[Footnote 1:  Supposed to be Percy.]

* * * * *

END OF JOHNSON’S POEMS.

* * * * *

THE POETICAL WORKS

OF

THOMAS PARNELL.

  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 ought 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. 
  Even now she shades thy evening walk with bays,
  (No hireling she, no prostitute to praise)
  Even 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.

   September 25, 1721.  A. POPE.

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF THOMAS PARNELL.

Parnell is the third in a trio of poetical clergymen whose names have immediately succeeded each other in this edition.  Bowles, Churchill, and Parnell were all clergymen, and all poets; but in other respects differed materially from each other.  In Bowles, the clerical and the poetical characters were on the whole well attuned and harmonised.  In Churchill, they came to an open rupture.  In Parnell, they were neither ruptured nor reconciled, but maintained an ambiguous relation, till his premature death settled the moot point for ever.