"Illa suo senium secludit corpore toto Haud numerans jugi fugientia secula lapsu, 315 His Hymn to Light' 12 is not equal to the other. He seems to think that there is an East absolute and positive where the Morning rises. In the last stanza, having mentioned the sudden eruption of new created Light, he says, "A while th' Almighty wondering viewed." He ought to have remembered that Infinite Knowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ig norance. Of his other poems it is sufficient to say that they deserve perusal, though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the omissions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm. 12 First printed in Dryden's Third Miscellany,' 1693. Works leaves him the charge of Publishing his Works — His Elegy on Addison Made Secretary to the Lords Justices Death at Bath and Character. 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 [9th Nov., 1710] was chosen Fellow; for which, as he did not comply with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained [25th Oct., 1717] 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 A Miss Eustace, with a fortune of 80007. or 10,000l. ('Daily Post' of 9 February, 1726.) He was married at Dublin, by the Primate of Ireland, on St. George's Day, 1726. (New College Register.) 2 An early acquaintance with the classics is what may be called the goodbreeding of poetry, as it gives a certain gracefulness which never forsakes a mind that contracted it in youth, but is seldom or never hit by those who would learn it too late.-TICKELL: Preface to Addison's Works. |