or 1626; and in 1642 was entered a gentleman commoner of Trinity college in Oxford. Four years afterwards he was admitted a member of the Inner Temple, and in 1662 elected a member of the Royal Society. He died about the year 1700. It is acknowledged, that his literary attainments were confiderable; that he was a man of good parts, of much learning and great application; a good Latin poet, an excellent naturalift, and, what is more material to our prefent object, a great lover of and indefatigable fearcher into antiquities. That the greater part of his life was devoted to literary purfuits, is afcertained by the works which he has publifhed, the correfpondence which he held with many eminent men, and the collections which he left in manufcript, and which are now repofited in the Afhmolean Mufeum. Among thefe collections is a curious account of our English poets and many other writers. While Wood was preparing his Athene Oxonienfes, this manufcript was lent to him, as appears from many queries in his handwriting in the margin; and his account of Milton, with whom Aubrey was intimately acquainted, is (as has been obferved by Mr. Warton) literally tranfcribed from thence. Wood afterwards quarreled with Mr. Aubrey, whom in the fecond volume of his Fafti, p. 262, he calls his friend, and on whom in his Hiftory of the University of Oxford he bestows the highest encomium; and, after their quarrel, with his ufual warmth, and in

9 « Tranfmiffum autem nobis eft illud epitaphium a viro perhumano, Johanne Alberico, vulgo Aubrey, Armigero, hujus collegii olim generofo commenfali, jam vero é Regia Societate, Londini; viro inquam, tam bono, tam benigno, ut publico folum commodo, nec fibi omnino, natus effe videatur." Hift, et Antig. Univ. Oxon. 1. ii. p. 297.

his loofe diction, he reprefented Aubrey as "a pretender to antiquities, roving, magottie-headed, and little better than crafed." To Wood every lover of antiquity and literary history has very high obligations; and in all matters of fact he may be fafely relied on; but his opinion of men and things is of little value. According to his reprefentation, Dr. Ralph Bathurst, a man highly efteemed by all his contemporaries, was "a most vile perfon," and the celebrated John Locke, "a prating, clamorous, turbulent fellow.” The virtuous and learned Dr. John Wallis, if we are to believe Wood, was a man who could "at any time make black white, and white black, for his own ends, and who had a ready knack at fophiftical evafion. How little his judgment of his contemporaries is to be trufted, is also evinced by his account of the ingenious Dr. South, whom, being offended by one of his witticisms, he has grofsly reviled.' Whatever Wood in a peevish humour may have thought or faid of Mr. Aubrey, by whofe labours he highly profited, or however fantastical Aubrey may have been on the fubject of chemistry and ghosts, his character for veracity has never been impeached; and as a very diligent antiquarian, his teftimony is

Letter from Wood to Aubrey, dated Jan. 16, 1689-90. MSS. Aubrey. No. 15, in Muf. Afhmol. Oxon.-Yet in the preface to his Hiftory of the University of Oxford, he defcribes Dr. Wallis as a man-" eruditione pariter et humanitate præftans."

3" Wood's account of South (fays Mr. Warton) is full of mali, cious reflections and abufive stories: the occafion of which was this. Wood, on a vifit to Dr. South, was complaining of a very painful and dangerous fuppreffion of urine; upon which South in his witty manner, told him, that, if he could not make water, he must make earth.' Wood was fo provoked at this unfeasonable and unexpected jeft, that he went home in a paffion, and wrote South's Life." Life of Ralph Bathurst, p. 184. Compare Wood's Athen. Oxen. II. 1041.

worthy of attention. Mr. Toland, who was well acquainted with him, and certainly a better judge of men than Wood, gives this character of him: "Though he was extremely fuperftitious, or feemed to be fo, yet HE WAS A VERY HONEST MAN, AND

MOST ACCURATE IN HIS ACCOUNT OF MATTERS OF

FACT. But the facts he knew, not the reflections he made, were what I wanted." I do not wish to maintain that all his accounts of our English writers are on these grounds to be implicitly adopted; but it seems to me much more reasonable to question fuch parts of them as feem objectionable, than to reject them altogether, because he may fometimes have been mistaken.

He was acquainted with many of the players, and lived in great intimacy with the poets and other celebrated writers of the laft age; from whom undoubtedly many of his anecdotes were collected. Among his friends and acquaintances we find Hobbes, Milton, Dryden, Ray, Evelyn,' Afhmole, Sir William Dugdale, Dr. Bathurst, Bishop Skinner, Dr. Gale, Sir John Denham, Sir Bennet Hofkyns, (fon of John Hofkyns, who was well acquainted with the poets of Shakspeare's time,) Mr. Jofiah Howe, Toland, and many more." The anecdotes

4 Specimen of a critical hiftory of the Celtick religion, &c. p. 122. 5" With incredible fatisfaction I have perufed your Natural Hiftory of the county of Surrey, and greatly admire both your induftry in undertaking fo profitable a work, and your judgment in the feveral obfervations you have made." Letter from John Evelyn, Efq. to Mr. Aubrey, prefixed to his Antiquities of Surrey.

6 Hobbes, whofe life Aubrey wrote, was born in 1588, Milton in 1608, Dryden in 1630, Ray in 1628, Evelyn in 1621, Ashmole in 1616, Sir W. Dugdale in 1606, Dr. Bathurst in 1620, Bishop Skinner in 1591, Dr. Gale about 1630, Sir John Denham in 1615, Şir Bennet Hofkyns (the fon of John Hofkyns, Ben Jonson's poetical father, who was born in 1566,) about 1600, and Mr. Jof, Howe in 1611.

concerning D'Avenant in Wood's Athene Oxonienfes, which have been printed in a former page, were, like the copious and accurate account of Milton, transcribed literally from Aubrey's papers. What has been there fuggefted, (that D'Avenant was Shakspeare's fon) is confirmed by a fubfequent paffage in the MS. which has been imperfectly obliterated, and which Wood did not print, though in one of his own unpublifhed manufcripts now in the Bodleian library he has himself told the fame ftory. The line which is imperfectly obliterated in a different ink, and therefore probably by another hand than that of Aubrey, tells us, (as Mr. Warton who has been able to trace the words through the obliteration, informs me,) that D'Avenant was Shakspeare's fon by the hoftefs of the Crown inn. The remainder of the context confirms this; for it fays, that "D'Avenant was proud of being thought fo, and had often (in his cups) owned the report to be true, to Butler the poet."-From Dr. Bathurst, Sir Bennet Hofkyns, Lacy the player, and others, Aubrey got fome anecdotes of Ben Jonfon, which, as this part of the manufcript has not been publifhed, I fhall give below; and from

7 Vol. I. [among Mr. Malone's Additional Anecdotes of Shakspeare.] The article relative to this poet immediately precedes that of Shakspeare, and is as follows:

MR. BENJAMIN JOHNSON, Poct-Laureat.

to

"I remember when I was a fcholar at Trin. Coll. Oxon. 1646, I heard Mr. Ralph Bathurst [now Dean of Welles] fay, that Ben: Johnfon was a Warwyckshire man. "Tis agreed, that his father was a miniter; and by his Epiftle DD of Every ManMr. W. Camden, that he was a Weftminfter fcholar, and that Mr. W. Camden was his fchoolmafter. His mother, after his father's death, married a bricklayer, and 'tis grally fayd that he wrought fome time with his father-in-lawe, & pticularly on the garden wall of Lincolns inne next to Chancery lane; & that a knight, a bencher,

Dryden and Mr. William Beefton, (fon of Chrif topher Beefton, Shakspeare's fellow-comedian, who

walking thro, and hearing him repeat fome Greeke verfes out of Homer, difcourfing with him & finding him to have a witt extraordinary, gave him fome exhibition to maintain him at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he was : then he went into the Lowe countreys, and spent fome time, not very long, in the armie; not to the difgrace of [it], as you may find in his Epigrames. Then he came into England, & acted & wrote at the Greene Curtaine, but both ill; a kind of Nursery or obfcure playhouse somewhere in the fuburbs (I think towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell). Then he undertooke againe to write a play, & did hitt it admirably well, viz. Every Man which was his firft

good one. Sergeant Jo. Hofkins of Herefordshire was his Father. I remember his fonne (Sir Bennet Hofkins, Baronet, who was fomething poctical in his youth) told me, that when he defired to be adopted his fonne, No, fayd he, 'tis honour enough for me to be your brother: I am your father's fonne: 'twas he that polished me: I doe acknowledge it. He was [or rather had been] of a clear and faire skin. His habit was very plain. I have heard Mr. Lacy the player fay, that he was wont to weare a coate like a coachman's coate, with fitts under the arm-pitts. He would many times exceede in drinke: Canarie was his beloved liquour: then he would tumble home to bed; & when he had thoroughly perfpired, then to ftudie. I have seen his ftudyeing chaire, which was of ftrawe, fuch as old women ufed; & as Aulus Gellius is drawn in. When I was in Oxon: Bifhop Skinner [Bp of Oxford] who lay at our coll: was wont to fay, that he understood an author as well as any man in England. He mentions in his Epigrames, a fonne that he had, and his epitaph. Long fince in King James time, I have heard my uncle Davers [Danvers] fay, who knew him, that he lived without temple barre at a combe-maker's fhop about the Eleph. Caftle. In his later time he lived in Westminster, in the houfe under whiche you paffe, as you gee out of the church-yard into the old palace; where he dyed. He lyes buried in the north aifle, the path fquare of stones, the reft is lozenge, oppofite to the fcutcheon of Robertus de Ros, with this infeription only on him, in a pavement fquare of blew marble, 14 inches fquare, O RARE BEN: IONSON: which was donne at the charge of Jack Young, afterwards knighted, who walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen pence to cutt it."

It is obfervable that none of the biographers of the laft age, but Aubrey, appear to have known that Jonfon went to the Low Coun tries, in his younger years; a fact which is confirmed by the con