III. Aim of this Edition.
In presenting a text of Aubrey's 'Lives,' an editor, on more than one important point, has to decide between alternatives.
1. Shall all, or some only, of the lives be given?
It is plain, from a glance over the MSS., that many of the lives are of little interest; in some cases, because they contain more marks of omission than statements of fact; in other cases, because they give mainly excerpts from prefaces of books; and so on. A much more interesting, as well as handier, book would be produced, if the editor were to reject all lives in which Aubrey has nothing of intrinsic value to show.
2. In the lives selected, shall the whole, or parts only, of what Aubrey has written be given?
Many sentences occur, which declare only Aubrey's ignorance of a date, or a place, or the title of a book. In other cases, dull and imperfect catalogues of writings are given. The omission of these would be a service to the whole, like the cutting of dead branches out of a shrub.
3. In constituting the text, how much, or how little, notice is to be taken of the imperfections of Aubrey's copy?
The simplest, and, from some points of view, the most effective, course would be to treat Aubrey's rough draft as if it were one's own, rejecting (without comment) one or other of two alternatives, supplying (without mark) a missing word or date, omitting a second version (though having some minor peculiarities) of a statement, and so on. In this way, with a minimum of trouble to the editor, a smooth text would be produced, which would spare the reader much irritation.
4. How far is the text to be annotated, the editor supplying Aubrey's abundant omissions, and correcting his many mistakes?
In respect of all these questions, the aim of the present edition, and the reasons for the decision taken in each case, can be stated very briefly and decidedly.
1, and 2. This edition seeks to give in full all that Aubrey has written in his four chief MSS. of biographies, MSS. Aubrey 6, 7, 8, and 9.
The entire contents of these MSS. will thus be placed beyond that risk of perishing, to which they must have remained liable so long as they were found only in MS., and they will, for what they are worth, henceforth be accessible to all.
Some things in Aubrey's writing offend not merely against our present canons of good taste, but against good morals. The conversation of the people among whom Aubrey moved, although they were gentry both in position and in education, was often vulgar, and occasionally foul, as judged by us. I have dealt with these lives as historical documents, leaving them, with a very few excisions, to bear, unchecked, their testimony as to the manners and morals of Restoration England.
3. This edition seeks to present faithfully Aubrey's text as he wrote it, neglecting only absolute minutiae.
(a) A plain text is given of what Aubrey wrote, taking, as seemed most convenient, sometimes his first version of a sentence or a word, sometimes his alternative version. The rejected alternatives are given in the textual notes, as 'duplicate with'; and occasionally the erasures, as 'substituted for.' Many of these notes are very trivial; but their presence, which after all gives little trouble, provides a complete view of the MS. text. I believe also that in this way I have preserved for the collector of words some quaint forms and expressions for which he will thank me, and provided the student of English style with some apt instances of the way in which terse native words have been replaced in our written language by feebler Latinisms.
(b) I have been careful to give, in every case, Aubrey's own spelling, with or without final or medial 'e,' with single or double letters, 'ie' or other diphthong where we write 'ei,' and the like. The English of Aubrey's age is so like our own that it is not unimportant to mark even its minor differences.
All merely artificial tricks of writing (wch for which, and the like) have been neglected.
(c) Where a date, a word, or a name has been inserted, the insertion is enclosed in angular brackets < >. Where it seemed requisite to mark that a word or phrase was added at a later date, or by another hand, square brackets have been used []. The use of these symbols, borrowed from Vahlen's edition of Aristotle's Poetics, has been censured as pedantic, but I know of no clearer or shorter way of making plain in a printed text just what is, and what is not, in the MS. text.
(d) Punctuation is generally absent in Aubrey's text, as might be expected, and where it is found, it is often misleading. The points and marks in this edition are therefore such as seemed to make the meaning clear to myself, and therefore, I hope, to others.
(e) As regards the order of the paragraphs, Aubrey's text has been given, where convenient, sentence by sentence, and page by page. But I have taken full liberty to bring into their proper place marginalia, interlinear notes, addenda on opposite pages, &c. In some cases, indeed, to give in print the MS. text sentence by sentence is to do it injustice. In the MS., the difference of inks between earlier and later notes, the difference of pen-strokes (on one day with a firm pen, on another with a scratchy quill), and similar nuances, impress the eye with a sequence of paragraphs which in print can be shown only by redistribution. For example, I claim that the life of Milton, in this edition, is, from its bolder treatment, truer to the MS., than the servile version in the old edition.
4. As regards notes and explanations. Aubrey's lives supply an inviting field for comment, correction, and addition. But, even so treated, they will never be a biographical dictionary. Their value lies not in statement of bibliographical or other facts, but in their remarkably vivid personal touches, in what Aubrey had seen himself and what his friends had told him. The notes therefore seek to supply no more than indications of outstanding features of the text, identifications of Aubrey's informants, or necessary parallels from his letters.