The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
AUBREY'S 'BRIEF LIVES'
ANDREW CLARK
VOL. I.
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
JOHN AUBREY: AETAT. 40
From a pen-and-ink drawing in the Bodleian
'Brief Lives,' chiefly of Contemporaries,
set down byJohn Aubrey, between
the Years 1669 & 1696
EDITED FROM THE AUTHOR'S MSS.
BY
ANDREW CLARK
M.A., LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD; M.A. AND LL.D., ST. ANDREWS
WITH FACSIMILES
VOLUME I. (A-H)
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1898
Oxford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
The rules laid down for this edition have beenfully stated in the Introduction. It need only besaid here that these have been scrupulously followed.
I may take this opportunity of saying that thetext gives Aubrey's quotations, English and Latinalike, in the form in which they are found in hisMSS. They are plainly cited from memory, notfrom book: they frequently do not scan, and attimes do not even construe. A few are incorrectcementings of odd half lines.
The necessary excisions have not been numerous.They suggest two reflections. The turbulenceattributed to Sir Walter Raleigh seems to have madehis name in the next age the centre of aggregationof quite a number of coarse stories. In the sameway, Aubrey is generally nasty when he mentionsthe noble house of Herbert, earl of Pembroke, andthe allied family of Sydney. There may be personalpique in this, for Aubrey thinks he had a narrow[Pg vi]escape from assassination by a Herbert (i. 48);perhaps also there may be the after-glow of aWiltshire 'feud' (i. 316).
The Index gives all references to persons mentionedin the text, except to a few found only inpedigrees, or otherwise quite insignificant; also toall places of which anything distinctive is said.
Andrew Clark.
January 4, 1898.
CONTENTS
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