OLDYS, WILLIAM, a most erudite and industrious bibliographer, was a natural son of Dr. William Oldys, chancellor of Lincoln, and advocate of the admiralty court, and was born in 1687. Regarding his early life little is known. His father dying in 1703 left him a small property, which Oldys squandered as soon as he got it into his own hands. The most of his life was spent as a bookseller's hack. He drank hard, and was so scan dalously fond of low company that lie preferred to live within the "rules" of the Fleet prison to any more respectable place. As may easily be supposed from his habits, the dissolute old bookworm was often in extremely necessitous circumstances, and when he died (April 15, 1761) he left hardly enough to decently bury hint. It is but fair to add that Oldys had some sterling merits. Capt. Grose, who knew him, praises his good nature, honor, and integrity as a historian, and says that "nothing would ever have biased him to insert any fact iu his writings which he did not believe, or to suppress any he did." For about ten years Oldys acted as librarian to the earl of Oxford. whose val
uable collection of books and MSS. he arranged and catalogued. His. chief works are: The Brit4h Librarian, EchThiting a Compendious Review of all Unpublished and Valuable Books in all Sciences (London, 1/37, anonymously); a Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, prefixed to Raleigh's History of the World (1738); a translation of Camden's Britannia (2 vols.); The Harleian Miscellany, or a Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Tracts (8 vols. Loud. 1753). Besides these, Oldys wrote a great variety of miscellaneous literary and bibliographical "articles" for his friends the booksellers, which it would be tedious to mention.