which is founded on Langbaine for the dramatic part, is meanly written, and, like many other meanly written works, is profusely illustrated. ‘I have been very sparing,’ says the editor, ‘in my Reflections on the Merits of Writers, which is indeed nothing but anticipating the judgment of the Reader, and who after all will judge for himself.’ Pope, perhaps after reading this sentence, called Jacob ‘the scourge of grammar.’ He and Congreve and other living writers were treated by the servile Jacob with a vapid monotony of commendation. In short, the book, like so much of later reviewing, is not critical; it belongs rather to the huge family of trade circulars and letters of introduction.
The effort to recover information concerning our older English poets was continued in the Eighteenth Century by the successors of Aubrey and Wood, chief among whom must be mentioned William Oldys and Thomas Coxeter.
Oldys (1696–1761) was one of those true antiquaries who are content to collect and arrange material to be used by others. ‘The generous assistance of the candid Mr. Oldys’ is acknowledged with gratitude by Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper in the preface to her book called The Muses Library; Or a Series of English Poetry, from the Saxons, to the Reign of King Charles II. Containing The Lives and Characters of all the known Writers in that Interval, the Names of their Patrons; Complete Episodes, by way of Specimen of the larger Pieces, very near the intire Works of some, and large Quotations from others. Vol I (1737). Mrs. Cooper is a modest and timid writer, but her brief Lives, prefixed to large selections from the English poets down to the time of Spenser, are something better than hack-work. She
