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"bufied in fo long a work there without his

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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 af"fair, make it highly probable that there was fome underhand dealing in that busi"nefs; and indeed Tickell himself, who is " a very fair worthy man, has fince, in a 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 thefe fufpicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other circumstances

concurred, Pope always in his Art of Sinking quotes this book as the work of Addison.

To compare the two tranflations would be tedious; the palm is now given univerfally to Pope; but I think the firft lines of TicVOL. III. N kell's

kell'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, ftands high among party-poems; it expreffes contempt without coarsenefs, and fuperiority without infolence. It had the fuccefs which it deferved, being five times printed.

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, 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 rose to be fecretary of state, made him under-fecretary. Their friendship feems to have continued without abatement; for when Addison 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

beauties to the affiftance which might be suspected to have ftrengthened or embellished his earlier compofitions; but neither he nor Addison 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 compafs 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 Kenfington Gardens, of which the verfification is fmooth 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 N 2

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to the Spectator. With respect to his perfonal character, he is faid to have been a man of gay conversation, at least a temperate lover of wine and company, and in his domeftick relations without cenfure,

HAMMOND.

HAMMON D.

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