Who was the new poet? The turn of his couplets and the delicate barbs of his satire suggested a poetic school then growing outmoded. There were those who, when they learned his name, remembered his grandfather, Thomas Tickell, a poet of Queen Anne’s day and the particular friend of Mr. Addison. Thomas Tickell (1685-1740) served as Addison’s Under-Secretary of State and retained his post under Craggs and Carteret. In 1724, when Carteret became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Tickell was sent to Dublin as Secretary to the Lords Justices. There were cordial relations between Dublin Castle and the Deanery of St. Patrick’s, and a circle of friends that included Swift, the Delanys, Lord Orrery, and Dr. Sheridan maintained in Dublin an outpost of Augustan literary society. In this propitious atmosphere John Tickell, eldest son of Thomas and father of Richard, our poet, was born in 1729 and grew up to take his place among the Dublin _virtuosi_. But he had a volatile character and fell into a train of misadventures and difficulties. In 1748 he made a runaway marriage with Esther (or Hester) Pierson, and children to the number of six followed in rapid succession.[8] At length he became disastrously involved in Anglo-Irish politics while serving on the court side as a magistrate after the Dublin riots in December 1759.[9] His conduct on this occasion, though its precise nature is not clear, excited such indignation that he was obliged to leave Dublin. In 1765, according to information in the Tickell family papers, his mother purchased for him a civil appointment at Windsor Castle; but some years later, like other indigent Englishmen at that period, he went to live on the Continent and disappeared from sight.