EPITAPH ON THOMAS PARNELL.
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his epitaph, apparently never used, was published with _The Haunchof Venison_, 1776; and is supposed to have been written about 1770.In that year Goldsmith wrote a _Life of Thomas Parnell, D.D._,to accompany an edition of his poems, printed for Davies of RussellStreet. Parnell was born in 1679, and died at Chester in 1718, on his wayto Ireland. He was buried at Trinity Church in that town, on the 24th ofOctober. Goldsmith says that his father and uncle both knew Parnell (_Lifeof Parnell_, 1770, p. v), and that he received assistance from thepoet’s nephew, Sir John Parnell, the singing gentleman who figures inHogarth’s _Election Entertainment_. Why Goldsmith should writean epitaph upon a man who died ten years before his own birth, is not easyto explain. But Johnson also wrote a Latin one, which he gave to Boswell.(Birkbeck Hill’s _Life_, 1887, iv. 54.) gentle Parnell’s name. Mitford compares Pope onParnell [_Epistle to Harley_, l. iv]:— With softest manners, gentlest Arts adorn’d. Pope published Parnell’s _Poems_ in 1722, and his sending themto Harley, Earl of Oxford, after the latter’s disgrace and retirement, wasthe occasion of the foregoing epistle, from which the following linesrespecting Parnell may also be cited:— For him, thou oft hast bid the World attend, Fond to forget the statesman in the friend; For SWIFT and him despis’d the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great; Dext’rous the craving, fawning crowd to quit,
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