Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 22:88 (Oct 1865)
Article: Life And Correspondence Of Theodore Parker
Author: Heman Lincoln

BSac 22:88 (Oct 1865) p. 588

Life And Correspondence Of Theodore Parker1

Rev. Heman Lincoln

Newton, an English painter of celebrity in the last generation, paid a professional visit to the United States, extending through several months. Much of this time was spent in Boston. On his return to England a London cockney undertook to condole with him on his long exile from good society. “Sir,” was the indignant reply of the artist, “I met such people in Boston every day as I should be glad to meet here occasionally.” The compliment was a generous one from an Englishman, but strictly just, as any one familiar with Boston society at the close of the last century can testify. The recent Memoirs of Choate and Prescott and Parker indicate that Boston has lost none of its celebrity in our generation. They moved in different social circles. They rarely met each other in private life, nor did they have mutual friends. But each of them had a large circle of friends of generous aims and high culture, in whose companionship they sought mental refreshment and stimulus. Three such men in a single city (in which Webster and Everett and Wendell Phillips were contemporaries) silence the sneers of foreign critics that American life is too young and

BSac 22:88 (Oct 1865) p. 589

raw to nurture scholars of broad learning and ripe wisdom. We may challenge England to name from the living citizens of its great metropolis, or from the recent dead, three men of equal enthusiasm and conscientiousness in study, and as intimately connected with the life of their age.

Mr. Parker claims precedence among the three in mental and moral greatness. We should not have conceded this in his life-time, but the new light thrown upon his character by the correspondence published in these volumes constrains us to make the award. Mr. Choate had more genius; a keener insight, by intuition, into men and books; an imagination of imperial sweep; a subtile magnetism, flowing from heart or brain, to take individuals captive, or sway bodies of men at will; but with the gifts of genius he had more of its eccentricities and faults, a lower type of conscience, less sincerity of character, more selfish aims, and less sympathy with his race and the philanthropic movements of the age. Mr. Prescott was more exact in scholarship, more amiable in character, more humane in judgment, a more genial and lovable man; but, in spite of uniform cheerfulness in misfortune, and a devotion to literature under discouragements which would have chilled the enthusiasm of ordinary men, there was much of the Sybarite in his life, a cliquish narrowness in friendships, and an indifference to social and moral reforms which forbid the highest praise. Mr. Parker united the ent...