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8vo., [4], xxviii, ii, 179pp., (pp.175-179 misnumbered 17-21), 2 finely engraved plates, bound in contemporary handsome tree calf with gilt decoration along all outer edges, gilt decorated spine in compartments with raised bands, with contrasting red morocco title label. A lovely clean copy in a most handsome contemporary binding. Ex Libris John Diggens with. a very neat contemporary presentation inscription in Latin dated 1796. Thomas Parnell, (1679-1718), Irish poet, essayist, and friend of Alexander Pope, who relied on Parnell s scholarship in his translation of the Iliad. Parnell s poetry, written in heroic couplets, was esteemed by Pope for its lyric quality and stylistic ease. Among his best poems are "An Elegy to an Old Beauty" and "Night Piece on Death," said to have influenced Thomas Gray s "An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard." Parnell contributed to The Spectator and the Guardian and was a member, with Swift and Gay, of the literary Scriblerus Club. In 1713 four poems by Parnell appeared in Steele's Poetical Miscellanies, and he became a member of the Scriblerus Club, whose aim it was to ridicule pedantry and "all false taste in learning;" Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot were among the other members. He was especially close to Pope, whom he assisted with his translations of Homer. Pope describes him as an intemperate drinker, but Johnson, in his sketch in the Lives of the Poets based on a short biography by Goldsmith, is forgiving: "That in his latter life he was too much a lover of the bottle, is not denied; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more likely to obtain forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a darling son, or, as others tell, the loss of his wife, who died (1712) in the midst of his expectations." After Parnell s death, Pope collected his poetry and published it in a volume called Poems on Several Occasions (1722). The work was republished in 1770 with additional poems and a life of Parnell by Oliver Goldsmith. Seller Inventory # 3750
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