2 



Aubrey's Wiltshire Collections and the Saturday Review. 



Reviewer, because they know the defects of our County History, whilst he does 

 not. He does not know what is new from what is old, and I must therefore 

 really declare his opinion upon the subject to be not worth a straw. 



If he had known, even a little about John Aubrey, of what small value 

 Aubrey's memoranda by themselves would have been, from the crude and dis- 

 jointed condition in which he left them; if he had known that in order 

 sometimes to make Aubrey's memoranda intelligible at all, a connected manorial 

 history of considerable length was absolutely neoessary : if he had ever carefully 

 examined Aubrey's original Manuscript, and had compared it with the volume 

 before his eyes ; if he had known that Aubrey himself had left on record his 

 earnest hope "that his memoranda might some day fall into the hands of an 

 antiquary who would make a handsome volume of them ; " the Reviewer would 

 never have been guilty of the truly laughable absurdity of saying that I " do 

 not appreciate Aubrey ! " If I do not, I should be glad to know who does ? 

 I am sure it is not the Reviewer. 



If he had known a little, ever so little, about myself, he would not have 

 attributed to me as he so impertinently does, a tone which I never in my life 

 assumed, and motives which I never for a moment entertained. He would not 

 have charged me 'with vanity and self-glorification, a charge which I leave to 

 be thrown back upon him with derision, by all who know me in the county of 

 Wilts. 



So then we have a writer, knowing nothing either of "Wiltshire History, or 

 of Aubrey, or me, putting himself forward as a judge of this book ! The result 

 is exactly what might be expected. " When you have no case, abuse the 

 attorney on the opposite side." Not being able to find, or even to pick, a hole 

 of the slightest importance in the book itself, he has recourse to the very 

 gentlemanlike alternative of abusing me. But what I have ever said, written 

 or done, to provoke this attack, I am really quite at a loss to imagine. 



However, he shall have my answer upon this point : but it will not be in his 

 own vein. I belong, he says, to an old-fashioned school, which may be true 

 enough, and any such remark I can assure him would be taken by me with 

 perfect good humour. But there is something in the school to which I belong, 

 which I do not find in that of which he no doubt considers himself a leading 

 ornament. It has always been my habit to express my own opinion modestly. 

 I have written a good deal on subjects conneoted with families and individuals, 

 but I never used an expression that (so far as I am aware) ever gave, or could 

 give, offence to any one. If I ever happened to possess a fragment of informa- 

 tion not found out by any one else, I never gave myself any airs upon the occasion, 

 much less did I ever charge anyone with stupid and obstinate ignorance. This 

 may be old-fashioned. It is certainly not the fashion of the Saturday Reviewer ; 

 but he must excuse me if in spite of the great provocation he has given me to 

 depart from it, I continue to prefer my fashion to his own. 



Very simply therefore do I tell him, that if instead of lecturing me about the 

 date of an old Saxon king or that of the dissolution of a monastery in Leicester- 

 shire, he had himself paid attention to a much more modern date, viz., that of 

 the very book whioh he was reviewing, he would have escaped two great 

 blunders into one of which, I think, and the other, I am certain, he has fallen. 



1. He has pronounced this whole volume "a thorough mistake." But he 



