Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

John Oldham

1653–1683

John Oldham (1653–1683) was an English satirist, the son of a Nonconformist minister in Gloucestershire. After St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he worked as an usher (assistant schoolmaster) at a school in Croydon. His Satyrs upon the Jesuits (1681), written in the vein of Juvenal, made his name, and he followed it with imitations and paraphrases of Latin and French poets, among them Juvenal, Horace, Boileau, Catullus and Anacreon.

The 1683 volume from which these poems are taken, Poems, and Translations, is anonymous on its title page (‘by the author of the Satyrs upon the Jesuits’); the author is identified as John Oldham by the TCP/ESTC catalogue record. He died of smallpox at the age of thirty. Dryden, who admired his work, wrote the elegy ‘To the Memory of Mr. Oldham’, and the archive also holds Gould’s elegy on him.

Poems (44)

  1. The Eighth Satyr of Monsieur Boileau, Imitated
  2. The Thirteenth Satyr of Juvenal, Imitated
  3. David's Lamentation for the Death of Saul and Jonathan, Paraphras'd
  4. The Ode of Aristotle in Athenaeus, Paraphras'd
  5. Upon the Works of Ben. Johnson
  6. The Ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace, Imitated
  7. Upon a Lady, Who by Overturning of a Coach Had Her Coats Behind Flung Up
  8. Catullus Epigr. VII. Imitated
  9. Book II. Elegy IV. That He Loves Women of All Sorts and Sizes
  10. Book II. Elegy V. To His Mistriss That Jilted Him
  11. Book II. Elegy X. To a Friend, Acquainting Him, That He Is in Love with Two at One Time
  12. A Fragment of Petronius, Paraphras'd
  13. An Ode of Anacreon, Paraphras'd. The Cup
  14. An Allusion to Martial. Book I. Epig. 118
  15. The Dream
  16. A Satyr Touching Nobility
  17. A Satyr. Address'd to a Friend, That Is About to Leave the University, and Come Abroad in the World
  18. Some Verses Presenting a Book to Cosmelia
  19. The Parting
  20. Complaining of Absence
  21. Promising a Visit
  22. The Careless Good Fellow
  23. A Satyr, in Imitation of the Third of Juvenal
  24. A Dithyrambick. The Drunkards Speech in a Mask
  25. To the Memory of My Dear Friend, Mr. Charles Morwent
  26. A Letter from the Country to a Friend in Town, Giving an Account of the Author's Inclinations to Poetry
  27. Satires upon the Jesuits: Prologue
  28. Satires upon the Jesuits: Satire I
  29. Satires upon the Jesuits: Satire II
  30. Satires upon the Jesuits: Satire III
  31. Satires upon the Jesuits: Satire IV
  32. An Imitation of Horace, Book I, Satire IX
  33. Paraphrase upon Horace, Book I, Ode XXXI
  34. Paraphrase upon Horace, Book II, Ode XIV
  35. Horace's Art of Poetry, Imitated in English
  36. The Praise of Homer
  37. A Satyr Dissuading the Author from the Study of Poetry
  38. Counterpart to the Satire against Virtue
  39. Upon the Marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Lady Mary
  40. An Ode for an Anniversary of Music on St. Cecilia's Day
  41. To Madam L. E. upon Her Recovery from a Late Sickness
  42. On the Death of Mrs. Katharine Kingscourt, a Child of Excellent Parts and Piety
  43. Paraphrase upon the 137th Psalm
  44. Paraphrase upon the Hymn of St. Ambrose

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