to him ; but deny such observations I have no distinct recollection. With Du Priestley I was a good deal acquainted when he resided at Hackney. I was very intimate with Mr. Wakefield.. I once passed part of a day with On Bridges, at a village near Thrapston, and dined with him at Magdalen. I have occasionally, dined in company with Porson at Dr. Raine's, and Porson used fre- quently to take his mutton chop with me." Having enjoyed these, advantages, we should not be surprised if Mr. Dyer were to write. the lives of his contemporaries ; we are certain, that of such ma- terials as a part of a day with Dr. Bridges, and a mutton chop, with Porson, we should have had from Ma. Barmane long erc. now, both Bridgiana. and Porsoniana. But Mr. 13 Al? It ER will never' write real ana as long as he lives. He does not know one end of' a joke from the other. His natural obtuseness is overlaid with the lumber of learning. He may deceive a few people by the numer- ousness of his quotations : they who read, and are simply gifted. with common sense, will quickly ascertain that he possesses but, one property of a collector, which is his pen—his ever pointed pen.
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