Then there was a long letter, dating from the autumn after this
delightful summer, in which he wrote again about Anthony à Wood, the old
Oxford antiquary. He had been reading Wood's diaries, finding in them,
he said, in spite of their old-fashioned pedantry and long genealogies,
a vivid picture of the University and Wood's life in it, two hundred
years ago. A calm life, Sutton described it, in curious contrast to the
times in which Wood lived, when the academic quiet was so often
disturbed by armies, and royal visits, and great events; and the noise
of tumults in the Oxford streets, and troops marching by, reaching the
old antiquary's ears, would draw him from the chronicles of the past, to
look with blinking eyes from his library window on the turmoil and
disquiet of contemporary history. For his life was spent in his own
study, or in "Bodlie's Library," or among the dusty archives of the
Colleges, reading and transcribing the monastic registers, the old
manuscripts and histories. Sutton quoted from his diary a sentence in
which he speaks of the exceeding pleasure he took in "poring on such
books."
"Heraldry, musick, and painting did so much crowd upon him, that he
could not avoid them, and could never give a reason why he should
delight in those studies more than in others, so prevalent was nature."
"My pen cannot enough describe," he writes in his enthusiasm, when he
first read Dugdale's _Antiquities of Warwickshire_, "how A. Wood's
tender affections and insatiable desire of knowledge were ravish'd and
melted down by the reading of that book. What by music and rare books
that he found in the public library, his life at this time and after was
a perfect Elysium."
"Wood often went for long, solitary walks, collecting arms and
monumental inscriptions from the churches, and visiting all the ruined
religious Houses and old halls in the country about Oxford. He describes
in his diary how, as he returned towards Oxford in the evening, 'after
he had taken his rambles about the country to collect monuments,' he
would hear the bells of Merton, his own College, ringing clearly in the
distance."
"Wood had small love for the Puritans," Sutton wrote, "who in his
lifetime were so long in power; and in his record of contemporary
events, sudden deaths, and alleged appearances of the devil, he more
than once mentions their destruction of antiquities, their contempt for
the Fathers and Schoolmen, and hatred of all authority, and 'everything
that smelt of an Academy, never rejoicing more than when he could
trample on the gowne, and bring humane learning and arts into
disgrace.'"
"Then came the Restoration, and almost the last event that Wood records
is the revival of Catholicism under James II. Wood himself was suspected
of being a Papist; his writings had made him enemies, and before he died
he was expelled from the University, and his book burned by order of the
Vice-Chancellor's Court."
"And yet, on the whole, his life was a happy one," Sutton said, writing,
it was plain, with a certain envy for the tranquil occupations and
lettered tastes of the old Oxford antiquary.