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TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

ROBERT EARL OF OXFORD AND EARL MORTIMER.

SUCH were the notes thy once-loved poet sung,
Till Death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.
Oh, just beheld, and lost! admired, and mourn'd!
With softest manners, gentlest arts adorn'd,
Blest in each science, blest in every strain,
Dear to the Muse, to Harley dear-in vain!

For him, thou oft hast bid the world attend,
Fond to forget the statesman in the friend;
For Swift and him, despised the farce of state,
The sober follies of the wise and great;
Dexterous the craving, fawning crowd to quit,
And pleased to 'scape from flattery to wit.

Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,
(A sigh the absent claims-the dead, a tear)
Recall those nights that closed thy toilsome days,
Still hear thy Parnell in his living lays:
Who careless, now, of interest, fame, or fate,
Perhaps forgets that Oxford e'er was great;
Or deeming meanest what we greatest call,
Beholds thee glorious only in thy fall.

And sure if ought below the seats divine
Can touch immortals, 'tis a soul like thine:
A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried,
Above all pain, all anger, and all pride,
The rage of power, the blast of public breath,
The lust of lucre, and the dread of death.

In vain to deserts thy retreat is made;
The Muse attends thee to the silent shade:
'Tis hers, the brave man's latest steps to trace,
Re-judge his acts, and dignify disgrace.
When Interest calls off all her sneaking train,
When all the obliged desert, and all the vain,
She waits; or, to the scaffold, or the cell,
When the last lingering friend has bid farewell.
Even now she shades thy evening walk with bays,
(No hireling she, no prostitute to praise)
Even now, observant of the parting ray,

Eyes the calm sunset of thy various day,

Through fortune's cloud one truly great can see,
Nor fears to tell that MORTIMER is he.

A..POPE.

September 25, 1721.

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF THOMAS

PARNELL.

PARNELL is the third in a trio of poetical clergymen whose names have immediately succeeded each other in this edition. Bowles, Churchill, and Parnell were all clergymen, and all poets; but in other respects differed materially from each other. In Bowles, the clerical and the poetical characters were on the whole well attuned and harmonised. In Churchill, they came to an open rupture. In Parnell, they were neither ruptured nor reconciled, but maintained an ambiguous relation, till his premature death settled the moot point for ever.

The life of this poet has been written by Goldsmith, by Johnson, by the Rev. John Mitford, and others; but, after all, very little is known about him. Thomas Parnell was the

descendant of an ancient family, which had been settled for some hundreds of years at Congleton, Cheshire. His father, whose name also was Thomas, took the side of the Commonwealth, and at the Restoration went over to Ireland, where he purchased a considerable property. This, along with his estate in Cheshire, devolved to the poet. His father had a second son, John, whose descendants were created baronets. The late Sir Henry Parnell, for some years the respected member of Parliament for the town of Dundee, where we now write, was the great-great-grandson of the poet's father. Parnell was born in Dublin, in the year 1679. He was sent to a school taught by one Dr Jones. Here he is said to have

distinguished himself by the readiness and retentiveness of his memory; often performing the task allotted for days in a few hours, and being able to repeat forty lines in any book of poems, after the first reading. It is a proof of the prematurity of his powers, that he entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of thirteen, where his compositions attracted attention from the extent of classical lore which they discovered. He took the degree of M.A. in 1700; and the same year (through a dispensation on account of being under age) was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Derry. Three years after, he was ordained priest; and in 1705, he was made Archdeacon of Clogher, by Sir George Ashe, bishop of that see. So soon as he received the archdeanery, he married Miss Ann Minchin, who is described as a young lady of great beauty, and of an amiable character, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter, who long survived both her parents.

Up to the triumph of the Tories, at the end of Queen Anne's reign, Parnell appears to have been, like his father, a keen Whig. He was at that time, however, induced, for motives which his biographers call obscure, but which to us seem obvious enough, on the well-known principle of the popularity of the rising sun, to change his party; and he was hailed by the Tories as a valuable accession to their ranks. This proves that his talents were even then known; a fact corroborated by Johnson's statement, that while he was waiting in the outer-room at Lord Oxford's levee, the prime minister, when told he was there, went out, at the persuasion of Swift, with his treasurer's staff in his hand, and saluted him in the most flattering manner. He became, either before or immediately after this, intimate with Pope, Swift, Gay, and the rest of that brilliant set, who all appear to have loved him for his social qualities, to have admired his genius, and to have pitied his infirmities. He was a member of the Scriblerus Club, and contributed some trifles to their transactions. He was, at the same time, intimate with Addison and Steele, and wrote a few papers in the "Spectator." To Pope, he was of essential service, assisting him in his notes to the "Iliad," being, what Pope was not, a good Greek scholar. He wrote a life of

Homer, which was prefixed to the Translation, although stiff in style, and fabulous in statement. He gratified Pope's malicious spirit still more by writing, under the guise of a "Life of Zoilus," a bitter attack on Dennis-the great object of the poet's fear and mortal abhorrence. For these and other services, Pope rewarded him, after his usual manner, with large offerings of that sweet and suffocating incense, by which he delighted, now to gain his enemies, and now to gratify his friends. With Gay, also, Parnell was intimate; and the latter, himself independent by his fortune, is said to have bestowed on this needy and improvident genius the price of the copyright of his works.

Parnell first visited London in 1706; and from that period till his death, scarcely a year elapsed without his spending some time in the metropolis. He seems to have had as intense a relish of London life as Johnson and Boswell ex

He

hibited in the next age. So soon as he had collected his rents, he hied to the capital, and there enjoyed himself to the top of his bent. He jested with the Scriblerus Club. quaffed now and then with Lord Oxford. He varied his round of amusements by occasional professional exhibitions in the pulpits of Southwark and elsewhere,-made, we fear, more from a desire to display himself, than to benefit his hearers. Still his sermons were popular; and he entertained at one time the hope,—a hope blasted by the death of Queen Anne,— of being preferred to a city charge. So soon as each London furlough was expired, he returned to Ireland, jaded and dispirited, and there took delight in nursing his melancholy; in pining for the amusements of the metropolis; in shunning and sneering at the society around him; and in abusing his native bogs and his fellow-countrymen in verse. This was not manly, far less Christian conduct. He ought to have drowned his recollections of London in active duty, or in diligent study; and if he found society coarse or corrupt, he should have set himself to refine and to purify it. But he seems to have been a lazy, luxurious person-his life a round of selfish rapture and selfish anguish,—in fact, ruined by his independent fortune.

Had he been a poorer, he had probably been a happier man. He was not, moreover, of that self-contained cast of character, which can live on its own resources, create its own world, and say, "My mind to me a kingdom is."

In 1712 he lost his wife, with whom he appears to have lived as happily as his morbid temperament and mortified feelings would permit. This blow deepened his melancholy, and drove him, it is said, to an excessive and habitual use of wine. In the same year we find him in London, brought out once more under the " special patronage" of Dean Swift, who had quite a penchant for Parnell, and who wished, through his side, to mortify certain persons in Ireland, who did not appreciate, he says, the Archdeacon; and who, we suspect, besides, did not thoroughly appreciate the Dean. Swift, partly in pity for the "poor lad," as he calls him, whom he saw to be in such imminent danger of losing caste and character, and partly in the true patronising spirit, introduced Parnell to Lord Bolingbroke, who received him kindly, entertained him at dinner, and encouraged him in his poetical studies. The Dean's patronage, however, was of little avail in this matter to the protégé; Bolingbroke, a man of many promises, and few performances, did nothing for him. The consequences of dissipation began, at this time, too, to appear in Parnell's constitution; and we find Swift saying of him, “His head is out of order, like mine, but more constant, poor boy." It was perhaps to this period that Pope referred, when he told Spence, Parnell is a great follower of drams, and strangely open and scandalous in his debaucheries." If so, his bad habits seem to have sprung as much from disappointment and discontent as from taste.

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Yet Swift continued his friend, and it was at his instance that, in 1713, Archbishop King presented Parnell with a prebend. In 1714, his hope of London promotion died with Queen Anne; but in 1716, the same generous Archbishop bestowed on him the vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin, worth £400 a-year. This preferment, however, the poet did not live long to enjoy,-dying at Chester, in July

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