Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/30

20 interests of the Duke of York's adherents, so Oldham asserted the views of their opponents; and in this aspect his Satires possess a special interest, and supply an important desideratum. They exhibit at its height the fury that pervaded the Protestant party, and enable us to balance the account of violence between them and the Roman Catholics. The writings of Dryden have transmitted to posterity an impression, too hastily adopted by modern historians, that the Tories immeasurably transcended the Whigs in malignity and intemperance; but in the invectives of Oldham we find a display of bitterness and rancour which even Dryden himself has not surpassed. The advantage of superior skill was with the greater poet; but Oldham rivals him in the breadth and torrent of his vituperation.

Nor are these Satires less curious as a picture of living manners. They reflect with minute fidelity the life of the Restoration. In his sketches of the modes and habits of London, Oldham enters into a variety of particulars that bear upon the moral and social attributes of the time. The panorama he thus brings before us is full of illustrative details. From the incidents of the streets, the slightness of the house architecture, the frequency of fires, the insecurity of passengers by night and day, and the exploits of scourers, roarers, and padders, he ascends to the delinquencies of the higher orders, the corruptions at court, the venality of authors and parasites, the neglect of literature, and the servile homage that was paid to wealth. The vividness of his portraiture of the contemporary age, and the stern justice he executes upon its vices, invest his Satires with a lasting historical value that abundantly compensates for the ruggedness of his verse, and vindicates his right to a high place amongst English satirists.