[78] Tycho Brache, the Danish astronomer.
[79] Dryden's opinion concerning the harshness of Oldham's numbers, was not unanimously subscribed to by contemporary authors. In the "Historical Dictionary," 1694, Oldham is termed, "a pithy, sententious, elegant, and smooth writer:" and Winstanley says, that none can read his works without admiration; "so pithy his strains, so sententious his expression, so elegant his oratory, so swimming his language, so smooth his lines." Tom Brown goes the length to impute our author's qualification of his praise of Oldham to the malignant spirit of envy: "'Tis your own way, Mr Bayes, as you may remember in your verses upon Mr Oldham, where you tell the world that he was a very fine, ingenious gentleman, but still did not understand the cadence of the English tongue."—Reasons for Mr Bayes' changing his Religion, Part II. p. 33.
But this only proves, that Tom Brown and Mr Winstanley were deficient in poetical ear; for Oldham's satires, though full of vehemence and impressive expression, are, in diction, not much more harmonious than those of Hall or of Donne. The reader may take the following celebrated passage on the life of a nobleman's chaplain, as illustrating both the merits and defects of his poetry:
Some think themselves exalted to the sky,
If they light in some noble family;
Diet, a horse, and thirty pounds a year,
Besides the advantage of his Lordship's ear;
The credit of the business, and the state,
Are things that in a youngster's sense sound great.
Little the unexperienced wretch doth know
What slavery he oft must undergo;
Who, though in silken scarf and cassock dressed,
Wears but a gayer livery at best
When dinner calls, the implement must wait,
With holy words, to consecrate the meat;
But hold it for a favour seldom known,
If he be deigned the honour to sit down:
Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape withdraw;
These dainties are not for a spiritual maw.
Observe your distance, and be sure to stand
Hard by the cistern, with your cup in hand;
Hard by the cistern, with your cup in hand;
There for diversion you may pick your teeth,
Till the kind voider comes to your relief:
For mere board-wages such their freedom sell;
Slaves to an hour, and vassals to a bell;
And if the enjoyment of one day be stole,
They are but prisoners out upon parole;
Always the marks of slavery retain,
And e'en when loose, still drag about their chain.
And where's the mighty prospect, after all,
A chaplainship served up, and seven years thrall?
The menial thing perhaps, for a reward,
Is to some slender benefice preferred;
}
[80] Henry Killigrew, D.D., the young lady's father, was himself a poet. He wrote "The Conspiracy," a tragedy much praised by Ben Jonson and the amiable Lord Falkland, published in 1634. This edition being pirated and spurious, the author altered the play, and changed the title to "Pallantus and Eudora," published in 1652.—See Wood's Athenæ Oxon. Vol. II. p. 1036.
[81] This line certainly gave rise to that of Pope in Gay's epitaph:
In wit a man, simplicity a child.
[82] James II. painted by Mrs Killigrew.
[83] Mary of Este, as eminent for beauty as rank, also painted by the subject of the elegy.