dget_ about Denham's seat and family
in Surrey.

My _white vellum pocket-book_, bordered with gold, for the extract
from "Groans of Great Britain" about Butler.

See my account of the great yews in Tankersley's park, while Sir R.
Fanshaw was prisoner in the lodge there; especially Talbot's yew,
which a man on horseback might turn about in, in my _botanical
budget_.

This Donald Lupton I have mentioned in my _catalogue_ of all the
books and pamphlets relative to London in folio, begun anno 1740, and
in which I have now, 1740, entered between 300 and 400 articles,
besides remarks, &c. Now, in June, 1748, between 400 and 500
articles. Now, in October, 1750, six hundred and thirty-six.[355]

There remains to be told an anecdote which shows that Pope greatly
regarded our literary antiquary. "Oldys," says my friend, "was one of
the librarians of the Earl of Oxford, and he used to tell a story of the
credit which he obtained as a scholar, by setting Pope right in a Latin
quotation which he made at the earl's table. He did not, however, as I
remember, boast of having been admitted as a guest at the table, but as
happening to be in the room." Why might not Oldys, however, have been
seated, at least below the salt? It would do no honour to either party
to suppose that Oldys stood among the menials. The truth is, there
appears to have existed a confidential intercourse between Pope and
Oldys; of this I shall give a remarkable proof. In those fragments of
Oldys, preserved as "additional anecdotes of Shakspeare," in Steevens's
and Malone's editions, Oldys mentions a story of Davenant, which, he
adds, "Mr. Pope told me at the Earl of Oxford's table!" And further
relates a conversation which passed between them. Nor is this all; for
in Oldys's Langbaine he put down this memorandum in the article of
_Shakspeare_--"Remember what I observed to my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's
use out of Cowley's preface." Malone appears to have discovered this
observation of Cowley's, which is curious enough, and very ungrateful to
that commentator's ideas: it is "to prune and lop away the old withered
branches" in the new editions of Shakspeare and other ancient poets!
"Pope adopted," says Malone, "this very unwarrantable idea; Oldys was
the person who suggested to Pope the singular course he pursued in his
edition of Shakspeare." Without touching on the felicity or the danger
of this new system of republishing Shaks