by John Aubrey
Aubrey stayed strictly within the frame of the story, anecdote or incident he found revealing of a Life. He made no attempt to interpret definitively, still less judge or account for, the Lives he wrote. He set out more modestly to record some true things about each of them. Which is why he saw himself more as a collector than a writer. ‘Now what shall I say, or doe with these pretty collections?’ he asked Wood, as old age encroached.fn15 Aubrey was frightened his unpublished manuscripts would be dissipated and lost after his death, so he thought to put them in the new Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, alongside Elias Ashmole’s cabinet of curiosities and rarities. There are more than four hundred Lives in the manuscripts Aubrey eventually deposited in the Ashmolean, some several pages long, others only a few lines. Like all collectors, Aubrey expressed personal taste and sensibility in what he chose to include and exclude from his Lives. But beyond this, he did not impose himself strongly on his subjects.
Over time Aubrey’s editors have dealt variously with the Brief Lives: like visitors to a museum they bring the expectations and capabilities of their own era and experience to bear on Aubrey’s collections. Kate Bennett’s 2015 edition painstakingly presents the Brief Lives as Aubrey himself arranged them, complete with all his significant revisions, corrections and gaps for information he had lost or still hoped to find.fn16 Oliver Lawson Dick, whose Aubrey’s Brief Lives was first published in 1949, added extracts from Aubrey’s many other manuscript collections into his edition of Brief Lives, and cut out anything he considered unimportant, especially Aubrey’s hesitations and changes of mind. He put the Lives in alphabetical order and provided brief introductions of his own to each of them. The result is a flamboyant, streamlined version of Aubrey’s intricate paper museum. I think Aubrey would have felt about it as authors today feel about movies made from their books: that it is related to, but radically different from, what he originally intended. Lawson Dick carried Aubrey’s name to a wide twentieth-century audience and helped inspire the Patrick Garland play, starring Roy Dotrice, through which audiences on both sides of the Atlantic have come to know Brief Lives.fn17 Aubrey, who only hoped that his name would live on like an ‘unprofitable’ tree on the ramparts of someone else’s noble building, would have been delighted.
Ruth Scurr, 2016
fn1 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Aubrey 6, fol. 12, printed in Two Antiquaries: a selection from the correspondence of John Aubrey and Anthony Wood, Balme, M., ed., (Edinburgh: Durham Academic Press, 2001), p. 92.
fn2 See Aubrey’s life of Thomas Hobbes, MS Aubrey 9, fol. 29r.
fn3 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Aubrey 12, fol. 8, Two Antiquaries, p. 104.
fn4 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Ballard 14, fol. 142, Two Antiquaries, p. 127.
fn5 See MS Aubrey 12, fol. 8.
fn6 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Wood F39, fol. 183.
fn7 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Aubrey 6, fol. 12, Two Antiquaries, p. 92.
fn8 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Aubrey 6, fol. 12, Two Antiquaries, p. 92.
fn9 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Ballard 14, fol. 155, Two Antiquaries, p. 148.
fn10 See Aubrey’s letter to Thomas Tanner, MS Tanner 24, fol. 108, Two Antiquaries, p. 158.
fn11 See Aubrey’s letter to Robert Boyle, Correspondence of Robert Boyle 1636–1691, Hunter, M., Clericuzio, A. and Principe, L. M., eds, 6 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001), vol. 3, pp. 111–12.
fn12 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Wood F39, fol. 340, Two Antiquaries, p. 91.
fn13 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Wood F39, fol. 340, Two Antiquaries, p. 91.
fn14 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Aubrey 6, fol. 12, Two Antiquaries, p. 92.
fn15 See Aubrey’s letter to Anthony Wood, MS Wood F39, fol. 392, Two Antiquaries, p. 114.
fn16 John Aubrey: Brief Lives with an Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers, Bennett, K., ed., 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
fn17 Brief Lives by John Aubrey: a play in two acts for one player, Patrick Garland (London: Faber, 1967).
FOREWORD
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THE ORIGINAL MATERIAL used in this edition has been taken from the following sources:—
In the Bodleian Library, Oxford:
I. MS. Aubrey 1. The Naturall Historie of Wiltshire.
II. MS. Aubrey 2. The Naturall Historie of Wiltshire.
III. MS. Aubrey 3. An Essay Towards a Description of the North Division of Wiltshire.
IV. MS. Aubrey 4. A Perambulation of Surrey.
V. MS. Aubrey 5. An Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum.
VI. MS. Aubrey 6. The Minutes of Lives: Part One.
VII. MS. Aubrey 7. The Minutes of Lives: Part Two.
VIII. MS. Aubrey 8. The Minutes of Lives: Part Three: including An Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers.
IX. MS. Aubrey 9. The Life of Mr. Thomas Hobbes.
X. MS. Aubrey 10. An Idea of Education of Young Gentlemen.
XI. MS. Aubrey 12. Letters to John Aubrey: 1644–1695: A-N.
XII. MS. Aubrey 13. Letters to John Aubrey: 1644–1695: O-W.
XIII. MS. Aubrey 14. Monumenta Britannica: Parts One and Two.
XIV. MS. Aubrey 15. Monumenta Britannica: Parts Three and Four.
XV. MS. Aubrey 16. Chronologia Architectonica.
XVI. MS. Aubrey 17. Designatio de Easton-Piers in Com: Wilts.
XVII. MS. Aubrey 19. Medical Recipes, in English.
XVIII. MS. Aubrey 21. The Countrey Revell and Miscellaneous Papers.
XIX. MS. Aubrey 23. A Collection of Genitures Well Attested.
XX. MS. Aubrey 24. An Astrological Treatise, with additional recipes and incantations.
XXI. MS. Aubrey 26. Faber Fortunae.
XXII. MS. Aubrey 28. A Letter by Thomas Hobbes, with notes by John Aubrey.
XXIII. MS. Wood E.4 Letters from Thomas Hobbes to Aubrey.
XXIV. MS. Wood F.39. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
XXV. MS. Wood F.40. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
XXVI. MS. Wood F.46. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
XXVII. MS. Wood F.49. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
XXVIII. MS. Wood F.51. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
XXIX. MS. Ballard 14. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
XXX. MS. Ashmolean 1814. Letters from Aubrey to Edward Llwyd.
XXXI. MS. Ashmolean 1829. Letters from Aubrey to Edward Llwyd.
XXXII. MS. Ashmolean 1830. Letters from Aubrey to Edward Llwyd.
XXXIII. MS. Rawlinson D.26. The Journal of Anthony Wood.
XXXIV. MS. Rawlinson D.727. Genealogical and Heraldic Papers, including fair copies of three of Aubrey’s Lives.
XXXV. MS. Rawlinson J.F.6. The Accidents of John Aubrey.
XXXVI. MS. Tanner 22. Letters to Thomas Tanner: 1698.
XXXVII. MS. Tanner 23. Letters to Thomas Tanner: 1697.
XXXVIII. MS. Tanner 24. Letters from Aubrey to Tanner: 1696.
XXXIX. MS. Tanner 25. Letters from Aubrey to Tanner: 1695.
XL. MS. Tanner 102. The Journal of Anthony Wood.
XLI. MS. Tanner 456. Letters between Aubrey and Wood.
XLII. Ashmole 1672. Pamphlets collected and annotated by John Aubrey.
XLIII. Ashmole 1722. Plott’s “Oxfordshire,” annotated by John Aubrey.
XLIV. “Festivious Notes” by Edmund Gayton, first published 1654.
XLV. “Britannia” by William Camden, first published 1586.
XLVI. “Merry Drollery, Complete, or A Collection of Joviall Poems, Merry Songs, Witty Drolleries, intermixed with Pleasant Catches Collected by W.N. C.B. R.S. J.G. Lovers of Wit,” published in 1670.
XLVII. “Wit Restored, or severall select poems not formerly publish’t”: 1658.
XLVIII.–L. “Monasticon” by Sir William Dugdale, first published in three volumes in 1655, 1661 and 1673.
LI. The Natural History of Wiltshire.
In the Library of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Devizes:
LII. Letters from Aubrey to Anthony Wood.
In the Library of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall
LIII. The Diary of Robert Hooke.
In the Library of the British Museum, London:
LIV. MS. Lansdowne 231. Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme.
LV. “Miscellanies Collected by J. Aubrey, Esq. London.” Printed 1696.
LVI. “Miscellanies on Several Curious Subjects,” including five letters to John Aubrey and his Introduction to the Survey and Natural History of the North-Division of the County of Wiltshire, edited by Dr. Rawlinson: 1714.
LVII.–LXI. “The Natural History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey. Begun in the year 1673 by John Aubrey, Esq. F.R.S. and continued to the present time by Dr. Rawlinson.” Printed 1718–19, in five volumes.
LXII “Miscellanies Collected by J. Aubrey, Esq. London.” Reprinted with additions and alterations, 1721.
LXIII.–LXIV. “Athenae Oxoniensis” by Anthony a Wood. First published, in two volumes, in 1691 and 1692.
LXV.–LXVI. “Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis” by Anthony a Wood. First published in 1674.
The passages from the above volumes that have been included in this edition, have been selected upon the following plan:—
1. Any life that has nothing of intrinsic value to offer has been discarded. The four hundred and twenty-six lives, which Aubrey wrote, vary so considerably in length (one consists of two words, another of twenty-three thousand) that many of them are of no interest whatsoever, consisting either of extracts from books or of mere lists of dates and facts. All that Aubrey has to say of John Holywood, for instance, is Dr. Pell is positive that his name was Holybushe.
2. In the one hundred and thirty-four lives that have been selected, many sentences have been rejected. For Aubrey starts one life as follows: James Harrington, Esq; the son of … Harrington of … in the Countie of …, by …, daughter of Sir … Samuel, was borne at … (Sir … Samuel’s house in Northamptonshire) anno … All sentences like this, which display nothing more than Aubrey’s ignorance of a date or a place or the title of a book, have been omitted.
3. The imperfections of Aubrey’s copy have been amended in the way that he intended they should be. A choice has been made between the alternative words he jotted down, and the several versions of his favourite stories, which he repeated sometimes as many as seven times, have been collated and a single version produced. As an instance, the two-page life of William and Philip Herbert was assembled from eleven different manuscripts; and this whole edition has been built up, like a jig-saw, until the disconnected pieces have at last resolved themselves into a complete picture.
4. All notes, quotation marks and other distractions to continuous reading have been excluded from the text, and each life has been prefaced with a paragraph, written by the editor, outlining those facts about the subject which Aubrey has ignored. These are always included in square brackets [].
5. Wherever a Latin quotation in the text is not self-explanatory, its translation has been given in square brackets. The word “pounds” has also been substituted throughout for the Latin “libri.”
6. Aubrey’s many mistakes have been left uncorrected, except in the case of two gross misquotations of famous poems. On the few occasions when Aubrey has not only left a gap to be filled in later, but has also given the reference from which the fact can be obtained, that fact has been supplied. For instance, in the life of Sir William Petty Aubrey says: Anno Domini … happened that memorable accident and experiment of the reviving Nan Green, which is to be ascribed and attributed to Dr. William Petty, as the first discoverer of life in her, and author of saving her. Vide and insert the material passages in the Tryal, and anatomicall experiment of Nan Green at Oxon: vide the narrative. In the face of such clear instructions, I have felt justified in including seven lines describing the incident from Anthony Wood’s “Journal.” Nowhere else has such an insertion been made, but on a few occasions the word “some” has been introduced to make good the omission of a figure; and in one place a word which Aubrey uses elsewhere, denigrating, has been inserted in the life of William Camden to complete a sentence.
7. Aubrey’s original spelling has been retained throughout, except that merely artificial tricks of writing (yt for that, wch for which, for mm) have been neglected. Aubrey’s use of capital letters has also been followed. Wherever possible, his original punctuation has been given, and italics have been used, when necessary, to clarify the meaning.
8. In “The Life and Times of John Aubrey,” however, italics have been used merely to distinguish those passages which occur in Aubrey’s own handwriting in the manuscripts.
A page of Aubrey’s manuscript, containing portions of the Lives of Sir Thomas Gresham, Ezreel Tonge, Sir William Petty, William Oughtred, Thomas Hobbes, George Withers, John Pell, Seth Ward, Henry Briggs and Josias Taylor
A page of Aubrey’s manuscript, containing the fair copy of his life of Milton
9. Aubrey’s use of sign language has been abandoned, and wherever possible this form of shorthand has been translated into words.
10. Lastly, there comes the vexed question of obscenity. In the seventeenth century sex had not yet been singled out as the sin par excellence, it was merely one among many failings, and Aubrey no more thought of concealing it, than he dreamt of avoiding the mention of gluttony or drunkenness. After judging his work, therefore, by its general tendency and not by particular details, it has been decided not to bowdlerise it in the slightest degree, but to print it as it was written, without emphasis and without concealment.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN AUBREY
* * *
NOT LONG AFTER John Aubrey’s death, a wise man warned us against treating books like members of the nobility: that is, against learning their titles and bragging afterwards of acquaintance with them. Yet this has been peculiarly Aubrey’s fate; for his reputation is founded almost entirely upon hearsay and the piecemeal quotation of his work by other writers.
The reason for the extraordinary neglect of this man of genius is not hard to find and the fault, it must be admitted, is entirely his own. For Aubrey’s love of life was so intense, his curiosity so promiscuous and so insatiable, that he proved quite incapable of completing any work he undertook. Each one was started in a most businesslike and practical fashion, but before long the original plan was always buried beneath the flood of digressions and notes, of horoscopes, letters and stories, which his restless mind seemed powerless to control.
Having decided to write a life, Aubrey selected a page in one of his notebooks and jotted down as quickly as possible everything that he could remember about the character concerned: his friends, his appearance, his actions, his books and his sayings. Any facts or dates that did not occur to him on the spur of the moment were left blank, and as Aubrey was so extremely sociable that he was usually suffering from a hangover when he came to put pen to paper, the number of these omissions was often very large. In the first flush of composition, too, his mind raced so far beyond his pen that he frequently resorted to a sort of involved shorthand and made use of signs instead of words.
He then read over what he had just written and put in any stories that he thought were even vaguely relevant, wrote alternatives to words and phrases, inserted queries, numbered words, sentences and paragraphs for transposition, disarranged everything.
Any facts that occurred to him later were jotted down quite at random, in the margin if there was still room, otherwise on another page or in the middle of another life, often in a different volume, sometimes even in a letter to a friend. And there the text was left, for he rarely made a fair copy of anything that he had written because, as he confessed, he wanted patience to go thorough Kn
otty Studies.
Even the optimistic author despaired at last of ever reducing his life’s work to a manageable shape. Considering therefore that if I should not finish and publish what I had begun, he wrote, My Papers might either perish, or be sold in an Auction, and some body else (as is not uncommon) put his name to my Paines: and not knowing any one that would undertake this Design whilst I live, I have tumultuarily stitcht up what I have many yeares since collected: I hope, hereafter it may be an Incitement to some Ingeniose and publick-spirited young Man, to polish and compleat, what I have delivered rough hewen: For I have not leisure to heighten my Stile Accepting this clear mandate and electing myself the Ingeniose and publick-spirited young Man, I have taken Aubrey at his word, and using his manuscripts as if they were my own notes, I have constructed the following book: with the important reservation that I have nowhere departed from the original text, although I have ruthlessly rearranged it.