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 Howell’s Letters of them.
In another, when his friend T. Hayward was collecting, for his “British Muse,” the most exquisite commonplaces 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 Catalogue raisonné of six hundred. When Mrs. Cooper attempted “The Muse’s Library,” the first essay which influenced 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.[352] When Curll, 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 importunity of this busy publisher, he gave him a life of Nell Gwynn; 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 History of the Stage and Actors in his own Time, for these 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 has 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 the secret thoughts of him who, loving literature with its purest passion, scarcely repines at being defrauded of his just fame, 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 that 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 Chappel-street, 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 everything 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. He had been a popular man at elections, and sometime 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 Romney.
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 favour of the ministry, and against Mr. Pope. One of them, printed by the late Sir Robert Walpole’s encouragement, 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 might 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 playhouse in Goodman’s Fields. (Remember that which was published against that playhouse, which I have entered in my London Catalogue. Letter to Sir Ric. Brocas, Lord Mayor, &c., 8vo, 1730.)
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 Spenser.
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 his eye on another. One of his favourite subjects was the realising of original discoveries respecting Spenser and Shakspeare; 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 Shakspeare. Mr. John Taylor informs me, that “Oldys had contracted to supply ten years of the life of Shakspeare 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.