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Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correspondence with Kelly. The correfpondence he acknowledged; but maintained, that it had no treasonable tendency. His papers were feized; but nothing was found that could fix a crime upon him, except two words in his pocket-book, thoroughpaced doctrine. This expreffion the imagination of his examiners had impregnated with treason, and the doctor was enjoined to explain them. Thus preffed, he told them that the words had lain unheeded in his pocket-book from the time of queen Anne, and that he was afhamed to give an account of them; but the truth was, that he had gratified his curiofity one day, by hearing Daniel Burgess in the pulpit, and those words was a memorial hint of a remarkable fentence by which he warned his congregation to "beware of" thorough-paced doctrine," that doctrine which coming in at "one ear, paces through the head, and goes ❝out at the other."

Nothing worse than this appearing in his papers, and no evidence arifing against him, he was fet at liberty.

It will not be supposed that a man of this character attained high dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship, and frequented the conversation, of a very numerous and fplendid fet of acquaintance. He died July 16, 1736, in the 66th year of his age.

Of his poems, many are of that irregular kind, which, when he formed his poetical character, was supposed to be Pindarick. Having fixed his attention on Cowley as a model, he has attempted in fome fort to rival him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counter-part to Cowley's Hymn to Light.

This hymn feems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part, imagined with great vigour, and expreffed with great propriety. I will not tranfcribe it. The feven firft ftanzas are good, but the third, fourth, and seventh, are the best; the eighth feems to involve a contradiction; the tenth is exquifitely beautiful; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly religious, and therefore not fuitable to each other; he might better have made the whole merely philofophical.

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There are two ftanzas in this poem where Yalden may be fufpected, though hardly convicted, of having confulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus, in the fixth ftanza, which anfwers in fome fort to these lines:

Illa fuo præeft nocturnis numine facrisPerque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris, Manefque excitos medios ululare per agros Sub noctem, et queftu notos complere penates. And again at the conclufion:

Illa fuo fenium fecludit corpore toto Haud numerans jugi fugientia fecula lapfu, Ergo ubi poftremum mundi compage folutâ Hanc rerum molem fuprema abfumpferit hora Ipfa leves cineres nube amplectetur opacâ, Et prifco imperio rurfus dominabitur UMBRA. His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He feems to think that there is an Eaft abfolute and pofitive where the Morning rifes.

In the laft ftanza, having mentioned the fudden eruption of new created Light, he Lays,

A while th' Almighty wondering flood,

He

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 fufficient to fay that they deserve perufal, though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are sometimes s very ill forted, and though his faults feem rather the omiffions of idleness than the negligences of enthufiafm,

TICKELL,

TICKEL L.

THOMAS TICKELL, the fon 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 chofen 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 thofe fcholars who wear away their lives in clofets; he entered early into the world, and was long bufy in publick affairs; in which he was initiated under the patronage of Addifon, whofe notice

he

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