94 Kington St. Michael. I John Aubrey. 



enough, one would suppose, to have enabled him to gather a multi- 

 tude of facts that now would have been invaluable. That he has 

 not done so, considering his propensity that way, perhaps was 

 owing to lack of such materials : which if it were the case, only 

 increases the mystery that surrounds the name of Shakspeare. 



Aubrey may have been credulous and not free from superstitions 

 shared by men of finer intellect than himself: but it is owing to 

 this very credulity that he has left us many things characteristic of 

 the times. He was, it is said, regarded as a good Naturalist. He 

 certainly noticed the iron ore at Seend near Devizes, only now, 

 after 200 years, beginning to be worked.^ He made many other 

 clever remarks on Geology, long before the principles of that 

 Science were systematically laid down : pointed out mineral springs 

 that became afterwards, and for a while, popiilar : and though much 

 of his "Natural History" may read very oddly at the present time, 

 it seems to have been fully up to the mark of the Science of his 

 own. The same may be said of his Antiquarian gatherings. He 

 used his eyes and pen when others were blind and idle. The ruins 

 of Avebury are not known to have been mentioned by any English 

 writer till his attention had been accidentally called to them. In 



1 " Seend (vulgo Seene) is a very well biiilt village on a sandy hill, from 

 whence it has its name ; sand being in the old English called send (for so I find 

 writt in the records of the Tower) : as also Send, in Surrey, is called for the 

 same reason. Underneath this sand (not very deep, in some place of the high- 

 way not above a yard or a yard and a half), I discovered the richest iron ore 

 that ever I saw or heard of. Come there on a certain occasion (at the Revell 

 A.D. 1666), it rained at 12 or one of the clock very impetuously, so that it had 

 washed away the sand from the ore ; and walking out to see the country, about 

 3 p.m., the sun shining bright reflected itself from the ore to my eyes. Being 

 surprised at so many spangles, I took up the stone with a great deal of admi- 

 ration. I went to the smith, Geo. Newton, an ingenious man, who from a black- 

 smith turned clock-maker and fiddle-maker, and he assiu-ed me that he has melted 

 of this ore in his forge, which the ore of the Forest of Dean, &c., will not do. 



" The reader is to be advertized that the forest of Melksham did extend itself 

 to the foot of this hill. It was full of goodly oaks, and so near together that they 

 say a squirrell might have leaped from tree to tree. It was disafforested about 

 1635, and the oaks were sold for Is. or 23. per boord at the most ; and then 

 nobody ever took notice of this iron ore, which, as I said before, every sun-shine 

 day after a rousing shower, glistered in thcii' eyes. Now there is scarce an oak 

 left in the whole parish, and oaks are very rare all hereabout, so that this rich 

 mine cannot be melted and turned to profit." (Nat. Hist, of Wilts, p. 21.) 



