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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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