During his courtship of Lyttelton he was fed at one time by hopes of being recommended in the West Indies; and, at another, of being served in the East; till by degrees the great man waxed so cold, that he wisely relinquished his suit. His next project was to go out as a merchant's clerk to Carolina; but some unexpected occurrences defeating this plan also, he engaged himself as corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford. Here he published (in 1767) the Concubine, a poem, in the manner of Spenser, to which, when it was printed, ten years after, having in the meantime passed through several editions, he gave the title of Syr Martyn.
Early in life, his zeal for religion had shewn itself in some remarks on an impious book termed the History of the Man after God's own Heart; and in 1767, the same feelings induced him to publish A Vindication of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, in a Letter to Dr. Harwood; and, in the year following, Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy.
He was now willing to try his fortune with a tragedy, and sent his Siege of Marseilles to Garrick, who observed to him, that though abounding in beautiful passages, it was deficient in dramatic art, and advised him to model it anew; in which task, having been assisted by the author of Douglas, and having submitted the rifacciamento of his play to the two Wartons, by whom he was much regarded, he promised himself better success; but had the mortification to meet with a second rebuff. An appeal from the manager to the public was his unquestioned privilege; but not contented with seeking redress by these means, he threatened Garrick with a new Dunciad. The rejection which his drama afterwards underwent at each of the playhouses, from the respective managers, Harris and Sheridan, perhaps taught him at least to suspect his own judgment.
In 1772, being employed to edit Pearch's Collection of Poems, he inserted amongst them his Hengist and Mey, and the Elegy on Mary. About the same time he wrote for the Whitehall Evening Post. But his mind was now attracted to a more splendid project. This was a translation of the great Epic Poem of Portugal, the Lusiad of Camoens, which had as yet been represented to the English reader only through the inadequate version of Fanshaw. That nothing might hinder his prosecution of this labour, he resigned his employment at Oxford, and retired to a farm-house at Forrest-hill, about five miles from that city, the village in which Milton found his first wife, and where Mickle afterwards found his in the daughter of his landlord. By the end of 1775, his translation was completed and published at Oxford, with a numerous list of subscribers. Experience had not yet taught him wariness in his approaches to his patron. At the suggestion of his relative, Commodore Johnstone, in an unlucky moment he inscribed his book to the Duke of Buccleugh. This nobleman had declared his acceptance of the dedication in a manner so gracious, that Mickle was once more decoyed with the hope of having found a powerful protector. After an interval of some months, he learnt that his incense had not been permitted to enter the nostrils of the new idol, and that his offering lay, where he left it, without the slightest notice. For this disappointment he might have considered it to be some compensation that his work had procured him the kindness of those who were more able to estimate it. Mr. Crowe assisted him in compiling the notes; Lowth offered to ordain him, with the promise of making some provision for him in the church; and one, whose humanity and candour are among the chief ornaments of the bench on which Lowth then sate, Doctor Bathurst, soothed him by those benevolent offices which he delights to extend to the neglected and the oppressed. Nor were the public insensible to the value of his translation. A second edition was called for in 1778; and his gains amounted on the whole to near a thousand pounds, a larger sum than was likely to fall to the share of an author, who so little understood the art of making his way in the world. It was not, however, considerable enough to last long against the calls made on it for the payment of old debts, and for the support of his sisters; and he was devising further means of supplying his necessities by a subscription for his poems, when Commodore Johnstone (in 1779) being appointed to head a squadron of ships, nominated him his secretary, on board the Romney. Mickle had hitherto struggled through a life of anxiety and indigence; but a gleam of prosperity came over the few years that remained. A good share of prize-money fell to his lot; and the squadron having been fortunately ordered to Lisbon, he was there received with so much distinction, that it would seem as if the Portuguese had been willing to make some amends for their neglect of Camoens, by the deference which they shewed his translator. Prince John, the uncle to the Queen, was ready on the Quay to welcome him at landing; and during a residence of more than six months he was gratified by the attentions of the principal men of the country. At the first institution of the Royal Academy at Lisbon, he was enrolled one of the Members. Here he composed Almada Hill, an epistle from Lisbon, which was published in the next year; and designing to write a History of Portugal, he brought together some materials for that purpose.
When he had returned to England, he was so much enriched by his agency for the disposal of the prizes which had been made during the cruise, and by his own portion of the prize-money, that he was enabled to discharge honourably the claims which his creditors still had on him, and to settle himself with a prospect of independence and ease. He accordingly married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Robert Tompkins, of Forrest-hill, and took a house at Wheatley, a little village about five miles from Oxford. Some interruption to his tranquillity occurred from the failure of a banker, with whom his agency had connected him, and from a chancery suit, in which he too hastily engaged to secure a part of his wife's fortune. He then resumed his intention of publishing his poems by subscription, and continued still to exercise his pen. His remaining productions were a tract, entitled The Prophecy of Queen Emma, an ancient Ballad, &c., with Hints towards a Vindication of the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian and Rowley (in 1782), and some essays, called Fragments of Leo, and some reviews of books, both which he contributed to the European Magazine. He died after a short illness, on the 25th of October, 1788, at Forrest-hill, while on a visit at the house of his father-in-law; and was buried at that place. He left one son, who was an extra-clerk in the India House, in 1806, when the Life of Mickle was written by the Rev. John Sim, a friend on whom he enjoined that task, and who, I doubt not, has performed it with fidelity.
Mickle was a man of strong natural powers, which he had not always properly under controul. When he is satisfied to describe with little apparent effort what he has himself felt or conceived, as in his ballads and songs, he is at times eminently happy. He has generally erred on the side of the too much rather than of the too little. His defect is not so much want of genius as of taste. His thoughts were forcible and vivid; but the words in which he clothed them, are sometimes ill-chosen, and sometimes awkwardly disposed. He degenerates occasionally into mere turgidness and verbosity, as in the following lines:
Oh, partner of my infant grief and joys!
Big with the scenes now past my heart o'erflows,
Bids each endearment fair at once to rise,
And dwells luxurious on her melting woes.
When his stanza forced him to lop off this vain superfluity of words, that the sense might be brought within a narrower compass, he succeeded better. Who would suppose, that these verses could have proceeded from the same man that had written the well known song, beginning "And are ye sure the news is true," from which there is not a word that can he taken without injury, and which seems so well to answer the description of a simple and popular song in Shakspeare?
—It is old and plain:
The songsters, and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their threads with bone,
Do use to chaunt it. It is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
Syr Martyn is the longest of his poems. He could not have chosen a subject in itself much less capable of embellishment. But whatever the pomp of machinery or profuseness of description could contribute to its decoration has not been spared. After an elaborate invocation of the powers that preside over the stream of Mulla, a "reverend wizard" is conjured up in the eye of the poet; and the wizard in his turn conjures up scene after scene, in which appear the hopeful young knight, Syr Martyn, "possest of goodly Baronie," the dairy-maid, Kathrin, by whose wiles he is inveigled into an illicit amour, the good aunt who soon dies of chagrin at this unworthy attachment, the young brood who are the offspring of the ill-sorted match, his brother, an openhearted sailor, who is hindered by the artifices of Kathrin from gaining access to the house, and lastly, the "fair nymph Dissipation," with whom Syr Martyn seeks refuge from his unpleasant recollections, and who conspires with "the lazy fiend, Self-Imposition," to conduct him to the "dreary cave of Discontent," where the poet leaves him, and "the reverend wizard" (for aught we hear to the contrary) in his company. Mean and familiar incidents and characters do not sort well with allegory, which requires beings that are themselves somewhat removed from the common sphere of human nature to meet and join it a little beyond the limits of this world. Yet in this tale, incongruous and disjointed as the dream of a sick man, velut aegri somnia, he has interspersed some lines, and even whole stanzas, to which the poet or the painter may turn again and again with delight, though the common reader will scarce find them sufficient to redeem the want of interest that pervades the whole.