Thomas Parnell's fame has often seemed to depend more on his important friendships and the considerable influence of a tiny handful of his poems than on his total literary achievement. Recent criticism, however, has established that his work is the epitome of early-eighteenth-century polite poetry, combining polished classicism with Christian sentiment. It is better to envision him as contributing to an expanded sense of the possibilities of poetry in his own period than to imagine him as the herald of something new.

Parnell was born in Dublin in the autumn of 1679. His family had long been settled in Congleton in the county of Cheshire, England, but they had Irish connections; his parents, Thomas and Anna Parnell, decided to move to Ireland just after the Restoration because of their previous support for Oliver Cromwell. They were Anglicans, however, rather than Presbyterians, and Parnell was early destined for a career...