Oldham's poems consist partly of odes, formal and elaborate compositions, and partly of the satires which in his age in some measure supplied the place of the modern journal and review. A secret and unconscious harmony pervades all branches of the contemporary art of every epoch; and in the stately and somewhat stilted lyrics of Oldham and his compeers we discern the counterpart of the elaborate frontispieces with temples and triumphal arches, chariots and cornucopias, tritons and nereids, which the engravers of the age prefixed to its literature. The engraving is hardly art, and the verse is hardly poetry; we are nevertheless conscious of a vigour and a substance which command respect. The work is compact and solid at any rate, and displays much of the force of the Giants, if little of the inspiration of the Gods. Oldham would fain be extravagant in praise of wine; but there is not the least trace of genuine Bacchic frenzy in his laboured dithyramb. The epicedion on his friend Mouvent is a serious composition indeed, forty-two mortal stanzas, with, nevertheless, sufficient good things to justify the praise bestowed on it by Pope. The ode to Ben Jonson is remarkable as expressing the feelings of the men of the Restoration towards the poet who they really thought had reformed the stage, and delivered it from the reprehensible licentiousness of Shakespeare. Like Oldham's other lyrical compositions, it abounds with most dissonant lines, but has also some noble ones, as these, for example: 'Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious fame, Content on gross and coarse applause to live And what the dull and senseless rabble give; Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn, Nor wouldst that wretched alms receive, The poor subsistence of some bankrupt, sordid name: Thine was no empty vapour, raised beneath, And formed of common breath, The false and foolish fire, that's whisked about By popular air, and glares awhile, and then goes out; But 'twas a solid, whole, and perfect globe of light, That shone all over, was all over bright, And dared all sullying clouds, and feared no darkening night.'