for his weary months of solitude at Clogher or Finglas.
About this time Pope and his friends had formed themselves into a society which they called the Scriblerus Club, of which Parnell was a member. It appears from some MS. anecdotes left by Pope, that Parnell had a principal share ' in the origin of the sciences from the monkies in Ethiopia.'[1] The life of Zoilus was intended as a satire on Dennis[2] and Theobald, with whom the club waged eternal war.
The life of Homer prefixed to the translation of the Iliad was written by Parnell, and corrected by Pope, who assures us, that this correction was not effected without great labour. "It is still stiff, (he says) and was written still stiffer; as it is, I verily think it cost me more pains in the correcting, than the writing it would have done." That Parnell's prose, as Goldsmith says, is awkward and inharmonious, and that Pope would have written in a style more elegant and polished, may be well believed; but I question whether Pope
- ↑ The origin of the sciences from the monkies of Ethiopia was written by me, Dean Parnell and Dr. Arbuthnot. Spence's Anecdotes, p. 201.
- ↑ Dennis's self-conceit, vanity, and envy, certainly deserved a heavy castigation: his preface to his Comical Gallants is a most extraordinary production of egotism and impudence; while the play itself is a mass of dulness and stupidity. The learning of Theobald might have shielded him from contempt.
