"bufied in fo long a work there without his "knowing fomething of the matter; and "that he had never heard a fingle word of "it till on this occafion. This furprise of "Dr. Young, together with what Steele has "faid against Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly probable that there 66 was fome underhand dealing in that bufi"nefs; and indeed Tickell himself, who is a very fair worthy man, has fince, in a 66 manner, as good as owned it to me. Mr. "POPE.-[When it was introduced into a "converfation between Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope by a third perfon, Tickell did not deny it; which, confidering his honour "and zeal for his departed friend, was the "fame as owning it.]". Upon these fufpicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other circumftances concurred, Pope always in his Art of Sinking quotes this book as the work of Addifon. To compare the two tranflations would be tedious; the palm is now given universally to Pope; but I think the firft lines of TicVOL. III. N kell's kell's were rather to be preferred, and Pope seems to have fince borrowed fomething from them in the correction of his own. When the Hanover fucceffion was difputed, Tickell gave what affiftance his pen twould fupply. His Letter to Avignon stands high among party-poems; it expreffes contempt without coarfenefs, and fuperiority without infolence. It had the fuccefs which it deferved, being five times printed. He was now intimately united to Mr. Addifon, who, when he went into Ireland as fecretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither, and employed him in publick bufinefs; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to be fecretary of ftate, made him under-fecretary. Their friendship, feems to have continued without abatement; for when Addifon died, he left him the charge of publishing his works, with a folemn recommendation to the patronage of Craggs. To thefe works he prefixed an elegy on the author, which could owe none of its beauties beauties to the affiftance which might be fufpected to have ftrengthened or embellished his earlier compofitions; but neither he nor Addifon ever produced nobler lines than are contained in the third and fourth paragraphs, nor is a more fublime or more elegant funeral poem to be found in the whole compass of English literature. He was afterwards (about 1725) made fecretary to the Lords Juftices of Ireland, a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when he died on the twenty-third of April at Bath. Of the poems yet unmentioned the longeft is Kensington Gardens, of which the verfification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction unfkilfully compounded of Grecian Deities. and Gothick Fairies. Neither fpecies of those exploded Beings could have done much; and when they are brought together, they only make each other contemptible. To Tickell, however, cannot be refufed a high place among the minor poets; nor fhould it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors |