10

11

12

after resigned his fellowship and lecture; and as a token of his gratitude gave the college a picture of their founder 2.

He was made rector of Chalton and Cleanville, two adjoining towns and benefices in Hertfordshire3, and had the prebends or sinecures of Deans, Hains, and Pendles in Devonshire. He had before been chosen, in 1698*, preacher of Bridewell Hospital, upon the resignation of Dr. Atterbury.

From this time he seems to have led a quiet and inoffensive life, till the clamour was raised about Atterbury's plot 5. Every loyal eye was on the watch for abettors or partakers of the horrid conspiracy; and Dr. Yalden, having some acquaintance with the bishop, and being familiarly conversant with Kelly his secretary, fell under suspicion, and was taken into custody.

Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correspondence with Kelly. The correspondence he acknowledged, but maintained that it had no treasonable tendency 7. His papers were seized; but nothing was found that could fix a crime upon him except two words in his pocket-book, 'thorough-paced doctrine.' This expression the imagination of his examiners had impregnated with treason, and the doctor was enjoined to explain them. Thus pressed he told them that the words had lain. unheeded in his pocket-book from the time of queen Anne, and that he was ashamed to give an account of them; but the truth was that he had gratified his curiosity one day by hearing Daniel Burgess in the pulpit, and those words were a memorial 5 Post, POPE, 131.

' In 1708 he became D.D., and in 1713 he resigned. Reg. of Mag. Coll. vi. 114. He could not hold his preferments with his fellowship. Johnson, in his Dictionary, does not give lecture in the sense of lectureship.

2 William of Waynflete. 'This painting, placed over the High Table in the Hall, has no pretensions to be a correct portrait of the Founder. Tradition states that some artist was employed to pourtray a representation of an Anglo-Catholic Bishop of the 15th century.' Reg. of Mag. Coll.

6

Atterbury, in his defence before the House of Lords on March 22, 1723, spoke of 'Mr. Kelly, my supposed amanuensis,' and added:

That he is no stranger to me I own; but that he is in any degree intimate with me, or frequently saw me, I deny. Atterbury Corres. ed. 1783, ii. 121, 138.

hint of a remarkable sentence by which he warned his congregation to 'beware of thorough-paced doctrine, that doctrine which coming in at one ear passes through the head, and goes out at the other '.'

Nothing worse than this appearing in his papers and no 13 evidence arising against him, he was set at liberty 2.

It will not be supposed that a man of this character attained 14 high dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship and frequented the conversation of a very numerous and splendid set of acquaintance. He died July 16, 1736, in the 66th year of his age 3.

Of his poems many are of that irregular kind which, when he 15 formed his poetical character, was supposed to be Pindarick. Having fixed his attention on Cowley as a model, he has attempted in some sort to rival him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counter-part to Cowley's Hymn to Light.

This hymn seems to be his best performance, and is for the 16 most part imagined with great vigour and expressed with great propriety. I will not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third, fourth, and seventh are the best; the eighth seems to involve a contradiction; the tenth is exquisitely beautiful; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth are partly

out "My beloved!" and the words "grace! regeneration! sanctification! a new light! the day! ay, my beloved, the day! or rather the night! the night is coming!" and "judgment will come when we least think of it!" and so forth-He knows to be vehement is the only way to come at his audience.' SWIFT, The Tatler, No. 66.

Hearne called him 'that old Presbyterian rogue.' Remains, i. 187.

'But above all other pernicious doctrines, take heed and beware, my beloved, of the thorough-paced doctrine, that doctrine, I mean, which coming in at one ear passes straight through the head, and out at the opposite ear.' Biog. Brit. p. 4379. [Both in the Lives and Biog. Brit.' passes' is printed 'paces.']

He was taken into custody on March 26, 1723, and admitted to bail on April 12. Atterbury Corres.

17

mythological and partly religious, and therefore not suitable to each other: he might better have made the whole merely philosophical.

There are two stanzas in this poem where Yalden may be suspected, though hardly convicted, of having consulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus, in the sixth stanza 1, which answers in some sort to these lines:

'Illa suo præest nocturnis numine sacris

Perque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris,
Manesque excitos medios ululare per agros
Sub noctem, et questu notos complere penates 2.'

And again at the conclusion 3:

'Illa suo senium secludit corpore toto

Haud numerans jugi fugientia secula lapsu,

Ergo ubi postremum mundi compage solutâ
Hanc rerum molem suprema absumpserit hora,

Ipsa leves cineres nube amplectetur opacâ

Et prisco imperio rursus dominabitur UMBRA “.'

18 His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He seems to think that there is an East absolute and positive where the morning rises 5.

19

In the last stanza, having mentioned the sudden eruption of new created light, he says

'Awhile th' Almighty wondering stood [viewed]"

In thy serener shades our ghosts
delight,

And court the umbrage of the
night;

In vaults and gloomy caves they
stray

But fly the morning's beams, and
sicken at the day.'

2 Ioan. Wovweri Dies Aestiva sive De Umbra Paegnion, 1610, p. 133. [Ante, ROCHESTER, 22.]

3 Yet fading light its empire must
resign,

And nature's power submit to
thine;

An universal ruin shall erect thy
throne,

And fate confirm thy kingdom ever-
more thy own.'

• Dies Aestiva, p. 133.

5 To thee the grateful East their altars raise,

And sing with early hymns thy praise;

Thou dost their happy soil bestow, Enrich the heavens above, and

earth below:

Thou risest in the fragrant East, Like the fair Phoenix from her balmy nest. [thine, No altar of the gods can equal The air's thy richest incense, the

whole land thy shrine.'
Eng. Poets, xxxix. 6; [Dryden's Misc.
Poems, 1693, p. 127.]

Awhile th' Almighty wondering
view'd,
[good.

And then himself pronounc'd it

He ought to have remembered that infinite knowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.

Of his other poems it is sufficient to say that they deserve 20 perusal, though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the omissions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm 1.

Yalden, though a Doctor of Divinity, translated Ovid's Art of Love, bk. ii. Eng. Poets, xxxix. 60. Of this translation it could not be said, as Johnson said of King's Art of Love (ante, KING, 12), that 'it is remarkable, notwithstanding its title, for purity of sentiment.'

In Swift's Works, viii. 463, is included a humorous paper by Yalden, entitled 'Squire Bickerstaff Detected, or the Astrological Impostor Convicted. By John Partridge, Student in Physics and Astrology.' For a list of Yalden's publications see Reg. of Mag. Coll. vi. 115.

1TH

2

TICKELL

HOMAS TICKELL, the son of the reverend Richard Tickell, was born in 1686 at Bridekirk in Cumberland; and in April 1701 became a member of Queen's College in Oxford': in 1708 he was made Master of Arts, and two years afterwards was chosen Fellow2; for which, as he did not comply with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the Crown3. 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

The fellowships at Queen's were confined to Cumberland and Westmorland men. Ayliffe's Oxford, 1714, i. 295; ante, ADDISON, 8.

Tickell, in a poem On Queen Caroline's Rebuilding the Lodgings of the Black Prince and Henry V at Queen's College, addressing that bright saint' Queen Philippa, says:—

'O could'st thou win young William's bloom to grace

His mother's walls, and fill thy Edward's place. Eng. Poets, xxxix. 152. 'Young William' was 'the butcher of Culloden.'

Mr. Courthope quotes the following epigram on nine Oxford wits (Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 328):—

'Alma novem genuit celebres Rhedycina poetas, Bubb, Stubb, Cobb, Crabb, Trapp, Young, Carey, Tickell, Evans.' Rhedycina is a fanciful name for Oxford.

2 Nov. 8, 1710. This day was an election of Fellows of Queen's College, when Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Tickle were elected over the heads of several of their seniors, and such as were better scholars. This Tickle is a pretender to poetry.' HEARNE, Collections, ed. Doble, iii. 77.

3 I owe the following note to the Provost of Queen's :-'The College, on Sept. 23, 1715, "agreed that Mr. Tickell be dispensed with for not taking orders according to Statute, for ye full space of three years from this day. He haveing thereby a more speedy prospect of preferment." On Oct 25, 1717, "K. George's Mandamus for Mr. Tickell's Dispensation passed unanimi consensu." Such

Parker's Early Hist. of Oxford, p.364. dispensations, though rare, were not unexampled.' See ante, ADDISON, 16 n. For degrees conferred by mandamus see post, AKENSIDE, 12 %.

4

He married a Miss Eustace,' with a fortune of £8,000 or £10,000, on April 23, 1726. Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, ii. 319. See also Swift's Works, xix. 282. Mrs. Delany (Auto. iii. 205) wrote of Mrs. Tickell in 1753" She talks, and cries, and laughs as fast as she can, ringing the changes . . .; but what makes it surprising is that she really has sense and wit.' Their grandson, Richard Tickell, wrote The Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox, &c., quoted in Boswell's Johnson, ii. 292 n. 4, iii. 388 n. 3, and The Project, ib. iii. 318.