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model, he has attempted in some sort to rival him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counter-part to Cowley's Hymn to Light.

This hymn seems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part, imagined with great vigour, and expressed with great propriety. I will not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third, fourth, and seventh, are the best: the eighth seems to involve a contradiction; the tenth is exquisitely beautiful; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly religious, and therefore not suitable to each other: he might better have made the whole merely philosophical. There are two stanzas in this poem where Yalden may be suspected, though hardly convicted, of having consulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus, in the sixth stanza, which answers in some sort to these lines:

Illa suo præest nocturnis numine sacris→→→
Perque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris,
Manesque excitos medios ululare per agros
Sub noctem, et questu notos complere penates.

And again, at the conclusion:

Illa suo senium secludit corpore toto

Haud numerans jugi fugientia secula lapsu ;
Ergo ubi postremum mundi compage solutâ
Hanc rerum molem suprema absumpserit hora,
Ipsa leves cineres nube amplectetur opacâ,

Et prisco imperio rursus dominabitur UMBRA.

His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He seems to think that there is an East absolute and positive where the Morning rises.

In the last stanza, having mentioned the sudden eruption of new-created light, he says,

Awhile th' Almighty wond'ring stood.

He ought to have remembered, that infinite knowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.

Of his other poems it is sufficient to say, that they deserve perusal, though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the omissions of idleness than the negligencies of enthusiasm.

1

THE

LIFE OF TICKELL.

BY DR. JOHNSON.

THOMAS TICKELL, the son of the reverend Richard Tickell, was born in 1686 at Bridekirk in Cumberland; and in April 1701 became a member of Queen's College in Oxford; in 1708 he was made master of arts; and, two years afterwards, was chosen fellow; for which, as he did not comply with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the crown. He held his fellowship till 1726, and then.

vacated it, by marrying, in that year, at Dublin.

Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in closets; he entered early into the world, and was long busy in public affairs; in which he was initiated under the patronage of Addison, whose notice he is said to have gained by his verses in praise of Rosamond.

To those verses it would not have been just to deny regard; for they contain some of the most elegant encomiastic strains; and, among the innumerable poems of the same kind, it will be hard to find one with which they need to fear a comparison. may deserve observation, that when Pope wrote long afterwards in praise of Addison, he has copied, at least has resembled, Tickell.

It

Let joy salute fair Rosamonda's shade,

And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.
While now perhaps with Dido's ghost she roves,
And hears and tells the story of their loves,

Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,

Since Love, which made them wretched, makes them great.

Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,

Which gain'd a Virgil and an Addison.

TICKELL

Then future ages with delight shall see
How Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's looks agree;
Or in fair series laurel'd bards be shown,
A Virgil there, and here an Addison.

POPE.

He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance of Cato, with equal skill, but not equal happiness.

When the ministers of queen Anne were negotiating with France, Tickell published The Prospect of Peace, a poem, of which the tendency was to reclaim the nation from the pride of conquest to the pleasures of tranquillity. How far Tickell, whom Swift

VOL. XI.

H

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