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FOOTNOTES:

[1] His intention was to publish a general classified biography of all the Italian authors.

[2] He says in his advertisement, “It will be difficult to ascertain whether he meant to give them to the public, or only to reserve them for his own amusement and the entertainment of his friends.” Many of these anecdotes are evidently mere loose scandal.

[3] Grose narrates his early history thus:–“His parents dying when he was very young, he soon squandered away his small patrimony, when he became, at first an attendant in Lord Oxford’s library, and afterwards librarian; at whose death he was obliged to write for the booksellers for a subsistence.”

[4] Mr. John Taylor, the son of Oldys’s intimate friend, has furnished me with this interesting anecdote. “Oldys, as my father informed me, was many years in quiet obscurity in the Fleet prison, but at last was spirited up to make his situation known to the Duke of Norfolk of that time, who received Oldys’s letter while he was at dinner with some friends. The duke immediately communicated the contents to the company, observing that he had long been anxious to know what had become of an old, though an humble friend, and was happy by that letter to find that he was alive. He then called for his gentleman (a kind of humble friend whom noblemen used to retain under that name in those days), and desired him to go immediately to the Fleet, to take money for the immediate need of Oldys, to procure an account of his debts, and discharge them. Oldys was soon after, either by the duke’s gift or interest, appointed Norroy King of Arms; and I remember that his official regalia came into my father’s hands at his death.”

In the “Life of Oldys,” by Mr. A. Chalmers, the date of this promotion is not found. My accomplished friend, the Rev. J. Dallaway, has obligingly examined the records of the college, by which it appears that Oldys had been Norfolk herald extraordinary, but not belonging to the college, was appointed per saltum Norroy King of Arms by patent, May 5th, 1755.

Grose says–“The patronage of the duke occasioned a suspicion of his being a papist, though I think really without reason; this for a while retarded his appointment: it was underhand propagated by the heralds, who were vexed at having a stranger put in upon them.”

[5] The beautiful simplicity of this Anacreontic has met the unusual fate of entirely losing its character, by an additional and incongruous stanza in the modern editions, by a gentleman who has put into practice the unallowable liberty of altering the poetical and dramatic compositions of acknowledged genius to his own notion of what he deems “morality;” but in works of genius whatever is dull ceases to be moral. “The Fly” of Oldys may stand by “The Fly” of Gray for melancholy tenderness of thought; it consisted only of these two stanzas:

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!
Drink with me, and drink as I!
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up:
Make the most of life you may;
Life is short and wears away!

Both alike are mine and thine,
Hastening quick to their decline!
Thine’s a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore!
Threescore summers when they’re gone,
Will appear as short as one!

[6] This anecdote should be given in justice to both parties, and in Grose’s words, who says:–“He was a man of great good-nature, honour, and integrity, particularly in his character of an historian. Nothing, I firmly believe, would ever have biassed him to insert any fact in his writings he did not believe, or to suppress any he did. Of this delicacy he gave an instance at a time when he was in great distress. After his publication of the ‘Life of Sir Walter Raleigh,’ some booksellers thinking his name would sell a piece they were publishing, offered him a considerable sum to father it, which he rejected with the greatest indignation.”