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 which 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 which Aubrey published during his lifetime,-
an amusing collection of "Miscellanies" relating to dreams,
apparitions, witchcraft, and similar subjects.
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