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Rh Congleton, in Cheshire. His father, Thomas Parnell, was attached to the Commonwealth party, and at the restoration went over to Ireland, where he purchased a considerable estate, which, with his property in Cheshire, descended to our poet.

Parnell was born in Dublin, in 1679, and was educated at the school of Dr. Jones in that city; he is said to have distinguished himself by an extraordinary quickness of memory, which enabled him in one night to complete a task that was intended to confine him many days, and it is said that he could repeat forty lines of any book after the first reading. It is probable that this account,