He builds up a vanished society from tiles and buttons, black-jacks, horn books, and battered pewter vessels. Whatever humanity has touched has a story for him. It is not an accident that the greatest novelist of Scotland was first an antiquary. And, to return to my tale, it was only by accident that John Aubrey, with his interest in witchcraft and mechanical science, in astrology and education, in Stonehenge and the Oxford colleges, did not leave some more considerable monument of his powers than the voluminous scattered papers which were published for the most part long after his death.
What antiquaries suffer from the neglect of the public is a small thing compared to what they suffer at the hands of one another. Aubrey’s biographical materials were compounded, with worse than no acknowledgement, by Anthony à Wood in his Athenae Oxonienses, an Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the University of Oxford (1691–2). This great work, as splendid a benefaction as has ever been conferred by a single donor on any University, was conceived and executed by its author out of love for the place where he was born and had his education. Like a disdainful beauty, the University of Oxford has often been careless of those who love and serve her best. Her native fascination keeps her truest lovers her slaves, and leaves her free to bestow her kindness on those who will not swell her following till they are assured of her favour. Anthony à Wood did not grudge a lifetime spent in the service of Oxford, but that he felt her indifference is evident from his preface, To the Reader:
