properly, in consequence of the coarseness objected to by Pope. It might be expected, nevertheless, that Oldham would have been recognised in the Anthologies, which, composed of picked specimens, afforded the means of bringing the public acquainted with him without compromising the taste of readers or editors. Yet here also he has been passed over in silence. If the principle of exclusion had been consistently acted upon in all instances, there would be less reason to complain of his rejection; but it is not easy to understand by what rule of taste or morality he was refused place in collections that presented the public with the obscenities of Swift in full, suffering not a scrap to escape; nor is that fastidiousness very intelligible which saw no objection to confer on such men as Rochester, whose lives and writings were saturated with grossness, a distinction denied to a poet who dragged their delinquencies before the bar of public opinion.[1]
It must be admitted that Oldham wrote some pieces which deserve the obloquy they have incurred, and that there are expressions and allusions in his Satires which would be unpardonable in a writer of the nineteenth century. In this respect, however, he is not more open to censure than the most famous of his contemporaries: and, although such transgressions are not to be excused by examples, it would be obviously unjust to hold up to particular condemnation in him
- ↑ Amongst Oldham's poems there is a lamentation on the death of Rochester, imitated from a Greek pastoral, and conceived in the usual vein of extravagant panegyric. Rochester was the first man of rank or influence that noticed Oldham, who in these stanzas discharges the obligations he owed to his memory. No personal considerations for Rochester, however, restrained him during the lifetime of that distinguished profligate from exposing the vices he practised, or the social delinquencies of the order to which he belonged. Pope has instituted a comparison between Oldham, Dorset, and Rochester, as poets, which curiously exemplifies the special character of his own taste. Rochester, he says, had much more delicacy and knowledge of mankind than Oldham, and was the medium between him and Dorset, who was better than either. The regularity of Dorset, and the wit of Rochester, were, as might be expected, preferred by Pope to the rough energy of Oldham.
