John Aubrey: My Own Life (45 page)

. . .

I fear the truths
³¹
set out in my book will breed trouble –
veritas odium parit
(truth begets hatred). I have written too much truth, some of it of those who are still alive. In my book the truth is set down in its pure and natural state, not falsely coloured. This pleases me as an antiquary, but my Lives are not fit to be published. I have been writing them for my friend Mr Wood and have included many rude, undigested, unpolished and frivolous things.

. . .

I met with
³²
old Mr Beeston, ‘the Chronicle of the Stage’, today and we talked about the English poets he has known. He will give me notes on their lives. His father was master of the . . . playhouse. Knowing the uncertainty of life, and how few there are who transmit memories to posterity, I am ever more eager to pursue what I have begun.

. . .

I have written up the Lives of Mr Shakespeare and Mr Spenser:

Mr William Shakespeare

Mr William Shakespeare was born
³³
at Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father’s trade, but when he killed a calf he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher’s son in this town that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural wit, his acquaintance and coetanean, but died young.

This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess, about 18; and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well (now Ben Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor). He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low; and his plays took well.

He was a handsome, well shaped man: very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit. The humour of . . . the constable, in Midsomernight’s Dreame, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks – I think it was Midsomer night that he happened to lye there – which is the road from London to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxford: Mr Josias Howe is of that parish, and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men daily where ever they came. One time as he was at the tavern at Stratford-super-Avon, one Combes, an old rich usurer, was to be buried, he makes there this extemporary epitaph:

Ten in the hundred the Devill allowes,

But Combes will have twelve, he sweares and vowes:

If any one askes who lies in this tombe,

‘Hoh!’ quoth the Devill, ‘’tis my John o Combe.’

He was wont to go to his native country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 2 or 300 li. per annum there and thereabout to a sister. Vide: his epitaph in Dugdale’s Warwickshire.

I have heard Sir William Davenant and Mr Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say that he had a most prodigious wit, and did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He was wont to say (Ben Jonson’s
Underwoods
) that he ‘never blotted out a line in his life’; said Ben Jonson, ‘I wish he had blotted-out a thousand.’

His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles
mores hominum
. Now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood.

Though, as Ben Jonson says of him, that he had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster, in the country – this from Mr . . . Beeston.

Mr Edmund Spenser
³⁴

Mr Edmund Spenser was of Pembroke-hall in Cambridge; he missed the fellowship there, which Bishop Andrewes got. He was an acquaintance and frequenter of Sir Erasmus Dreyden. His mistress, Rosalind, was a kinswoman of Sir Erasmus’s lady’s. The chamber there at Sir Erasmus’s is still called Mr Spenser’s chamber. Lately, at the College taking-down the wainscot of his chamber, they found an abundance of cards, with stanzas of the
Faerie Queen
written on them. – This from John Dryden, Esq., Poet Laureate.

Mr Beeston says he was a little man, wore short hair, a little band and little cuffs.

Mr Samuel Woodford (the poet, who paraphrased the Psalms) lives in Hampshire near Alton, and he told me that Mr Spenser lived sometime in these parts, in this delicate sweet air; where he enjoyed his muse, and writ good part of his verses.

I have said before that Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh were his acquaintance. He had lived some time in Ireland, and wrote a description of it, which is printed with Morison’s History, or Description, of Ireland.

Sir John Denham told me that Archbishop Usher, Lord Primate of Armagh, was acquainted with him, by this token: when Sir William Davenant’s
Gondibert
came forth, Sir John asked the Lord Primate if he had seen it. Said the Primate, ‘Out upon him, with his vaunting preface, he speaks against my old friend, Edmund Spenser.’

In the south crosse-aisle of Westminster abbey, next the door, is this inscription:

Here lies (expecting the second coming of our Saviour Christ Jesus) the body of Edmund Spenser, the Prince of Poets of his time; whose divine spirit needs no other witness then the works which he left behind him. He was borne in London, in the year 1510, and died in the year 1596.

. . .

8 August

My mother has written to tell me that she has been ill for three weeks and now her eyes are a little sore.

. . .

At my mother’s request
³⁵
, Mr Paschall has supplied his wife’s recipe for
lapis calamine
for sore eyes, and has explained how to apply the cure. The ointment is made from finely powdering the
lapis calamine
and mixing it with butter.

. . .

15 August

On this day
³⁶
my brother Tom died at Sarum. I will write to my friend the astrologer Charles Snell, for an account of my poor brother’s demise.

. . .

Charles Snell tells me he had not heard my brother was ill until he was dead. He had no learned physician with him, only drunken Jack Chapman, the sometime apothecary at Bath.

. . .

September

I have brought
³⁷
more of my Lives to Oxford for Mr Wood. I have been here a week, refreshing my soul among ingenious acquaintances. I feel I owe adoration to Oxford’s very buildings and groves, and am ready almost to offer sacrifice, when I find myself growing young again here. I am reminded of Ovid’s account of Medea rejuvenating old Aeson that gave my friend Francis Potter the idea of blood transfusion.

. . .

October

It is ringing all over St Albans that Sir Harbottle Grimston, Master of the Rolls, removed the coffin of renowned Lord Bacon to make room for his own in the vault of St Michael’s Church.

. . .

December

I am an ignorant fellow of but little learning. It has been suggested to me that I might succeed Dr Lamphire as Principal of Hart Hall. But surely they will choose some more learned man, like Dr Plot.

Mr Ashmole and I
³⁸
have been making a collection of the nativities of learned men from the manuscripts of old English astrologers who lived over a hundred years ago. These manuscripts used to belong to Mr William Lilly – who died at his house in Hersham on 9 June this year – but now they are in the possession of Mr Ashmole. We work on the manuscripts together: Mr Ashmole turning over the pages and reading them aloud while I transcribe. By April I hope we will have got through forty volumes. After Christmas I will visit him at his house in Lambeth every Sunday to this purpose. Each volume takes us about an hour. Also, after Christmas, when the opiating quality of the mince pies has been exhaled, I will continue with Mr Beeston recording the details he remembers of the lives of the poets.

Mr Ashmole also has
³⁹
Mr Lilly’s account of his own life. He was born on May Day and if he had lived until next May he would have been full fourscore. In the last almanac that Mr Lilly wrote by his own hand in 1677, before he went blind, he predicted the great comet that appeared last year. I must remember to bind up the almanac with some other pamplets, for it is very considerable and should not be lost.

But what encouragement does one have to do such things, for which one receives no thanks, but only scorn and contempt:
O curva in terras anima
(Oh, crooked souls that bow to earth).

. . .

St John the Evangelist’s Day

Today I was smoking
⁴⁰
a pipe of tobacco at my friend Mr Wylde’s house when it suddenly came to me that Mr Wood might succeed Dr Lamphire at Hart Hall and secure himself an income. He is a man who makes no bustle in the world, but who is there to compare with him in merit?

. . .

I am too late
⁴¹
! Old Mr Beeston has died before I could get from him more details of the lives of the English poets! Alas! Alas! Those details have gone with him into oblivion and nothing can retrieve them now. He died at his house in Bishopgate Street. Mr Shipey in Somerset House has his papers.

. . .

I went to visit
⁴²
Mr Fabian Philips and took down his life from his mouth. His house is over against the middle of Lincoln’s Inn garden in Chancery Lane. He reproached me with never finishing any of my work. He was a barrister at Middle Temple, but grows blind and lonely and miserable now. I must see him again to cheer him. He told me that sixty-nine years ago, there were only two attorneys in the whole of Worcestershire. But now there is one in every market town, about a hundred, he believes.

Two days before
⁴³
Charles I was beheaded Mr Fabian Philips wrote a ‘Protestation Against the Intended Murder of the King’ and printed it and caused it to be put upon the posts. When all the courts in Westminster Hall were voted down, he wrote a book to justify them and the Speaker and Keepers of the Liberty sent him thanks. Mr Fabian Philips assures me that King Charles’s plain coffin cost just six shillings.

. . .

The Earl of Clarendon
⁴⁴
tells me that when his father was writing his history of our times – from the reign of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II – the pen fell out of his hand. He picked it up to continue writing and it fell again. This is how he realised that he had palsy. It is said the history is very well done, but his son will not print it. Nor will he print his father’s Life, written by himself, because he says it is too soon (his father died in 1674).

. . .

I have consulted
⁴⁵
Sir James Long, of Draycot Cerne in Wiltshire, on the cutting of a canal to join the rivers Thames and Avon. He has referred me to Bills in Parliament for this and another such project, but expresses himself strongly against it (considering the plan unfeasible, spoiling of land, and proposed only by adventurers who do not intend to act on their proposals, etc.). He mentions alternative routes for the cutting, and the objection to each. Cutting through Cricklade is a possibility, and Sir James Long has consulted his cousin, who will help. He warns of stony ground and scarcity of water, but is glad to be of service, even so, and will await my response. Meanwhile, he interests himself in witch trials.

. . .

I have taken care of Sir James Long’s hawk, and he has reimbursed me.

. . .

The second reading
⁴⁶
of the Bill for marrying the rivers Thames and Avon by a three-mile cut near Malmesbury has revived in my mind the notion I have entertained for many years of making a boat to be rowed with sheels, or paddles, by a crank instead of oars. Such a boat would suit better the narrowness of the cut and be easier to propel against the strong stream. I think Mr Potter’s concave cylinders could be fitted to the bottom of the boats.

. . .

London has become
⁴⁷
so big and populous that the New River of Middleton can only serve the pipes to private houses twice a week.

. . .

Anno 1682

Easter Eve

Now that the warmer weather comes on I grow exceedingly active and begin to consider that we are all mortal men, and that we must not lose TIME.

If Mr Wood confirms he is alive and in Oxford, I will send him my collections – I would not have them go astray.

When Lord Norris
⁴⁸
of Rycote comes to Oxfordshire, I will certainly wait on him, for he has been kind in presenting me with a map of Rome by Pyrrho Ligurio, which should be engraved by Mr White, Mr Loggan’s scholar. I hope Mr Wood will subscribe to this good work.

. . .

I have had
⁴⁹
my Designatio de Easton Piers bound up between hard boards to preserve it.

. . .

I have now sent
⁵⁰
to Mr Wood the third volume of my Lives. I have also sent him Mr Hobbes’s recently published Tracts.

. . .

When I was staying
⁵¹
with Sir Robert Henley in Hants., in solitude and secluded among the beech trees, I wrote a trifle that I am minded to show to Mr Wood. It is a description in verse and prose of the landscape that was within range of view.