Memoir of John Aubrey, F.R.S.; embracing his autobiographical sketches, a brief review of his personal and literary merits, and an account of his works, with extracts from his correspondence, anecdotes of some of his contemporaries, and of the times in which he lived / By John Britton ... Published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society [with its 5th Annual Report, 1845].
- John Britton
- Date:
- 1845
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoir of John Aubrey, F.R.S.; embracing his autobiographical sketches, a brief review of his personal and literary merits, and an account of his works, with extracts from his correspondence, anecdotes of some of his contemporaries, and of the times in which he lived / By John Britton ... Published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society [with its 5th Annual Report, 1845]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
90/158 page 68
![“You need not fear my playing the plagiary with your MSS., tho’ I must excuse your jealousy of such a thing, Antony Wood having dealt so ungenteely by you.” * The letters containing these passages were respectively written in May and De- cember, 1693. Aubrey himself accused Wood of this offence in the following remarkable letter, dated nearly two years after the circumstance referred to had occurred. As they do not appear to have corresponded during the whole of that interval, it may have been a sort of reconciliatory letter. At all events the manner in which Aubrey mentions the subject is highly creditable to his feelings : “ Mr. Wood, “ Borstall, Sept. 2, 1694.” “T thought I should have heard from you ere this time. I have been ill ever since I came from Oxford, till within these five days, of a surfeit of peaches, &c.; so that I could I was faine to send to Kit White for a good Lusty Vomit. diq not eat a bitt of flesh for six days, but abstinence hath pretty well settled me again. Your unkindness and choleric humour was a great addition to my ilnes. You know I always loved you, and never thought I took paines enough to serve you; and I was told by severall at Oxford, and so the last yeare, that you can never afford me a good word. I desired you to give to the Museum my draught of Osney, which cost me xxs. when I was of Trin. Coll: ’twas donne by one Hesketh, a Hedge-Priest, who painted under Mr Dobson ;-{ also I desired you to give the entertainment to the Queen at Bushells’ Rocks ; your Nephews and Neices will not value them. You have cutt out a matter of 40 pages out of one of my volumes, as also the index [was ever any body so unkind ?] and I remember you told me coming from Heddington, that there were some things in it that would cutt my throat. I thought you so deare a friend that I might have entrusted my life in your hands ; and now your unkindness doth almost break my heart. If you will returne these papers to me & the other things * Originals, in the Collection of Letters to Aubrey, ut supra. (These are printed in Letters Jrom the Bodleian, vol. ii. p. 164—169.) + See ante, pp. 14, 51, as to this drawing of Osney Abbey. “Mr. Dobson” was the well known portrait painter, patronized by Vandyck and Charles I. He was appointed serjeant-painter to the king, and died in 1646. Neither the drawings of Osney, nor the other subject mentioned in this letter, are now to be found in the Ashmolean Museum.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33522169_0090.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
