PAGE 12
Life And Habits Of A Literary Antiquary.–Oldys And His Manuscripts
by
[7] We have been taught to enjoy the two ages of Genius and of Taste. The literary public are deeply indebted to the editorial care, the taste, and the enthusiasm of Mr. Singer, for exquisite reprints of some valuable writers.
[8] Gibbon once meditated a life of Rawleigh, and for that purpose began some researches in that “memorable era of our English annals.” After reading Oldys’s, he relinquished his design, from a conviction that “he could add nothing new to the subject, except the uncertain merit of style and sentiment.”
[9] The British Museum is extremely deficient in our National Literature. The gift of George the Third’s library has, however, probably supplied many deficiencies. [The recent bequest of the Grenville collection, and the constant search made of late years for these relics of early literature by the officers of our great national library, has greatly altered the state of the collection since the above was written s–Ed.]
[10] Grose says–“His mode of composing was somewhat singular: he had a number of small parchment bags, inscribed with the names of the persons whose lives he intended to write; into these bags he put every circumstance and anecdote he could collect, and from thence drew up his history.”
[11] At the Bodleian Library, I learnt by a letter with which I am favoured by the Rev. Dr. Bliss, that there is an interleaved “Gildon’s Lives and Characters of the Dramatic Poets,” with corrections, which once belonged to Coxeter, who appears to have intended a new edition. Whether Coxeter transcribed into his Gildon the notes of Oldys’s first “Langbaine,” is worth inquiry. Coxeter’s conduct, though he had purchased Oldys’s first “Langbaine,” was that of an ungenerous miser, who will quarrel with a brother rather than share in any acquisition he can get into his own hands. To Coxeter we also owe much; he suggested Dodsley’s Collection of Old Plays, and the first tolerable edition of Massinger.
Oldys could not have been employed in Lord Oxford’s library, as Mr. Chalmers conjectures, about 1726; for here he mentions that he was in Yorkshire from 1724 to 1730. This period is a remarkable blank in Oldys’s life. My learned friend, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, has supplied me with a note in the copy of Fuller in the Malone collection preserved at the Bodleian. Those years were passed apparently in the household of the first Earl of Malton, who built Wentworth House. There all the collections of the antiquary Gascoigne, with “seven great chests of manuscripts,” some as ancient as the time of the Conquest, were condemned in one solemn sacrifice to Vulcan; the ruthless earl being impenetrable to the prayers and remonstrances of our votary to English History. Oldys left the earl with little satisfaction, as appears by some severe strictures from his gentle pen.
[12] This copy was lent by Dr. Birch to the late Bishop of Dromore, who with his own hand carefully transcribed the notes into an interleaved copy of “Langbaine,” divided into four volumes, which, as I am informed, narrowly escaped the flames, and was injured by the water, at a fire at Northumberland House. His lordship, when he went to Ireland, left this copy with Mr. Nichols, for the use of the projected editions of the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian, with notes and illustrations; of which I think the Tatler only has appeared, and to which his lordship contributed some valuable communications.
[13] I know that not only this lot of Oldys’s manuscripts, but a great quantity of original contributions of whole lives, intended for the “Biographia Britannica,” must lie together, unless they have been destroyed as waste paper. These biographical 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.