ath of Mr. Addison, is very pathetic. He begins it thus,
If dumb too long, the drooping Muse hath stray'd,
And left her debt to Addison unpaid,
Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan,
And judge, O judge, my bosom by your own.
What mourner ever felt poetic fires!
Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires:
Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.
Mr. Tickell's works are printed in the second volume of the Minor Poets,
and he is by far the most considerable writer amongst them. He has a
very happy talent in versification, which much exceeds Addison's, and is
inferior to few of the English Poets, Mr. Dryden and Pope excepted. The
first poem in this collection is addressed to the supposed author of the
Spectator.
In the year 1713 Mr. Tickell wrote a poem, called The Prospect of Peace,
addressed to his excellency the lord privy-seal; which met with so
favourable a reception from the public, as to go thro' six editions. The
sentiments in this poem are natural, and obvious, but no way
extraordinary. It is an assemblage of pretty notions, poetically
expressed; but conducted with no kind of art, and altogether without a
plan. The following exordium is one of the most shining parts of the
poem.
Far hence be driv'n to Scythia's stormy shore
The drum's harsh music, and the cannon's roar;
Let grim Bellona haunt the lawless plain,
Where Tartar clans, and grizly Cossacks reign;
Let the steel'd Turk be deaf to Matrons cries,
See virgins ravish'd, with relentless eyes,
To death, grey heads, and smiling infants doom.
Nor spare the promise of the pregnant womb:
O'er wafted kingdoms spread his wide command.
The savage lord of an unpeopled land.
Her guiltless glory just Britannia draws
From pure religion, and impartial laws,
To Europe's wounds a mother's aid she brings,
And holds in equal scales the rival kings:
Her gen'rous sons in choicest gifts abound,
Alike in arms, alike in arts renown'd.
The Royal Progress. This poem is mentioned in the Spectator, in
opposition to such performances, as are generally written in a swelling
stile, and in which the bombast is mistaken for the sublime. It is meant
as a compliment to his late majesty, on his arrival in his British
dominions.
An imitation of the Prophesy of Nereus. Horace, Book I. Ode XV.--This
was written about the year 1715, and intended as a ridicule upon the
enterprize of
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