Anthony Wood

“ He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good.' Anthony à Wood says: 'He was a person endowed with rare gifts; he was a noted theologist and preacher, a curious critic in several matters, an excellent mathematician and experimentist, and one as well seen in mechanisms and new philosophy, of which he was a great promoter, as any man of his time. He also highly advanced the study and perfection of astronomy both at Oxford and London ”

“ In 1667 he had made the acquaintance of Anthony à Wood at Oxford, and when Wood began to gather materials for his invaluable Athenae Oxonienses, Aubrey offered to collect information for him. From time to time he forwarded memoranda to him, and in 1680 he began to promise the “Minutes for Lives,” which Wood was to use at his discretion. He left the task of verification largely to Wood. As a hanger-on in great houses he had little time for systematic work, and he wrote the “Lives” in the early morning while his hosts were sleeping off the effects of the dissipation of the night before. ”

“ As the year 1679 is also within the stated date-range of Ward's departure, the existence of the broadsheet must count marginally against his being the author of PdT.
I can cast no further light on this mystery beyond proposing that if the story of the exiled poet is in fact a fabrication, the poem may have been the work of a younger (b. 1661) and Protestant "T.W." in the person of Thomas Wood, Anthony à Wood's nephew, later celebrated as a legal writer, poet, and controversialist and for his fondness for anonymous and pseudonymous publication. ”

“ The wood is very hard, and impervious to the white ants and to water. It is a question whether any wood has come into man’s use which is at the same time so durable and so easily worked. It may be that, after all, the hopes of the West Australian Micawbers will be realised in jarrah-wood. ”

“ The ravines between the spurs of the mountains which run down to the sea are full of thick timber, and thus has grown up this peculiarity of industry by which the people of the Knysna support themselves. But wood is sometimes a drug,—as I was assured it was at the time of my visit,—and then the people are very badly off indeed. They will do nothing else. The land around will produce anything if some little care be taken as to irrigation. Any amount of vegetables might be grown and sent by boat to Capetown or Algoa Bay. But no! The people have learned to cut wood, and have learned nothing else. ”

“ And even Dutch woodcutters will become civilized when the schoolmaster gradually makes his way among them. But I did express myself as disappointed when I was told that nothing was ever done to restore the forests as the hill-sides are laid bare by the axe. There will be an end to the wood even on the spurs of the Outiniqua range, if no care be taken to assist the reproduction of nature. The Government of the Cape Colony should look to this, as do the Swiss Cantons and the German Duchies. ”

“ The appearance of the new-comer was extremely prepossessing; and, after his trepidation had a little subsided, Wood began to regard him with some degree of interest. Evidently in the flower of his age, he was scarcely less remarkable for symmetry of person than for comeliness of feature; and, though his attire was plain and unpretending, it was such as could be worn only by one belonging to the higher ranks of society. His figure was tall and commanding, and the expression of his countenance (though somewhat disturbed by his recent exertion) was resolute and stern. ”

“ Meanwhile he practiced his profession and held the office of county attorney for many years. When the land office was established at Sauk Rapids he was appointed receiver and served a number of years. He was a member of the first state legislature. In 1869 he was elected president of the New Athens College, Greensburg, Kentucky, and served a short time, when he contracted the disease that afterward terminated his earthly career. Mr. Wood was a man of more than ordinary ability, an eloquent speaker, a fluent and gifted writer, whose influence will long be felt. ”

“ Here he was always at home, and it was characteristic of the man that he was as equally at ease, equally happy, 'rubbing a salamander' at the Orpheus as at the council table of Harvard. With artist and artizan, mechanic or musician, professor or publicist, Dr. Wood was always on the same plane, equally happy, equally admired and admiring. It is to be doubted if he had an enemy in the world, and although such a condition generally predicates a nonentity it may be safely affirmed that if he had an enemy that man's enmity was a compliment. ”

“ A bishopric was expected for him; but he drifted off the highroad to promotion into hopeless insolvency. ‘He was a shiftless man as to worldly affairs,’ Wood testifies, ‘and his tenants and relatives dealt so unkindly with him that they cozened him out of the profits of his parsonages, and kept him so indigent that he wanted necessaries, even paper and ink, to his dying day.’ He resided for some years at Brereton Hall, Cheshire, as the guest of William, third lord Brereton, who had been his pupil at Breda ”

“ Our Water-poet found leisure to write fourscore books, some of which occasioned diversion enough in their time, and were thought worthy to be collected in a folio volume. Mr. Wood observes, that had he had learning equal to his natural genius, which was excellent, he might have equalled, if not excelled, many who claim a great share in the temple of the muses. Upon breaking out of the rebellion, 1642, he left London, and retired to Oxford, where he was much esteemed for his facetious company ”

“ After he had gotten some feathers at Martock, he took his flight to London,” and opened a school in Goldsmiths’ Rents, Cripplegate. From this school, which had as many as 300 pupils, there issued, says Wood, “more churchmen and statesmen than from any school taught by one man in England.” In the course of his London career “he was made master of arts of Cambridge, and soon after incorporated at Oxon.” Such was his success that he was enabled to buy an estate at Otford near Sevenoaks, Kent, to which he retired from London in 1636, still, however, carrying on his profession of schoolmaster. ”

“ After studying at Sedan and Leyden, he repaired to Cambridge, where he received the degree of D.D. About 1625, after an imprisonment at Dunkirk, he was appointed to the living (refused by his father) of St. John's, Chester, but there is no trace in the church books of his having resided there. In 1640, however, on becoming D.D. at Leyden, he described himself as holding that benefice. Wood could not ascertain whether he held any English preferment prior to the civil war, but he was rector of Witherley, Leicestershire, in 1633, and of Wheldrake, Yorkshire, in 1641. ”

“ In the practice of his profession he was able to do a lasting service to his commanding officer. General Miles suffered a grave accident to his leg when a horse fell upon it. It was the opinion of the surgeon who attended him that amputation would be necessary. But the General was of no mind to beat a one-legged retreat in the midst of a highly interesting and successful career. Captain Wood had inspired confidence in him as an Indian fighter--a confidence so strong that he thought it might not be misplaced if it became confidence in him as a doctor--and so Wood was summoned. ”

“ But he still laboured at a continuation of his Oxford biographies, to be published as an ‘appendix’ to the ‘Athenæ.’ Among his friends at this time were Arthur Charlett, master of University College, White Kennett, and Thomas Tanner. Wood had a sharp illness on 1 Nov. 1695; about the 11th he again fell ill; Charlett saw him on the 22nd, and told him he was dying. Wood manfully settled his affairs and prepared for death. ”

“ In 1648 he was ejected from his fellowship by the parliamentary visitors, but during the Commonwealth practised physic with some success at Oxford. Wood in his 'Autobiography' says he belonged to a set of royalists 'who esteemed themselves virtuosi or wits,' and was sometimes the 'natural droll of the company.' He was Wood's physician, and tried to cure his deafness. ”

“ When Laud was taunted with giving preferment only to men ‘popishly inclined,’ he replied that he disposed of livings to ‘divers good and orthodox men, as to Doctor Jackson of Canterbury,’ to whom he had given ‘an hospital.’ Wood says that he ‘mostly seemed to be a true son of the church of England.’ He nevertheless found favour with the parliament, as he continued in office until his death in November 1646. ”

“ The declaration of authorship came as a surprise, for the tales, which are subdued, quite unmelodramatic, and, at their best, approximate Mrs. Gaskell's in manner, had been held by some of the critics to exhibit qualities in which Mrs. Wood was believed to be deficient.
Shortly after her husband's death in 1866, Mrs. Henry Wood removed from Kensington to St. John's Wood Park, South Hampstead. There she lived for the remainder of her life, working assiduously at her novels. As may be gathered from their pages, she was a strictly orthodox churchwoman and a strong conservative. ”

“ It was all so natural, Wood said, that seeing it sudden that way give him a first-class jolt. For a minute, he said, he couldn’t help thinking it was the real thing. As for the little man––and he likely would have took matters just the same, and no blame to him, if his feet had been as hard as anybody’s––he swallowed the show whole. ”

“ And yet he assumed that it would be absolutely impossible for him to abandon his drudgery in order to devote himself solely to the series of essays on which he had pinned his hopes of success. His serious work, as he called it, made little progress when interrupted at every step by the necessity for writing twaddle about trash.
It may be objected that George Wood should not have written twaddle, but should have employed his best 8energies in the improvement of second class literature by systematically telling the truth about it. Unfortunately the answer to such a stricture is not far to seek. ”

“ But the most minute description of George Wood’s physical characteristics would convey no such impression as he produced upon those who first saw him. He was discontented with himself as well as with his surroundings, and his temper was clouded by perpetual disappointment. Sometimes dull and apathetic, there were moments when a vicious energy gleamed in his dark eyes, and when he looked like what fighting men call an ugly customer. Mirth was never natural to him, and when he laughed aloud there was scarcely the semblance of a smile upon his features. ”

“ When Wood first came out in 1903, the army in the Philippines didn't know him. There were plenty of officers who reviled him as a favorite of the White House, and cussed him out for it. Pretty soon the army began to realize that he was a hustler; that he knew a good deal about the soldier's game; that he did things and did them right; that, when reveille sounded before daybreak, he was usually up and dressed before {184} us; that, when a man was down and out, and he happened to be near, he'd get off his horse and see what the matter was and fix the fellow up, if he could ”

“ For these and similar hits, his uncle, a Roman catholic, ‘dashed his name out of his last will.’ Owen's epigrams, which exhibit what Wood calls ‘an ingenious liberty of joking,’ won great popularity, and retained it longer abroad than at home. He deals freely in anagrams, puns, and the like, and at best is an imitator of Martial; but he will always be read with interest for his contemporary allusions and his sprightly good sense. ”

“ All for the sake of George Wood who, conscious that many if not all were in deep trouble, anxiety or suffering, was driving his pen unceasingly from one side of a piece of paper to the other, with an expression of keen interest on his dark face, and a look of eager delight in 394his eyes such as a man may show who is hunting an animal of value and who is on the point of overtaking his prey. ”

“ Thus by an honest but mistaken zeal fell Sir Thomas More; a man of wit and parts superior to all his contemporaries of integrity unshaken; of a generous and noble disposition; of a courage intrepid; a great scholar and a devout christian. Wood says that he was but an indifferent divine, and that he was very ignorant of antiquity and the learning of the fathers, but he allows him to be a man of a pleasant and fruitful imagination, and a statesman beyond any that succeeded him. ”

“ Nor does the fact that the war did come when it did give any ground for making Wood one of the greatest citizens of our country to-day because he preaches preparedness. General Wood stands at the forefront of the leaders in America at this time because of his own personal make-up and character and because of the amazing variety and extent of his services to his country which are written upon every page of its history during the last thirty years. ”

“ Viewing him in this way, we could not help regretting that it should devolve upon a young actor, who could scarcely expect to escape unhurt in it. Our surprise was great, nor was our pleasure less, to find in Mr. Wood's performance, a pleasing marked delineation of the best features of Alonzo, with the worst considerably softened and relieved. Seldom is a character so indebted to the aid of an actor as this to the judgment of Mr. Wood. Dr. Young's muse flags most dolefully [Pg 339] in this part, and Mr. Wood did more than could be expected to bear her up. ”

“ It's the easiest thing in the world to pick a fight out there now by saying something against Wood. It is always the same when men come in contact with him. I don't honestly believe there is a man in the department now who wouldn't go to hell and back for Leonard Wood. ”