'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,
Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;
For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,
Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.
Vast price of blood on each victorious day!
(But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)
Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell
That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'
His Colin and Lucy called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be quoted:—
'"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.
By a false heart and broken vows,
In early youth I die;
Was I to blame because his bride
Was thrice as rich as I?
'"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,
Vows due to me alone;
Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
Nor think him all thy own.
To-morrow in the church to wed,
Impatient, both prepare!
But know, fond maid, and know, false man,
That Lucy will be there!
'"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
This bridegroom blithe to meet,
He in his wedding trim so gay,
I in my winding-sheet."
She spoke, she died; her corse was borne
The bridegroom blithe to meet,
He in his wedding trim so gay,
She in her winding-sheet.'
There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell's long poem on Kensington Gardens, a title which recalls Matthew Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold's lines belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.
Tickell's translation of the first book of the Iliad led to the quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant eulogium of Addison.
The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed up in a paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree, and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether
'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'
Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the friendship and patronage of Addison, who employed him in public affairs, and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, 'a place of great honour,' which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been bestowed upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best writers of occasional verses.'