"
Dr. Johnson's definition of a parish clerk in his Dictionary does not
convey the whole truth about him and his historic office. He is defined
as "the layman who reads the responses to the congregation in church, to
direct the rest." The great lexicographer had, however, a high
estimation of this official. Boswell tells us that on one occasion "the
Rev. Mr. Palmer, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, dined with us. He
expressed a wish that a better provision were made for parish clerks.
Johnson: 'Yes, sir, a parish clerk should be a man who is able to make a
will or write a letter for anybody in the parish.'" I am afraid that a
vast number of our good clerks would have been sore puzzled to perform
the first task, and the caligraphy of the letter would in many cases
have been curious.
That careful delineator of rural manners as they existed at the end of
the eighteenth century, George Crabbe, devotes a whole poem to the
parish clerk in his nineteenth letter of _The Borough_. He tells of the
fortunes of Jachin, the clerk, a grave and austere man, fully orthodox,
a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and detecter and opposer of the wiles of
Satan. Here is his picture:
"With our late vicar, and his age the same,
His clerk, bright Jachin, to his office came;
The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender frame:
But Jachin was the gravest man on ground,
And heard his master's jokes with look profound;
For worldly wealth this man of letters sigh'd,
And had a sprinkling of the spirit's pride:
But he was sober, chaste, devout, and just,
One whom his neighbours could believe and trust:
Of none suspected, neither man nor maid
By him were wronged, or were of him afraid.
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