I. Origin of the 'Lives.'
Aubrey sought and obtained an introduction to Anthony Wood in August 1667. He was keenly interested in antiquarian studies, and had the warmest love for Oxford; he had been a contemporary in Trinity College with Wood's brother, Edward; and so was drawn to Wood on hearing that he was busy with researches into the History of the University of Oxford.
Aubrey was one of those eminently good-natured men, who are very slothful in their own affairs, but spare no pains to work for a friend. He offered his help to Wood; and, when it was decided to include in Wood's book short notices of writers connected with Oxford, that help proved most valuable. Aubrey, through his family and family-connexions, and by reason of his restless goings-to-and-fro, had a wide circle of acquaintance among squires and parsons, lawyers and doctors, merchants and politicians, men of letters and persons of quality, both in town and country. He had been, until his estate was squandered, an extensive and curious buyer of books and MSS. And above all, being a good gossip, he had used to the utmost those opportunities of inquiry about men and things which had been afforded him by societies grave, like the Royal Society, and frivolous, as coffee-house gatherings and tavern clubs. The scanty excerpts, given in these volumes, from letters written by him between 1668 and 1673, supply a hint of how deeply Wood's Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis, published in 1674, was indebted to the multifarious memory and unwearying inquiries of the enthusiastic Aubrey.
Dean Fell's request that Wood should notice Oxford writers and bishops in his Historia had suggested to Wood the plan of, and set him to work upon, the larger and happier scheme of the Athenae Oxonienses, an 'exact history of all the writers and bishops that have had their education in ... Oxford' since 1500. He engaged his friend Aubrey to help him in his undertaking, by committing to writing in a more systematic way, for Wood's benefit, his multitudinous recollections of men and books. He was dexterous enough to supply the additional motive, that, after serving his friend's turn, Aubrey's collections might be gathered together, preserved for a while in some safe and secret place, and, when personal feelings were saved by lapse of time, be published and secure their writer a niche in the Temple of Fame.
It was now by no means easy for Aubrey to undertake any extensive, and especially any connected work. Being by this time bankrupt, and a hanger-on at the tables of kindred and acquaintances, he had to fall in with his patrons' habits, at the houses where he visited; to sit with them till they wearied of their carousings in the small hours of the morning; and to do his writing next forenoon, before they had slept off their wine.
Still, his interest in the subject, and his desire to help his friend prevailed; and we soon find him thanking Wood for setting him to work. March 27, 1680[1]:—''Twill be a pretty thing, and I am glad you putt me on it. I doe it playingly. This morning being up by 10, I writt two <lives>: one was Sir John Suckling[2], of whom I wrote a leafe and ½ in folio.' May 22, 1680[3]:—'My memoires of lives' <is now> 'a booke of 2 quires, close written: and after I had began it, I had such an impulse on my spirit that I could not be at quiet till I had donne it.' Sept. 8, 1680[4]:—'My booke of lives ... they will be in all about six-score, and I beleeve never any in England were delivered so faithfully and with so good authority.'
Aubrey, therefore, began these lives[5] on the suggestion of, and with a desire to help Anthony Wood.
Among the lives so written were several of mathematicians and men of science. And another friend of Aubrey's, Dr. Richard Blackburne, advised him to collect these by themselves, and add others to them, with a view to a biographical history of mathematical studies in England. To this suggestion Aubrey was predisposed through his pride at being 'Fellow of the Royal Society,' and for some time he busied himself in that direction[6].
In the same way, although the bulky life of Thomas Hobbes[7] was partly undertaken in fulfilment of a promise to Hobbes himself, an old personal friend, the motive which induced Aubrey to go on with it was a desire to supply Dr. Blackburne with material for a Latin biography, Vitae Hobbianae Auctarium, published in 1681.
These matters will be found more fully explained in the notices which Aubrey has prefixed to the several MSS. of his biographical collections, as described below.