The Poetical Works of Thomas Tickell/The Life of the Author
THE LIFE OF
THOMAS TICKELL.
This gentleman, well known to the world by the friendship and intimacy which subsisted between him and Mr. Addison, was the son of the Rev. Richard Tickell, and was born in 1686 at Bridekirk in Cumberland. In 1701 he was sent to Queen's College Oxford, in 1708 he was made Master of Arts, and in 1710 was chosen Fellow, for which, as he did not comply with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the Crown. In the 1726 he married at Dublin, and in that year vacated his Fellowship.
While he was at the university he wrote some beautiful verses addressed to Mr. Addison on his opera of Rosamond, which so effectually recommended him to that gentleman that he held him in esteem ever afterwards. He produced another piece of the same kind on Cato, but not with equal happiness.
When Mr. Addison went into Ireland as Secretary to Lord Sunderland he carried Tickell with him and employed him in business; and when he afterwards in the 1717 rose to be Secretary of State he conferred the place of Undersecretary on Mr. Tickell. On Mr. Addison's resigning the Secretaryship, Mr. Craggs who succeeded him continued Tickell in his place, which he held till that gentleman's death.
Mr. Addison being a diffident man consulted with his friends about disposing of such places as were immediately dependant on him, and communicated to Sir Richard Steele his design of preferring Mr. Tickell to be his Undersecretary, which Sir Richard warmly opposed, considering Tickell as a petulant man. He observed that Tickell was of a temper too enterprising to be governed, and as he had no opinion of his honour he did not know what might be the consequence if by insinuation and flattery, or by bolder means, he ever had an opportunity of raising himself. It holds pretty generally true that diffident people, under the appearance of distrusting their own opinions, are frequently positive, and though they pursue their resolutions with trembling, they seldom fail to pursue them. Mr. Addison had a little of this temper; he could not be persuaded to set aside Mr. Tickell, nor even had caution to conceal from him Sir Richard's opinion. This produced a great animosity between Sir Richard and Tickell which subsisted during their lives.
Mr. Tickell, in his life of Addison, prefix'd to his own edition of that great man's works, (for when Addison died he left him the charge of publishing his works) throws out some unmannerly reflections against Sir Richard, who was at that time in Scotland as one of the Commissioners on the forfeited estates. Upon Sir Richard's return to London he dedicates to Mr. Congreve Addison's comedy called The Drummer, in which he takes occasion very smartly to retort upon Tickell, and clears himself of the imputation laid to his charge, namely that of valuing himself upon Mr. Addison's papers in The Spectator. It does not appear that Mr Tickell was in any respect ungrateful to Mr. Addison, to whom he owed his promotion; on the contrary he embraced every opportunity to celebrate him, which he always performed with so much zeal and earnestness that he seems to have retained the most lasting sense of his patron's favours. His verses on Rosamond are strikingly beautiful, and his Poem to the Earl of Warwick on the Death of Mr. Addison is extremely pathetick.
About the 1713 Mr. Tickell published The Prospect of Peace, addressed to his Excellency the Lord Privy Seal, which met with so favourable reception from the publick that six editions were speedily sold. Upon this poem Mr. Addison in The Spectator has bestowed many encomiums. The sentiments are natural and obvious, but no way extraordinary. It is an assemblage of pretty notions poetically expressed, but conducted with no kind of art, and altogether without a plan.
The Royal Progress Mr. Tickell meant as a compliment to George I. on his arrival in the British dominions. This poem is mentioned in The Spectator in opposition to such performances as are generally written in a swelling style, and in which the bombast is mistaken for the sublime.
his friends about disposing of such places as were immediately dependant on him, and communicated to Sir Richard Steele his design of preferring Mr. Tickell to be his Undersecretary, which Sir Richard warmly opposed, considering Tickell as a petulant man. He observed that Tickell was of a temper too enterprising to be governed, and as he had no opinion of his honour he did not know what might be the consequence if by insinuation and flattery, or by bolder means, he ever had an opportunity of raising himself. It holds pretty generally true that diffident people, under the appearance of distrusting their own opinions, are frequently positive, and though they pursue their resolutions with trembling, they seldom fail to pursue them. Mr. Addison had a little of this temper; he could not be persuaded to set aside Mr. Tickell, nor even had caution to conceal from him Sir Richard's opinion. This produced a great animosity between Sir Richard and Tickell which subsisted during their lives.
Mr. Tickell, in his life of Addison, prefix'd to his own edition of that great man's works, (for when Addison died he left him the charge of publishing his works) throws out some unmannerly reflections against Sir Richard, who was at that time in Scotland as one of the Commissioners on the forfeited estates. Upon Sir Richard's return to London he dedicates to Mr. Congreve Addison's comedy called The Drummer, in which he takes occasion very smartly to retort upon Tickell, and clears himself of the imputation laid to his charge, namely that of valuing himself upon Mr. Addison's papers in The Spectator. It does not appear that Mr Tickell was in any respect ungrateful to Mr. Addison, to whom he owed his promotion; on the contrary he embraced every opportunity to celebrate him, which he always performed with so much zeal and earnestness that he seems to have retained the most lasting sense of his patron's favours. His verses on Rosamond are strikingly beautiful, and his Poem to the Earl of Warwick on the Death of Mr. Addison is extremely pathetick.
About the 1713 Mr. Tickell published The Prospect of Peace, addressed to his Excellency the Lord Privy Seal, which met with so favourable reception from the publick that six editions were speedily sold. Upon this poem Mr. Addison in The Spectator has bestowed many encomiums. The sentiments are natural and obvious, but no way extraordinary. It is an assemblage of pretty notions poetically expressed, but conducted with no kind of art, and altogether without a plan.
The Royal Progress Mr. Tickell meant as a compliment to George I. on his arrival in the British dominions. This poem is mentioned in The Spectator in opposition to such performances as are generally written in a swelling style, and in which the bombast is mistaken for the sublime.
His Imitation of The Prophecy of Nereus was written about the year 1715, and was intended as a ridicule upon the Earl of Marr's enterprise, which he prophesies will be crushed by the Duke of Argyle.
The Epistle from a Lady in England to a Gentleman at Avignon stands high among party poems. It is written in the manner of a lady to a gentleman, whose principles obliged him to be an exile with the Royal Wanderer. The great propension of the Jacobites to place confidence in imaginary means, and to construe all extraordinary appearances into ominous signs of the restoration of their king is happily touched. Of this piece five editions were sold.
Kensington Garden is the longest of our Author's poems. The fiction is compounded partly of Grecian deities and partly of Gothick Fairies. The versification is harmonious, and the language elegant.
Our Author's translation of the first book of The Iliad was published much about the same time of Mr. Pope's; but it will not bear a comparison; and Mr. Tickell cannot receive a greater injury than to have his verses placed in contradistinction to Pope's. Mr. Melmouth, in his Letters published under the name of Fitzosborne, has produced some parellel passages little to the advantage of Mr. Tickell, who if he fell greatly short of the elegance and beauty of Pope, has yet much exceeded Congreve in what he has attempted of Homer. Addison declared both versions to be good, but gave the preference to Tickell's. Sir Richard Steele, in his Dedication of The Drummer to Mr. Congreve, gives it as his opinion that Addison was himself the author. Pope also considered Addison as the writer of Tickell's version. These translations published at the same time were certainly meant as rivals to one another. We cannot convey a more adequate idea of this than in the words of Mr. Pope, in a Letter to James Craggs, Esq. dated 15th July 1715. "Sir, They tell me the busy part of the nation are not more busy about Whig and Tory than these idle fellows of the feather about Mr. Tickell's and my translation. I, like the Tories, have the Town in general, that is, the mob, on my side; but it is usual with the smaller party to make up in industry what they want in number, and that is the case with the little senate of Cato. However, if our principles be well considered I must appear a brave Whig and Mr. Tickell a rank Tory. I translated Homer for the publick in general, he to gratify the inordinate desires of one man only. We have it seems a great Turk in poetry who can never bear a brother on the throne; and has his mutes too, a set of meddlers, winkers, and whisperers, whose business it is to strangle all other offsprings of wit in their birth. The new translator of Homer is the humblest slave he has, that is to say, his first minister: let him receive the honours he gives me, but receive them with fear and trembling: let him be proud of the approbation of his absolute lord; I appeal to the people as my rightful judges and masters; and if they are not inclined to condemn me I fear no arbitrary high-flying proceeding from the court faction at Button's. But after all I have said of this great man there is no rupture between us; we are each of us so civil and obliging that neither thinks he is obliged; and I for my part treat with him as we do with the Grand Monarch, who has too many great qualities not to be respected, though we know he watches any occasion to oppress us."
Pope did not long consider Tickell as the translator of the first Iliad. He suspected that version to have been Addison's; and the reasons for his suspicion we shall literally transcribe from Mr. Spence's Collection. "There had been a coldness 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 Coffehouse, 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 my 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 surprise at Tickell's having had such a translation 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. This 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. Mr. Pope.———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 Pope always in his Art of Sinking quotes this book as the work of Addison.
In June 1724 Mr. Tickell was appointed Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland, a place of great honour, and which he held till his death, which happened at Bath on the 23d of April 1740.
Mr. Tickell had a happy talent in versification, in which he much exceeds Addison, and is inferiour to few of the English poets, Dryden and Pope excepted; but as there appears no great invention in his works, if he cannot be placed in the first rank of poets, yet from the beauty of his numbers, and the real poetry which enriched his imagination, he has at least an unexceptionable claim to the second. To him cannot be refused a high place among the minor poets; nor should it pass unnoticed that he was a contributor to The Spectator. As 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 domestick relations without censure.