Part 9

Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Editions, Becket, 1778. Also a variant “Second Edition,” with the same imprint and date but with a different number of blanks in the words containing deleted letters in the title and with different collation: p. [i], title, verso blank; pp. [iii]-iv, “Advertisement”; pp. [5]-67, text; p. [68], blank. Tenth Edition, Becket, 1780. A New Edition, Becket, 1794. Dublin: Byrn and Son, 1778. Philadelphia: T. Bradford, 1779; called “The Sixth Edition.” New York: James Rivington, 1779 (no copy traced; announced as published in Rivington’s _Royal Gazette_, 17 March). Reprinted in _The Pamphleteer_; _Dedicated to Both Houses of Parliament_, A. J. Valpy, XIX, 1822, [309]-345.

Of the numerous continuations and imitations that appeared in the next few years, none except _Common-Place Arguments_, 1780 (no. viii, below), is by Tickell. _Opposition Mornings: with Betty’s Remarks_, J. Wilkie, 1779, is assigned to him in Halkett and Laing (_Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature_, new ed., Edinburgh, 1926-34, IV, 265), in Sabin (#95797), and in library catalogues generally. Not made by earlier bibliographers, this attribution is probably based on a conjecture in _The Monthly Review_ that _Opposition Mornings_ might be an inferior work by Tickell (LX, 1779, 473). The tract makes use of several of Tickell’s satirical devices of the kind easily borrowed. But there is no good evidence that he wrote it, and the lack of a spark of wit in the whole performance is strong evidence to the contrary.

v

La Cassette Verte de Monsieur de Sartine, Trouvée chez Mademoiselle Du Thé. Ipse dolos tecti ambagesque resolvit. Virgil. (Cinquième Edition revue & corrigée sur celles de Leipsic & d’Amsterdam.) A La Haye: Chez la Veuve Whiskerfeld, in de Platte Borze by de Vrydagmerkt. M,DCC,LXX,IX.

8vo. P. [i], half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-4, “Avis au Lecteur”; p. [5], “Avant Propos,” verso blank; pp. [7]-71, text; p. [72], blank.

Copies: HEH, NYP, YU. Sabin #95793.

Sixième Edition, with identical title (except for change in number of edition), identical imprint and date; the text is set largely from the same type but extended by new matter to p. 76, and there is no blank page at the end. The Cinquième Edition described above may be safely regarded as the _editio princeps_; there were, however, at least three variant issues, two of which are easily confused with the original edition. One of these corresponds exactly in imprint, pagination, and signatures with the regular Cinquième Edition but is set from different type, has a different title-page border, and uses less elaborate printer’s ornaments throughout; it may be at once distinguished from the original by the fact that the words “Monsieur de Sartine” in the title are printed, not in red as in the original, but in black; copies in BA, NYP. A second variant has the same imprint as the regular Cinquième Edition, but the title-page has a still different border, no rubrication, and the word “Cinquième” is erroneously printed with an acute instead of a grave accent; the pagination is the same as that of the regular Cinquième Edition, but the variant is a smaller octavo, the type is not the same, nor are the signatures (regular: []², B-K⁴; variant: []², B-E⁸, F⁴); copies in NYP, YU. There is, finally, in the Yale University Library an issue called the “Cinquieme [_sic_] édition,” with a title-page border different from any in the preceding issues, with the same pagination as the regular Cinquième Edition, but from different type, with signatures[]¹, B⁸, C-I⁴ (half-title doubtless wanting), and with the puzzling date “M. DCC. LXXXII.”

_La Cassette verte_ is a political and bibliographical hoax. The text purports to be secret papers found in a dispatch-box belonging to M. de Sartine, French Minister of Marine. (On Mademoiselle Du Thé, i.e., Rosalie Duthé, a Parisian courtesan who had recently visited England, see Pierre Larousse, _Grand dictionnaire ... du XIXᵉ siècle_, Paris, 1866-90, VI, 1447-1448.) The papers expose the motives of the French government in aiding the United States and satirize Franklin’s activities in Paris, English sympathizers with the American cause, and the like. A letter supposedly written by one of Sartine’s agents in London provides a gloss on certain passages in _Anticipation_. I quote from the English version (no. vi, below):

Alas! in these times, a spy’s office here is almost a sinecure: a dozen newspapers in the morning, and as many fresh ones every evening, rob us of all our business: a secret even in private affairs is a prodigy in London; but as to public matters, it is the patriot’s boast, that a free constitution abhors secrecy: and so indeed it seems; for, not only the minutest accounts of the army, the navy, and the taxes, but the minister’s letters, official instructions, and in short, every paper, the disclosure of which may serve opposition, and tend to prejudice the ministers by a premature discovery of their plans, are perpetually called for, and must lie on the tables of Parliament; where, as soon as they are once brought, their contents one way or other get into print; consequently, ... the French ministers are not only as much in possession of them as the English, but study them far more attentively, and to ten times more advantage than _they_ do who called for their disclosure in England⸺All this is bad encouragement to a spy at London.

Bibliographically, the pamphlet raises questions that cannot be answered with complete certainty. How is the number of variant issues to be accounted for, and what are their relations to the _editio princeps_? The satire was originally written by Tickell in English and was then translated into bad French to circulate on the Continent as propaganda against the Franco-American alliance (see the extract from _The Monthly Review_ under the next entry, and that from Bachaumont’s _Mémoires_ further on in the present entry). However, the French version, purporting to be the “Cinquième Edition,” published “A La Haye,” and “revue & corrigée sur celles de Leipsic & d’Amsterdam,” appeared in England earlier than the English original (_La Cassette verte_ was noticed in _The Monthly Review_ for May 1779, p. 394; _The Green Box_ in the following month, p. 473). It seems most likely that the regular Cinquième and the Sixième Editions were printed on the Continent and that the variant issues were English reprints. Typographical evidence tends to confirm this supposition. The type and ornaments of the regular Cinquième Edition and the Sixième seem clearly not to be English. The variants, on the other hand, all appear to be English in origin, and it may be noted that their less elaborate ornaments give the impression of feeble imitation.

There is evidence that the hoax was disliked in certain high quarters. In Louis Petit de Bachaumont’s _Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la republique des lettres en France_, 1780-89, appears an “Extrait d’une lettre d’Amsterdam du 22 Mai 1780,” which reads, in part:

Il a paru dans ce pays, il y a déja du tems, peut-être un an, une brochure très courte, intitulée _la cassette verte_.... On ne sait si M. de Sartine en a été piqué, ou si c’est un zele de ses partisans dans ce pays; mais on mande de la Haye que le jeudi 19 de ce mois, on y a arrêté une Dame Godin, comme ayant eu quelque part à cette _cassette verte_ & qu’elle en est partie le jour même avec des gardes qui la conduisent jusqu’aux frontieres de France, d’où vraisemblement elle sera transférée à la Bastille (XV, 189).

vi

The Green Box of Monsieur de Sartine, Found at Mademoiselle du Thé’s Lodgings. From the French of the Hague Edition. Revised and corrected by those of Leipsic and Amsterdam. “I translate for the Country Gentlemen.” Anticipation. London: Sold by A. Becket, corner of the Adelphi, Strand; and R. Faulder, Bond-street. M DCC LXXIX.

8vo. P. [i], half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-4, “Advertisement”; p. [5], note by the “Editor,” verso blank; pp. [7]-71, text; p. [72], advertisement of _Anticipation_, Ninth Edition, _La Cassette verte_, and other works by Tickell.

Copies: BP, HC, HEH, NYP. Sabin #95796.

Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Editions, Becket and Faulder, 1779. Dublin: James Byrn and Son, 1779. Also an edition dated 1779 without place or publisher’s name and with different collation; evidently a piracy. Heartman’s Historical Series No. 19; “Sixty-five copies printed for Charles F. Heartman, New York City 1916”; this is an independent translation of _La Cassette verte_.

“It now appears that this pretended English translation is the _original work_, as it came from the ludicrous pen of Mr. Tickell ...; and that the French edition ... was only a _circumstance_ in the _joke_” (_The Monthly Review_, LX, 1779, 473).

A number of imitations followed _La Cassette verte_ and _The Green Box_. Among these are _An English Green Box_ ..., G. Kearsly, 1779; _Histoire d’un pou françois_ ..., “A Paris, de l’Imprimerie Royale,” 1779, and the English version of the latter, _History of a French Louse_ ..., T. Becket, 1779—all of which have been erroneously ascribed to Tickell.

vii

Epistle from the Honourable Charles Fox, Partridge-Shooting, to the Honourable John Townshend, Cruising. London: Printed for R. Faulder, New Bond Street. M DCC LXXIX.

4to. P. [1], half-title, verso blank; p. [3], title, verso blank; pp. [5]-14, text; pp. [15-16], blank.

Copies: BM, HC. Sabin #95795.

A New Edition, Faulder, 1779. Third Edition, Faulder, 1780. Dublin: R. Marchbank, 1779. Reprinted in _The New Foundling Hospital for Wit ... A New Edition ... In Six Volumes_, J. Debrett, 1786, I, 318-323. Reprinted in _Bell’s Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry_, British Library, 1789-94, IV, [86]-91.

The _Epistle_ is a pleasing Horatian piece that makes good-natured fun of the Whig wits and politicians of Brooks’s Club. On John Townshend (1757-1833), later called Lord John, second son of the first Marquis Townshend, see W. P. Courtney, _Eight Friends of the Great_, 1910, pp. 172-183. Fox, in the country, is depicted urging on his pointers with “patriot names”:

No servile ministerial runners they! Not RANGER then, but WASHINGTON, I cry; Hey on! PAUL JONES, re-echoes to the sky: Toho! old FRANKLIN—SILAS DEANE, take heed!— Cheer’d with the sound, o’er hills and dales they speed.

But as he toils through fields of stubble he yearns for “The long lost pleasures of ST. JAMES’S STREET,” which are set forth by Tickell in graceful and glowing lines. The _Epistle_ was very highly praised by the reviewers and by others, but Horace Walpole, in a letter to Lady Ossory of 2 December 1779, recorded an acute dissent: “Towards the end there seems some very pretty lines; but, upon the whole, _à quoi bon? à quel propos?_ I believe it was meant for a satire, but the author winked, and it flashed in the pan (_Letters_, ed. Toynbee, XI, 74-75).”

viii

Common-Place Arguments against Administration, with Obvious Answers, (Intended for the Use of the New Parliament.) London: Printed for R. Faulder, New Bond Street. M DCC LXXX.

8vo. P. [i], half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [v]-viii, “Advertisement”; pp. [an inserted leaf], “Contents”; pp. [9]-101, text; p. [102], blank.

Copies: HC, NYP. Sabin #95794.

Second, Third, and Fourth Editions, Faulder, 1780. Dublin: R. Marchbank, 1780; called “The Third Edition.”

A transparent attempt to repeat the success of _Anticipation_, this satire was unanimously assigned to Tickell by the reviews and is clearly his. Opposition charges and ministerial replies are provided on such topics as “Best Officers drawn from the Service,” “The last Campaign, and State of the Nation,” and the like, together with a section of “Miscellaneous Eloquence, or, Collateral Rhetoric for the Gallery,” which contains the best mimicry the tract affords. The reviewers justly taxed Tickell with writing for hire and borrowing from himself.

ix

Select Songs of the Gentle Shepherd. As It Is Performed at the Theatre-Royal, Drury-Lane London: Printed for T. Becket, Adelphi, Strand. M DCC LXXXI. [Price Six-pence.]

8vo. P. [1], title, verso blank; pp. [3]-19, text; p. [20], blank.

Copy: HEH.

There were no other issues.

This pastoral opera in two acts, performed as an afterpiece at Drury Lane, 29 October 1781, is an alteration of Allan Ramsay’s _Gentle Shepherd_, 1725, which had already had a long stage history. It ran for twenty-two nights and remained the standard stage version until after 1800. In an article entitled “Reviving ‘The Gentle Shepherd,’” W. J. Lawrence condemned Tickell’s alteration out of hand because “the abounding Doric had been bled white, and new music had been substituted for the fine old Scots melodies” (_The_ [London] _Graphic_, CVIII, 1923, 340). The music has not survived, but the discriminating review in _The Universal Magazine_ praised Linley’s skill in preserving the original airs while providing accompaniments for an expanded orchestra (LXIX, 1781, 237). The dialogue, however handled, was certain to produce disagreement, but Tickell was more faithful to the original than previous adapters had been. On this point James Boaden wrote:

The simple beauties of the poem were ... felt on this occasion, and the lovers of rustic nature were obliged to Mr. Tickell for the restoration of its original language—the _pronunciation_, and still more the _cadence_, suffered as might be expected from diffidence and badness of ear (_Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons_, 1827, I, 252).

x

Songs, Duos, Trios, Chorusses, &c., in the Comic Opera of the Carnival of Venice, as it is Performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. London. 1781. Pr. Iˢ.

8vo. P. [1], title, verso blank; p. [3], “Dramatis Personæ,” verso blank; pp. 5-27, text; p. [28], blank.

Copy: BM.

There were no other issues.

_The Carnival of Venice_ opened on 13 December 1781 and played twenty-three times during the season but was never revived. It was written to suit what Tickell himself, in a letter to an aspiring playwright, called “the present taste for complicated plot and perplexed incidents” (unpublished letter to A. Becket, August 1781, in the Widener Collection, Harvard College Library); for the plot, see the review in _The Universal Magazine_, LXIX, 1781, 328. The music was provided by Linley, and the elaborate sets and costumes by De Loutherbourg. In particular the songs were admired: Tom Moore and Samuel Rogers remembered and quoted them in the next century (Moore, _Sheridan_, 2nd ed., 1825, II, 227; Rogers, _Table-Talk_, p. 72). Mary Young, in her _Memoirs of Mrs. Crouch_, 1806, said that “Many of the songs in this piece so perfectly resemble, in poetic beauty, those which adorn the Duenna [by Sheridan], that they declare themselves to be the offspring of the same Muse” (I, 127). Sheridan’s biographers have variously ascribed the songs, in part or entirely, to him and Mrs. Sheridan, but on what grounds save their excellence does not appear (Sichel, _Sheridan_, I, 443, and II, 459; Rae, article on Tickell in the _DNB_).

xi

[Prologue to] Variety; A Comedy, in Five Acts: as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. London: Printed for T. Becket, Adelphi, Strand, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and Their Royal Highnesses the Princes. MDCCLXXXII.

Copies: BM, C.

8vo. P. [i], half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [v-vi], “Prologue, by Richard Tickell, Esq;”; p. [vii], “Epilogue”; p. [viii], “Epilogue,” continued, and “Dramatis Personæ”; pp. [1]-71, text; p. [72], publisher’s advertisements.

Subsequent issues disregarded here.

_Variety_ was written by Richard Griffith (d. 1788), and was first performed 25 February 1782.

xii

Remarks on the Commutation Act. Addressed to the People of England. London: Printed for T. Becket, in Pall-Mall. M DCC LXXXV. [Price One Shilling and Six-pence.]

8vo. P. [i], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-81, text; p. [82], blank.

Copy: YU.

Second, Third, and Fourth Editions, Becket, 1785.

Assigned to Tickell by a MS. note on the title-page of a copy of the Fourth Edition in the New York Public Library. It is characteristically Tickell’s in substance and style. Intended as an attack on a proposed reduction of the tea-duty, it enlarges into a satire on Pitt’s administration, especially the ascendancy of the East India Company interest therein. While the Company continues its corrupt sway, Pitt directs the energies of Parliament to “Edicts against the Waste of Wafers in Public Offices, and Registrations of the Nett Consumption of Quills; together with Sworn Meters of Sand, and a Comptroller-General of Blotting-Paper.”

xiii

Contributions to _The Rolliad_.

The work known as _The Rolliad_ is only for the sake of convenience so styled. The name serves as a collective title for a group of many works, differently titled and separately published, ranging from squibs a quatrain long to extended mock-heroic poems. These collaborative Whig satires began to appear in Henry Bate’s _Morning Herald_ late in 1784; and the inclusive editions, issued from 1795 on under the title of _The Rolliad_, contain _Criticisms on The Rolliad_, _Political Eclogues_, _Probationary Odes for the Laureateship_, and _Political Miscellanies_. Many ancillary pieces by the same group of authors appeared in newspapers and fugitive miscellanies but were never reprinted.

A good deal has been written in appreciation of the literary and political satire of the _Rolliad_ pieces, but no thorough study of their history and bibliography has been attempted. So complex is their bibliography that it is impossible to give a satisfactory account of any single author’s share. The principal information on authorship will be found in several contributions to _Notes and Queries_, 1st ser., II, 1850, and III, 1851, from copies of _The Rolliad_ annotated by the authors or by those who knew them, as follows: French Laurence’s notes, II, 373, and III, 129-131; George Ellis’ notes, II, 114-115; Alexander Chalmers’ notes, II, 242; Sir James Mackintosh’s notes, III, 131. To these should be added Sheridan’s notes in a copy used by Walter Sichel; see his _Sheridan_, II, 87ff. There is much other scattered information, of which full use has not yet been made, in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century memoirs and journals.

According to French Laurence, who acted as editor, “the piece first published, and the origin of all that followed,” was the “Short Account of the Family of the Rollos, now Rolles,” written principally by Tickell and purporting to be a genealogy of the family of John Rolle, M.P. for Devon, the unlucky hero of the projected mock epic. Tickell designed the absurd family tree that served as frontispiece for _Criticisms on The Rolliad_ (information from Sheridan, in Lord Broughton [John Cam Hobhouse], _Recollections of a Long Life_, ed. Lady Dorchester, 1909-11, I, 202). He had also a leading hand in the next project of the group, the _Probationary Odes_, for which he provided the editorial preliminaries, the first of the trial odes, supposed to be by Sir Cecil Wray, and the ninth, supposed to be by Nathaniel Wraxall and one of the best in the series. (According to Mackintosh, the ninth ode was “sketched by Canning, the Eton boy, finished by Tickell.”) The most successful of the _Political Eclogues_, a satire on Lord Lansdowne called _Jekyll_, was the collaborative work of Tickell and Lord John Townshend; it first appeared as a quarto poem published by J. Debrett, 1788. For the smaller contributions of Tickell, which are numerous, the lists in _Notes and Queries_ may be consulted.

xiv

A Woollen Draper’s Letter on the French Treaty, to His Friends and Fellow Tradesmen All over England. “The clothiers all not able to maintain “The many to them ’longing, have put off “The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers.” Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. London: Printed for the Author, and sold by J. French, Bookseller, No. 164, Fenchurch-street, by the Booksellers near the Royal Exchange, Pater-Noster-Row, Fleet-street, &c. &c. &c. M,DCC,LXXXVI.

8vo. P. [i], title, verso blank; pp. [I]-48, text.

Copies: HC, NYP.

Second Edition, French, 1786.

This tract is here first assigned to Tickell, who stated he was the author in a letter to Samuel Parr, 20 February [1787] (Parr, _Works_, ed. J. Johnstone, 1828, VIII, 131). It is assigned to a different author in Halkett and Laing (new ed., 1926-34, VI, 252), where a copy is reported that contains a MS. dedication signed “Lieut. J. Mackenzie.” Tickell’s statement of authorship, the lack of any information about J. Mackenzie, and various circumstances (too involved to detail here) relating to Whig propagandist activity at this time, all suggest that Lieut. J. Mackenzie is a fictitious person. As the Foxites’ chief pamphleteer Tickell did his duty, but as a member of Brooks’s he did not care to associate his name with a sober commercial tract.

This supposed Woollen Draper, who seems to be well acquainted with the subject he treats, endeavours to shew his fellow tradesmen the very great injuries to which the woollen trade is exposed, by the commercial treaty, lately signed at Paris.... In his own style, the sample, which he hath here offered to the Public, is well wrought, and of a good fabric (_The Monthly Review_, LXXVI, 1787, 71).

xv

The People’s Answer to the Court Pamphlet: Entitled A Short Review of the Political State of Great Britain. Quid prius dicam solitis Parentis Laudibus?⸺Printed for J. Debrett, opposite Burlington-house Piccadilly. MDCCLXXXVII.

8vo. P. [i], half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-50, text; pp. [51-52], blank.

Copies: HC, NYP, WLC.

Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Editions, Debrett, 1787. Dublin: White, Byrne, Moore, and Jones, 1787.

This tract is here first assigned to Tickell. His letter to Parr of 20 February [1787], mentioned in the preceding entry, begins:

From some enquiries in your letter to Mrs. Sheridan, I believe you thought it was right to answer _the Political Review_. I mean the pamphlet that traduced the Prince of Wales and every one else except Hastings. I now send you the answer I gave it, because, as you thought it right it should be answered, you will excuse faults in a paper written in a hurry (Parr, _Works_, VIII, 131).