without constraint, and easy without weakness.

What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an
abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from
my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to
the memory of Goldsmith.

Thomas Parnell was the son of a Commonwealthsman of the same name,
who, at the Restoration, left Congleton, in Cheshire, where the
family had been established for several centuries, and, settling in
Ireland, purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire,
descended to the poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after
the usual education at a grammar school, was, at the age of
thirteen, admitted into the College where, in 1700, he became Master
of Arts; and was the same year ordained a deacon, though under the
canonical age, by a dispensation from the Bishop of Derry.

About three years afterwards he was made a priest and in 1705 Dr.
Ashe, the Bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of
Clogher. About the same time he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an
amiable lady, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a
daughter, who long survived him.

At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of Queen Anne's reign,
Parnell was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure
from those whom he forsook, and was received by the new Ministry as
a valuable reinforcement. When the Earl of Oxford was told that Dr.
Parnell waited among the crowd in the outer room, he went, by the
persuasion of Swift, with his Treasurer's staff in his hand, to
inquire for him, and to bid him welcome; and, as may be inferred