1712). Parnell was made B.D. and D.D. by Dublin University in 1712, and towards the end of the year was preparing his poetical ‘Essay on the Different Styles of Poetry.’ It embodied compliments to Bolingbroke, which much 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. At the end of the year four 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. 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 Aug., 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.
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 (Cotton, Fasti Eccles. Hib. v. 217). 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 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 (information supplied by the Rev. E. Marston). In December 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 (Daily Courant), 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 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
