[342] The beautiful simplicity of this Anacreontic has met the unusual fate of entirely losing its character, by an additional and incongruous stanza in the modern editions, by a gentleman who has put into practice the unallowable liberty of altering the poetical and dramatic compositions of acknowledged genius to his own notion of what he deems “morality;” but in works of genius whatever is dull ceases to be moral. “The Fly” of Oldys may stand by “The Fly” of Gray for melancholy tenderness of thought; it consisted only of these two stanzas:
| Busy, curious, thirsty fly! Drink with me, and drink as I! Freely welcome to my cup, Couldst thou sip and sip it up: Make the most of life you may; Life is short and wears away! Both alike are mine and thine, Hastening quick to their decline! Thine’s a summer, mine no more, Though repeated to threescore! Threescore summers when they’re gone, Will appear as short as one! |
[343] This anecdote should be given in justice to both parties, and in Grose’s words, who says:—“He was a man of great good-nature, honour, and integrity, particularly in his character of an historian. Nothing, I firmly believe, would ever have biassed him to insert any fact in his writings he did not believe, or to suppress any he did. Of this delicacy he gave an instance at a time when he was in great distress. After his publication of the ‘Life of Sir Walter Raleigh,’ some booksellers thinking his name would sell a piece they were publishing, offered him a considerable sum to father it, which he rejected with the greatest indignation.”
[344] 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.
[345] 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.”
[346] 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.]
[347] 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.”
[348] 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.
[349] 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.