Thomas Parnell

Thomas Parnell (1679-1718). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas Parnell (11 September 1679 - 24 October 1718) was an Irish poet and clergyman

Life

Overview

Parnell was born and educated in Dublin, took orders in 1700, and was vicar of Finglas and archdeacon of Clogher. The death of his young wife in 1706 drove him into intemperate habits. He was a friend of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, a contributor to the Spectator, and aided Pope in his translation of the Iliad. He wrote various isolated poems showing a fine descriptive touch, of which the most important are "The Hermit," "The Night Piece," and "The Hymn to Contentment." Parnell was a scholar, and had considerable social gifts. His Life was written by Goldsmith.

His long poem "A Night-Piece on Death," widely considered the 1st "Graveyard school" poem, was published posthumously in Poems on Several Occasions, collected and edited by Pope.

Youth

Parnell was the eldest son of Thomas Parnell of Congleton, Cheshire, and Anna, his wife. He was born in Dublin in 1679, and attended a school kept by Dr. Jones, where he showed great powers of memory. In 1689 he was involved, with his mother ("of Kilosty, Tipperary, widow"), in the attainder of the protestants; but in 1693 he was admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, under Mr. Owen Lloyd, and there he earned the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1697, and that of M.A. on 9 July 1700.

Ecclesiastical career

In 1700 Parnell was ordained deacon by Dr. William King, bishop of Derry, after obtaining the dispensation required through his being under canonical age. He was ordained priest about 1703, was installed minor canon of St. Patrick's, Dublin, on 16 Aug. 1704, and was made archdeacon of Clogher on 9 Feb. 1706 by St. George Ashe, bishop of Clogher. The parish of Clontibret was annexed to the archdeaconry. When Parnell informed Dr. King, now archbishop of Dublin, of his new appointment, King sent him an excellent letter (6 March 1705–6) of congratulation and advice.

Soon afterwards Parnell married Anne, daughter of Thomas Minchin of Tipperary, by whom he had 2 sons, who died young, and a daughter, who is said to have been living in 1793. In 1709 his mother died, leaving to him lands in Armagh.

In 1709 the question of the conversion of the Roman Catholics of Ireland was under discussion, and the lower House of Convocation in Ireland passed resolutions for printing the bible and liturgy in Irish, providing Irish preachers, &c. Parnell was chairman of the committee appointed to make recommendations, and he reported their resolutions to the house on 27 Aug. 1711. He also headed a deputation to the queen, when an address was presented; but nothing came of the proposals.

By 1711 he had abandoned the political views of his early years, and was on friendly terms with Swift and other members of the Tory party, then in power. He did not, however, desert his former acquaintances, and in 1712–13 he assisted Addison and Steele by contributing occasional papers of an allegorical nature to the The Spectator and Guardian. The death of his wife, to whom he was much attached, in August 1711 was a severe blow. Nearly a year later Swift wrote: "He has been ill for grief of his wife's death, and has been two months at Bath."

Towards the end of 1712 he was preparing his poetical Essay on the Different Styles of Poetry. It embodied compliments to Bolingbroke, which pleased that statesman. Swift told Esther Johnson — who seems to have known both Parnell and his wife in Ireland — that Parnell "outdoes all our poets here a bar's length," and he spared no pains to obtain the interest of Oxford and Bolingbroke for his friend. "I value myself," he said, "on making the Ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell, and not Parnell with the Ministry." Bolingbroke, who was greatly pleased by Parnell's complimentary references, helped the author to correct his poem. But the publication of the work was delayed owing to Parnell's illness. It appeared, however, on 24 March, and was "mightily esteemed, but poetry sells ill."

When the treaty of Utrecht was signed, Parnell wrote a Poem on Queen Anne's Peace, and on 30 April 1713 Swift, the new dean of St. Patrick's, asked King to transfer the prebend of Dunlavin, which he was vacating, to Parnell. The request was complied with.

Scriblerius Club

At the end of the year 4 poems by Parnell appeared in Steele's Poetical Miscellanies, and their author became a member of the Scriblerus Club, which proposed to ridicule pedants and "all the false tastes in learning." Since 1706 Parnell had paid frequent visits to London, and had made the acquaintance of Erasmus Lewis, Charles Ford, George Berkeley, and others of Swift's friends. Parnell was fond of popular preaching, and was often heard in public places in Southwark and London in Queen Anne's time.

Pope, Arbuthnot, Swift, Gay, Atterbury, Congreve, and Oxford were members of the new club. Pope says that the Essay concerning the Origin of Sciences, which aims at proving that all learning was derived from the monkeys in Ethiopia, was by Arbuthnot, Parnell, and himself. Swift complained that Parnell was too idle to contribute much to the Scriblerus scheme. His scholarship enabled him to lend Pope considerable aid in connection with his translation of the Iliad, and he contributed to the work an introductory "Essay on Homer." In June 1714 there was some talk of Parnell going as chaplain to Lord Clarendon, the new minister at Hanover, who had just appointed Gay as his secretary.

After Oxford's fall on 27 July 1714 and Queen Anne's death on 1 August, Parnell stayed for a time with Pope at Binfield. In September, Pope and Parnell were at Bath, the latter being in bad health. At the end of the year, or early in 1715, Parnell returned to Ireland, and Pope once more complained that he neglected to write to old friends. When Parnell's "Essay on the Life, Writings, and Learning of Homer" appeared in the first volume of Pope's Iliad in June 1715, Pope wrote gratefully, in public, of this work, "written upon such memoirs as I had collected;" but, in private, said it was so stiff in its style that he was put to great pains in correcting it.

Final years

Oliver Goldsmith says that Parnell ‘was the most capable man in the world to make the happiness of those he conversed with, and the least able to secure his own.’ He was always in a state either of elation or depression. His company was much sought by men of both parties, for he was agreeable, generous, and sincere. When he had a fit of spleen he withdrew to a remote part of the country, that he might not annoy others.

He shared Swift's dislike of Ireland, and was consequently not popular with his neighbours. In spite of his considerable fortune, he seems to have often exceeded his income; but his chief weakness, according to Pope, was his inability to resist the general habit of heavy drinking. Pope ascribes the intemperance to dejection occasioned by the death of Parnell's wife. But the vice was apparently neither gross nor notorious.

Charles Jervas, Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot sent Parnell a long joint letter from a chophouse early in 1716, and in July Pope complained that he and Gay had written several times in vain, and alluded to Parnell's "splenetic hours.’ On 31 May the Archbishop of Dublin had presented Parnell — in succession to Dillon Ashe — with the vicarage of Finglas, worth 400l. according to Goldsmith, 100l. according to Swift's more probable estimate. On receiving this appointment Parnell resigned his archdeaconry. Jervas on a visit to Ireland brought back a picture of the poet.

The only separate volume issued by Parnell during his lifetime, Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice, with the Remarks of Zoilus, to which is prefixed the Life of the said Zoilus, was published about May 1717. The 16l. 2s. 6d. which Bernard Lintot gave for the copyright was paid, at Parnell's wish, to Gay. The prose portion of the book was a satire upon false critics, and was aimed especially at Lewis Theobald and John Dennis.

Pope's Poems were published in folio in June, with lines by Parnell prefixed to them. Parnell had placed his own pieces in Pope's hands for publication, with liberty to correct them where it seemed advisable. In the summer of 1718 he met his old friends in London, and once more exchanged doggerel verses with Lord Oxford.

In October he left for Ireland, but was taken ill at Chester, where he died, and was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church on the 24th.

Writing

Critical introduction

by Edmund Gosse

In contemplating the Lampadephoria of poetical history we sometimes meet with a figure whose torch was well charged with the resin of genius and ready to be enflamed, but whom accidental circumstances removed from the line of light so long and so far that its destiny was never properly fulfilled. Such a figure is Parnell, who, having spent his youth as a thoroughly insignificant amateur in verse, was roused during the last 5 years of his life, under the influence of Pope, a much younger man than he, to strike a few magnificent chords on the lyre of a true poet.

The last 3 pieces in the posthumous edition of Parnell’s poems show us what he might have been, had he lived in London instead of Ireland, had he been born in 1699 instead of 1679, and had he understood at once the imperative bent of his genius. But this sententious and sonorous writer, whose verse in its deeper harmonies surpasses even Pope’s in melody, fancied himself a satirist, a society-singer, and emulated in his false ambition the successes of Oldham and Prior. But while he was vainly attempting to subdue for himself a province in Acrostic-land, there lay unvisited a romantic island of poesy, which was his by birthright, and it was Pope who opened his eyes to this fact.

We know little of Parnell’s life, but we may be sure, from internal evidence, that his last 3 poems were composed during the 5 years between the publication of Windsor Forest and his own death. Yet, though Pope awakened his genius within him, Parnell was not the disciple of Pope; within the narrow range of what he did well, there was no writer of his time who showed a greater originality.

"The Hermit" may be considered as forming the apex and chef d’œuvre of Augustan poetry in England. It is more exactly in the French taste than any work that preceded it, and after it English poetry swiftly passed into the degeneracy of classicism. Parnell’s poem is the model of a moral conte; the movement is dignified and rapid, the action and reflection are balanced with exquisite skill, the surprise is admirably prepared, and the treatment never flags from beginning to end. The French complaint of the lack of style in our minor poetry might have been triumphantly confronted by the Dennises and Budgells of the infancy of our criticism, by a reference to Parnell’s masterpiece, which, if we are ready to grant that polish, elegance and symmetry are the main elements of poetry, could scarcely be surpassed in any language.

But more of real inspiration attended the composition of his two remarkable odes, the "Night-Piece" and the "Hymn to Contentment." In these he originated two distinct streams of poetical influence, for the former was no less certainly the precursor of the curious funereal school of Young, Blair, and Porteus, than the latter was of Collins’ exquisite strain of lyrical writing. In both he shows himself the disciple of Milton, and wields the ringing octosyllabic measure as no one had done since "Il Penseroso" was published. Some lines from the "Hymn to Contentment" reach a higher range of melody, and strike a more subtle chord of fancy than perhaps any other verses of that age. Yet Parnell has been neglected from his own generation to ours, and it is doubtful whether his moral abstractions can ever hope to regain the popular ear.

Recognition

Parnell was made a B.D. and D.D. by Dublin University in 1712.

In December 1718 Pope inquired where Parnell was buried, and whether there was any memorial over his grave. He himself was erecting the best monument he could—the forthcoming edition of Parnell's Poems. This volume, however, was not published until 11 Dec. 1721, when Pope prefixed to it a dedication to Lord Oxford, in which he called Parnell Oxford's "once-loved poet," "dear to the Muse, to Harley dear — in vain!" Johnson and Goldsmith afterwards wrote epitaphs.

Goldsmith wrote a biography of Parnell which often accompanied later editions of Parnell's works.

Parnell's "Song (When thy beauty appears)" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems on Several Occasions. London: B. Lintot, 1721; Dublin: A. Rhames, for J. Hyde, R. Gunne, R. Owen, and E. Dobson, 1722.
• Poetical works: Containing those published by Mr. Pope, together with his posthumous pieces; with the life of the author. Edinburgh: Apollo Press, by the Martins, 1770; London: Fry & Couchman, 1786; London: C. Cooke, 1796.
• The Poems of Parnell and A. Philips (with Ambrose Philips). London: J. Rivington, 1779.
• The Poems of A. Philips, Parnell, and West (with Ambrose Philips & Gilbert West). Chiswick, UK: Press of C. Whittingham, 1822.
• The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, Thomas Parnell, William Collins, Matthew Green, and Thomas Warton (edited by Robert Aris Willmott). London: George Routledge, 1853.
• Poetical works. With a life by Oliver Goldsmith. Boston: Little, Brown, 1854.
• Collected Poems (edited by Claude Julien Rawson & F.P. Lock). Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press / London: Associated University Presses, 1989.

Essays

• An Essay on the Different Stiles of Poetry. London: B. Tooke, 1713.

Translated

• Homer? Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice: With the remarks of Zoilus. London: Bernard Lintot, 1717.

Collected editions

• The Posthumous Works. London: W. Johnson, 1758.
• The Works: In verse and prose. Glasgow: Robert & Andrew Foulis, 1767.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

A Dream (Thomas Parnell Poem)

• List of Irish poets

References

• R. Woodman, Thomas Parnell (1985). ISBN 978-0805768831
•  Aitken, George Atherton (1895) "Parnell, Thomas" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 43 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 349-351  . Wikisource, Web, Sep. 1, 2016.</ref>

External links

Poems

• "Song (When thy beauty appears)"
• Selected Poetry of Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) (3 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Parnell in The English Poets: An anthology: extract from "A Night Piece on Death", extract from "A Hymn to Contentment", "The Hermit"
• Thomas Parnell at PoemHunter (129 poems)
• Thomas Parnell at Poetry Nook (144 poems)

Books

• Works by Thomas Parnell at Project Gutenberg

About

• Thomas Parnell in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Thomas Parnell at NNDB
• Parnell, Thomas at the Literary Gothic
• Thomas Parnell in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Parnell, Thomas