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Brief Lives, Vol. 2

Chapter 40: Notes.
By John Aubrey
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BiographiesBritish LiteratureHistory - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)

About This Book

A collection of concise biographical sketches of contemporaries and earlier figures recorded by an antiquarian observer, combining factual entries—births, offices, publications, and inscriptions—with personal anecdotes, hearsay, heraldic and parish-register notes, bibliographic references, and occasional critical judgments. Entries range from terse records to extended reminiscences, often citing documentary sources or witness statements, and reflect an informal, detail-driven approach aimed at preserving lives, reputations, and local traditions for reference and remembrance.

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658).

[135]Richard Lovelace[R], esq.: he was a most beautifull gentleman.

Geminum, seu lumina, sydus,
 Et dignos Baccho digitos, et Apolline crines,
 Impubesque genas, et eburnea colla, decusque
 Oris, et in niveo mistum candore ruborem.

Ovid. Metamorph.[136] fab. 5 (Echo), lib. III.

Obiit in a cellar in Long Acre, a little before the restauration of his majestie. Mr. Edmund Wyld, etc. have made collections for him, and given him money.

One of the handsomst men of England. He was of ... in Kent, 500 li. per annum and + (quaere E. W.).

He was an extraordinary handsome man, but prowd. He wrote a poem called Lucasta[XI.], 8vo, printed London by Thomas Harper to be sold at the Gun in Ivy lane, 1649[137].

[XI.] Lucasta, Posthumous Poems of Richard Lovelace, esq., with verses of severall of his friends on him: 8vo.

He was of Glocester hall[138], as I have been told.

He had two younger brothers, viz. colonel Francis Lovelace, and another brother <William> that died at Carmarthen (prout per poema).

George Petty, haberdasher, in Fleet Street, carried xxs. to him every Monday morning from Sir ... Many and Charles Cotton, esq., for ... (quaere quot) moneths, but was never repayd[S].

Notes.

[R] In MS. Aubr. 7, fol. 5, is the note:—'Let me see colonel Lovelace's life to insert some verses;' i.e. Aubrey asks back from Anthony Wood MS. Aubr. 8, to insert 'some verses.' This seems not to have been done, unless they be those quoted from Ovid.

[S] The meaning seems to be that these two commissioned Petty to pay Lovelace a weekly allowance, but never re-paid him. Is 'Sir ... Many' Sir John Mennis? George Petty was a distant connexion of Anthony Wood: Clark's Wood's Life and Times, i. 35.