Unquestionably we have incurred a great loss in Oldys’s collections for Dryden’s Life, which are 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 8vo. 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 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 extract 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 in which I have now, 1740, 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.[355]
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 Latin 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 either party to suppose that Oldys stood among the menials. The truth is, there appears to have existed a confidential intercourse between Pope and Oldys; of this I shall give a remarkable proof. In those fragments of Oldys, preserved as “additional anecdotes of Shakspeare,” in Steevens’s 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 Oldys’s Langbaine he put down this memorandum in the article of Shakspeare—“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 Shakspeare and other ancient poets! “Pope adopted,” says Malone, “this very unwarrantable idea; Oldys was the person who suggested to Pope the singular course he pursued in his edition of Shakspeare.” Without touching on the felicity or the danger of this new system of republishing Shakspeare, one may say that if many passages were struck out, Shakspeare would not be injured, for many of them were never composed by that great bard! There not only existed a literary intimacy between Oldys and Pope, but our poet adopting his suggestions on so important an occasion, evinces how highly he esteemed his judgment; and unquestionably Pope had often been delighted by Oldys with the history of his predecessors, and 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!