34 Conversazione. 
he set it on foot in this very town; but how long it lasted, and how 
it ended, you shall hear in his own words. He says, in the preface 
to the “Collections” —‘At a meeting of gentlemen at the Devises 
for choosing of Knights of the Shire, in March 1659 “(just 200 years 
ago,)” it was wished by some, that this county, wherein are many 
observable antiquities, should be surveyed in imitation of Mr. 
Dugdale’s Illustrations of Warwickshire. But it being too great a 
task for one man, Mr. Wm. Yorke, Councellor at Lawe, and a lover 
of this kind of learning, advised to have the labour divided. He 
himselfe would undertake the Middle Division. I would undertake 
the North. Thos. Gore, Esq., Jeffery Daniel, Esq., and Sir John 
Erneley would be assistants. Judge Nicholas was the greatest 
antiquary as to Evidences that this county hath had in memory of 
man, and had taken notes of all the ancient deeds that came to his 
hands. Mr. Yorke had taken some memorandums in this kind too. 
Both now dead. ’Tis pitie that those papers should fall into the 
merciless hands of women and be put under pies. But this good 
design vanished over their pipes, and was never thought of since.” 
Though Aubrey’s smoking friends deserted him, he went on by 
himself with his design, so far as regarded the Northern part of 
Wilts; and the collections which he made form the manuscript 
which led me to introduce the mention of him here. It consists of 
one folio volume, marked A. Another, to which he constantly 
refers as “ Liber B,” has been lost for many years. There are two 
parts in the one that is left; both of which have been printed by 
Sir T. Phillipps. The way in which Aubrey made his collections 
seems to have been this:—He took a commonplace book; entered 
at the head of separate pages the names of the different parishes in 
the district, and then jotted down from time to time any notice or 
memorandum that he happened to meet with about any of those 
places. Of no one of them is there anything at all approaching to 
a regular account. Sometimes his memoranda are merely inscrip- 
tions in the church, sometimes a Latin deed, sometimes a bit of 
village gossip; in fact, a miscellaneous gathering which he never 
digested or finished, and which he never himself regarded as any- 
thing more than a mere accumulation of occasional notes. In one 
oint the manuscript is very valuable. Aubrey drew and coloured 
with his own hand, all the armorial bearings and figures that he 
found in the churches ; and with these are intermingled a few rough 
outline sketches of old houses of the gentry that have now long 
since disappeared. 
In Sir Thomas Phillipps’s edition (which indeed is the only one 
ever printed,) these curious illustrations, nearly 700 in number, 
are almost wholly omitted, though descriptions of most of them, in 
words, are inserted: but the very use of Heraldric blazonry being, 
to speak to the mind through the eye, the omission of the figured 
illustrations themselves, is, so far, a great deduction from the value 
