hor as myself; and that publishing both was entering on
a fair stage. I then added that I would not desire him to look over my
first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's, but
could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which
I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.
Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning, and Mr. Addison
a few days after returned it, with very high commendations. Soon after
it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of
the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street, and upon our falling into
that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell's
having had such a translation so long by him. He said that it was
inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter;
that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote,
even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so
long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and
that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion.
This surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against
Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly probable that there
was some underhand dealing in that business; and indeed Tickell himself,
who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in a manner, as good as owned
it to me. When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr.
Tickell and Mr. Pope by a third person, Tickell did not deny it, which,
considering his honour and zeal for his departed friend, was the same as
owning it."

Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other
circumstances concurred, Pope always in his "Art of Sinking" quotes this
book as the work of Addison.

To compare the two translations would be tedious; the palm is now given
universally to Pope, but I think the first lines of Tickell's were
rather to be preferred; and Pope seems to have since borrowed something
from them in the correction of his own.

When the Hanover succession was disputed, Tickell gave what assistance
his pen would supply. His "Letter to Avignon" stands high among party
poems; it expresses contempt without coarseness, and superiority without
insolence. It had the success which it deserved, being five times
printed.

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into
Ireland as secretary to the Lord Sunderland, took him thither,