Confounded, to the dark recess I fly

Of wood-hole; straight my bristling hairs erect
Through sudden fear; a chilly sweat bedews
My shuddering limbs, and (wonderful to tell!)
My tongue forgets her faculty of speech;
So horrible he seems! His faded brow,
Entrench'd with many a frown, and conic beard,
And spreading band, admired by modern saints,
Disastrous acts forebode; in his right hand
Long scrolls of paper solemnly he waves,
With characters and figures dire inscribed,
Grievous to mortal eyes; (ye gods avert

Such plagues from righteous men!) Behind him stalks

Another monster, not unlike himself,
Sullen of aspect, by the vulgar call'd

A Catchpole, whose polluted hands the gods,
With force incredible, and magic charms,
Erst have endued; if he his ample palm
Should haply on ill-fated shoulder lay
Of debtor, straight his body, to the touch
Obsequious (as whilom knights were wont)
To some enchanted castle is convey'd,
Where gates impregnable, and coercive chains,
In durance strict detain him, till, in form
Of Money, Pallas sets the captive free.

Beware, ye Debtors! when ye walk, beware,
Be circumspect; oft with insidious ken
The caitiff eyes your steps aloof, and oft
Lies perdue in a nook or gloomy cave,
Prompt to enchant some inadvertent wretch
With his unhallow'd touch. So (poets sing)
Grimalkin, to domestic vermin sworn
An everlasting foe, with watchful eye
Lies nightly brooding o'er a chinky gap,
Protending her fell claws, to thoughtless mice
Sure ruin. So her disembowell'd web
Arachne, in a hall or kitchen, spreads
Obvious to vagrant flies: she secret stands
Within her woven cell; the humming prey,
Regardless of their fate, rush on the toils
Inextricable, nor will aught avail
Their arts, or arms, or shapes of lovely hue;
The wasp insidious, and the buzzing drone,
And butterfly, proud of expanded wings
Distinct with gold, entangled in her snares,
Useless resistance make with eager strides,
She towering flies to her expected spoils;
Then, with envenom'd jaws, the vital blood
Drinks of reluctant foes, and to her cave
Their bulky carcasses triumphant drags.

So pass my days. But, when nocturnal shades This world envelop, and th' inclement air Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;

Me lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
Of loving friend, delights; distress'd, forlorn,
Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
Or lover pendent on a willow-tree.
Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought,
And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose:
But if a slumber haply does invade
My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake,
Thoughtful of drink, and, eager, in a dream,
Tipples imaginary pots of ale,

In vain ; awake I find the settled thirst
Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.

Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarr'd,
Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial rays
Mature, john-apple, nor the downy peach,
Nor walnut in rough-furrow'd coat secure,
Nor medlar, fruit delicious in decay;
Afflictions great! yet greater still remain :
My galligaskins, that have long withstood
The winter's fury, and encroaching frosts,
By time subdued (what will not time subdue!)
An horrid chasm disclosed with orifice
Wide, discontinuous; at which the winds
Eurus and Auster, and the dreadful force
Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian waves,
Tumultuous enter with dire chilling blasts,
Portending agues. Thus a well-fraught ship,
Long sail'd secure, or through th' Ægean deep,
Or the Ionian, till cruising near

The Lilybean shore, with hideous crush
On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!)
She strikes rebounding; whence the shatter'd oak,
So fierce a shock unable to withstand,
Admits the sea; in at the gaping side

The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage,
Resistless, overwhelming ; horrors seize
The mariners; Death in their eyes appears,
They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear, they
pray;

(Vain efforts!) still the battering waves rush in, Implacable, till, deluged by the foam,

The ship sinks foundering in the vast abyss*.

He

[* The Splendid Shilling" has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it may be thought precluded by the ancient "Centos." But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author. that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents of common life, and even adapt it with some art, which would not be difficult, must yet expect a small part of the praise which Philips has obtained; he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a jest.JOHNSON.]

A DOMESTIC of the Earl of Dorset, and afterwards a schoolmaster, who wrote two dramas

"The Rival Sisters," and "Innocence Distressed."

SONG.

FROM THE VIOLENCE OF LOVE, OR THE RIVAL SISTERS.

FAIR and soft, and gay and young,

All charm-she play'd, she danced, she sung:
There was no way to 'scape the dart,
No care could guard the lover's heart.
Ah, why, cried I, and dropp'd a tear,
Adoring, yet despairing e'er

To have her to myself alone,

Why was such sweetness made for one?

But, growing bolder, in her ear
I in soft numbers told my care:

She heard, and raised me from her feet,
And seem'd to glow with equal heat.
Like heaven's, too mighty to express,
My joys could but be known by guess;
Ay, fool, said I, what have I done,
To wish her made for more than one!

But long she had not been in view,
Before her eyes their beams withdrew ;
Ere I had reckon'd half her charms,
She sunk into another's arms.

But she that once could faithless be,
Will favour him no more than me:
He, too, will find he is undone,
And that she was not made for one.

SONG. FROM THE SAME.

CELIA is cruel: Sylvia, thou,
I must confess, art kind;
But in her cruelty, I vow,

I more repose can find.
For, oh thy fancy at all games does fly,
Fond of address, and willing to comply.

Thus he that loves must be undone,
Each way on rocks we fall;
Either you will be kind to none,

Or worse, be kind to all.

Vain are our hopes, and endless is our care; We must be jealous, or we must despair.

THE Compass of Parnell's poetry is not extensive, but its tone is peculiarly delightful not from mere correctness of expression, to which some critics have stinted its praises, but from the graceful and reserved sensibility that accompanied his polished phraseology. The curiosa felicitas, the studied happiness of his diction, does not spoil its simplicity. His poetry is like a flower that has been trained and planted by the skill of the gardener, but which preserves, in its cultured state, the natural fragrance of its wilder air.

His ancestors were of Congleton, in Cheshire. His father, who had been attached to the republican party in the civil wars, went to Ireland at the Restoration, and left an estate which he purchased in that kingdom, together with another in Cheshire, at his death, to the poet. Parnell was educated at the university of Dublin, and having been permitted, by a dispensation, to take deacon's orders under the canonical age, had the archdeaconry of Clogher conferred upon him by the bishop of that diocese, in his twenty-sixth year. About the same time he married a Miss Anne Minchin, an amiable woman, whose death he had to lament not many years after their union, and whose loss, as it affected Parnell, even the iron-hearted Swift mentions as a heavy misfortune.

Though born and bred in Ireland, he seems to have had too little of the Irishman in his local attachments. His aversion to the manners of his native country was more fastidious than amiable. When he had once visited London, he became attached to it for ever. His zest or talents for society made him the favourite of its brightest

literary circles. His pulpit oratory was also much admired in the metropolis; and he renewed his visits to it every year. This, however, was only the bright side of his existence. His spirits were very unequal, and when he found them ebbing, he used to retreat to the solitudes of Ireland, where he fed the disease of his imagination, by frightful descriptions of his retirement. During his intimacy with the whigs in England, he contributed some papers, chiefly Visions, to the Spectator and Guardian. Afterwards his personal friendship was engrossed by the tories, and they persuaded him to come over to their side in politics, at the suspicious moment when the whigs were going out of power. In the frolics of the Scriblerus club, of which he is said to have been the founder, wherever literary allusions were required for the ridicule of pedantry, he may be supposed to have been the scholar most able to supply them; for Pope's correspondence shows, that among his learned friends he applied to none with so much anxiety as to Parnell. The death of the queen put an end to his hopes of preferment by the tories, though not before he had obtained, through the influence of Swift, the vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin. His fits of despondency, after the death of his wife, became more gloomy, and these aggravated a habit of intemperance which shortened his days. He died, in his thirty-eighth year, at Chester, on his way to Ireland*, and he was buried in Trinity church, in that city, but without a memorial to mark the spot of his in| terment.

Edwin, I wis, a gentle youth,

Endow'd with courage, sense, and truth,
Though badly shaped he been.

See Goldsmith's Misc. Works by Prior, vol. iv.