that there is scarcely any coincidence found between the two performances, though upon the very same subject. The only instances are, in describing London as the sink of foreign worthlessness:
'the common shore,
Where France does all her filth and ordure pour.'
Oldham.
'The common shore of Paris and of Rome.'
Johnson.
and,
'No calling or profession comes amiss,
A needy monsieur can be what he please.'
Oldham
'All sciences a fasting monsieur knows.'
Johnson.
The particulars which Oldham has collected, both as exhibiting the horrours of London, and of the times, contrasted with better days, are different from those of Johnson, and in general well chosen, and well exprest[1].
There are, in Oldham’s imitation, many prosaick verses and bad rhymes, and his poem sets out with a strange inadvertent blunder:
'Tho' much concern'd to leave my dear old friend,
I must, however, his design commend
Of fixing in the country.'
- ↑ I own it pleased me to find amongst them one trait of the manners of the age in London, in the last century, to shield from the sneer of English ridicule, which was some time ago too common a practice in my native city of Edinburgh:—
'If what I’ve said can't from the town affright,
Consider other dangers of the night;
When brickbats are from upper stories thrown,
And emptied chamberpots come pouring down
Boswell.From garret windows.'See Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 14, 1773, where Johnson, on taking his first walk in Edinburgh, 'grumbled in Boswell’s ear, "I smell you in the dark."' I once spent a night in a town of Corsica, on the great road between Ajaccio and Bastia, where, I was told, this Edinburgh practice was universal. It certainly was the practice of the hotel.
