Oldys affords one more example how life is often closed amidst discoveries and acquisitions. The literary antiquary, when he has attempted to embody his multiplied inquiries, and to finish his scattered designs, has found that the labor absque labore, “the labour void of labour,” as the inscription on the library of Florence finely describes the researches of literature, has dissolved his days in the voluptuousness of his curiosity; and that too often, like the hunter in the heat of the chase, while he disdained the prey which lay before him, he was still stretching onwards to catch the fugitive!
Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.
At the close of every century, in this growing world of books, may an Oldys be the reader for the nation! Should he be endowed with a philosophical spirit, and combine the genius of his own times with that of the preceding, he will hold in his hand the chain of human thoughts, and, like another Bayle, become the historian of the human mind!
[338] His intention was to publish a general classified biography of all the Italian authors.
[339] 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.
[340] 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.”
[341] 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.”