"Steele has faid against Tickell in relation to "this affair, make it highly probable that there "was fome underhand dealing in that business; "and indeed Tickell himfelf, who is a very "fair worthy man, has fince, in a manner, as "good as owned it to me. When it was in"troduced 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 first lines of Tickell's were rather to be preferred, and Pope feems 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 would fupply. His Letter to Avignon stands high among partypoems; it expreffes contempt without coarfenefs, and fuperiority without infolence. It

had

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 business; and when (1717) afterwards he rofe to be secretary 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 these works he prefixed an elegy on the author, which could owe none of its beauties to the affiftance which might be suspected 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 li

terature.

He was afterwards (about 1725) made fecretary to the Lords juftices of Ireland, a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740,

VOL. IV.

E

when

when he died on the twenty-third of April at Bath.

Of the poems yet unmentioned the longest is Kenfington Gardens, of which the verfification is fmooth and elegant; but the fiction unskilfully compounded of Grecian Deities and Gothick Fairies. Neither fpecies of thofe exploded Beings could have done much; and when they are brought together, they only make each other contemptible. To Tickell, however, cannot be refused a high place among the minor poets; nor fhould it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the Spectator. With respect to his personal character, he is faid to have been a man of gay converfation, at least a temperate lover of wine and company, and in his domestick relations without cenfure.

HAMMOND.

HAM M O N D.

O

F Mr. HAMMOND, though he be

well remembered as a man efteemed and careffed by the elegant and the great, I was at firft able to obtain no other memorials than fuch as are supplied by a book called Cibber's Lives of the Poets; of which I take this opportunity to teftify that it was not written, nor, I believe, ever seen, by either of the Cibbers; but was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute understanding, though with little fcholaftick education, who, not long after the publication of his work, died in London of a confumption. His life was virtuous, and his end was pious. Theophilus Cibber, then a prifoner for debt, inparted, as I was told, his name for ten guinea's The

E 2

The manufcript of Shiels is now in my poffeffion.

I have fince found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent enquirer, had been misled by falfe accounts; for he relates that James Hammond, the author of the Elegies, was the fon of a Turkey merchant, and had fome office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whofe name was Dashwood, for a time difordered his understanding. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.

Of this narrative, part is true, and part falfe. He was the fecond fon of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and parlamentary orators, in the beginning of this century, who was allied to Sir Robert Walpole, by marrying his fifter*. He was born about 1710, and educated at Weftminster-school; but it does not appear that he was of any univerfity. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and feems to have come very early into

*This account is ftill erroneous. James Hammond our au thor was of a different family, the fecond fon of Anthony Hammond, of Somerfham-place, in the county of Huntingdon, Efq. See Gent. Mag. vol. LVII. p. 780. E.

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