"He is the only man," said Mr. King more
than once to the writer, "with whom I can sit down and seriously
discuss a disputed reading and find him familiar with all that has
been written upon it." Yet Greek and Latin were only the preliminaries
of Mr. Parker's scholarship.
I know, for one,--and there are many who will bear the same
testimony,--that I never went to Mr. Parker to talk over a subject
which I had just made a speciality, without finding that on that
particular matter he happened to know, without any special
investigation, more than I did. This extended beyond books, sometimes
stretching into things where his questioner's opportunities of
knowledge had seemed considerably greater,--as, for instance, in
points connected with the habits of our native animals and the
phenomena of out-door Nature. Such were his wonderful quickness and
his infallible memory, that glimpses of these things did for him the
work of years. But, of course, it was in the world of books that this
wonderful superiority was chiefly seen, and the following example may
serve as one of the most striking among many.
It happened to me, some years since, in the course of some historical
inquiries, to wish for fuller information in regard to the barbarous
feudal codes of the Middle Ages,--as the Salic, Burgundian, and
Ripuarian,--before the time of Charlemagne. The common historians,
even Hallam, gave no very satisfactory information and referred to no
very available books; and supposing it to be a matter of which every
well-read lawyer would at least know something, I asked help of the
most scholarly member of that profession within my reach.
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