and
employed him in public business; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to
be Secretary of State, made him Under-Secretary. Their friendship seems
to have continued without abatement; for, when Addison died, he left him
the charge of publishing his works, with a solemn recommendation to the
patronage of Craggs. To these works he prefixed an elegy on the author,
which could owe none of its beauties to the assistance which might be
suspected to have strengthened or embellished his earlier compositions;
but neither he nor Addison ever produced nobler lines than are contained
in the third and fourth paragraphs; nor is a more elegant funeral
poem to be found in the whole compass of English literature. He was
afterwards (about 1725) made secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland,
a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when he died
on the 23rd of April at Bath.

Of the poems yet unmentioned, the longest is "Kensington Gardens,"
of which the versification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction
unskilfully compounded of Grecian deities and Gothic fairies. Neither
species of those exploded beings could have done much; and when they are
brought together, they only make each other contemptible. To Tickell,
however, cannot be refused a high place among the minor poets; nor
should it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the
Spectator. With respect to his personal character, he is said to have
been a man of gay conversation, at least a temperate lover of wine and
company, and in his domestic relations without censure.

SOMERVILE.

Of Mr. Somervile's life I am not able to say anything that can satisfy
curiosity. He was a gentleman whose estate lay in Warwickshire; his
house, where he was born in 1693, is called Edston, a seat inherited
from a long line of ancestors; for he was said to be of the first family
in his county. He tells of himself that he was born near the Avon's
banks. He was bred at Winchester school, and was elected fellow of
New College. It does not appear that in the places of his education he
exhibited any uncommon proofs of genius or literature. His powers were
first displayed in the country, where he was distinguished as a poet, a
gentleman, and a skilful and useful justice of the peace.

Of the close of his life, those whom his poems have delighted will read
with pain the following account, copied from the "Letters" of his friend
Shenstone, by whom he was too much resem