EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



IN the "Memoir of John Aubrey," published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society in 1845, 

 I expressed a wish that the "NATURAL HISTORY or WILTSHIRE," the most important of that 

 author's unpublished manuscripts, might be printed by the Society, as a companion volume to that 

 Memoir, which it is especially calculated to illustrate. 



The work referred to had been then suggested to the Council of the Society by George Poulett 

 Scrope, Esq. M.P., as desirable for publication. They concurred with him in that opinion ; and 

 shortly afterwards, through the kind intervention of the Marquess of Northampton, an applica- 

 tion was made to the Council of the Royal Society for permission to have a transcript made for 

 publication from the copy of the " Natural History of Wiltshire" in their possession. The required 

 permission was readily accorded ; and had not the printing been delayed by my own serious illness 

 during the last winter, and urgent occupations since, it would have been completed some months ago. 



When the present volume was first announced, it was intended to print the whole of Aubrey's 

 manuscript ; but after mature deliberation it has been thought more desirable to select only such 

 passages as directly or indirectly apply to the county of Wilts, or which comprise information really 

 useful or interesting in itself, or curious as illustrating the state of literature and science at the 

 time when they were written. 



Before the general reader can duly understand and appreciate the contents of the present volume 

 it is necessary that he should have some knowledge of the manners, customs, and literature of the 

 age when it was written, and with the lucubrations of honest, but " magotie-headed " John Aubrey, 

 as he is termed by Anthony a Wood. Although I have already endeavoured to portray his mental 

 and personal characteristics, and have carefully marked many of his merits, eccentricities, and 

 foibles, I find, from a more careful examination of his " Natural History of Wiltshire " than I had 

 previously devoted to it, many anecdotes, peculiarities, opinions, and traits, which, whilst they serve 

 to mark the character of the man, afford also interesting memorials of his times. If that age be 

 compared and contrasted with the present, the difference cannot fail to make us exult in living, 

 breathing, and acting in a region of intellect and freedom, which is all sunshine and happiness, 

 opposed to the gloom and illiteracy wliich darkened the days of Aubrey. Even Harvey, Wren, 

 Flamsteed, and Newton, his contemporaries and friends, were slaves and victims to the superstition 

 and fanaticism of their age. 



It has long been customary to regard John Aubrey as a credulous and gossiping narrator of 

 anecdotes of doubtful authority, and as an ignorant believer of the most absurd stories. This notion 

 was grounded chiefly upon the prejudiced testimony of Anthony a Wood, and on the contents of the 

 only work wliich Aubrey published during his lifetime, an amusing collection of " Miscellanies" 

 relating to dreams, apparitions, witchcraft, and similar subjects. Though his " History of Surrey" 

 was of a more creditable character, and elicited the approval of Manning and Bray, the subsequent 

 historians of that county, an unfavourable opinion of Aubrey long continued to prevail. The pub- 

 lication of his " Lives of Eminent Men" tended, however, to raise him considerably in the estimation 



b 



