day, 20th July, whence he infers that churches were so placed that the eastern ends should be directly opposite to that part of the horizon where the sun rose on the day of their patron saints. He contributed the plate of Osney Abbey, near Oxford, to Dugdale's Monasticon,* engraved by Hollar, and continued his assistance to Anthony Wood; but pecuniary difficulties more and more pressed on him. He found a friend in the Earl of Thanet, who appears, however, more willing than able to assist him. We confess we do not understand the mysterious significance of the following letter addressed to him by the Earl :

"Yow are my sollicitor to looke after my business in London; and for your sallary that is agreed on. My mother hath lent me Thanet house garden, where I intend to fit up two or three chambers for my use when I come to London privately, and intend to stay not long there,

I

one of which as my meniall servant you
may make use of when fitted up, and when
it is you shall have notice.
would have you in the future to take more
time in writing your letters, for your last
was soe ill writ that I had a great deal of
trouble to read some part of it."

Again :-" Sir, I am well aware the stile of my letter of the 3d instant was unfitting to a person of your birth. The reason I made myself such a proud ill-bred fellow in it is the better to disguise the business you lately enjoined me to do for you." He then says that his future letters shall be equally cool and distant in their language, so that, if examined, any person would believe "that the business, although very unbefitting, of your belonging to me, is no otherwise than real," &c. My Lord Thanet's protection, however, seemed but of little service, for two years after we find "July 1, 1677, I sold my bookes to Mr. Littlebury; scilicet, when the imposthume in my head did break." However, he found a singular good friend in Dr. Edward Davenant, who generously lent him five hundred pounds for a year and a half, and he would not fasten any interest upon him.

In December 1679 Thomas Hobbes died. He had desired Aubrey to write his life, which he accordingly did, but lent it to Dr. Richard Blackbourne, of Trinity College, Cant. who in 1681 produced a Latin Life of Hobbes, with the Memoirs previously published, supposed to have been written by Hobbes himself. In 1680 he addressed his Lives of Eminent Men to Anthony à Wood, which he appears to have collected as materials for Wood's Athene Oxonienses. In 1683-4 he compiled his Idea of Education for young gentlemen, a manuscript the most valued of all his writings; and he evinces much anxiety for its fate after his decease.t

In 1685 Aubrey witnessed the coronation procession of James II. but his only record of the ceremony is, "The canopy carried over the King's head by the Wardens of the Cinque Ports was torn off by a puff of wind, as he came to Westminster Hall: it hung down very lamentably; I saw it." In 1686, he says, that Penn, Lord Proprietor of Pennsylvania, did give him a grant under his seal of 600 acres in Pennsylvania; and he also had a gift of a thousand acres of land in the island of Tobago, from Captain Poyntz; but what benefit he derived from them does not appear. At one time he seemed not unwilling to go to the West Indies, and the Earl of Thanet wished him to go to his estate in the Bermudas. In 1686 his mother died, and he says, " the estate of Chalke must be sold." He says, his

* Dr. Rawlinson says most of the copies of the Monasticon want this plate, but the British Museum copies both have it. It is copied in pl. 115 of Mr. Skelton's " Oxonia Antiqua Restaurata."

† Original in the Ballard Collection of Letters in the Bodleian Library, vol. xiv.

eyes were a fountain of tears, but we doubt the sincerity of the stream; for in the same letter he sends his true love to Kit Wase, of whom he and Lord Pembroke had much talk at dinner. He laments the death of his facetious friend, Parson Hodges, and adds, " I must make haste with my papers, for I am now 60." In 1686, meaning to take a journey to the West of England, he made his will, bequeathing his papers on the Natural History of Wilts to his worthy friend Mr. Robert Hooke, of Gresham college, and desiring that Mr. David Loggan should engrave the plates. Next year he wrote his Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaism, a MS. now in the British Museum. Its object is to show that most of the old provincial customs and observances in England were derived from the ancients.* About this time he came to the determination of depositing his MSS. in the Museum at Oxford, and he also still persevered in his chancery suits; it does not however appear, at this time, what lady was the plaintiff. In 1692 he commenced a correspondence with Dr. Garden, of King's college, Aberdeen, on the subject of Celtic monuments, Scottish traditions, Second-sight, Transportation by an invisible power, &c. The letters are still preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, and are mentioned with commendation by Bishop Gibson, in his edition of Camden's Britannia. In 1692 we find him diligently employed in revising his History of Surrey; he also visited Ray, the Naturalist, at his living at Black Notley, in Essex, and submitted his different works to him, for his alterations and improvements. There seems, however, at this time to have been much difficulty in getting publishers to undertake the expense and risk of any works of size and importance. Bishop Tanner writes to him:

"My principal business is to drive on our common design, viz. the Antiquities of Wilts, which I hope will find encouragement. If it does not I will never undertake any thing more for the public. My St. Cuthbert's Life hath suffered the fate of a great many better books. I am heartily sorry your Monumenta meets with no better encouragement in this age, but I like it never the worse for that. It hath been the ill fortune of the best books that they have not borne the charges of their own impression. It is well known

that no bookseller would give Sir Henry Spelman five pounds in books for his incomparable Glossary, and you know that Sir Walter Raleigh burnt the latter part of his admirable History of the World, because the former had undone the printer. The X Scriptores and the Monasticon, volumes now worth old gold, had never been printed had not the former been carried on by a public fund, the other by the sole charges of the editor," &c.

We have long, though we have not communicated this to our readers, we say, we have long suspected, that the friendship of our author with Mr. A. Wood, was not built on quite so strong foundations as is generally supposed: we were never very fond of Master Wood's physiognomy, there was a vulpine expression about it, unpleasing to our eyes. And now it must all come out. He behaves to John Aubrey no better than the women had done. This good man has become a general prey. In the MS. of the second part of his Lives of Eminent Men, there is written in large capital letters as follows:

"INGRATITUDE.

"In this part the Second Mr. Wood has gelded from p. 1 to 44, and other pages too are wanting wherein are contain'd Trueths, but such as I entrusted nobody with the sight of but himself, whom I thought I might have entrusted

with my life. There are several papers that may cut my throate. I find too late memento diffidere was a saying worthy of the sages. He hath also embezill'd the Index of it, qd N.B.

"It was stitched up when I sent it to him. "Novemb. 29, 1692."

* Lansdowne MS. No. 231, British Museum.

Tanner seems to lend his authority to the charge of ingratitude against Wood. He says "I shall scorn to be like A. Wood, make use of your papers and acquaintance, and at last afford you not a good word;" and again he alludes to Wood's having "dealt so ungenteely by you." Two years after we find Aubrey sending the following letter to Wood, in which the cause of his complaint is more fully opened; and, as the whole circumstance is curious, we shall give the extract as it stands in Mr. Britton's book:

Few personal notices of Aubrey occur after this time. On the 20th March, 1692, about 11 at night, he was robbed and had five wounds in his head; and the spring following he had an apoplectic fit, circiter 4 h. P.M. In his Miscellanies, he says, "On the day of St. John the Baptist, 1694, I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague House,* it was 12 o'clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees, very busy, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me, that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plaintain to put under their head that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands. It was to be sought for that day and hour."

In 1696 Aubrey's Miscellanies were published, and dedicated by the author to the Earl of Abingdon, in whose "pleasant walks and gardens at Lavington he mentions having reviewed his scattered papers. His life of labour and of anxiety, however, was now to draw to a close. Probably, Mr. Britton says, another fit of apoplexy was the immediate cause of his dissolution; at all events, the suddenness of his decease is shewn by the fact, that, within six days after the date of his last letter to his publisher Churchill, he was buried in the parish church of St. Mary Magdalen, Oxon. The entry of burials stands thus : - " 1697. John Aubrey A stranger was buried Jun. 7th." Dr. Rawlinson stated in his Memoir, that " several misfortunes" reduced Aubrey, in the latter part of his life, "to very low and mean circumstances, so that (as a Reverend Divine from Kington St. Michael's informed the Editor) he was generously supported by the late Lady Long, of Draycot, in her own house, to which he was going, on his return from London, when his journey and life were concluded at Oxford, where it is presumed he was buried; though neither the time of his Obit or his place of burial can be yet recovered."†

"Aubrey, it may be presumed, received as good an education as was usually imparted by the tutors and colleges of his age. The course appears to have embraced the classics, a general knowledge

of algebra, geometry, mathematics, natural history, &c.; but he never became eminent as a scholar or man of science. His Idea of Education shows that, although he did not undervalue the advantages of

* Mr. Britton gives a curious account of the verge or northern boundary of London as he remembers it when a boy. To this we add, that we learned to ride, when very young, in fields where Fitzroy-square now stands, and that we can remember well an old farm-house and yards standing where the Colosseum now is. Old Mr. Walker, who keeps Jack's Coffee-house, in Dean-street, Soho, informs us that he could see Hampstead formely from his windows. We have also heard Lord Eldon mention the peaches and nectarines he ripened in his garden in Gower-street. In the map to Dodsley's London, 1761, the north boundary of London runs thus-Ormond-street, Queen-square, Bedford and Montague Houses, Cavendish square, Marylebone-lane terminating London north of Oxford-street. Where Charlotte-street now is, was called "The Green Lane." The Middlesex Hospital, Whitfield's Tabernacle, the Foundling Hospital, were all in the country. It would at that time have been feasible for the Duke of Chandos to have carried though his grand projected plan of making a long private avenue from his country seat at Canons to his house in Cavendish-square, which was to occupy the whole north side. At that time Oxford-street took the name of Tyburn-road as soon as it crossed Bond-street, and Lambeth was almost entirely fields and marshes. The only rural suburb now left is a little district between Old Brompton and Kensington-road, where Cromwell House stands, and where are still a few old cottages embosomed in gardens and orchards. Rev.

† Some singular variations and mistakes occur as to the time of his birth and the place of his burial, which may be seen fully detected and observed on in Mr. Britton's

Three original portraits of Aubrey seem to have been made. One by the celebrated Samuel Cooper, * one by Faithorne, and the other by an unknown hand. The first is completely lost. Faithorne's rests in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, executed in Indian ink in a careful and beautiful manner. It was taken when Aubrey was forty.

His books and manuscripts were given to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where they are still preserved, and a very full and interesting account of their contents will be found in Mr. Britton's volume. From his Introduction to the Antiquities of Wiltshire we cannot refrain from giving one passage, as it affords such a graphic and pleasing account of that part of England in the days of our forefathers.

* There is a singularly strong eulogy on Cooper in one of Ray's letters to Aubrey:-" Your picture done in miniature by Cooper is a thing of great value. I remember, so long ago as when I was in Italy, and while he was yet living, any piece of his was highly esteemed there; and for that kind of painting he was esteemed the best artist in Europe." Aubrey mentions his picture by Cooper at an auction yielding 20 guineas. Vid. p. 80.