concerning Anthony Wood, whom he termed "the strangest and least agreeable creature who ever rendered important service to English literature." "A large, lean, gaunt man, with a sour face, stooping shoulders and shambling gait, Anthony Wood," he wrote, "had a sharp, spiteful temper, that in no way belied the querulous expression of a countenance which was forbidding without being misshapen."
If Mr. Wood really did have "a sharp, spiteful temper," which is not unlikely, it is perhaps fortunate for Mr. Jeaffreson that Mr. Wood had been dead for some time when these lines were printed. Mr. Jeaffreson went on to say that Wood, "possessing no intellect that qualified him for higher work than the labor of grubbing and ferreting through old parchments for facts of comparatively small importance, spent his life in the congenial toil of an antiquary, surrounded by materials adapted to his peculiar kind of curiosity." This, as coming from Mr. Jeaffreson, might have hurt the feelings of the present chronicler and grubber after facts, were it not for his realization of the truth that Mr. Jeaffreson had, in two good-sized volumes, been doing the very same thing himself, frequently quoting Mr. Anthony Wood in the doing of it. And this encourages the present ferreter to quote, not only Mr. Wood, but
