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. It may deserve observation, that when Pope wrote long afterwards in praise of Addison, he has copied, at least has resembled, Tickell.

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

afterwards mentioned as Whiggissimus, had then connected himself with any party, I know not; this poem certainly did not flatter the practices, or promote the opinions, of the men by whom he was afterwards befriended.

Mr. Addison, however he hated the men then in power, suffered his friendship to prevail over his public spirit, and gave in the Spectator such praises of Tickell's poem, that when, after having long wished to peruse it, I laid hold on it at last, I thought it unequal to the honours which it had received, and found it a piece to be approved rather than admired. But the hope excited by a work of genius, being general and indefinite, is rarely gratified. It was read at that time with so much favour, that six editions were sold.

At the arrival of king George he sung The Royal Progress; which, being inserted in the Spectator, is well known; and of which it is just to say, that it is neither high nor low. The poetical incident of most importance in Tickell's life was his publication of the first book of the Iliad, as translated by himself, an apparent opposition to Pope's Homer, of which the first part made its entrance into the world at the same time.

Addison declared that the rival versions were both good; but that Tickell's was the best that ever was made; and with Addison, the wits, his adherents and followers, were certain to concur. Pope does not appear to have been much dismayed; "for," says he, "I have the town, that is, the mob on my side." But he remarks, "that it is common for the smaller party to make up in diligence what they want in numbers; he appeals to the people as his proper judges; and, if they are not inclined to condemn him, he is in little care about the high-flyers at Button's."

Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge; for he considered him as the writer of Tickell's version. The reasons for his suspicion I will literally transcribe from Mr. Spence's Collection.

"There had been a coldness (said Mr. Pope) between Mr. Addison and me for some time; and we had not been in company together, for a good while, any where but at Button's coffee-house, where I used to see him almost every day.-On his meeting me there, one day in particular, he took me aside, and said he should be glad to dine with me, at such a tavern, if I staid till those people were gone (Budgell and Philips). We went accordingly; and after dinner Mr. Addison said, 'That he had wanted for some time to talk with me; that his friend Tickell had formerly, whilst at Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad; that he designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over; that he must therefore beg that I would not desire him to look over my first book, because, if he did, it would have the air of double-dealing. I assured him, that I did not at all take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on a fair stage. I then added, that I would not desire him to look over my first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's; but could wish to have the benefit of his observations on the second, which I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon. Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning; and Mr. Addison a few days after returned it, with very high commendations. Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street; and upon our falling into that subject, the Doctor expressed a great deal of surprize at Tickell's having had such a trans

lation so long by him. He said, that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion. The surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against' Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly probable that there was some underhand dealing in that business; and indeed Tickell himself, who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in a manner as good as owned it to me. When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope, by a third person, Tickell did not deny it; which, considering his honour and zeal for his departed friend, was the same as owning it."

Upon these suspicions, 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 translations 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 seems to have since borrowed something from them in the correction of his own.

When the Hanover succession was disputed, Tickell gave what assistance his pen would supply. His Letter to Avignon stands high among party-poems; it expresses contempt without coarseness, and superiority without insolence. It had the success which it deserved, being five times printed.

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into Ireland as secretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither and employed him in public business; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to be secretary of state, made him undersecretary. Their friendship seems to have continued without abatement; for, when Addison died, he left him the charge of publishing his works, with a solemn 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 assistance which might be suspected to have strengthened or embellished his earlier compositions; but neither he nor Addison ever produced nobler lines than are contained in the third and fourth paragraphs; nor is a more sublime or more elegant funeral-poem to be found in the whole compass of English literature.

He was afterwards (about 1725) made secretary to the Lords Justices 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 longest is Kensington Gardens, of which the versification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction unskilfully compounded of Grecian deities and Gothic fairies. Neither species 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 refused a high place among the minor poets; nor should it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the Spectator. With respect to his personal character, he is said to have been a man of gay conversation, at least a temperate lover of wine and company, and in his domestic relations without censure,

WHERE bold and graceful soars, secure of fame, Our youth run headlong in the fatal snare;

The pile, now worthy great Philippa's name,
Mark that old ruin, gothic and uncouth,
Where the Black Edward pass'd his beardless youth;
And the Fifth Henry, for his first renown,
Out-stripp'd each rival in a student's gown.

In that coarse age were princes fond to dwell
With meagre monks, and haunt the silent cell:
Sent from the monarch's to the Muse's court,
Their meals were frugal, and their sleeps were short;
To conch at curfeu-time they thought no scorn,
And froze at matins every winter-morn;
They read, an early book, the starry frame,
And lisp'd each constellation by its name;
Art after art still dawning to their view,
And their mind opening as their stature grew.
Yet, whose ripe manhood spread our fame so far,
Sages in peace, and demi-gods in war!
Who, stern in fight, made echoing Cressi ring,
And, mild in conquest, serv'd his captive king!
Who gain'd, at Agincourt, the victor's bays;
Nor took himself, but gave good Heaven, the praise!
Thy nurselings, ancient dome! to virtue form'd;
To mercy listening, whilst in fields they storm'd:
Fierce to the fierce; and warm th' opprest to save;
Through life rever'd, and worship'd in the grave!
In tenfold pride the mouldering roofs shall shine,
The stately work of bounteous Caroline;
And blest Philippa, with unenvious eyes,
From Heaven behold her rival's fabric rise.
If still, bright saint, this spot deserves thy care,
Incline thee to th' ambitious Muse's prayer:
O, could'st thou win young William's bloom to grace
His mother's walls, and fill thy Edward's place,
How would that genius, whose propitious wings
Have here twice hover'd o'er the sons of kings,
Descend triumphant to his ancient seat,
And take in charge a third Plantagenet!

In height of rapture clasp unheeded pains,
And suck pollution through their tingling veins?
Thy spotless thoughts unshock'd the priest may
And the pure vestal in her bosom wear. [hear;
To conscious blushes and diminish'd pride,
Thy glass betrays what treacherous love would hide;
Nor harsh thy precepts, but infus'd by stealth,
Pleas'd while they care, and cheat us into health.
Thy works in Chloe's toilet gain a part,
And with his tailor share the fopling's heart:
Lash'd in thy satire, the penurious cit
Laughs at himself, and finds no harm in wit:
From felon gamesters the raw squire is free,
And Britain owes her rescued oaks to thee.
His miss the frolic viscount dreads to toast,
Or his third cure the shallow Templar boast;
And the rash fool, who scorn'd the beaten road,
Dares quake at thunder, and confess his God.

The brainless stripling, who, expell'd the town,
Damn'd the stiff college and pedantic gown,
Aw'd by thy name, is dumb, and thrice a week
Spells uncouth Latin, and pretends to Greek.
A sauntering tribe! such, born to wide estates,
With yea and no in senates hold debates:
At length despis'd each to his fields retires,
First with the dogs, and king amidst the squires;
From pert to stupid, sinks supinely down,
In youth a coxcomb, and in age a clown.

Such readers scorn'd, thou wing'st thy daring
flight,

Above the stars, and tread'st the fields of light;
Faine, Heaven and Hell, are thy exalted theme,
And visions such as Jove himself might dreain;
Man sunk to slavery, though to glory born,
Heaven's pride when upright, and deprav'd his scorn,
Such hints alone could British Virgil lend,
And thou alone deserve from such a friend;