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.