Volume Iii Part 23 (2/2)
that last Word is by some thought to be metaphorically used, and to signify young Men. Allowing this Interpretation to be right, the Text may not appear to be wholly foreign to our present Purpose.
'When you are in a Disposition proper for writing on such a Subject, I earnestly recommend this to you, and am,
_SIR,_
_Your very humble Servant._
T.
[Footnote 1: Thomas Parnell, the writer of this allegory, was the son of a commonwealthsman, who at the Restoration ceased to live on his hereditary lands at Congleton, in Ches.h.i.+re, and bought an estate in Ireland. Born in 1679, at Dublin, where he became M.A. of Trinity College, in 1700 he was ordained after taking his degree, and in 1705 became Archdeacon of Clogher. At the same time he took a wife, who died in 1711. Parnell had been an a.s.sociate of the chief Whig writers, had taste as a poet, and found pleasure in writing for the papers of the time. When the Whigs went out of power in Queen Anne's reign, Parnell connected himself with the Tories. On the warm recommendation of Swift, he obtained a prebend in 1713, and in May, 1716, a vicarage in the diocese of Dublin, worth 400 a year. He died in July, 1717, aged 38.
Inheriting his father's estates in Ches.h.i.+re and Ireland, Pamell was not in need. Wanting vigour and pa.s.sion, he was neither formidable nor bitter as a political opponent, and in 1712 his old friends, Steele and Addison, were glad of a paper from him; though, with Swift, he had gone over to the other side in politics.]
[Footnote 2: I Corinthians xi. 10.]
No. 461. Tuesday, August 19, 1712. Steele
'--Non Ego credulus illis--'
Virg.
For want of Time to subst.i.tute something else in the Room of them, I am at present obliged to publish Compliments above my Desert in the following Letters. It is no small Satisfaction, to have given Occasion to ingenious Men to employ their Thoughts upon sacred Subjects, from the Approbation of such Pieces of Poetry as they have seen in my _Sat.u.r.day's_ Papers. I shall never publish Verse on that Day but what is written by the same Hand; yet shall I not accompany those Writings with _Eulogiums,_ but leave them to speak for themselves.
_For the_ SPECTATOR.
_Mr_. SPECTATOR,
'You very much promote the Interests of Virtue, while you reform the Taste of a Prophane Age, and persuade us to be entertained with Divine Poems, while we are distinguished by so many thousand Humours, and split into so many different Sects and Parties; yet Persons of every Party, Sect, and Humour are fond of conforming their Taste to yours.
You can transfuse your own Relish of a Poem into all your Readers, according to their Capacity to receive; and when you recommend the pious Pa.s.sion that reigns in the Verse, we seem to feel the Devotion, and grow proud and pleas'd inwardly, that we have Souls capable of relis.h.i.+ng what the SPECTATOR approves.
'Upon reading the Hymns that you have published in some late Papers, I had a Mind to try Yesterday whether I could write one. The 114th _Psalm_ appears to me an admirable Ode, and I began to turn it into our Language. As I was describing the Journey of _Israel_ from _Egypt_, and added the Divine Presence amongst them, I perceived a Beauty in the _Psalm_ which was entirely new to me, and which I was going to lose; and that is, that the Poet utterly conceals the Presence of G.o.d in the Beginning of it, and rather lets a Possessive p.r.o.noun go without a Substantive, than he will so much as mention any thing of Divinity there. _Judah was his Sanctuary, and_ Israel _his Dominion or Kingdom_. The Reason now seems evident, and this Conduct necessary: For if G.o.d had appeared before, there could be no wonder why the Mountains should leap and the Sea retire; therefore that this Convulsion of Nature may be brought in with due Surprise, his Name is not mentioned till afterward, and then with a very agreeable Turn of Thought G.o.d is introduced at once in all his Majesty. This is what I have attempted to imitate in a Translation without Paraphrase, and to preserve what I could of the Spirit of the sacred Author.
'If the following Essay be not too incorrigible, bestow upon it a few Brightnings from your Genius, that I may learn how to write better, or to write no more.
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