Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/21

Rh scene of novel excitement to one whose life had hitherto been passed in retirement and wearisome routine; but its attractions were soon exhausted. The social moralist was not to be bribed or corrupted by these dangerous pleasures, and he saw in the profligacies of the town only fresh subjects for indignant satire. Had he been disposed to minister to the vanity and vices of the fashionable world, the seductions that were thrown in his way were sufficiently numerous and flattering. Admitted to a familiar intercourse with many distinguished persons, he was particularly noticed by the Earl of Kingston. That nobleman pressed him to accept the office of private chaplain to his household, which promised a more secure provision for the future than could be hoped for from the precarious profession of authorship; but Oldham preferred his liberty, with all its risks and hardships. His proud and manly nature resented the degradation to which clergymen in such situations were subjected; who for

were treated more like menials than gentlemen. In his Satire addressed to a friend about to leave the University (published after this offer had been made to him), he draws a striking picture of the humiliations and indignities heaped upon the unhappy private chaplain, who, after many years of servitude in a noble family, might consider himself fortunate to be preferred to some slender benefice, on condition of his marrying his lady's cast-off waiting-woman. The sketch is curious as an illustration of the domestic life of the period.

The Earl of Kingston, finding he could not prevail upon Oldham to enter his house as a dependent, invited him as a guest on a visit to his seat at Holmes-Pierpont, in Nottinghamshire. Oldham accepted the invitation, and was received with a kindness and consideration as creditable to his lordship as to the poor struggling poet who had so honourably vindicated the dignity of his calling. About this time Oldham published a volume of poems and translations, in the advertisement to which he took occasion to assert his independence