from Pope's dedication, admitted him as a favourite companion to his
convivial hours, but, as it seems often to have happened in those
times to the favourites of the great, without attention to his
fortune, which, however, was in no great need of improvement.

Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was desirous to make
himself conspicuous, and to show how worthy he was of high
preferment. As he thought himself qualified to become a popular
preacher, he displayed his elocution with great success in the
pulpits of London; but the Queen's death putting an end to his
expectations, abated his diligence; and Pope represents him as
falling from that time into intemperance of wine. 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.

He was now to derive every future addition to his preferments from
his personal interest with his private friends, and he was not long
unregarded. He was warmly recommended by Swift to Archbishop King,
who gave him a prebend in 1713; and in May, 1716, presented him to
the vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin, worth 400 pounds
a year. Such notice from such a man inclines me to believe that the
vice of which he has been accused was not gross or not notorious.

But his prosperity did not last long. His end, whatever was its
cause, was now approaching. He enjoyed his preferment little more
than a year; for in July, 1717, in his thirty-eighth year, he died
at Chester on his way to Ireland.