admitting men in holy orders to be Parish Clerks.  Early in the present century Hartley Coleridge made a somewhat similar suggestion.  ’How often in town and country do we hear our divine Liturgy rendered wholly ludicrous by all imaginable tones, twangs, drawls, mouthings, wheezings, gruntings, snuffles and quidrollings, by all diversities of dialect, cacologies and cacophonies, by twistings, contortions and consolidations of visage, squintings and blinkings and upcastings of eyes....  Then, too, the discretion assumed by these Hogarthic studies of selecting the tune and verses to be sung makes the psalmody, instead of an integral and affecting portion of the service, as distracting and irrational an episode as the jigs and country dances scraped between the acts of a tragedy.’[1164] There would be no difficulty, he thought, in getting educated persons to discharge the office for little remuneration or none, if it were not for the troublesome and often disagreeable parish business annexed to the office.  As it was, the Clerk occupied a very odd position, uniting the menial duties of a useful Church servant to other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man.  Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet’s History, Pope writes ‘the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.’  With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking rank among ’men right worthy of their calling, of a clear and sweet voice, and of becoming gravity’—­of his place in the congregation at the feet of the Priest,—­of his raising the Psalm,—­of his arraying the ministers with the surplice,—­of his responsible part in the service of the Church!  ’Remember, Paul, I said to myself, thou standest before men of high worship, the wise Mr. Justice Freeman, the grave Mr. Justice Tonson, the good Lady Jones, and the two virtuous gentlewomen her daughters, nay the great Sir Thomas Truby, knight and baronet, and my young master the Squire who shall one day be lord of this manor.’  With what magisterial gravity he descants of whipping out the dogs, ’except the sober lap-dog of the good widow Howard,’—­tearing away the children’s half-eaten apples, smoothing the dog’s ears of the great Bible!  How he prides himself in sweeping and trimming weekly the pews and benches, which were formerly swept but once in three years,—­in having the surplice darned, washed and laid up in fresh lavender, better than any other parish,—­in having discovered a thief with a Bible and key—­in his love of ringing,—­in his tutoring young men and maidens to tune their voice as it were with a psaltery,—­in being invited to the banquets of the Church officers,—­in the hints he has given to young clergymen,—­in his loyal attachment to the interests of ’our High Church.’[1165] Such was the Parish Clerk of the eighteenth century, the personage upon whom