13 When the Hanover succession was disputed Tickell gave what assistance his pen would supply. His Letter to Avignon 1 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 2.

14

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into Ireland as secretary to the lord Sunderland3, took him thither, and employed him in publick business; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to be secretary of state made him undersecretary. 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 3.

15 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 sublime or more elegant funeral poem to be found in the whole compass of English literature 6.

16

He was afterwards (about 17257) made secretary to the Lords justices of Ireland, a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when he died on the twenty-third of April at Bath'.

Eng. Poets, xxxix. 185.

"Tickell bewailed his friend in an

2 The five editions bear the date of elegy which would do honour to the

1717.

3 Ante, ADDISON, 105 n. 8.

Ante, ADDISON, 86. According to Steele Addison, by his preference of Tickell, 'incurred the warmest resentments of other gentlemen.' Addison's Works, v. 151. See also Macaulay's Essays, iv. 249.

5 Addison's Works, Preface, p. 11; vi. 523; ante, ADDISON, 103.

6 Eng. Poets, xxxix. 245; Addison's Works, Preface, p. 13; ante, ADDISON, 102.

Steele, speaking of Tickell's Preface to Addison's Works, says that 'he adorned his heavy discourse with prose in rhyme at the end of it upon Mr. Addison's death.' Addison's Works, v. 154.

'This elegy is one of the finest in our language.' GOLDSMITH, Works, iii. 438.

greatest name in our literature, and which unites the energy and magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of Cowper.' MACAULAY, Essays, iv. 254.

In May, 1724. Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 429. Swift wrote to him on July 11, 1724:-'It is hard that you last comers and lodgers should invite us old housekeepers.' Works, xix. 271.

The Lords Justices act for the Lord Lieutenant in his absence, who (according to Swift) is absent 'usually four-fifths of his government.' lb. vii. 38. See also ib. vi. 414. It was to benefit Tickell that Swift told the story of Addison and his fees. Ante, ADDISON, 32.

9

On April 21, according to Gent. Mag. 1740, p. 261.

Of the poems yet unmentioned the longest is Kensington 17 Gardens', of which the versification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction unskilfully compounded of Grecian Deities and Gothick Fairies. Neither species of those exploded beings could have done much; and when they are brought together they only make each other contemptible 3. 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 domestick relations without censure.

assigns a high place among the minor poets, and of whom Goldsmith rightly observes, that there is "a strain of ballad-thinking through all his poetry, and it is very attractive.' Memoirs of Wordsworth, ii. 221.

Goldsmith adds that Tickell's ballad of Colin and Lucy' is perhaps the best in our language in this way.' Works, iii. 438.

Gray ends the criticisms quoted above (TICKELL, 6 n. 3) :-'However I forgive him for the sake of his ballad, which I always thought the prettiest in the world.' Mitford's Gray, iii. 89. It contains the well-known lines:'I hear a voice you cannot hear, Which says I must not stay; I see a hand you cannot see, Which beckons me away.'

Eng. Poets, xxxix. 250.

1

2

OF

HAMMOND

F Mr. HAMMOND, though he be well remembered as a man esteemed and caressed by the elegant and great, I was at first able to obtain no other memorials than such as are supplied by a book called Cibber's Lives of the Poets1; of which I take this opportunity to testify that it was not written, nor, I believe, ever seen, by either of the Cibbers, but was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland 2, a man of very acute understanding, though with little scholastick education, who, not long after the publication of his work, died in London of a consumption. His life was virtuous, and his end was pious 3. Theophilus Cibber, then a prisoner for debt, imparted, as I was told, his name for ten guineas. The manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession. I have since found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent enquirer, has been misled by false accounts; for he relates that James Hammond, the author of the following Elegies, was the son of a Turkey merchant, and had some office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whose name was Dashwood, for a time disordered his understanding 5. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.

1 Vol. v. p. 307.

2 For a curious account of the citizens of Edinburgh see Cibber's Lives, v. 164.

3 Cibber's Lives are not free from gross stories.

46 The bookseller (said Johnson) gave Theophilus Cibber, who was then in prison, ten guineas, to allow Mr. Cibber to be put upon the titlepage as the author; by this a double imposition was intended: in the first place, that it was the work of a Cibber at all, and, in the second place, that it was the work of old Cibber.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 29. For an attempted refutation of this see ib. 30 n. Colley Cibber died in 1757. On the title-page of vol. i 'Mr. Cibber' is given as the author; on the other volumes, Mr. Cibber and other Hands.' The Gent. Mag. 1753, p. 102, no doubt to expose the frauds,

announced the book as 'by Mr. Cibber Jun.' In the same volume, p. 590, in the notice of Robert Shiels's death, it is stated that he wrote 'great part of the Lives.' For Johnson's kindness to him see Boswell's Johnson, i. 187, 241.

Cibber received £21. In his receipt, dated Nov. 13, 1752, he undertook 'to revise... a work now printing in four volumes... that his name shall be made use of as the author.' Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, ii. 329.

5 Mrs. Pendarves (Mrs. Delany) wrote to her sister on Dec. 6, 1742:'I send you Hammond's Elegies on our friend; but don't name her when you show them. I am sure she must be touched when she reads them.' Mrs. Delany's Auto. ii. 203. The editor says that 'Mrs. Dashwood was the intimate friend' of the two ladies. Croker, in the Preface to Lord

Of this narrative, part is true, and part false. He was the 3 second son of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and parliamentary orators in the beginning of this century, who was allied to Sir Robert Walpole by marrying his sister'. He was born about 17102, and educated at Westminster-school; but it does not appear that he was of any university. He was equerry to the prince of Wales 3, and seems to have come very early into publick notice, and to have been distinguished by those whose friendship prejudiced mankind at that time in favour of the man on whom it was bestowed; for he was the companion of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield'. He is said to have divided his life between pleasure and books; in his retirement forgetting the town, and in his gaiety losing the student. Of his literary hours all the effects are here' exhibited,

Hervey's Memoirs, p. 30, says:— 'Lady Corke, who died in 1840, at the age of ninety-four, told me she had known Kitty Dashwood very well, and that Hammond undoubtedly died for love; "the only instance of the kind," she said, "that she had ever known in her long life." Kitty had at first accepted, but afterwards rejected him on-Lady Corke thought -prudential reasons. She died in 1779, bedchamber-woman to Queen Charlotte.' As Hammond died four years before Lady Corke was born, all she had known was a woman for whom a man was said to have died for love. The bricks are alive at this day to testify it.'

Horace Walpole wrote in 1761:— 'It is comical to see Kitty Dashwood, the famous old beauty of the Oxfordshire Jacobites, living in the palace as Duenna to the Queen.' Letters, iii. 435.

Walpole's brother-in-law was neither the wit nor the father of the poet. For Horace Walpole's scornful mention of his uncle, a Norfolk squire, see ib. i. 247. The poet's father was Anthony Hammond, of Somersham Place, Huntingdonshire, M.P. for Shoreham. Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 780. Dr. Maty describes him as a good speaker in parliament, and well known by the name of "silvertongued Hammond" given to him by Lord Bolingbroke. He was

a

man of wit, but wanted conduct, and had, as Lord Chesterfield used to say, "all the senses but common sense. ." Chesterfield's Misc. Works, i. 90. He married Jane Clarges, daughter of a nephew of the Duchess of Albemarle. N. & Q. 2 S. xi. 493.

On May 22, 1710. Ib.

3 Frederick, Prince of Wales. In the first edition 'patronage and friendship.'

5 Johnson, speaking of Pope's 'noble friends,' says 'he can derive little honour from the notice of Cobham.' Post, POPE, 272. To him Pope 'inscribed his Characters of Men Post, POPE, 202.

6

Lyttelton was the Prince's Secretary. Post, LYTTELTON, 6. In 1736, writing to Pope from Bath, he speaks of Hammond as 'the joy and dread of Bath.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ix. 173. Hammond praises Lyttelton in Elegy xiv. Eng. Poets, xxxix. 332.

? For his friendship with Chesterfield see Chesterfield's Misc. Works, i. 90, 225; Mahon's Chesterfield, iii. 452, v. 434; and Eng. Poets, xxxix. 329.

91.

Chesterfield's Misc. Works, i.

9 'Here': i. e. Eng. Poets, to which Johnson contributed the Lives as Prefaces. See also 'following,' ante, HAMMOND, 2.

4

of which the Elegies were written very early', and the Prologue not long before his death 2.

In 1741 he was chosen into parliament for Truro in Cornwall, probably one of those who were elected by the Prince's influence3; and died next year in June at Stowe, the famous seat of the lord Cobham. His mistress long outlived him, and in 1779 died unmarried. The character which her lover bequeathed her was indeed not likely to attract courtship.

5 The Elegies were published after his death; and while the writer's name was remembered with fondness they were read with a resolution to admire them. The recommendatory preface of the editor, who was then believed, and is now affirmed by Dr. Maty, to be the earl of Chesterfield, raised strong prejudices in their favour 8.

6

But of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reasonably suspected that he never read the poems; for he professes to value

I

According to Chesterfield they were written before the author was two-and-twenty years old.' Misc. Works, ii. 394; Eng. Poets, xxxix. 309.

The Prologue to Lillo's Elmerick. Ib. p. 336. Elmerick was published in March, 1740. Gent. Mag. 1740, p. 152.

3 According to Dr. Maty it was Chesterfield who procured Hammond a seat in parliament. Chesterfield's Misc. Works, i. 225. Chesterfield was one of the Prince's party. Hammond's brother-member was Clerk of the Household to the Prince. Parl. Hist. xii. 196. Mr. W. P. Courtney informs me that the Boscawens ruled Truro borough from 1659 to 1832. In 1741 Lord Falmouth [the head of the family] was in opposition to Walpole. It was no doubt through arrangement with him that the Prince of Wales in 1741 put in two of his sycophants.'

Thomson, describing Hammond as 'the darling pride, The friend and lover of the tuneful throng,'

goes on to speak of

'that eager zeal

* He died on June 7, 1742. Gent. Mag. 1742, p. 330. In Elegy xv he says:

'To Stowe's delightful scenes I now repair,

In Cobham's smile to lose the gloom of care.' Eng. Poets, xxxix. 333. Pope, in Moral Essays, iv. 69, ends a passage on 'architecture and gardening':

Nature shall join you; Time shall
make it grow

A work to wonder at-perhaps a
Stowe.'

5 On Feb. 17, 1779. Gent. Mag. 1779, p. 103.

6 Addressing Venus he says:— 'Deceived by thee, I loved a beauteous maid,

Who bends on sordid gold her low desires:

Nor worth nor passion can her heart persuade,

But Love must act what Avarice requires. Eng. Poets, xxxix. 312. ? They appeared in 1743.

8 'Chesterfield,' wrote Maty, 'was greatly affected with his loss, and testified his regard by taking care of what he left behind him, his Delia and his works.' Chesterfield's Misc. Works, i. 226. For Chesterfield's Preface see ib. ii. 394; Eng. Poets, xxxix. 309.