Often regarded as the father of the Graveyard School, the Irish-born Parnell was a minister — and something of a whiz kid, entering Trinity College, Dublin, when he was 13 and earning his M. A. by the time he was 21 — and friend of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Addison and Steele and other members of the famed Scriblerus Club, in which Parnell was included. He was a fairly prolific poet and essayist, although he published very little during his lifetime. His "Night-Piece on Death" is often regarded as the first work of the Graveyard School, and was an influence on Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Parnell, despite being known for his polish, wit, and politeness, was apparently touched by depression: a friend reports he was "melancholic" as he contemplated entering the priesthood, and Jonathan Swift reported that Parnell still seemed deeply affected by his wife's death a year after her passing. And although some of the reports may have been exaggerations, Parnell certainly seemed to be, as Samuel Johnson put it, "too much a lover of the bottle."
Sites:
Biographical essay
[Paul Baines, U Liverpool; Literary Encyclopedia]
Thomas Parnell
Samuel Johnson's essay on Parnell. [18th Century Archive, Kathleen Kememerer, Penn State Hazelton]
Biographical note
From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21) at Project Bartleby]
Brief biographical note
[Wikipedia]
Brief biographical noteCousins' note reports the date of the death of Parnell's wife as 1706; I believe that the date mentioned in my note to "Night-Piece" below, 1711, is correct, as it comes from Bryan Coleborne's entry on Parnell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biograpy. [John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]
