THE ROYAL DUBLIN SOCIETY 189 



country." 1 The letter which Dr. Ball annotates is 

 one from Swift to Tickell, dated nth July 1723, 

 in which he speaks of him as a "last comer and 

 lodger." They had just become acquainted, and 

 Tickell had a high claim to the Dean's regard as the 

 friend and biographer of Addison. 



Thomas Tickell was born in 1686 in Cumberland, 

 and in 1710 was elected Fellow of Queen's College, 

 Oxford. From the time of his arrival in Ireland in 

 1724, he made it his permanent residence, and, in 

 1726, married Clotilda, daughter of Sir Maurice 

 Eustace, of Harristown. He died in 1740, and some 

 of his descendants were resident in Dublin up to a 

 recent period. Major Thomas Tickell, who sold his 

 interest in the ground in Glasnevin to the Dublin 

 Society, was Tickell's grandson. Tickell held a high 

 place among the minor poets, and contributed to the 

 Spectator. Dr. Johnson, in the Lives of the British 

 Poets, says of his Elegy on the Death of Addison, that 

 " no more sublime or elegant funeral poem is to be 

 found in the whole compass of English literature." 

 In it occur the oft-quoted lines : 



u There taught us how to live, and (oh ! too high 

 The price for knowledge) taught us how to die." 



The ground at Glasnevin was ready by April 1796, 

 when a committee was appointed to manage the place. 

 Dr. Walter Wade, author of Flora Dublinensis, was 

 invited to undertake the arrangement of the new plants, 

 and to act as professor and lecturer in botany, so far 

 as such might tend to promote agriculture, arts, and 

 manufactures. Later, Wade lectured on botany in 

 connection with diet, medicine, agriculture, and rural 



1 Nicholson's Letters , ii. 574. 



