THOMAS TICKELL, the son of the Rev. Richard Tickell, was born in 1686, at
Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and in 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, made them great.
Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,
Which gained 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 laurelled 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 of 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 with so much favour
that six editions were sold.
At the arrival of King George, he sang “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 highflyers 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, anywhere 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 stayed till those people were gone (Budgell and
Philips). He 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. 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 Under-Secretary. 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 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 23rd
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.