Always the marks of slavery remain,
  And they tho’ loose, still drag about their chain. 
  And where’s the mighty prospect after all,
  A chaplainship serv’d up, and seven years thrall? 
  The menial thing, perhaps for a reward,
  Is to some slender benefice prefer’d,
  With this proviso bound that he must wed, }
  My lady’s antiquated waiting maid, }
  In dressing only skill’d, and marmalade. }
  Let others who such meannesses can brook,
  Strike countenance to ev’ry great man’s look: 
  Let those, that have a mind, turn slave to eat,
  And live contented by another’s plate: 
  I rate my freedom higher, nor will I,
  For food and rayment track my liberty. 
  But if I must to my last shift be put,
  To fill a bladder, and twelve yards of gut,
  Richer with counterfeited wooden leg,
  And my right arm tyed up, I’ll choose to beg. 
  I’ll rather choose to starve at large, than be,
  The gaudiest vassal to dependancy.

The above is a lively and animated description of the miseries of a slavish dependance on the great, particularly that kind of mortification which a chaplain must undergo.  It is to be lamented, that gentlemen of an academical education should be subjected to observe so great a distance from those, over whom in all points of learning and genius they may have a superiority.  Tho’ in the very nature of things this must necessarily happen, yet a high spirit cannot bear it, and it is with pleasure we can produce Oldham, as one of those poets who have spurned dependence, and acted consistent with the dignity of his genius, and the lustre of his profession.

When the earl of Kingston found that Mr. Oldham’s spirit was too high to accept his offer of chaplainship, he then caressed him as a companion, and gave him an invitation to his house at Holmes-Pierpont, in Nottinghamshire.  This invitation Mr. Oldham accepted, and went into the country with him, not as a dependant but friend; he considered himself as a poet, and a clergyman, and in consequence of that, he did not imagine the earl was in the least degraded by making him his bosom companion.  Virgil was the friend of Maecenas, and shone in the court of Augustus, and if it should be observed that Virgil was a greater poet than Oldham, it may be answered, Maecenas was a greater man than the Earl of Kingston, and the court of Augustus much more brilliant than that of Charles ii.

Our author had not been long at the seat of this Earl, before, being seized with the small pox, he died December 9, 1683, in the 30th year of his age, and was interred with the utmost decency, his lordship attending as chief mourner, in the church there, where the earl soon after erected a monument to his memory.—­Mr. Oldham’s works were printed at London 1722, in two volumes 12mo.  They chiefly consist of Satires, Odes, Translations, Paraphrases of Horace, and other authors; Elegiac Verses, Imitations, Parodies,