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Life And Habits Of A Literary Antiquary.–Oldys And His Manuscripts
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[14] 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 envoy, turns on one perpetual topic, his son’s and his own advancement in the state.
[15] It is a stout octavo volume of 400 pages, containing a good selection of specimens from the earliest era, concluding with Sam. Daniel, in the reign of James I. Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper was the wife of an auctioneer, who had been a chum of Oldys’s in the Fleet Prison, where he died a debtor; and it was to aid his widow that Oldys edited this book.
[16] William Thompson, the poet of “Sickness,” and other poems; a warm lover of our elder bards, and no vulgar imitator of Spenser. He was the revivor 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.
[17] Malone’s Life of Dryden, p. 420.
[18] 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 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 desideratum, were it printed entire as collected by Oldys, not merely for the topography of the metropolis, but for its relation to its manners, domestic annals, events, and persons connected with its history.