Brief Lives, Vol. 1 — Themes and Context

xcerpts, 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.

Dean Fell's request that Wood should notice Oxford writers and bishops in his _Historia_ had suggested to Wood the plan of, and set him to work upon, the larger and happier scheme of the _Athenae Oxonienses_, an 'exact history of all the writers and bishops that have had their education in ... Oxford' since 1500. He engaged his friend Aubrey to help him in his undertaking, by committing to writing in a more systematic way, for Wood's benefit, his multitudinous recollections of men and books. He was dexterous enough to supply the additional motive, that, after serving his friend's turn, Aubrey's collections might be gathered together, preserved for a while in some safe and secret place, and, when personal feelings were saved by lapse of time, be published and secure their writer a niche in the Temple of Fame.

It was now by no means easy for Aubrey to undertake any extensive, and especially any connected work. Being by this time bankrupt, and a hanger-on at the tables of kindred and acquaintances, he had to fall in with his patrons' habits, at the houses where he visited; to sit with them till they wearied of their carousings in the small hours of the morning; and to do his writing next forenoon, before they had slept off their wine.

Still, his interest in the subject, and his desire to help his friend prevailed; and we soon find him thanking Wood for setting him to work. March 27, 1680[1]:--''Twill be a pretty thing, and I am glad you putt me on it. I doe it playingly. This morning being up by 10, I writt two <lives>: one was Sir John Suckling[2], of whom I wrote a leafe and 1/2 in folio.' May 22, 1680[3]:--'My memoires of lives' <is now> 'a booke of 2 quires, close written: and after I had began it, I had such an impulse on my spirit that I could not be at quiet till I had donne it.' Sept. 8, 1680[4]:--'My booke of lives ... they will be in all about six-score, and I beleeve never any in England were delivered so faithfully and with so good authority.'

Aubrey, therefore, began these lives[5] on the suggestion of, and with a desire to help Anthony Wood.

Among the lives so written were several of mathematicians and men of science. And another friend of Aubrey's, Dr. Richard Blackburne, advised him to collect these by themselves, and add others to them, with a view to a biographical history of mathematical studies in England. To this suggestion Aubrey was predisposed through his pride at being 'Fellow of the Royal Society,' and for some time he busied himself in that direction[6].

In the same way, although the bulky life of Thomas Hobbes[7] was partly undertaken in fulfilment of a promise to Hobbes himself, an old personal friend, the motive which induced Aubrey to go on with it was a desire to supply Dr. Blackburne with material for a Latin biography, _Vitae Hobbianae Auctarium_, published in 1681.

These matters will be found more fully explained in the notices which Aubrey has prefixed to the several MSS. of his biographical collections, as described below.

II. CONDITION OF THE TEXT OF THE 'LIVES.'

Few of the 'Lives' are found in a fair copy[8]. Again and again, in his letters to Anthony Wood, Aubrey makes confession of the deficiencies of his copy, but puts off the heavy task of reducing it to shape.

His method of composition was as follows. He had a folio MS. book, and wrote at the top of a page here and there the name of a poet, or statesman, or the like, whose life he thought of committing to paper. Then, selecting a page and a name, he wrote down hastily, without notes or books, his recollections of the man, his personal appearance, his friendships, his actions or his books. If a date, a name, a title of a book, did not occur to him on the spur of the moment, he just left a blank, or put a mark of omission (generally, ... or----), and went on. If the matter which came to him was too much for the page, he made an effort to get it in somehow, in the margins (top, bottom, or sides), between the paragraphs, or on the opposite page.

When he read over what he had written in the first glow of composition, he erased, wrote alternatives to words and phrases, marked words, sentences, and paragraphs for transposition, inserted queries: unsettled everything.