Thomas Parnell (1679-1717), whose gentleness of nature and misfortunes endeared him to Swift, and made Swift take a somewhat too high estimate of his genius. 'He outdoes all our poets here a bar's length,' says Swift; and in the decay of faculties never strong and now weakened by grief and intemperance, he found in Swift a patron who introduced him to Bolingbroke and the 'Society.'