PARNELL.

TH

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 such variety of powers, and fuch felicity of performance, that he always feemed to do best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confufion; whofe language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and eafy without weakness.

What fuch an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger

larger narrative; and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith.

Τὸ γὰρ γέρας ἐπὶ θανόντων.

THOMAS PARNELL was the fon of a commonwealthfman of the fame name, who at the Reftoration left Congleton in Cheshire, where the family had been established for feveral centuries, and, settling in Ireland, purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, defcended to the poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after the usual education at a grammar school, was at the age of thirteen admitted into the College, where, in 1700, he became mafter 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 priest; and in 1705 Dr. Afhe, the bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of Clogher. About the fame time he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable lady,

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 miniftry 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 those 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 conspicuous, and to fhew how worthy he was of high preferment. As he thought himself qualified to become a popular preacher, he difplayed his elocution with great fuccefs

in the pulpits of London; but the queen's death putting an end to his expectations, abated his diligence: and Pope reprefents him as falling from that time into intemperance of wine. That in his latter life he was too much a lover of the bottle, is not denied; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more likely to obtain forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a darling fon; or, as others tell, the lofs of his wife, who died (1712) in the midst of his expectations.

him

He was now to derive every future addition to his preferments from his perfonal interest with his private friends, and he was not long unregarded. He was warmly recommended by Swift to archbishop King, who gave a prebend in 1713; and in May 1716 prefented him to the vicarage of Finglas in the diocese of Dublin, worth four hundred pounds a year. Such notice from fuch a man, inclines me to believe that the vice of which he has been accufed was not gross, or not notorious.

But his profperity did not last long. His end, whatever was its caufe, was now approaching.

proaching. He enjoyed his preferment little more than a year; for in July 1717, in his thirty-eighth year, he died at Chefter, on his way to Ireland.

He feems to have been one of those poets who take delight in writing. He contributed to the papers of that time, and probably published more than he owned. He left many compofitions behind him, of which Pope selected those which he thought beft, and dedicated them to the earl of Oxford. Of these Goldsmith has given an opinion, and his criticism it is feldom safe to contradict. He bestows just praise upon the Rife of Woman, the Fairy Tale, and the Pervigilium Veneris; but has very properly remarked, that in the Battle of Mice and Frogs the Greek names have not in English their original effect.

He tells us, that the Bookworm is borrowed from Beza; but he should have added, with modern applications: and when he difcovers that Gay Bacchus is tranflated from Augurellus, he ought to have remarked, that the latter part is purely Parnell's. Another VOL. II.

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