Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects

by John Aubrey

This etext was produced by Michael Coker.

MISCELLANIES

UPON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

BY

JOHN AUBREY, F.RS.

CONTENTS

LIFE of Aubrey
Dedication to the First Edition
Day-Fatality; or, Some Observations of Days Lucky and Unlucky
Day-Fatality of Rome
Of Fatalities of Families and Places
Ostenta; or, Portents
Omens
Dreams
Apparitions
Voices
Impulses
Knockings
Blows invisible
Prophesies
Miranda
Magick
Transportation by an invisible Power
Visions in a Beryl or Crystal
Visions without a Glass or Crystal
Converse with Angels and Spirits
Corps-candles in Wales
Oracles
Ecstacy
Glances of Love and Malice
An accurate account of Second-Sighted men in Scotland
Additaments of Second-Sight
Farther Additaments
Appendix

THE LIFE OF JOHN AUBREY.

JOHN AUBREY, the subject of this brief notice, was born at Easton Pierse, (Parish of Kington,) in Wiltshire, on the 12th of March, 1626; and not on the 3rd of November in that year, as stated by some of his biographers. He was the eldest son of Richard Aubrey, Esq. of Burleton, Herefordshire, and Broad Chalk, Wiltshire. Being, according to his own statement, "very weak, and like to dye," he was baptized on the day of his birth, as appears by the Register of Kington. At an early age (1633) he was sent to the Grammar School at Yatton Keynel, and in the following year he was placed under the tuition of Mr. Robert Latimer, the preceptor of Hobbes, a man then far advanced in years.

On the 2nd of May, 1642, being then sixteen years of age, Aubrey was entered a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, where he appears to have applied himself closely to study. He however cherished a strong predilection for English History and Antiquities, which was fostered and encouraged at this time by the appearance of the "Monasticon Anglicanum", to which he contributed a plate of Osney Abbey, an ancient ruin near Oxford, entirely destroyed in the Civil Wars.