ページの画像
PDF
ePub

"work there without his knowing fomething of the "matter; and that he had never heard a single word "of it till on this occafion. This furprife of Dr. "Young, together with what Steele has faid against “Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly pro"bable that there was fome underhand dealing in that "business; and indeed Tickell himself, who is a very "fair worthy man, has fince, in a manner, as good as "owned it to me. [When it was introduced into a "converfation between Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope by "a third perfon, Tickell did not deny át; which, con"fidering his honour and zeal for his departed friend, "was the fame as owning it."]

Upon thefe fufpicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other circumftances concurred, Pope always in his Art of Sinking quotes this book as the work of Addifon.

To compare the two tranflations would be tedious; the palm is now given univerfally to Pope; but I think the first lines of Tickell's were rather to be preferred, and Pope feems to have fince borrowed fomething from them in the correction of his own.

When the Hanover fucceffion was difputed, Tickell gave what affiftance his pen would fupply. His Letter to Avignon ftands high among party-pocms; it expreffes contempt without coarfenefs, and fuperiority without infolence. It had the fuccefs which it deferved, being five times printed.

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addifon, who, when he went into Ireland as fecretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither, and employed him in pub lick bufinefs; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to be secretary of state, made him under-fecretary. Their

friendship

friendship feems to have continued without abatement ; for when Addison died, he left him the charge of publishing his works, with a folemn recommendation to the patronage of Craggs.

To these works he prefixed an elegy on the author, which could owe none of its beatuies to the affiftance which might be fufpected to have strengthened or embellished his earlier compofitions; but neither he nor Addison ever produced nobler lines than are contained in the third and fourth paragraphs, nor is a more fublime or more elegant funeral poem to be found in the whole compafs of English literature.

He was afterwards (about 1725) made secretary to the Lords juftices of Ireland, a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when he died on the twenty-third of April at Bath.

Of the poems yet unmentioned the longest is Kenfington Gardens, of which the verfification is fmooth and elegant, but the fiction unskilfully compounded of Grecian Deities and Gothick Fairies. Neither fpecies of thofe exploded Beings could have done much; and when they are brought together, they only make each other contemptible. To Tickell, however, cannot be refufed a high place among the minor poets; nor fhould it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the Spectator. With refpect to his perfonal character, he is faid to have been a man of gay converfation, at least a temperate lover of wine and company, and in his domeftick relations without cenfure.

HAMMOND.

1

HAM MMON D.

[ocr errors]

F Mr. HAMMOND, though he be well remembered as a man efteemed and careffed by the elegant and great, I was at firft able to obtain no other memorials than fuch as are fupplied by a book called Cibber's Lives of the Poets; of which I take this opportunity to testify that it was not written, nor, I believe, ever feen, by either of the Cibbers; but was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute understanding, though with little fcholaftick education, who, not long after the publication of his work, died in London of a confumption. His life was virtuous, and his end was pious. Theophilus Cibber, then a prifoner for debt, imparted, as I was told, his name for ten guincas. The manufcript of Shiels is now in my poffeffion.

I have fince found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent enquirer, has been misled by falfe accounts; for he relates that James Hammond, the author of the following Elegies, was the fon of a Turkey merchant, and had fome office at the prince of Wales's

2

court,

court, till love of a lady, whofe name was Dashwood, for a time difordered his understanding. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.

Of this narrative, part is true, and part falfe. He was the fecond fon of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and parliamentary orators, in the beginning of this century, who was allied to Sir Robert Walpole by marrying his fifter. He was born about 1710, and educated at Westminster-school; but it does not appear that he was of any university. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and feems to have come very early into publick notice, and to have been diftinguished by those whofe friendship prejudiced mankind at that time in favour of the man on whom they were bestowed; for he was the companion of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chefterfield. He is faid to have divided his life between pleasure and books; in his retirement forgetting the town, and in his gaiety lofing the ftudent. Of his literary hours all the effects are here exhibited, of which the Elegies were written very early, and the Prologue not long before his death.

In 1741, he was chofen into parliament for Truro in Cornwall, probably one of thofe who were elected by the Prince's influence; and died next year in June at Stowe, the famous feat of the lord Cobham. His miftrefs long outlived him, and in 1779 died unmarried. The character which her lover bequeathed her was, indeed, not likely to attract courtship.

The Elegies were published after his death; and while the writer's name was remembered with fondnefs, they were read with a refolution to admire them.

The recommendatory preface of the editor, who was then believed, and is now affirmed by Dr. Maty, to be the earl of Chesterfield, raised ftrong prejudices in their favour.

Where there is

But of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reafonably fufpected that he never read the poems; for he profeffes to value them for a very high fpecies of excellence, and recommends them as the genuine effufions of the mind, which expreffes a real passion in the language of nature. But the truth is, thefe elegies have neither paffion, nature, nor manners. fiction, there is no paffion; he that defcribes himself as a fhepherd, and his Neæra or Delia as a fhepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no paffion. He that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deferves to lose her; for fhe may with good reafon fufpect his fincerity. Hammond has few fentiments drawn from nature, and few images from modern life. He produces nothing but frigid pedantry. It would be hard to find in all his productions three ftanzas that deferve to be remembered.

Like other lovers, he threatens the lady with dying; and what then fhall follow?

Wilt thou in tears thy lover's corfe attend;
With eyes averted light the folemn pyre,
Till all around the doleful flames afcend,
Then, flowly finking, by degrees expire?
To footh the hovering foul be thine the care,
With plaintive cries to lead the mournful band.
In fable weeds the golden vafe to bear,

And cull my afhes with thy trembling hand:

Panchaia's odours be their coftly feast,

And all the pride of Afia's fragrant year,
Give them the treafures of the fartheft Eaft,

And, what is ftill more precious, give thy tear.

Surely

« 前へ次へ »