PARNEUL 



near to paralysing the House of 

 Commons; a disciplined body which 

 devoted itself to such an organized 

 obstruction of public business as 

 hitherto had never been known in 

 England. 



Parnell's aim was explicitly the 

 establishment of an independent 

 parliament in Dublin. For the agra- 

 rian question, the grievance con- 

 sciously felt by the Irish peasant, 

 he avowedly cared little, but he 

 saw in it the means of combining 

 the great majority of the Irish 

 people into one compact force. To 

 that end in 1878 he organized 

 the Land League, poured vitriolic 

 scorn on every English attempt to 

 provide remedial agrarian legis- 

 lation, and urged the Irish 

 peasantry to adopt every con- 

 ceivable method short of positive 

 crime to render the law nugatory. 

 The Phoenix Park murders in 1882 

 forced him to an open denunciation 

 of such crimes, and a contemptuous 

 repudiation of the charges that he 

 had condoned them. 



Popular opinion, however, still 

 held Parnell guilty, morally at least, 

 of Irish crimes and outrages, until 

 a special judicial commission was 

 appointed to investigate the whole 

 question of "Parnellism and crime." 

 The sensational event of this inquiry 

 was the demonstration that an 

 alleged letter of Parnell's, utterly 

 damning if genuine, was a forgery 

 which The Times newspaper had 

 accepted with reckless credulity. 

 Liberals and Irish Home Rulers 

 were drawing into a close alliance, 

 when Parnell was disastrously im- 

 plicated in a divorce scandal. His 

 intimate and trusted agent, Captain 

 O'Shea, cited him as co-respondent 

 in an action for divorce which he 

 instituted against his wife, and, 

 the action being undefended, se- 

 cured a decree in Nov., 1890. 



Parnell's retirement from the 

 leadership, in which his parlia- 

 mentary colleagues were at first 

 disposed to retain him, was 

 demanded by Gladstone ; the Irish 

 party was divided, the great 

 majority insisting upon Parnell's 

 withdrawal. Parnell fought fiercely 

 for his position, repudiating the 

 Liberal alliance. But before it 

 could be said that the fight was 

 decided, he died suddenly on 

 Oct. 6, 1891, within four months 

 of his marriage to Mrs. O'Shea, and 

 within twelve months of the pro- 

 ceedings which had wrought his fall. 

 See Gladstone; HomeRule; Ireland; 

 Kilmainham Prison; consult also 

 The Parnell Movement, with Sketch 

 of Irish Parties, T. P. O'Connor, 

 1889; Life, R. B. O'Brien, 1898; 

 C. S. Parnell, his Love Story and 

 Political Life, 2 vols., Mrs. C. S. 

 Parnell, 1914. 



5988 



Thomas Parnell, 

 English poet 



Parnell, THOMAS (1679-1718). 

 English poet. Of English descent, 

 he was born in Dublin and edu- 

 cated at Trinity College, Dublin. 

 Made a minor canon of S. Patrick's 

 Cathedral, 1704, he was arch- 

 deacon of 

 Clogher, 1706- 

 16, and became 

 vicar of Finglas 

 in 1716. Visit- 

 ing England in 

 1706, he was 

 on terms of 

 friendship with 

 Robert Harley, 

 earl of Ox- 

 ford, Swift, and 

 Pope. He contributed to The Spec- 

 tator and The Guardian ; was one 

 of the members of the Scriblerus 

 Club ; and aided Pope in his trans- 

 lation of the Iliad, for which he 

 wrote the introductory essay on 

 Homer. Following the death of 

 his wife (Anne Minchin) in 1711, 

 Parnell gave way to intemperance, 

 and, dying at Chester, was buried 

 in Trinity Church there, Oct. 24, 

 1718. Praised by Goldsmith, who 

 wrote his Life, and by Campbell, 

 his work is marked by love of the 

 classics, humorous fancy, grace, 

 good taste, and moral feeling, and 

 serves as a link between that of 

 Pope and Goldsmith. Especially 

 notable are his Hymn to Content- 

 ment, A Night-piece on Death, 

 Epistle to Pope, A Fairy Tale, and 

 The Hermit. Pope edited Parnell's 

 Poems in 1721. See Collected 

 Works, ed. G. A. Aitken, 1894. 

 ..' Parody. Imitation, mainly as 

 manifested in literature, of the 

 general style or spirit of a writer or 

 of the form of a specific piece of 

 work, with intent to make fun. It 

 differs from burlesque, which is a 

 laughable perversion of a serious 

 theme, in that it is a mocking of 



PAROS 



the manner rather than the matter. 

 In Sir Owen Seaman's words, " At 

 its lowest, a mere verbal echo, at 

 its highest it becomes a depart- 

 ment of criticism." 



Though the art is an old one, 

 exemplified first in The Battle of 

 the Frogs and Mice, and merging in 

 the hands of Aristophanes through 

 burlesque into pure comedy, modern 

 parody may be said to begin with 

 The Pipe of Tobacco of Isaac Haw- 

 kins Browne, 1736, little known 

 now except by students. Popular 

 parody started in England with 

 The Anti-Jacobin of George .Can- 

 ning and J. H. Frere, 1797, and 

 The Rejected Addresses by James 

 and Horace Smith, 1812. Since then 

 the art has had many admirable 

 exponents, some of the chief of 

 whom, among writers in English, 

 are W. M. Thackeray, Sir Theodore 

 Martin, and W. E. Aytoun, Bret 

 Harte; C. S. Calverley, Sir A. T. 

 Quiller-Couch, Sir Owen Seaman, 

 Stephen Leacock, and Max Beer- 

 bohm. See Parodies Collected and 

 Annotated by Walter Hamilton, 

 1884-89; A 'Century of Parody 

 and Imitation, Walter Jerrold and 

 R. M. Leonard, 1913. 



Parole. In international law, 

 the pledge of honour of a prisoner 

 of war to observe conditions im- 

 posed by his captor, if allowed his 

 liberty. Under The Hague con- 

 vention the government of a coun- 

 try cannot compel one of its sub- 

 jects to break such parole, though 

 if the government disapproves of 

 the conditions of parole it is the 

 duty of the combatant concerned to 

 surrender again to the enemy. In 

 a military sense, a parole is a 

 watchword given by the com- 

 mander of an army or garrison for 

 officers to use. 



In penal law, it is a pledge of 

 good conduct given by a person 

 convicted of crime as a condition of 

 his or her release from prison. The 

 parole system in penology is steadily 

 on the increase in many countries, 

 notably the U.S.A. 



Paros. Island in the Aegean 

 Sea, belonging to Greece. One of 

 the Cyclades group, it is 5 m. W. of 

 Naxos, and has a length of 13 m. 

 and a breadth of 10 m. 

 Pyramidal in shape, it rises in 

 Hagios Elias, the ancient Mar- 

 pessa, to about 2,500 ft. Near the 

 chief town, Parikia, are the quarries 

 of Parian marble, wrought from 

 ancient times. Paros was colonised 

 by Ionian Greeks who afterwards 

 founded Parium and Thasos. It was 

 captured by the Persians in 490 B.C. 

 and later became merged in the 

 Athenian confederacy. The Arundel 

 marbles were brought to England 

 from Paros in 1667. Its area is 

 96 sq. m. Pop. 8,000. 



