By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 97 



Monumenta Britannica" mentioned there (p.89) as missing, has since 

 been discovered in the Bodleian Librar}^ A fourth edition of his 

 " Miscellanies " has appeared during the present year^ with the 

 addition of the Preface designed by Aubrey for his History of 

 Wilts, and printed in " Curll's Miscellanies" 1714. 



lie was a thoroughly unsettled and unlucky man. His whole 

 inheritance (at one time £700 a year) was consumed in paying 

 debts and defending actions transmitted with his estate. lie lived 

 chiefly at Broad Chalk, sometimes at Easton ; kept terras in London, 

 and spent much time riding over "Wiltshire in search, now of 

 "Antiq.", now of a wife. The one he found; the other, not. 

 Through sundry mishaps, his 



" course of true love never did run smooth. 



For cither it was difference in blood. 

 Or else misgrafied in respect of years, 

 Or else it stood upon the choice of friends, 

 Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, 

 Law, death or sickness did lay siege to it." 



In this reference to Lysandcr's catalogue of obstacles,^ the change 

 of reading (acknowledged in Italic type,) is specially required for 

 Aubrey's case ; his principal suit to the fair sex in the person of Mis- 

 tress Joan Sumner of Seend, having been suddenly extinguished by a 

 suit at law, the full particulars and cause whereof are lost to curi- 

 osity. His assiduities also to others invariably ended in disappoint- 

 ment. Just at the interesting moment the "natal star" wasalwa3's 

 found to be in provoking opposition, and so it came to pass that he 

 never lived to paj^ for license or be called in church. 



His birth-place and family connexion (on his mother's side) with 

 Kington St. Michael's have been mentioned above (p. 79). The 

 "Accidents" of his life will be most properly given in liis own 

 words, copied frcjui loose and vague notes amongst his MSS., form- 

 ing all that is loft of his 



o 



AuTOBIOGRArilY. 



I.A. 

 " To be intcrponed as a sheet of wast paper only at the binding 



1 rJnio. Kiisscll SmiOi, Soho Square, 1857. 

 2 .Midbummer Niglil'w Dream, Act. 1. 



U 



