Lives Of The Poets, Vol. 1 (fiscle part-III), Samuel Johnson [good summer reads .TXT] 📗
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Summoning the Electoral Prince To Parliament, As Duke Of Cambridge.
At The Queen'S Death He Was Appointed one Of The Regents; And At The
Accession Of George The First Was Made Earl Of Halifax, Knight Of The
Garter, And First Commissioner Of The Treasury, With A Grant To His
Nephew Of The Reversion Of The Auditorship Of The Exchequer. More Was Not
To Be Had, And This He Kept But A Little While; For, On The 19Th Of May,
1715, He Died of An Inflammation Of His Lungs.
Of Him, Who From A Poet Became A Patron Of Poets, It Will Be Readily
Believed that The Works Would Not Miss Of Celebration. Addison Began
To Praise Him Early, And Was Followed or Accompanied by Other Poets;
Perhaps, By Almost All, Except Swift And Pope, Who Forbore To Flatter Him
In His Life, And After His Death Spoke Of Him, Swift With Slight Censure,
And Pope, In the Character Of Bufo, With Acrimonious Contempt[141].
He Was, As Pope Says, "Fed with Dedications;" For Tickell Affirms That No
Dedicator Was Unrewarded. To Charge All Unmerited praise With The Guilt
Of Flattery, And To Suppose That The Encomiast Always Knows And Feels The
Falsehoods Of His Assertions, Is, Surely, To Discover Great Ignorance Of
Human Nature And Human Life. In determinations Depending not On Rules,
But On Experience And Comparison, Judgment Is Always, In some Degree,
Subject To Affection. Very Near To Admiration Is The Wish To Admire.
Every Man Willingly Gives Value To The Praise Which He Receives,
And Considers The Sentence Passed in his Favour As The Sentence Of
Discernment. We Admire, In a Friend, That Understanding that Selected us
For Confidence; We Admire More, In a Patron, That Judgment Which, Instead
Of Scattering bounty Indiscriminately, Directed it To Us; And, If The
Patron Be An Author, Those Performances Which Gratitude Forbids Us To
Blame, Affection Will Easily Dispose Us To Exalt.
To These Prejudices, Hardly Culpable, Interest Adds A Power Always
Operating, Though Not Always, Because Not Willingly, Perceived. The
Modesty Of Praise Wears Gradually Away; And, Perhaps, The Pride Of
Patronage May Be In time So Increased, That Modest Praise Will No Longer
Please.
Many A Blandishment Was Practised upon Halifax, Which He Would Never Have
Known, Had He No Other Attractions Than Those Of His Poetry, Of Which A
Short Time Has Withered the Beauties. It Would Now Be Esteemed no Honour,
By A Contributor To The Monthly Bundles Of Verses, To Be Told, That, In
Strains Either Familiar Or Solemn, He Sings Like Montague.
[Footnote 139: He Left Sir Isaac Newton 200/. M.]
[Footnote 140: Mr. Reed observes, That This Anecdote Is Related by Mr.
Walpole, In his Catalogue Of Royal And Noble Authors, Of The Earl Of
Shaftesbury, Author Of The Characteristicks, But It Appears To Me To Be
A Mistake, If We Are To Understand That The Words Were Spoken By
Shaftesbury At This Time, When He Had No Seat In the House Of Commons;
Nor Did The Bill Pass At This Time, Being thrown Out By The House Of
Lords. It Became A Law In the Seventh Of William, When Halifax And
Shaftesbury Both Had Seats. The Editors Of The Biog. Brit. Adopt Mr.
Walpole'S Story, But They Are Not Speaking of This Period. The Story
First Appeared in the Life Of Lord Halifax, Published in 1715.]
[Footnote 141: Mr. Roscoe Denies That Pope'S Character Of Bufo, In the
Prologue To The Satires, Was Intended for Halifax. In evidence Of His
Assertion He Quotes Several Passages From Pope'S Poems, And The Preface
To The Iliad, All Published after That Nobleman'S Death, When The Poet
Could Hope For No Return For His Praises, When Flattery Could Not Sooth
"The Dull Cold Ear Of Death." Twenty Years After Halifax'S Decease, He Is
Thus Commemorated:
"But Does The Court One Worthy Man Remove,
That Moment I Declare He Has My Love:
I Shun Their Zenith, Court Their Mild Decline;
Thus Somers Once, And Halifax Were Mine."
See Roscoe'S Pope, Vol. I. P. 138. Ed.]
Parnell
The Life Of Dr. Parnell Is A Task Which I Should Very Willingly Decline,
Since It Has Been Lately Written By Goldsmith, A Man Of Such Variety Of
Powers, And Such Felicity Of Performance, That He Always Seemed to Do
Best That Which He Was Doing; A Man Who Had The Art Of Being minute
Without Tediousness, And General Without Confusion; Whose Language Was
Copious Without Exuberance, Exact Without Constraint, And Easy Without
Weakness.
What Such An Author Has Told, Who Would Tell Again? I Have Made An
Abstract From His Larger Narrative; And Have This Gratification From My
Attempt, That It Gives Me An Opportunity Of Paying due Tribute To The
Memory Of Goldsmith:
'Tho Geras Esti Thanonton'
Thomas Parnell Was The Son Of A Commonwealthsman Of The Same Name, Who,
At The Restoration, Left Congleton, In cheshire, Where The Family Had
Been Established for Several Centuries, And, Settling in ireland,
Purchased an Estate, Which, With His Lands In cheshire, Descended 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 Master Of Arts; And Was The Same Year Ordained
A Deacon, Though Under The Canonical Age, By A Dispensation From The
Bishop Of Derry.
About Three Years Afterwards He Was Made A Priest; And, In 1705, Dr.
Ashe, The Bishop Of Clogher, Conferred upon Him The Archdeaconry Of
Clogher. About The Same Time He Married mrs. Anne Minchin, An Amiable
Lady, By Whom He Had Two Sons, Who Died young, And A Daughter Who Long
Survived him.
At The Ejection Of The Whigs, In the End Of Queen Anne'S Reign, Parnell
Was Persuaded to Change His Party, Not Without Much Censure From Those
Whom He Forsook, And Was Received by The New Ministry As A Valuable
Reinforcement. When The Earl Of Oxford Was Told That Dr. Parnell Waited
Among The Crowd In the Outer Room, He Went, By The Persuasion Of Swift,
With His Treasurer'S Staff In his Hand, To Inquire 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 Desirous To Make
Himself Conspicuous, And To Show How Worthy He Was Of High Preferment. As
He Thought Himself Qualified to Become A Popular Preacher, He Displayed
His Elocution With Great Success In the Pulpits Of London; But The
Queen'S Death Putting an End To His Expectations, Abated his Diligence;
And Pope Represents 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 son; Or, As
Others Tell, The Loss Of His Wife, Who Died, 1712, In the Midst Of His
Expectations.
He Was Now To Derive Every Future Addition To His Preferments From
His Personal Interest With His Private Friends, And He Was Not Long
Unregarded. He Was Warmly Recommended by Swift To Archbishop King, Who
Gave Him A Prebend In 1713; And In may, 1716, Presented him To The
Vicarage Of Finglass, In the Diocese Of Dublin, Worth Four Hundred pounds
A Year. Such Notice From Such A Man Inclines Me To Believe, That The Vice
Of Which He Has Been Accused was Not Gross, Or Not Notorious.
But His Prosperity Did Not Last Long. His End, Whatever Was Its Cause,
Was Now Approaching. He Enjoyed his Preferment Little More Than A Year;
For In july, 1717, In his Thirty-Eighth Year, He Died at Chester, On His
Way To Ireland.
He Seems 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 Compositions Behind Him, Of Which Pope Selected
Those Which He Thought Best, And Dedicated them To The Earl Of Oxford. Of
These Goldsmith Has Given An Opinion, And His Criticism It Is Seldom Safe
To Contradict. He Bestows Just Praise Upon The Rise 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 Discovers That Gay Bacchus
Is Translated from Augurellus, He Ought To Have Remarked, That The Latter
Part Is Purely Parnell'S. Another Poem, When Spring comes On, Is, He
Says, Taken From The French. I Would Add, That The Description Of
Barrenness, In his Verses To Pope, Was Borrowed from Secundus; But Lately
Searching for The Passage, Which I Had Formerly Read, I Could Not Find
It. The Night-Piece On Death Is Indirectly Preferred by Goldsmith To
Gray'S Church-Yard; But, In my Opinion, Gray Has The Advantage In
Dignity, Variety, And Originality Of Sentiment. He Observes, That The
Story Of The Hermit Is In more'S Dialogues And Howell'S Letters, And
Supposes It To Have Been Originally Arabian.
Goldsmith Has Not Taken Any Notice Of The Elegy To The Old Beauty, Which
Is, Perhaps, The Meanest; Nor Of The Allegory On Man, The Happiest Of
Parnell'S Performances. The Hint Of The Hymn To Contentment[142] I
Suspect To Have Been Borrowed from Cleiveland.
The General Character Of Parnell Is Not Great Extent Of Comprehension, Or
Fertility Of Mind. Of The Little That Appears, Still Less Is His Own. His
Praise Must Be Derived from The Easy Sweetness Of His Diction: In his
Verses There Is More Happiness Than Pains; He Is Sprightly Without
Effort, And Always Delights, Though He Never Ravishes; Every Thing is
Proper, Yet Every Thing seems Casual. If There Is Some Appearance Of
Elaboration In the Hermit, The Narrative, As It Is Less Airy, Is Less
Pleasing[143]. Of His Other Compositions It Is Impossible To Say Whether
They Are The Productions Of Nature, So Excellent As Not To Want The Help
Of Art, Or Of Art So Refined as To Resemble Nature.
This Criticism Relates Only To The Pieces Published by Pope. Of The Large
Appendages, Which I Find In the Last Edition, I Can Only Say, That I Know
Not Whence They Came, Nor Have Ever Inquired whither They Are Going. They
Stand Upon The Faith Of The Compilers.
[Footnote 142: Parnell'S "Exquisite Hymn To Contentment, Is Manifestly
Formed on The Divine _Psalmodia_ Of Cardinal Bona--This Imitation Has
Escaped the Notice Of Dr. Johnson, And, It Is Believed, Of All Other
Critics And Commentators." Dr. Jebb'S Sermons, Second Edition, P. 94.]
[Footnote 143: Dr. Warton Asks, "Less Than What?"]
Garth
Samuel Garth Was Of A Good Family In yorkshire, And, From Some School In
His Own Country, Became A Student At Peter-House, In cambridge, Where He
Resided till He Became Doctor Of Physick, On July The 7Th, 1691. He Was
Examined before The College At London, On March The 12Th, 1691-2, And
Admitted fellow, July 26Th, 1693.
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