LIFE OF PARNELL.
61
have added, in a note,[1] the works of different authors, where, in my own very contracted line of reading, I have accidentally met with this fiction, and which shows it to have been more generally known, than Goldsmith or probably Parnell were aware.[2] Johnson thinks that there is more elaboration in the Hermit than in the other poems of Parnell, which renders it less airy and pleasing.
- ↑ 1. Herolt Sermones de Tempore et Sanctis, fol. Nuremb. 1496 (Serm. liii).2. Gesta Romanorum, c. lxxx.3. Sir Percy Herbert's Conceptions to his Son, 4to. 1652.4. H. More's Divine Dialogues, p. 256, ed. 1743.5. Howell's Letters, iv. 4.6. Lutherana (Eng. Trans.) vol. ii. p. 127.7. Voltaire's Zadig. vol. i. chap. xx. p. 125; and see Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. vi. p. 324; and Warton's Eng. Poetry, vol, i. p. cciv. cclxvi.; vol. iii. p. 41. See also Br. Mus. MS. Harl. 463. fol.8. Epitres de Madam Antoinette Bourignon, Part: sec: Ep. xvii.
Antonia who the Hermit's story fram'd,
A tale to prose-men known, by verse-men fam'd.
W. Harte's Courtier and Prince. - ↑ In the first couplet of this poem, the word 'grew,' for 'liv'd,' is exceptionable, and there is an ambiguity of expression, in the lines
"To find if books, or swains, report it right,
(For yet by swains alone the world he knew,
Whose feet came wandering o'er the nightly dew);"
which might without much difficulty have been removed. The word 'alone' has no reference to books in the preceding line, but to 'swains,' as distinguished from all other persons; when I wrote the above, I was not aware of the difficulty having been noticed in Boswell's Johnson; see vol. iii. p. 418. At p. 126 of Pope's ed. of Parnell (The Flies, an Eclogue) "your fenny shade forsakes the vale," is a misprint for "ferny."
