Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/104

56 borrowed the venerable name of the father of poetry; but I will just mention that there is one passage in it, which at once precludes it from being the production of the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, unless an interpolation by a later hand should be suspected.

There is no mention of this bird in Homer; probably it was not known till the return of the army of Alexander, who brought the Indian Jungle fowl home with them from the East, and domesticated them in Europe.

The Epistle to Pope, Goldsmith says, is one of the finest compliments that was ever paid to any poet, he hints at Parnell's description of his residence in Ireland being splenetic and untrue: and says that this poem gave much offence to his neighbours, who considered that they could supply him with learning and poetry, without an importation from Twickenham.

The translation of some lines in the Rape of the Lock into rhyming Latin verse, was owing to the following circumstance. Before the Rape of the Lock was finished, Pope was reading it to Swift,