n of the
preceding age. His labours were then valueless, their very nature not
yet ascertained, and when he opened the treasures of our ancient lore in
"The British Librarian," it was closed for want of public encouragement.
Our writers, then struggling to create an age of genius of their own,
forgot that they had had any progenitors; or while they were acquiring
new modes of excellence, that they were losing others, to which their
posterity or the national genius might return. (To know, and to admire
only, the literature and the tastes of our own age, is a species of
elegant barbarism.)[344] Spenser was considered nearly as obsolete as
Chaucer; Milton was veiled by oblivion, and Shakspeare's dramas were so
imperfectly known, that in looking over the play-bills of 1711, and much
later, I find that whenever it chanced that they were acted, they were
always announced to have been "written by Shakspeare." Massinger was
unknown; and Jonson, though called "immortal" in the old play-bills, lay
entombed in his two folios. The poetical era of Elizabeth, the eloquent
age of James the First, and the age of wit of Charles the Second, were
blanks in our literary history. Bysshe, compiling an Art of Poetry in
1718, passed by in his collection "_Spenser and the poets of his age_,
because their language is now become so obsolete that most readers of
our age have no ear for them, and therefore _Shakspeare_ himself is so
_rarely cited_ in my collection." The _best_ English poets were
considered to be the _modern_; a taste which is always obstinate!

All this was nothing to Oldys; his literary curiosity anticipated by
half a century the fervour of the present day. This energetic direction
of all his thoughts was sustained by that life of discovery which in
literary researches is starting novelties among old and unremembered
things; contemplating some ancient tract as precious as a manuscript, or
revelling in the volume of a poet whose passport of fame was yet delayed
in its way; or disinterring the treasure of some secluded manuscript,
whence he drew a virgin extract; or raising up a sort of domestic
intimacy with the eminent in arms, in politics, and in literature in
this visionary life, life itself with Oldys was insensibly gliding
away--its cares almost unfelt!

The life of a literary antiquary partakes of the nature of those who,
having no concerns of their own, busy themselves with those of others.
Oldys lived in the back ages of E