John Aubrey, antiquary (b. 1626, d. 1700), wrote the “Natural History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey” (1719), “Miscellanies upon Various Subjects” (1696), and “A History of Wiltshire,” besides contributing “Minutes of Lives” of eminent men to Wood’s “Athenæ Oxonienses,” and aiding Dugdale in the preparation of his “Monastican Anglicanum.” A biography of Aubrey by Britton was published in 1845 by the Wiltshire Topographical Society, and an edition of the “Lives,” &c., was issued in 1813.
Personal
His life is more remarqueable in an astrologicall respect then for any advancement of learning, having from his birth (till of late yeares) been labouring under a crowd of ill diretions: for his escapes of many dangers, in journeys both by land and water, 40 yeares…. I gott not strength till I was 11 or 12 yeares old; but had sicknesse of vomiting, for 12 houres every fortnight for … years, then about monethly, then quarterly, and at last once in halfe a yeare. About 12 it ceased…. He began to enter into pocket memorandum bookes philosophicall and antiquarian remarques, Anno Domini 1654, at Llantrithid. Anno 16—I began my lawe-suite on the entaile in Brecon, which lasted till … and it cost me 1200 li. Anno—I was to have married Mris K. Ryves, who died when to be married, 2000 li. +, besides counting care of her brother, 1000 li. per annum…. A strange fate that I have laboured under never in my life to enjoy one entire monethe or 6 weekes otium for contemplation. My studies (geometry) were on horse back, and (in) the house of office: (my father discouraged me). My head was alwaies working; never idle, and even travelling (which from 1649 till 1670 was never off my horseback) did gleane som observations, of which I have a collection in folio of 2 quiers of paper + a dust basket, some whereof are to be valued. His chiefe vertue, gratitude…. My fancy lay most to geometrie. If ever I had been good for anything, ’twould have been a painter, I could fancy a thing so strongly and had so cleare an idaea of it.
He had a stronger tincture of superstition than is commonly found in men of his parts and learning. In his “Miscellanies,” among which are some things well worth the reader’s notice, is a receipt against an evil tongue, which was formerly thought much worse than an evil eye. Ob. circ. 1700. A. Wood, whom he esteemed his friend, speaks of him as a pretender to antiquities, and as vain, credulous, and whimsical; he adds, that he was expensive to such a degree, as to be forced to sell his estate of 700 l. a year, and afterward to become a dependant on his friends for subsistence. There seems to be a tincture of gall in this censure of the Oxford antiquary.
Aubrey was the very type of the man who is no man’s enemy but his own. He possessed every virtue usually associated with an easy careless temper, and an industry in his own pursuits which would have done credit to one of robuster mould. “My head,” he says, “was always working, never idle, and even travelling did glean some observations, some whereof are to be valued.” They assuredly are, and many, especially those on the alteration of manners in his time, exhibit real shrewdness. He was well aware of his failings, and it is impossible not to sympathise with his regret for the abolition of the monasteries which would have afforded him a congenial refuge; and his verdict that “if ever I had been good for anything, ’twould have been a painter.” His buoyant cheerfulness defied calamity, and preserved his self-respect under the hard trial of dependence.
Aubrey was one of those eminently good-natured men, who are very slothful in their own affairs, but spare no pains to work for a friend. He offered his help to Wood; and, when it was decided to include in Wood’s book short notices of writers connected with Oxford, that help proved most valuable. Aubrey, through his family and family-connexions, and by reason of his restless goings-to-and-fro, had a wide circle of acquaintance among squires and parsons, lawyers and doctors, merchants and politicians, men of letters and persons of quality, both in town and country. He had been, until his estate was squandered, an extensive and curious buyer of books and MSS. And above all, being a good gossip, he had used to the utmost these opportunities of inquiry about men and things which had been afforded him by societies grave, like the Royal Society, and frivolous, as coffee-house gatherings and tavern clubs. The scanty excerpts, given in these volumes from letters written by him between 1668 and 1673, supply a hint of how deeply Wood’s “Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis,” published in 1674, was indebted to the multifarious memory and unwearying inquiries of the enthusiastic Aubrey.
General
Aubrey, the little Boswell of his day.
Whoever expects a rational account of any fact, however trite, from Aubrey, will meet with disappointment…. Aubrey thought little, believed much, and confused everything.
A very interesting old gentleman he is. Everybody has heard more or less about him as a gossiping old soul of the latter part of the seventeenth century, who went about collecting scraps of information and personal anecdote about notable persons of his own day and of the immediately preceding generations, for some of which scraps we are now much indebted to him. He was one of those useful individuals who, having themselves a passion for knowing what kind of noses and mouths, and what kind of eyes and hair eminent men have, and what dresses they wear, and what they like for dinner, and so on, take the trouble to jot down the information they obtain on these points for the satisfaction of posterity. Something of a taste for these minutiæ, as every one knows, is found in most persons who have any liveliness of fancy, and is almost a necessary ingredient in the character of the historian or the general man of letters; but occasionally we find the taste developed to the dimensions of a constitutional mania, leaving room for little else. In this case we have what is called “a gossip,” or perhaps a collector of portraits and autographs. Boswell, on the whole, belonged to this type, but by good luck, and his own enthusiasm for one man, his passion for gossip and anecdote became concentrated, and enabled him to be the author of the best biography in the language. Pepys, the Paul Pry of his day, was another example; less effective, because more diffuse. Aubrey, who was contemporary with Pepys, was, we fear, a lower man in the class than even Pepys.
He was a “perambulator,” and, in the words of one of his critics, “picked up information on the highway, and scattered it everywhere as authentic.”… The searcher for authentic material must carefully scrutinize Aubrey’s facts; but, with much that is doubtful, valuable information may be obtained from his pages.
In matters of religious opinion, Aubrey’s judgment is of no more value than that of any social gossip-monger would be in our own day.
His character as an antiquary has been unworthily traduced by Anthony à Wood, but fully vindicated by his recent editors and biographers. He certainly is devoid of literary talent, except as a retailer of anecdotes; his head teems with particulars which he lacks the faculty to reduce to order or combine into a whole. As a gossip, however, he is a kind of immature Boswell; and we are infinitely beholden to him for the minute but vivid traits of Bacon, Milton, Raleigh, Hobbes, and other great men preserved in his “Minutes of Lives.” His “Natural History of Wilts” is full of quaint lore, and one need not believe in spirits to enjoy his “Miscellanies.” Half the charm is in the simple credulity of the narrator.
The Dictionaries fail to tell us that he was about as credulous an old goose as one could hope to find out of Gotham—an inveterate, good-natured gossip, as fond of a cock and bull story, and as certain to adorn it (nihil tetigit quod non ornavit) as the very latest editor of Mr. Joseph Miller or Barnum. He was ready to believe the ipse dixit of any one mortal man, woman, or child, that fell in his way, on any subject under the sun, from a cure for the toothache to a discourse with the Angel Gabriel. All this, however, one has to find out for oneself, and the task is an easy and amusing one, by simply wandering pleasantly through one of his most characteristic books just now republished, and rightly named (“Miscellanies upon various subjects”).
Aubrey’s lives supply an inviting field for comment, correction, and addition. But, even so treated, they will never be a biographical dictionary. Their value lies not in statement of bibliographical or other facts, but in their remarkably vivid personal touches, in what Aubrey had seen himself and what his friends had told him.
