ed over Mr. Tickell's; but
could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I
had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.
Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning; and Mr.
Addison, a few days after, returned it, with very high commendations.
Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the
first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street; and, upon our
falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise
at Tickell's having had such a translation so long by him. He said, that
it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the
matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they
wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied
in so long a work there, without his knowing something of the matter;
and that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion.
The surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against
Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly probable that there
was some underhand dealing in that business; and indeed Tickell himself,
who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in a manner, as good as owned
it to me. [When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr.
Tickell and Mr. Pope, by a third person, Tickell did not deny it; which,
considering his honour, and zeal for his departed friend, was the same
as owning it."]

Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other
circumstances concurred, Pope always, in his Art of Sinking, quotes this
book as the work of Addison.

To compare the two translations would be tedious; the palm is now given
universally to Pope; but I think the first lines of Tickell's were
rather to be preferred; and Pope seems to have since borrowed something
from them, in the correction of his own.

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

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into
Ireland as secretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither, and
employed him in publick business; and when, 1717, afterwards he rose to
be secretary of state, made him under-secretary. Their friendship seems
to have continu