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Thomas Tickell (1686-1740)

The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,

The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
Where once again the spangled show
Descends to meet our eyes below.
The grounds, which on the right aspire,
In dimness from the view retire :
The left presents a place of graves,
Whose wall the silent water laves.
That steeple guides thy doubtful right
Among the livid gleams of night.
There pass, with melancholy state
By all the solemn heaps of fate,
And think, as softly sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,

"Time was, like thee, they life possessed,
And time shall be that thou shalt rest."

Thomas Tickell (1686-1740) was the son of the Rev. of Bridekirk, in Cumberland, where he was born in

Thomas Tickell

From an original Portrait

time in Ireland, keeping up his friendship with Swift.

John Tickell, Vicar 1686. He was educated at

Queen's College, Oxford, where he mainly resided. from 1701 to 1726. He introduced himself to Addison, by writing a copy of laudatory verses on the opera of Rosamond. When Addison went to Dublin in 1714, he seems to have taken Tickell with him as a private secretary. Tickell's translation of the first book of the Iliad, in June 1715, was a leading incident in Pope's famous quarrel with Addison. The latter made Tickell UnderSecretary of State in 1717, and at his death in 1719 designed his admirer and protégé as his literary executor. Tickell's famous and very fine elegy on Addison was not printed until 1721, when it opened the stately edition of Addison's Works which he edited. After 1723 Tickell spent much of his In 1726 he married, and so

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severed his connection with Oxford. He died at Bath on the 23rd of April 1740. Gray called Tickell "a poor, short-winded imitator of Addison," but once, in his elegy, he far surpassed his master.

Pope emerged from Homer in 1725, ready to take his place again in militant literature. But the world was not the same to him. Of his elders and compeers half passed away while he was finishing the Iliad-Garth, Parnell, Addison, Lady Winchelsea, and Prior. Congreve and Gay grew languid and fatigued. The great quarrels of Pope's life began, and the acrid edge was set on his temper. But Atterbury had long ago assured him that satire was his true forte, and Swift encouraged him to turn from melancholy reflection on the great friends he had lost, to bitter jesting with the little enemies that remained to him. In 1728-29 the Dunciad lashed the bad writers of the age in couplets that rang with the crack of a whip. During the remainder of his life, Pope was actively engaged in the composition and rapid publication of ethical and satirical poems, most of which appeared in successive folio pamphlets between 1731 and 1738. It has been conjectured that all these pieces were fragments of a great philosophical poem which he intended one day to complete, with the addition of that New Dunciad (1742) which was the latest of Pope's important writings. Among these scattered pieces the most famous are the four parts of the Essay on Man, the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and the successive Imitations of Horace.

In these poems of the maturity of Pope there is no longer any distinct trace of French influence. They mark the full coming of age of the English classical school. The lesson first taught by the Royalists who came back from the Continent in 1660 was now completely learned; criticism had finished its destructive work long before, and on the basis so swept clear of all the ruins of the Renaissance a new kind of edifice was erected. In the Fables of Dryden, in the tragedies of Otway and Congreve (the Mourning Bride), something was left of the sonorous irregularity of the earlier seventeenth century, a murmur, at least, of the retreating wave. But in such a satire as of the Use of Riches not the faintest echo of the old romantic style remains. It is not fair, in such a conjunction, to take passages in which the colloquial wit of Pope is prominent; but here are verses which are entirely serious, and intended to be thoroughly poetical:

Consult the genius of the place in all ;
That tells the waters or to rise or fall,

Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,

Or scoops in circling theatres the vale ;

Calls in the country, catches opening glades,

Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades ;

Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines;

Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

Is this poetry or not? That is the question which has troubled the critics for a hundred years, and seems as little to be capable of solution as the crux of predestination and freewill. That it is not poetry of the same class as a chorus out of Prometheus Unbound or a tirade out of the Duchess of Malfy is obvious; but this is no answer to the query. Certain facts need to be observed. One is, that to several successive generations of highly

intelligent men this did appear to be poetry, and of a very high order. Another is, that since the revolution compassed by Wordsworth we have been living under a prejudice in favour of the romantic manner which may or may not be destined to last much longer. If another revolution in taste should overwhelm us, Adonais and Tintern Abbey may easily grow to seem grotesquely unreadable. It is wise, therefore, not to moot a question which cannot be solved, as Matthew Arnold tried to solve it, by calling "Dryden and Pope not classics of our poetry, but classics of our prose." Pope was not a classic of prose; he wrote almost exclusively in a highly finished artistic verse, which may evade the romantic formulas, but is either poetry or nothing. The best plan is to admit that it is poetry, and to define it.

In their conception of that class of poetry, then, of which the later works of Pope supply the most brilliant example, the English classicists returned to what the French had taught them to believe to be a Latin manner. They found in the admirable poets of antiquity, and particularly in Horace, a determination to deal with the average and universal interests and observations of mankind, rather than with the exceptional, the startling, and the violent. They desired to express these common thoughts and emotions with exquisite exactitude, to make of their form and substance alike an amalgam of intense solidity, capable of a high polish. If we had asked Pope what quality he conceived that he had achieved in the Essay on Man, he would have answered, "Horatii curiosa felicitas," the consummate skill in fixing normal ideas in such a way as to turn common clay into perdurable bronze. By the side of such a design as this it would have seemed to him a poor thing to dig out rough ore of passion, like Donne, or to spin gossamer threads of rainbow-coloured fancy, like Shelley. We may not agree with him, because we still live in a romantic age. It is hardly likely, moreover, that, whatever change comes over English taste, we shall ever return exactly to the Boileauesque-Horatian polishing of commonplaces in couplets. But to admire Ibsen and Tolstoi, and to accept them as imaginative creators, is to come back a long way towards the position held by Pope and Swift, towards the supposition that the poet is not a child dazzled by lovely illusions and the mirage of the world, but a grown-up person to whom the limits of experience are patent, who desires above all things to see mankind steadily and perspicuously. In its palmy days at least, that is to say during the lifetime of Pope, "classical" English poetry was, within its narrow range, an art exquisitely performed by at least one artist of the very first class. That this height was not long sustained, and that decline was rapid, will be our observation in a later chapter.

More durable has been the impress on our prose of the great critical contemporaries of Pope. One of the landmarks in the history of literature is the date, April 12, 1709, when Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff began to circulate his immortal lucubrations in the first gratis number of the Tatler. Here, at last, the easy prose of everyday life had found a medium in which, without a touch of pedantry, it could pass lightly and freely across the

I

Non fumum ex fulgore, fed ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat, ut fpeciofa dehinc miracula promat. Hor.

To be Continued every Day.

Thursday, March 1. 1711.

Have obferved, that a Reader feldom perufes a Book with Pleasure 'till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Difpolition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To gratify this Curiofity, which is fo natural to a Reader, I defign this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Difcourfes to my following Writings, and fhall give fome Account in them of the feveral Perfons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief Trouble of Compiling, Digefling and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do my felf the Juftice to open the Work with my own History.

I was born to a small Hereditary Eftate, which I find, by the Writings of the Family, was bounded by the fame Hedges and Ditches in William the Conqueror's Time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from Father to Son whole and entire, without the Lofs or Acquisition of a fingle Field or Meadow, during the Space of fix hundred Years. There goes a Story in the Family, that when iny Mother was gone with Child of me about three Months, the dreamt that the was brought to Bed of a Judge: Whether this might proceed from a Law-Suit which was then depending in the Family, or my Father's being a Justice of the Peace, I cannot determine; for I am not fo vain as to think it prefaged any Dignity that I should arrive at in my future Life, though that was the Interpretation which the Neighbourhood put upon it. The Gravity of my Behaviour at my very first Appearance in the World, and all the Time that I fucked, feemed to favour my Mother's Dream: For, as fhe has often told me, I threw away my Rattle before I was two Months old, and would not make ufe of my Coral 'till they had taken away the Bells from it.

As for the rest of my Infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I fhall pass it over in Silence. I find, that, during my Nonage, I had the Reputation of a very fullen Youth, but was always a Favourite of my School-Master, who used to fay, that my Parts were folid and would Dear well. I had not been long at the Univerny, before I di

ftinguished my felf by a moft profound Silence: For during the Space of eight Years, excepting in the publick Exercifes of the College, I fcarce uttered the Quantity of an hundred Words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three Sentences together in my whole Life. Whilft. I was in this Learned Body I applied my self with fo much Diligence to my Studies, that there are very few celebrated Books, either in the Learned or the Modern Tongues, which I, ain not acquainted

with.

Upon the Death of my Father I was refolved to travel into Foreign Countries, and therefore left the University, with the Character of an odd unaccountable Fellow, that had a great deal of Learning, if I would but fhow it. An insatiable Thirst after Knowledge carried me into all the Countries of Europe, where there was any thing new or strange to be feen; nay, to fuch a Degree was my Curiofity raised, that having read the Controverfies of fome great Men concerning the Antiquities of Egypt, I made a Voyage to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the Measure of a Pyramid; and as foon as I had fet my self right in that Particular, returned to my Native Country with great Satisfaction.

I have paffed my latter Years in this City, where I am frequently feen in moft publick Places, tho' there are not above half a dozen of my felect Friends that know me; of whom my next Paper fhall give a more particular Account. There is no Place of Publick Refort, wherein I do not often make my Appearance; fometimes I am feen thrusting my Head into a Round of Politicians at Will's, and liftning with great Attention to the Narratives that are made in thofe little Circular Audiences. Sometimes I finoak a Pipe at Child's; and whilst I feem attentive to nothing but the Puft-Man, over-hear the Conversation of every Table in the Room. [ appear on Sunday Nights at St. James's CoffeeHoufe, and fometimes join the little Committee of Politicks in the Inner-Room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My Face is likewife very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-Tree, and in the Theaters both of Drury-Lane, and the Hay-Market. I have been taken for a Merchant upon

The first page of No. 1 of the "Spectator"

221

minds of men. The place which those newspapers hold in our memory is quite out of proportion with the duration of their issue. We hardly realise that the Tatler lasted only till January 1711, and that the Spectator itself, though started two months later, expired before the close of 1712. Three years and eight months sufficed to create the English essay, and lift it to an impregnable position as one of the principal forms of which literature

Jacob Tonson

After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller at Bayfordbury

should henceforth consist. In this great enterprise, the importance of which in the history of literature can hardly be exaggerated, popular opinion long gave the main, almost the exclusive credit to JOSEPH ADDISON. But the invention of the periodical essay we now know to have been RICHARD STEELE'S, and of the 271 Tatlers only 42 are certainly Addison's.

In the Spectator their respective shares were more exactly balanced, and the polished pen of Addison took precedence. We gather that, of these immortal friends, Steele was the more fertile in invention, Addison the the more brilliant and captivating in execution. say that politics had

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It was cruel in Swift, and only partly true, to turned Steele from "an excellent droll" into "a very awkward pamphleteer"; yet Steele could be awkward. "The elegance, purity, and correctness" which delighted all readers of the essays were contributed by Addison, and were appreciated in nis own age to a degree which appears to us slightly exaggerated, for we have learned to love no less the humour and pathos of Steele. Without the generous impulse of Steele the unfailing urbanity of Addison might have struck a note of frigidity. Contemporaries,

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