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 aught 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.
Ev'n now she shades thy evening walk with bays,

(No hireling she, no prostitute to praise)
Ev'n 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.

THOMAS FARNEY D.D

From an original Picture in the repsession of Sir John Parne!!!!

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF THOMAS

PARNELL.

A POETICAL clergyman has been, on the whole, a rara avis in literature. Yet there have been some who have admirably united the powers of genius with eminent clerical position. Such an one was "holy George Herbert." Dr Young, too, was scarcely less eminent as a preacher than he was as a poet. In Bowles, also, the clerical and the poetical characters seem to have been well attuned and harmonised. The age has yet in Milman a good specimen of this complex celebrity, and is mourning the loss of a far greater one in George Croly. In Churchill, on the other hand, the two elements came to an open rupture; while in Parnell they were neither ruptured nor reconciled, but maintained an ambiguous relation.

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. 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