Mr. Tickell in his life of Addison, prefixed to his own edition of that great man’s works, throws out some unmannerly reflexions against Sir Richard, who was at that time in Scotland, as one of the commissioners on the forfeited estates.  Upon Sir Richard’s return to London, he dedicates to Mr. Congreve, Addison’s Comedy, called the Drummer, in which he takes occasion very smartly to retort upon Tickell, and clears himself of the imputation laid to his charge, namely that of valuing himself upon Mr. Addison’s papers in the Spectator.

In June 1724 Mr. Tickell was appointed secretary to the Lords Justices in Ireland, a place says Mr. Coxeter, which he held till his death, which happened in the year 1740.

It does not appear that Mr. Tickell was in any respect ungrateful to Mr. Addison, to whom he owed his promotion; on the other hand we find him take every opportunity to celebrate him, which he always performs with so much zeal, and earnestness, that he seems to have retained the most lasting sense of his patron’s favours.  His poem to the earl of Warwick on the death of Mr. Addison, is very pathetic.  He begins it thus,

  If dumb too long, the drooping Muse hath stray’d,
  And left her debt to Addison unpaid,
  Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan,
  And judge, O judge, my bosom by your own. 
  What mourner ever felt poetic fires! 
  Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires: 
  Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
  Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.

Mr. Tickell’s works are printed in the second volume of the Minor Poets, and he is by far the most considerable writer amongst them.  He has a very happy talent in versification, which much exceeds Addison’s, and is inferior to few of the English Poets, Mr. Dryden and Pope excepted.  The first poem in this collection is addressed to the supposed author of the Spectator.

In the year 1713 Mr. Tickell wrote a poem, called The Prospect of Peace, addressed to his excellency the lord privy-seal; which met with so favourable a reception from the public, as to go thro’ six editions.  The sentiments in this poem are natural, and obvious, but no way extraordinary.  It is an assemblage of pretty notions, poetically expressed; but conducted with no kind of art, and altogether without a plan.  The following exordium is one of the most shining parts of the poem.

  Far hence be driv’n to Scythia’s stormy shore
  The drum’s harsh music, and the cannon’s roar;
  Let grim Bellona haunt the lawless plain,
  Where Tartar clans, and grizly Cossacks reign;
  Let the steel’d Turk be deaf to Matrons cries,
  See virgins ravish’d, with relentless eyes,
  To death, grey heads, and smiling infants doom. 
  Nor spare the promise of the pregnant womb: 
  O’er wafted kingdoms spread his wide command. 
  The savage lord of an unpeopled land. 
  Her guiltless glory just Britannia draws
  From pure religion, and impartial laws,
  To Europe’s wounds a mother’s aid she brings,
  And holds in equal scales the rival kings: 
  Her gen’rous sons in choicest gifts abound,
  Alike in arms, alike in arts renown’d.