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_From a pen-and-ink drawing in the Bodleian_]
_'Brief Lives,' chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696_
ANDREW CLARK M.A., LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD; M.A. AND LL.D., ST. ANDREWS
[Illustration: Oxford] PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
The rules laid down for this edition have been fully stated in the Introduction. It need only be said here that these have been scrupulously followed.
I may take this opportunity of saying that the text gives Aubrey's quotations, English and Latin alike, in the form in which they are found in his MSS. They are plainly cited from memory, not from book: they frequently do not scan, and at times do not even construe. A few are incorrect cementings of odd half lines.
The necessary excisions have not been numerous. They suggest two reflections. The turbulence attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh seems to have made his name in the next age the centre of aggregation of quite a number of coarse stories. In the same way, Aubrey is generally nasty when he mentions the noble house of Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and the allied family of Sydney. There may be personal pique in this, for Aubrey thinks he had a narrow escape from assassination by a Herbert (i. 48); perhaps also there may be the after-glow of a Wiltshire 'feud' (i. 316).
The Index gives all references to persons mentioned in the text, except to a few found only in pedigrees, or otherwise quite insignificant; also to all places of which anything distinctive is said.
APPENDIX I:--AUBREY'S NOTES OF ANTIQUITIES 317-332
APPENDIX II:--AUBREY'S COMEDY _The Countrey Revell_ 333-339
I. Castle Mound, Oxford. Riding at the Quintin.
III. Horoscope and cottage of Thomas Hobbes.
V. Horoscope and arms of Sir William Petty.
In the text the Lives have been given in alphabetical order of the names. This was necessary, not only on account of their number--more than 400--but because Aubrey, in compiling them, followed more than one principle of selection, writing, first, lives of authors, then, lives of mathematicians, but bringing in also lives of statesmen, soldiers, people of fashion, and personal friends.