his incessant pen.
Everything was acquisition. This never-ending business of research
appears to have absorbed his powers, and sometimes to have dulled his
conceptions. No one more aptly exercised the _tact_ of discovery; he
knew where to feel in the dark: but he was not of the race--that race
indeed had not yet appeared among us--who could melt into their
Corinthian brass the mingled treasures of Research, Imagination, and
Philosophy!

We may be curious to inquire where our literary antiquary deposited the
discoveries and curiosities which he was so incessantly acquiring. They
were dispersed, on many a fly-leaf, in occasional memorandum-books; in
ample marginal notes on his authors--they were sometimes thrown into
what he calls his "parchment budgets," or "Bags of Biography--of
Botany--of Obituary"--of "Books relative to London," and other titles
and bags, which he was every day filling.[347] Sometimes his collections
seem to have been intended for a series of volumes, for he refers to "My
first Volume of Tables of the eminent Persons celebrated by English
Poets"--to another of "Poetical Characteristics." Among those
manuscripts which I have seen, I find one mentioned, apparently of a
wide circuit, under the reference of "My Biographical Institutions. Part
third; containing a Catalogue of all the English Lives, with Historical
and Critical Observations on them." But will our curious or our
whimsical collectors of the present day endure without impatience the
loss of a quarto manuscript, which bears this rich condiment for its
title--"Of London Libraries; with Anecdotes of Collectors of Books;
Remarks on Booksellers; and on the first Publishers of Catalogues?"
Oldys left ample annotations on "Fuller's Worthies," and "Winstanley's
Lives of the Poets," and on "Langbaine's Dramatic Poets." The late Mr.
Boswell showed me a _Fuller_ in the Malone collection, with Steevens's
transcriptions of _Oldys's notes_, which Malone purchased for 43_l._ at
Steevens's sale; but where is the original copy of Oldys? The
"Winstanley," I think, also reposes in the same collection. The
"Langbaine" is far-famed, and is preserved in the British Museum, the
gift of Dr. Birch; it has been considered so precious, that several of
our eminent writers have cheerfully passed through the labour of a
minute transcription of its numberless notes. In the history of the fate
and fortune of books, that of Oldys's _Langbaine_ is too curious to
omit. Oldys