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to obtain only a transcript, very large sums have since been cheerfully given. The Museum copy of Langbaine, is in Oldys's hand-writing, not interleaved, but overflowing with notes, written in a very small hand about the margins, and inserted between the lines: nor may the transcriber pass negligently even its corners, otherwise he is here assured that he will lose some useful date, or the hint of some curious reference. The enthusiasm and diligence of Oldys, in undertaking a repetition of his first lost labour, proved to be infinitely greater than the sense of his unrequited labours. Such is the history of the escapes, the changes, and the fate of a volume, which forms the groundwork of the most curious information concerning our elder poets, and to which we must still frequently refer.

In this variety of literary arrangements, which we must consider as single works in a progressive state, or as portions of one great work on our modern literary history, it may, perhaps, be justly suspected that Oldys in the delight of perpetual acquisition, impeded the happier labour of unity of design, and completeness of purpose. He was not a Tiraboschi-nor even a Niceron! He was sometimes chilled by neglect, and by vanity and vexation of spirit,' else we should not now have to count over a barren list of manuscript works; masses of literary history, of which the existence is even doubtful.

In Kippis's Biographia Britannica, we find frequent references to O. M. Oldys's manuscripts. Mr. John Taylor, the son of the friend and executor of Oldys, has greatly obliged me with all his recollections of this man of letters; whose pursuits, however, were in no manner analogous to his, and whom he could only have known in youth. By him I learn, that on the death of Oldys, Dr Kippis, editor Biographia Britannica, looked over these manuscripts at Mr. Taylor's house. He had been directed to this discovery by the late Bishop of Dromore, whose active zeal was very remarkable in every enterprise to enlarge our literary history. Kippis was one who, in some degree, might have estimated their literary value; but, employed by commercial men, and negotiating with persons who neither comprehended their nature, or affixed any value to them, the editor of the Biographia found Oldys's manuscripts an easy purchase for his employer, the late Mr. Cadell; and the twenty guineas, perhaps, served to bury their writer! Mr. Taylor says, The manuscripts of Oldys were not so many as might be expected from so indefatigable a writer. They consisted chiefly of short extracts from books, and minutes of dates, and were thought worth purchasing by the doctor. I remember the manuscripts well; though Oldys was not the author, but rather recorder.' Such is the statement and the opinion of a writer, whose effusions are of a gayer sort. But the researches of Oldys must not be estimated by this standard: with him a single line was the result of many a day of research, and a leaf of scattered hints would supply more original knowledge than some octavos, fashioned out by the hasty gilders and varnishers of modern literature. These discoveries occupy small space to the eye; but large works are composed out of them. This very lot of Oldys's manuscripts was, indeed, so considerable to the judgment of Kippis, that he has described them as a large and useful body of biographical materials, left by Mr. Oldys.' Were these the Biographical Insti tutes' Oldys refers to among his manuscripts? The late Mr. Malone,' continues Mr. Taylor, told me that he had scen all Oldys's manuscripts; so I presume they are in the hands of Cadell and Davies; Have they met with the fate of sucked oranges ?-and how much of Malone may we owe to Oldys?

This information enabled me to trace the manuscripts of Oldys to Dr. Kippis; but it cast me among the booksellers, who do not value manuscripts which no one can print. I discovered, by the late Mr. Davies, that the direction of that hapless work in our literary history, with its whole treasure of manuscripts, had been consigned, by Mr. Cadell, to the late George Robinson: and that the successor of Dr. Kippis had been the late Dr. George Gregory. Again I repeat, the history of voluminous works is a melancholy office; every one concerned with them no longer can be found! The esteemed relic of Doctor Gregory, with a friendly promptitude, gratified my anxious inquiries, and informed me, that She perfectly recollects a mass of papers, such as I described, being returned, on the death of Dr. Gregory, to the house of Wilkie and Robinson, in the early part of the year 1809.' I applied to this house, who, after some time, referred me

to Mr. John Robinson, the representative of his late fa ther, and with whom all the papers of the former partnership were deposited. But Mr. John Robinson has terminated my inquiries, by his civility in promising to comply with them, and his pertinacity in not doing so. He may have injured his own interest in not trading with my cu riosity. It was fortunate for the nation, that George Vertue's mass of manuscripts escaped the fate of Oldys's; had the possessor proved as indolent, Horace Walpole would not have been the writer of his taost valuable work, and we should have lost the Anecdotes of Painting,' of which Vertue had collected the materials.

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Of a life consumed in such literary activity we should have known more had the Diaries of Oldys escaped destruction. One habit of my father's old friend, William Oldys,' says Mr Taylor, was that of keeping a diary, and recording in it every day all the events that occurred, and all his engagements, and the employment of his time. I have seen piles of these books, but know not what became of them.' The existence of such diaries is confirmed by a sale catalogue of Thomas Davies, the literary bookseller, who sold many of the books and some manuscripts of Oliys, which appears to have been dispersed in various libraries, I find Lot 3627, Mr Oldys's Diary, containing several observations relating to books, characters &c a single volume, which appears to have separated from the 'piles' which Mr Taylor once witnessed. The literary diary of Oldys would have exhibited the mode of his pursuits, and the results of his discoveries. One of these volumes I have fortunately discovered, and a singularity in this writer's feelings throws a new interest over such diurnal records. Oldys was apt to give utterance with his pen to his most secret emotions. Querulous or indignant, his honest simplicity confided to the paper before him such extemporaneous soliloquies, and I have found him hiding in the very corners of his manuscripts his 'secret sorrows.'

A few of these slight memorials of his feelings will exhibit a sort of Silhouette likeness traced by his own hand, when at times the pensive man seems to have contemplated his own shadow. Oldys would throw down in verses, whose humility or quaintness indicates their ongin, or by some pithy adage, or apt quotation, or recording anecdote, his self-advice, or his self-regrets!

Oppressed by a sense of tasks so unprofitable to himself, while his days were often passed in trouble and in prison; he breathes a self-reproach in one of these profound reflections of melancholy which so often startle the man of study, who truly discovers that life is too limited to acquire real knowledge, with the ambition of dispensing it to the world.

'I say, who too long in these cobwebs lurks,
Is always whetting tools, but never works'

In one of the corners of his note-books I find this curious but sad reflection:

'Alas! this is but the apron of a fig-leaf-but the curtain of a cobweb.'

Sometimes he seems to have anticipated the fate of that obscure diligence, which was pursuing discoveries reserved for others to use.

He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.'

Fond treasurer of these stores, behold thy fate In Psalm the thirty-ninth, 6, 7, and 8.' Sometimes he checks the eager ardour of his pen, and reuninds himself of its repose, in Latin, Italian, and English, Non vi, sed sæpe cadendo.

Assai presto si fa quel che si fa bene. Some respite best recovers what we need, Discreetly baiting gives the journey speed. There was a thoughtless kindness in honest Oldys; and his simplicity of character, as I have observed, was practised on by the artful or the ungenerous. We regret to

* I know that not only this lot of Oldys's manuscript, but a great quantity of original contributions of whole lives, intended for the Biographia Britannica, must lie together, unles they have been destroyed as waste-paper. These biographi cal and literary curiosities were often supplied by the families or friends of eminent persons. Some may, perhaps have been reclaimed by their owners. I am informed there was among them an interesting collection of the correspondence of Locke; and I could mention several lives which were prepared.

find the following entry concerning the famous collector, tory of the Stage and Actors in his own Time, for these James West.

'I gave above threescore letters of Dr Davenant to his son, who was envoy at Frankfort in 1703 to 1708, to Mr James West, with one hundred and fifty more, about Christmas, 1746: but the same fate they found as grain that is sowed in barren ground.'

Such is the plaintive record by which Oldys relieved himself of a groan! We may smile at the simplicity of the following narrative, where poor Oldys received manuscripts in lieu of money!

Old Counsellor Fane, of Colchester, who, in forma pauperis, deceived me of a good sum of money which he owed me, and not long after set up his chariot, gave me a parcel of manuscripts, and promised me others, which he never gave me, nor any thing else, besides a barrel of oysters, and a manuscript copy of Randolph's poems, an original, as he said, with many additions, being devolved to him as the author's relation."

There was no end to his aids and contributions to every author or bookseller who applied to him; yet he had reason to complain of both while they were using his invaluable, but not valued, knowledge. Here is one of these diurnal entries:

I lent the tragical lives and deaths of the famous pirates, Ward and Dansiker, 4to, London, 1612, by Robt. Daborn, alias Dabourne, to Mr T. Lediard, when he was writing his naval History, and he never returned it. See Howel's Letters of them.'

In another, when his friend T. Hayward was collecting, for his British Muse,' the most exquisite common-places of our old English dramatists, a compilation which must not be confounded with ordinary ones, Oldys not only assisted in the labour, but drew up a curious introduction, with a knowledge and love of the subject which none but himself possessed. But so little were these researches then understood, that we find Oldys, in a moment of vexatious recollection, and in a corner of one of the margins of his Langbaine, accidentally preserving an extraordinary circumstance attending this curious dissertation. Oldys having completed this elaborate introduction, the penurious publisher insisted on leaving out one third part, which happened to be the best matter in it, because he would have it contracted into one sheet!" Poor Oldys never could forget the fate of this elaborate Dissertation on all the Collections of English poetry; I am confident that I have seen some volume which was formerly Oldys's, and afterwards Thomas Warton's, in the possession of my intelligent friend Mr Douce, in the fly-leaf of which Oldys has expressed himself in these words: In my historical and critical review of all the collections of this kind, it would have made a sheet and a half or two sheets; but they for sordid gain, and to save a little expense in print and paper, got Mr John Campbell to cross it and cramp it, and play the devil with it, till they squeezed it into less compass than a sheet. This is a loss which we may never recover. The curious book-knowledge of this singular man of letters, those stores of which he was the fond treasurer, as he says with such tenderness for his pursuits, were always ready to be cast into the forms of a dissertation or an introduction; and when Morgan published his Collection of rare Tracts, the friendly hand of Oldys furnished * A Dissertation upon Pamphlets, in a Letter to a Nobleman: probably the Earl of Oxford, a great literary curiosity; and in the Harleian Collection he has given a Cata Logue Raisonnee of six hundred. When Mrs Cooper attempted The Muse's Library,' the first essay which ufluenced the national taste to return to our deserted poets in our most poetical age, it was Oldys who only could have enabled this lady to perform that task so well. When Curl, the publisher, to help out one of his hasty compilations, a History of the Stage,' repaired, like all the world, to Oldys, whose kindness could not resist the importumity of this busy publisher, he gave him a life of Nell Gwyn; while at the same moment Oldys could not avoid noticing, in one of his usual entries, an intended work on the stage, which we seem never to have had, Dick Leveridge's His

* This collection, and probably the other letters, have come down to us, no doubt, with the manuscripts of this collector, purchased for the British Museum. The correspondence of Dr Davenant, the political writer, with his son, the eavoy, torbe on one perpetual topic, his sons and his own advance. ment in the state.

forty or fifty years past, as he told me he had composed, is likely to prove, whenever it shall appear, a more perfect work.' I might proceed with many similar gratuitous contributions with which he assisted his contemporaries. Oldys should have been constituted the reader for the nation. His comptes rendus of books and manuscripts are still held precious; but his useful and curious talent had sought the public patronage in vain! From one of his Diaries,' which had escaped destruction, I transcribe some interesting passages ad verbum.

The reader is here presented with a minute picture of those invisible occupations which pass in the study of a man of letters. There are those who may be surprised, as well as amused, in discovering how all the business, even to the very disappointments and pleasures of active life, can be transferred to the silent chamber of a recluse student; but there are others who will not read without emotion to the secret thoughts of him, who, loving literature with its purest passion, scarcely repines at being defrauded of his just tame, and leaves his stores for the after-age of his more gifted heirs. Thus we open one of Oldys's literary days:

I was informed this day by Mr Tho. Odell's daughter, that her father, who was deputy-inspector and licenser of the plays, died 24 May, 1749, at his house in Chappelstreet, Westminster, aged 58 years. He was writing a history of the characters he had observed, and conferences he had had with many eminent persons he knew in his time. He was a great observator of every thing curious in the conversations of his acquaintance, and his own conversation was a living chronicle of the remarkable intrigues, adventures, sayings, stories, writings, &c, of many of the quality, poets and other authors, players, booksellers, &c, who flourished especially in the present century. Had been a popular man at elections, and scmetime master of the playhouse in Goodman's Fields, but latterly was forced to live reserved and retired by reason of his debts. He published two or three dramatic pieces, one was the Patron, on the story of Lord Romnev.

'Q. of his da. to restore me Eustace Budgell's papers, and to get a sight of her father's.

'Have got the one, and seen the other.

July 31.-Was at Mrs Odell's; she returned me Mr Budgell's papers. Saw some of her husband's papers, mostly poems in the favour of the ministry, and against Mr. Pope. One of them, printed by the late Sir Robert Walpole's encouragemnet, who gave him ten guineas for writing, and as much for the expense of printing it; but through his advice it was never published, because it right hurt his interest with Lord Chesterfield, and some other noblemen, who favoured Mr Pope for his fine genius.

The tract I liked best of his writings was the history of his play-house in Goodman's Fields. (Remember that which was published against that play-house, which I have entered in my London Catalogue. Letter to Sir RicBrocas, lord mavor, &c, 8vo. 1780.)

Saw nothing of the history of his conversations with ingenious men; his characters, tales, jests, and intrigues of them, of which no man was better furnished with them. She thinks she has some papers of these, and promises to look them out, and also to inquire after Mr Griffin of the lord chamberlain's office, that I may get a search made about Spencer.'

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So intent was Oldys on these literary researches, that we see, by the last words of this entry, how in hunting after one sort of game, his undivided zeal kept its eye on another. One of his favourite subjects was realizing of original discoveries respecting Spenser and Shakespeare; of whom, perhaps, to our shame, as it is to our vexation, it may be said that two of our master-poets are those of whom we know the least! Oldys once flattered himself that he should be able to have given the world a life of Shakespeare. Mr John Taylor informs me, that Oldys had contracted to supply ten years of the life of Shakespeare unknown to the biographers, with one Walker, a bookseller in the Strand; and as Oldys did not live to fulfil the engagement, my father was obliged to return to Walker twenty guineas which he had advanced on the work.' That interesting narrative is now hopeless for us. Yet, by the solemn contract into which Oldys had entered, and from his strict integrity, it might induce one to suspect that he had made positive discoveries which are now irrecoverable.

We may observe the manner of his anxious inquiries about Spenser.

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Ask Sir Peter Thompson if it were improper to try if Lord Effingham Howard would procure the pedigrees in the Heralds' office, to be seen for Edward Spenser's parentage or family? or how he was related to Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, in Northamptonshire? to three of whose daughters, who all married nobility, Spenser dedicates three of his poems.

'Of Mr Vertue, to examine Stowe's memorandum-book. Look more carefully for the year when Spenser's monument was raised, or between which years the entry stands -1623 and 1626.

'Sir Clement Cottrell's book about Spenser. "Capt' Power, to know if he has heard from Capt. Spenser about my letter of inquiries relating to Edward Spenser. 'Of Whiston, to examine if my remarks on Spenser are complete as to the press.-Yes.

Remember when I see Mr W. Thomson, to inquire whether he has printed in any of his works any character of our old poets than those of Spenser and Shakespeare;* and to get the liberty of a visit at Kentish Town, to see his Collection of Robert Green's Works, in about four large volumes in quarto. He commonly published a pamphlet every term, as his acquaintance Tom Nash informs us.'

Two or three other memoranda may excite a smile at his peculiar habits of study, and unceasing vigilance to draw from original sources of information.

'Dryden's dream at Lord Exeter's, at Burleigh, while he was translating Virgil, as Signior Verrio, then painting there, related it to the Yorkshire painter, of whom I had it, lies in the parchment book in quarto, designed for his life.'

At a subsequent period Oldys inserts, 'Now entered therein.' Malone quotes this very memorandum, which he discovered in Oldys' Langbaine, to show that Dryden had some confidence in Oneirocriticism, and supposed that future events were sometimes prognosticated by dreams. Malone adds, Where either the loose prophetic leaf, or the parchment book now is, I know not.'t

Unquestionably we have incurred a great loss of Oldys's collection for Dryden's life, which were very extensive; such a mass of literary history cannot have perished unless by accident; and I suspect that many of Oldys's manuscripts are in the possession of individuals who are

not acquainted with his hand-writing, which may be easily

verified.

'To search the old papers in one of my large deal boxes for Dryden's letter of thanks to my father, for some communication relating to Plutarch, while they and others were publishing a translation of Plutarch's Lives, in five volumes, Svo, 1683. It is copied in the yellow book for Dryden's Life, in which there are about 150 transcriptions in prose and verse, relating to the life, character, and writings of Mr. Dryden.'-Is England's Remembrancer extracted out of my obit. (obituary) into my remarks on him in the poetical bag?"

'My extracts in the parchment budget about Denham's seat and family in Surrey.'

'My white vellum pocket-book, bordered with gold, for the extracts from "Groans of Great Britain" about Butler.'

See my account of the great yews in Tankersley's park while Sir R. Fanshaw was prisoner in the lodge there; especially Talbot's yew, which a man on horseback might turn about in, in my botanical budget.'

This Donald Lupton I have mentioned in my catalogue of all the books and pamphlets relative to London in folio, begun anno 1740, and which I have now, 1746, entered between 300 and 400 articles, besides remarks, &c. Now, in June, 1748, between 400 and 500 articles. Now, in October, 1750, six hundred and thirty-six.'*

*William Thompson, the poet of Sickness,' and other poems; a warm lover of elder bards, and no vulgar imitator of Spenser. He was the reviver of Bishop Hall's Satires, in 1753, by an edition which had been more fortunate if conducted by his friend Oldys, for the text is unfaithful, though the edition followed was one borrowed from Lord Oxford's library, probably by the aid of Oldys.

† Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 420.

This is one of Oldys's manuscripts; a thick folio of titles, which has been made to do its duty, with small thanks from those who did not care to praise the service which they derived from it. It passed from Dr Berkenhout to George Steevens, who lent it to Gough. It was sold for five guineas. The

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There remains to be told an anecdote, which shows that Pope greatly regarded our literary antiquary. Oldys, says my friend, was one of the librarians of the Earl of Oxford, and he used to tell a story of the credit which he obtained as a scholar, by setting Pope right in a Lain quotation, which he made at the earl's table. He did not, however, as I remember, boast of having been admitted as a guest at the table, but as happening to be in the room.' Why might not Oldys, however, have been seated, at least, below the salt! It would do no honour to enher party to suppose that Oldys stood among the menials. The truth is, there appears to have existed a confidential intercourse between Pope and Oldys; and of this I shall give a remarkable proof. In those fragments of Oldys preserved as additional anecdotes of Shakespeare,' in Steevens' and Malone's editions, Oldys mentions a story of Davenant, which he adds, Mr. Pope told me at the Earl of Oxford's table! And further relates a conversation which passed between them. Nor is this all; for in Oidys's Langbaine he put down this memorandum in the article of Shakespeare Remember what I observed to my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's use out of Cowley's preface.' Malone appears to have discovered this observation of Cowley's, which is curious enough and very ungrateful to that commentator's ideas; it is to prune and lop away the old withered branches' in the new editions of Shakespeare and other ancient poets! says Malone, this very unwarrantable idea; Oldys was 'Pope adopted,' the person who suggested to Pope the singular course he pursued in his edition of Shakespeare.' Without touching on the felicity or the danger of this new system of republishing Shakespeare, one may say that if many passages were struck out, Shakespeare would not be injured, for many of them were never composed by that great bard! There not only existed a literary intimacy betweer Oldys and Pope, but our poet adopting his suggestions on so important an occasion, evinces how highly he esteemed his lighted by Oldys with the history of his predecessors, and judgment; and unquestionably Pope had often been de the curiosities of English poetry.

I have now introduced the reader to Oldys sitting amidst his poetical bags, his parchment biographical budgets,' his catalogues, and his diaries, often venting a solitary groan, or active in some fresh inquiry. Such is the Silhouette of this prodigy of literary curiosity!

The very existence of Oldys's manuscripts continues to be of an ambiguous nature, referred to, quoted, and transcribed, we can but seldom turn to the originals. These masses of curious knowledge, dispersed or lost, have enriched an after-race, who have often picked up the spoil and claimed the victory, but it was Oldys who had fought the battle!

Oldys affords one more example how life is often closed amidst discoveries and acquisitions. The literary ant quary, when he has attempted to embody his multipled inquiries, and to finish his scattered designs, has found that the labor absque labore, the labour void of labour,' as the inscription on the library of Florence finely describes voluptuousness of his curiosity; and that too often, like the researches of literature, has dissolved his days in the the hunter in the heat of the chase, while he disdained the prey which lay before him, he was still stretching onwards to catch the fugitive!

Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat. At the close of every century, in this growing world of books, may an Oldys be the reader for the nation! Should he be endowed with a philosophical spirit, and combine the genius of his own times with that of the preceding, be will hold in his hand the chain of human thoughts, and, like another Bayle, become the historian of the human mind!

useful work of ten years of attention given to it! The antiquary Gough alludes to it with his usual discernment. Among these titles of books and pamphlets about London are many purely historical, and many of too low a kind to rank under the head of topography and history.' Thus the design of Oldys in forming this elaborate collection, is condemned by trying it by the limited object of the topographer's view. This catalogue remains a disideratum, were it printed entire as col· lected by Oldys, not merely for the topography of the metropolis, but for its relation to its mariners, duomestic anual, events, and persons connected with its history.

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