y taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the
crown. He held his fellowship till 1726, and then vacated it, by
marrying, in that year, at Dublin.

Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in
closets; he entered early into the world, and was long busy in publick
affairs; in which he was initiated under the patronage of Addison, whose
notice he is said to have gained by his verses in praise of Rosamond.

To those verses it would not have been just to deny regard; for they
contain some of the most elegant encomiastick strains; and, among the
innumerable poems of the same kind, it will be hard to find one with
which they need to fear a comparison. It may deserve observation, that
when Pope wrote, long afterwards, in praise of Addison, he has copied,
at least has resembled, Tickell.

Let joy salute fair Rosamonda's shade,
And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.
While now perhaps with Dido's ghost she roves,
And hears and tells the story of their loves,
Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,
Since love, which made them wretched, made them great.
Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,
Which gain'd a Virgil and an Addison. TICKELL.

Then future ages with delight shall see
How Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's, looks agree;
Or in fair series laurell'd bards be shown,
A Virgil there, and here an Addison. POPE.

He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance of Cato,
with equal skill, but not equal happiness.

When the ministers of queen Anne were negotiating with France, Tickell
published the Prospect of Peace, a poem, of which the tendency was to
reclaim the nation from the pride of conquest to the pleasures of
tranquillity. How far Tickell, whom Swift afterwards mentioned as
_whiggissimus_, had then connected himself with any party, I know not;
this poem certainly did not flatter the practices, or promote the
opinions, of the men by whom he was afterwards befriended.

Mr. Addison, however he hated the men then in power, suffered his
friendship to prevail over his publick spirit, and gave, in the
Spectator, such praises of Tickell's poem, that when, after having long
wished to peruse it, I laid hold on it at last, I thought it unequal to
the honours which it had received, and found it a piece to be approved
rather than admired. But the hope excited by a work of genius, being
general and indefinite, is ra