By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 95 



January 1649, his 24th year, being out hunting with Lord Francis 

 Seymour near Marlborough, the hounds ran through the village of 

 Avebury : "In the closes there (he says) I was wonderfully surprised 

 at the sight of those va^t stones of ivhich I had never heard be/ore," 

 (though within 15 miles of his home) " as also of the mighty bank 

 and graffe about it." He left the company, and having examined 

 the place, rejoined them at Kennet. Upon subsequent visits he 

 made his notes. And until that time, this extraordinary monument, 

 which if, whilst yet entire, it had been made national property and 

 protected from injury, woidd have been now the most extraordinary 

 one in the world, does not appear to have been even named in any 

 English book extant. 



Aubrey's " Lives of Eminent Men," originally written in aid of 

 Antony Wood's labours, were published (with some suppressions) 

 for the first time at Oxford in 1813, by Dr. Bliss and the Eev. J. 

 "Walker ; in a work called " Letters from the Bodleian." They 

 refer for the most part either to contemporaries and personal ac- 

 quaintances of his own (and he seems to have known every body,) 

 or to persons of a certain public station who, immediately before his 

 time, had pronounced their " Valete et plaudite " upon the stage of 

 life. In these "Lives" there is nothing elaborate or artificial. 

 They are merely memoranda of character and manners, without 

 concealment of the bad or exaggeration of the good : anecdotes, 

 odd sayings and doings, all naturally told, and such as more digni- 

 fied biographers would hardly have introduced. But it is this very 

 naivete which makes them the more amusing. Aubrey's " eminent 

 men" arc not drawn in full ceremonial costume to produce an im- 

 posing effect, but in their every day dress, and sometimes in their 

 undress. In his description something is sure to be found, not to 

 be found any where else : and much as he has been reviled by stiflf 

 critics who would fain make the world believe, that wise men and 

 heroes were heroes and wise men at all hours of their lives, his 

 anecdotes arc in the main perfectly credible. Slips of memory in 

 names of person or place may be frequent : and there is inaccuracy 

 in trifling facts : but as no two persons ever tell the same story in 

 precisely the same words, Aubrey's aberrations in narrative are not 



