There had been a coldnefs (faid Mr. Pope) "between Mr. Addison and me for fome time; "and we had not been in company together, for 66 a good while, any where but at Button's coffee"houfe, where I used to see him almost every day. "On his meeting me there, one day in parti"cular, he took me afide, and faid he fhould be "glad to dine with me, at fuch a tavern, if I ftaid "till thofe people were gone (Budgell and Philips). "He went accordingly; and after dinner Mr. "Addison faid, That he had wanted for fome "time to talk with me; that his friend Tickell "had formerly, whilft at Oxford, tranflated the "first book of the Iliad; that he defigned to print "it, and had defired him to look it over; that he "must therefore beg that I would not defire him "to look over my first book, becaufe, if he did, it "would have the air of double-dealing.' I affured "him that I did not at all take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his tranflation: that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was "entering on a fair ftage. I then added, that I "would not defire him to look over my first book "of the Iliad, becaufe, he had looked over Mr. "Tickell's; but could wish to have the benefit of "his obfervations on my fecond, which I had then "finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched "upon. Accordingly I fent him the fecond book "the next morning; and Mr. Addifon 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 fubject, the Doctor expreffed

"a great deal of furprise at Tickell's having had "fuch a tranflation fo long by him. He faid, that "it was inconceivable to him, and that there must "be fome mistake in the matter; that each used "to communicate to the other whatever verfes "they wrote, even to the least things; that "Tickell could not have been bufied in fo long a "work there without his knowing fomething of "the matter; and that he had never heard a fingle "word on it till on this occafion. This surprise "of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has "faid against Tickell in relation to this affair, "make it highly probable that there was fome "underhand dealing in that bufinefs; 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 it; which, "confidering his honour and zeal for his departed "friend, was the fame as owning it."

Upon these 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 partypoems; it expreffes contempt without coarfenefs,

and

and fuperiority without infolence. It had the fuccefs which it deferved, being five times printed.

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into Ireland as fecretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither, and employed him in public business; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to be fecretary of state, made him underfecretary. Their friendship feems to have continued without abatement; for when Addifon died, he left him the charge of publishing his works, with a folemn recommendation to the patronage of Craggs.

To thefe works he prefixed an elegy on the author, which could owe none of its beauties to the affiftance which might be fufpected to have ftrengthened or embellifhed his earlier compofitions; but neither he nor Addifon 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 fecretary 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 unfkilfully 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 refused a high place among the minor poets; nor fhould it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the

F 6

Spectator.

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.

OF Mr. HAMMOND, though he be well re

membered as a man efteemed and careffed by the elegant and the great, I was at first 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 understand- › ing, though with little fcholaftic 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 guineas. The manufcript of Shiels is now in my poffeffion.

I have fince found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent inquirer, had been mifled by falfe accounts; for he relates that James Hammond, mer

chant,

chant, the author of the Elegies, was the son of a Turkey merchant, and had fome office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whose name was Dashwood, for a time difordered his underftanding. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.

Of this narrative, part is true, and part false. 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. fchool; but it does not appear that he was of any univerfity. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and feems to have come very early into public notice, and to have been diftinguifhed by those whose friendship prejudiced mankind at that time in favour of the man on whom they were beftowed; for he was the companion of Cobham, Lyttleton, 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

*This account is ftill erroneous. James Hammond our author was of a different family, the fecond fon of Anthony Hammond, of Somerfham-place, in the county of Huntingdon, Efq. See Gent. Mag. vol. LVII. p. 780.

R.