Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake
Thomas Tickell (16861740)Critical Introduction by Edmund W. Gosse
[Thomas Tickell was born at Bridekirk, near Carlisle, in 1686, and died at Bath in 1740. His longest poem, Kensington Gardens, appeared in 1722.]
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. Kensington Gardens is one of those works that will not let themselves be read; the once-admired ballad of Colin and Lucy seems very trite and silly to a modern reader; while the poem On Hunting, in which Tickell posed as the English Gratius Faliscus, progressed so slowly that it was at last anticipated by the Chase of Somerville, another of Addison’s ardent disciples. From this general condemnation it is only just to except the thoughtful and melodious lines On the Death of the Earl of Cadogan.
Tickell’s first introduction to Addison was through a copy of verses which he addressed to him from Oxford in 1707, in which this couplet occurred:—