Born, at Bridekirk, Cumberland, 1686. Matric., Queen’s College, Oxford, 16 May 1701; B.A., 1705; M.A., 22 Feb. 1709. Friendship with Addison. Appointed by him Under-Secretary of State, 1717. Married, 1726. Secretary to Lords Justices of Ireland, 1724–40. Died, at Bath, 21 April 1740. Works: “A Poem to … the Lord Privy Seal on the Prospect of Peace,” 1713; Translation of Homer’s “Iliad,” Bk. I. (pubd. under Tickell’s name, but possibly by Addison), 1715; “An Epistle from a Lady in England to a Gentleman at Avignon” (anon.), 1717; “An Ode occasioned by Earl Stanhope’s Voyage to France,” 1718; “An Ode to the Earl of Sutherland” (anon.), 1720; “Kensington Gardens” (anon.), 1722; “To Sir G. Kneller” (anon.), 1722; “On Her Majesty’s rebuilding the Lodgings of the Black Prince and Henry V. at Queen’s College, Oxford,” 1733. He edited: Addison’s Works, 1722, etc. Collected Works: ed. by T. Park, 1807.
Personal
Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in a closet. 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 domestick relations without censure.
Tickell was in his person and manners amiable and pleasing. His habits were rather of a convivial cast; he loved the gay circle and the enlivening glass, but seldom, if ever, passed beyond the limits of temperate indulgence. His conversation was spirited and attractive, and in his family he was regular, affectionate, and kind.
Homer’s Iliad, Book I, 1715
I must inform the reader that when I begun this first book I had some thoughts of translating the whole “Iliad,” but had the pleasure of being diverted from that design by finding that the work was fallen into a much abler hand. I would not, therefore, be thought to have any other view in publishing this small specimen of Homer’s “Iliad,” than to bespeak, if possible, the favour of the public to a translation of Homer’s “Odyssey,” wherein I have already made some progress.
They tell me, the busy part of the nation are not more divided 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 public 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 nodders, winkers, and whisperers, whose business ’tis 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 small 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’s 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.
It does not indeed want its merit; but I was strangely disappointed in my expectation of a translation nicely true to the original; whereas in those parts where the greatest exactness seems to be demanded, he has been the least careful; I mean the history of ancient ceremonies and rites, &c., in which you have with great judgment been exact.
Be assured I want no new inducement to behave myself like your friend. To be very plain, the University almost in general gives the preference to Pope’s Translation; they say his is written with more Spirit, Ornament and Freedom, and has more the air of an original. I inclined some; Hanton &c., to compare the Translation with the Greek; which was done, and it made some small alteration in their opinions, but still Pope was their man. The bottom of the case is this, they were strongly prepossest in Pope’s favour, from a wrong notion of your design before the Poem came down; and the sight of yours has not force enough upon them to make them willing to contradict themselves, and own they were in the wrong; but they go far for prejudiced persons, and own yours an excellent translation, nor do I hear any violently affirm it to be worse than Pope’s, but those who look on Pope as a miracle, and among those to your comfort Evans is the first, and even these zealots allow that you have outdone Pope in some particulars. E. g. the speech beginning
| “Oh sunk in Avarice &c. | |
| And leave a naked” &c. |
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…. 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.
So far as a writer has a right to resent being misjudged by eminent contemporaries, Pope had a right to complain that Addison and his friends should prefer Tickell’s version to his own. The translations are substantially executed in the same style, and in that style Pope is incomparably Tickell’s superior. Even the passages in which, as Young tells Tickell, Pope’s admirers at Oxford were disposed to give Tickell the preference, will not now seem to us to justify any such award. The instances of mean expressions—by far the larger proportion of the faults which Pope finds in Tickell—are in general fairly selected and justly noted. About the places in which Tickell is apparently accused of archaic simplicity, there may be greater room for difference of opinion: but on the whole I believe that Pope’s instinct was right, and that in the style which both he and Tickell adopted a vein of “ballad-thinking,” however Homeric it may be in itself, was essentially out of place, just as Ambrose Philips’ Spenserianisms are not ornaments but blemishes in pastorals, the whole structure of which shows them to be members—unworthy ones, perhaps—of the school of Virgil.
A translation of the first Iliad by Tickell appeared (in June, 1715) simultaneously with Pope’s first volume. Pope had no right to complain. No man could be supposed to have a monopoly in the translation of Homer. Tickell had the same right to try his hand as Pope; and Pope fully understood this himself. He described to Spence a conversation in which Addison told him of Tickell’s intended work. Pope replied that Tickell was perfectly justified, Addison having looked over Tickell’s translation of the first book, said that he would prefer not to see Pope’s, as it might suggest double dealing; but consented to read Pope’s second book, and praised it warmly. In all this, by Pope’s own showing, Addison seems to have been scrupulously fair; and if he and the little senate preferred Tickell’s work on its first appearance, they had a full right to their opinion, and Pope triumphed easily enough to pardon them…. It was, say Pope’s apologists, an awkward circumstance that Tickell should publish at the same time as Pope, and that is about all that they can say. It was, we may reply in Stephenson’s phrase, very awkward—for Tickell. In all this, in fact, it seems impossible for any reasonable man to discover anything of which Pope had the slightest ground of complaint.
Elegy on Addison, 1721
This elegy (by Mr. Tickell) is one of the finest in our language: there is so little new that can be said upon the death of a friend, after the complaints of Ovid, and the Latin Italians, in this way, that one is surprised to see so much novelty in this to strike us, and so much interest to affect.
Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison. But one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his friend in an elegy which would do honour to the greatest name in our literature; and which unites the energy and magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of Cowper.
The famous elegy is justly ranked among the greatest masterpieces of its kind. In it a sublime and public sorrow for once moved a thoroughly mediocre poet into utterance that was sincere and original. So much dignity, so much pathos, so direct and passionate a distress, are not to be found in any other poem of the period. But when Tickell was not eulogising the majesty and sweetness of Addison, he was but a languid, feeble versifier.
The poem dedicated to the essayist’s memory is perhaps overpraised by Macaulay when he says that it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom he so loved and honoured.
General
This is not only a state-poem (my ancient aversion), but a state-poem on the peace of Utrecht. If Mr. Pope had wrote a panegyric on it, one could hardly have read him with patience: but this is only a poor short-winded imitator of Addison, who had himself not above three or four notes in poetry, sweet enough indeed, like those of a German flute, but such as soon tire and satiate the ear with their frequent return. Tickell has added to this a great poverty of sense, and a string of translations that hardly become a school-boy. However, I forgive him for the sake of his ballad, which I always thought the prettiest in the world.
He has a very happy talent in versification, which much exceeds Addison’s, and is inferior to few of the English Poets, Mr. Dryden and Pope excepted.
Through all Tickell’s Works there is a strain of ballad thinking, if I may so express it; and in this professed ballad, [“Colin and Lucy”] he seems to have surpassed himself. It is, perhaps, the best in our language in this way.
Of his personal character we have little information: 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. It may be added, that he was in one respect at least a man of great modesty. He suppressed his share in the Spectator and Guardian, for which no other motive can fairly be assigned, and this he did so successfully, that it is not easy to determine any one paper to be his. Of those which have been attributed to him, upon conjecture, he had no reason to be ashamed; yet it frequently happens that men in advanced and serious life do not look upon their juvenile productions with complacency. If this apology is unsatisfactory, let it be supposed, on the other hand, that he became vain, and thought them beneath him.
Though it has not much merit as a poem [“Prospect of Peace,”] it presents some noble thoughts on the general subject of peace and the duty of nations to cultivate it among each other, which, if practised, would make the world much better and happier.
Nobody writes better grammar than Tickell. His style is always remarkably clear and exact, and the mere appropriateness and judicious collocation of his words, aided by the swell of the verse in his more elaborate or solemn passages, have sometimes an imposing effect.
Tickell was what the French call a “Moon” of Addison; yet, poetically speaking, he shone more brightly than his sun, and he had a singular gift at the funeral elegy, those on Addison himself and on Cadogan being of remarkable excellence in their kind.
Tickell was certainly as good a versifier as Addison; but his chief claim to notice, as he himself felt, is that he was Addison’s friend.
