forms a strong contrast with that of Pope's preface, that precedes it. It is singular, that the use of 'shall' for 'will,'[1] that occurs repeatedly in it, should have been overlooked by Pope. Goldsmith says, the language is shamefully incorrect; though Swift, who set a very high value on correctness of style, appeared satisfied with it; for, in a letter to Pope, he says, "your notes are perfectly good, and so are your preface and Essays." There are a few papers by Parnell in the Spectator, called Visions, which do not require any particular notice; as a prose writer, there is a stiffness, a want of neatness and arrangement, and an inaccuracy in his style: his merits as a poet are thus summed up by Goldsmith in the following elegant epitaph, with which I shall conclude the Memoir.
This tomb inscrib'd to gentle Parnell's name,
May speak our gratitude, but not his fame.
What heart but feels his sweetly moral lay,
That leads to truth through pleasure's flowery way.
- ↑ See Swift's Works, ed. Nichols, vol. xiv. p. 5, p. 136. "But these things shall lie by till you come to compare them, and alter rhyme and grammar, and triplets, and cacophonies of all kinds," &c. yet Swift uses shall for will.
Homeric Poems, spurious pieces of biography, and interpolated passages passed without suspicion. The solid learning, and sagacity of Heynè, Wolff, P. Knight, and particularly of that unequalled scholar Hermann, have thrown much light on a subject so obscure from its antiquity; but the difficulties of the question are as yet only pointed out, and the modern Aristarchus is still to come.
