only error you have been guilty of. I hope very speedily to embrace you in London, and to assure you of the particular esteem and friendship wherewith I am your, &c.
From these letters, says Goldsmith, we may conclude, as far as their testimony can go, that Parnell was an agreeable, a generous, and sincere man, indeed, he took care that his friends should always see him to the best advantage, for when he found his fits of spleen and uneasiness, which sometimes lasted for weeks together, returning, he retreated with all expedition to the remote parts of Ireland, and there made out a gloomy kind of satisfaction in giving hideous descriptions of the solitude to which he retired,—from many of his unpublished pieces which I have seen, and from others which have appeared, it would seem that scarce a bog in his neighbourhood was left without reproach, and scarce a mountain round his head unsung. " I can easily, (says Pope, in one of his letters,[1] in answer to a dreary description of Parnell's) I can easily image
- ↑ This fragment of a letter is not to be found in Pope's correspondence as published in Dr. Warton's edition. I should therefore suppose that Goldsmith possessed the MS. which has not been preserved. I may here remark, that Pope's correspondence is not published in Warton's edition with the correctness or completeness that could be desired. How far the late editors may have supplied his deficiences,
