LITERARY HISTORY OF PARNELl's ' HERAIIT.' 145 



wider view of the supernatural being who has read the 

 book of fate and can foresee their real effect. The transfer 

 of the cup is to reform the pride of the one and to excite 

 the generosity of the other. Beneath the ruins of his 

 wrecked mansion the good man finds a greater treasure to 

 recompense his loss. The widow mourns the innocent 

 youth of one who, if he had lived another year, Tvould 

 have been her murderer. Thus does the hermit vindicate 

 the dark and mysterious ways of Providence to man. 



Some of the critics, vain in the possession of a httle 

 learning, remarked that Voltaire's apologue was not ori- 

 ginal, but copied from Parnell. It is quite possible that 

 such was the case ; though Freron might have remembered 

 that Antoinette Boiuignon, the mystic, had emploved the 

 same fable*. Parnell, although he does not make any'avowal 

 of his indebtedness to any previous author, would hardly 

 have cared or dared to claim credit for the invention of 

 the story. He found the fable ready to his hand; he saw 

 that it formed good material for poetry; and accordingly 

 he made the best use of it that he could in the poem which, 

 more than any thing else, has kept his memory from' 

 oblivion. Pope says that Parnell found the story in 

 HoweU^s 'Letters/ a very curious book which was 'first 

 printed in i 645. Pope pronounced ParnelPs poem very 

 good. '' The story,'' he says, " was written originally in 

 Spanish, whence probably Howell had translated it into 

 prose and inserted it in one of his ' letters.' Addison liked 

 the scheme, and was not disinclined to come into it'^f. O 

 this supposed Spanish original we have no other testimony. 



» Mitford haa pointed this out in his ' Life of ParneU,' p. 6i, where he 

 quotes from W. Harte these two lines :— 



" Antonia, who the Hermit's story fram'd, 

 A tale to prosemen known, by versemen famed." 

 She wa,sborn in 1616, and died in 1680. 

 t Goldsmith's ' Life of Parnell.' 

 SER. HI. VOL, VII. 



