Charles Webbe, whose life is usually dated approximately from 1650 to about 1680, occupies a small but intriguing place in the history of English Restoration poetry. He is remembered less through a substantial published body of work than through a handful of lyrics and, above all, through the persistent afterlife of one forceful poem of love and emotional extremity. The uncertainty surrounding even the spelling of hi…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Charles Webbe
Poet B
Thomas Parnell
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71%
Poems 86%
Blended 77%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Thomas Parnell, born in Dublin on 11 September 1679 and dead at Chester, England, on 24 October 1718, occupies a distinctive position in the literary culture of the early eighteenth century. He was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, poet, translator, essayist, and valued member of the brilliant circle that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. His name is often introduced through those greater…
“Mankind is thus managed by the breath of Opinion, deluded by Errour, fired by Self-Conceit, and given up to be trained in all the courses of Vanity, till Scorn or Poverty come upon us.”
In time
Charles Webbe
Thomas Parnell
1650
1718
They overlapped for 2 years (1679–1680).
When Thomas Parnell was born, Charles Webbe was about 29.
Thomas Parnell was about 1 when Charles Webbe died.
On the map
About 482 km separate Sidcup, London, England from Dublin, Ireland. Both have ground in England.
Thomas Parnell
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Charles Webbe only
From the biographies
Charles Webbe: restoration poetry, more love or more disdain, against indifference, emotional extremity, thirty years' war, commonwealth and protectorate, charles ii, henry purcell. Thomas Parnell: chester, anglo-irish, trinity college dublin, the hermit, a night-piece on death, scriblerus club, anne minchin, robert harley.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Charles Webbe
Thomas Parnell
Emotional landscapes
Charles Webbe: Longing, Despair, Sorrow. Thomas Parnell: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.