in the more valuable virtues of the heart. It is said, that the festivity of his conversation, the benevolence of his heart, and the generosity of his temper, were qualities that might serve to cement any society, and that could hardly be replaced when he was taken away. In his later years, domestic sorrows so preyed on a nervous and excited mind, as to drive him from solitude, and he sought even in common and promiscuous company a temporary oblivion of his affliction. That he fondly cherished the remembrance of the estimable partner of his life whom he so early lost, seems to be a fact known to his friends and acknowledged by his biographers; but that he fell a martyr to conjugal fidelity (as Goldsmith asserts), may be received with some moderate limitation. Our materials[1] are too scanty and imperfect to enable us to determine what was the exact cause of Parnell's death, which took place before his fortieth year; but from the passages in Swift's Journal, I should think it not improbable that he died of a slow nervous decline.
Perhaps it would be as well to insert, in this part of the narrative, the mention made of him by Swift while both were resident in London, and when the
- ↑ Johnson is reported to have said "Goldsmith's Life of Parnell is poor, not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drank, and lived in social intercourse with him." Boswell's Life of Johnson, ii. p. 163.
