had no other attractions than thofe of his poetry, of which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told, that, in ftrains either familiar or folemn, he fings like Montague. PARNELL. PARNEL L. T HE Life of Dr. PARNELL is a task which I should very willingly decline, fince it has been lately written by Goldfmith, a man of fuch variety of powers, and fuch felicity of performance, that he always feemed to do beft that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confufion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness. What fuch an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith. Το γὰρ γερας εσι θανόντων. THOMAS PARNELL was the fon of a commonwealthfman of the fame name, who at the Restoration left Congleton in Cheshire, where the family had been established for feveral centuries, and, and, fettling in Ireland, purchased an eftate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, defcended to the poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after the ufual education at a grammar fchool, was at the age of thirteen admitted into the College, where, in 1700, he became master of arts; and was the fame year ordained a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a difpenfation from the bishop of Derry. About three years afterwards he was made a prieft; and in 1705 Dr. Ashe, the bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the arch-deaconry of Clogher. About the fame time he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable lady, by whom he had two fons who died young, and a daughter who long furvived him. At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of queen Anne's reign, Parnell was perfuaded to change his party, not without much cenfure from thofe whom he forfook, and was received by the new ministry as a valuable reinforcement. When the earl of Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited among the croud in the outer room, he went, by the perfuafion of Swift, with his treasurer's staff in his hand, to enquire for him, and to bid him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope's dedication, admitted him as a favourite companion to his convivial hours, but, as it seems often to have happened in thofe times to the favourites of the great, without attention to his fortune, which however was in no great need of improvement. Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was defirous to make himself confpicuous, and to fhew |