d in 1701 became a member of Queen's
College in Oxford; in 1708 he was made Master of Arts, and two years
afterwards was chosen Fellow, for which, as he did not comply with the
statutes by 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 public
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 encomiastic 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 gained 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 laurelled 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 public spirit, and gave in the Spectator
such praises of Tickell's poem that when, after having long wished
to peruse it, I laid hold of it at last, I thought it