Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/291

Aylett AYLETT, ROBERT (1583–1655?), was author of a volume of religious verse entitled 'Divine and Moral Speculations in Metrical Numbers upon Various Subjects. By Doctor R. Aylet, one of the Masters of the High Court of Chancery. London. . . 1654.' It was dedicated to 'Henry Lord Marquesse of Dorchester and his incomparable lady,' as 'the humblest of their servants.' There are prefixed commendatory poems by Sir Robert Beaumont, Bart., and James Howell, and a W. Martin. In some copies there is inserted before the title-page a cunningly engraved portrait, with this inscription on the upper left-hand corner, 'Æt. 52, 1635.' Aylett was thus born about 1583. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and commenced LL.D. in 1614. He is represented as a hard student who lightened his professional labours with 'the relaxation of poetry.' Except his odd 'A Wife not readymade but bespoke, by Dicus the Batchelor, and made up for him by his fellow shepheard Tityrus; in four pastoral eclogues' (1653), his entire verse is 'sacred.' Its main feature is pious aphoristic thought, after the type of George Herbert's poems of 'The Temple.' His 'Divine and Moral Speculations' start with a semi-paraphrase of the 'Song of Songs,' which is succeeded by 'The Brides Ornaments' — a series of meditations of 'Heavenly Love,' 'Humility,' 'Repentance, 'Faith,' 'Hope,' 'Justice and Righteousness,' 'Truth,' 'Mercy,' 'Fortitude,' 'Heavenly Knowledge,' 'Zeal,' 'Temperance,' 'Bounty,' 'Joy,' 'Prudence,' 'Obedience,' 'Meeknesse,' 'God's Word,' 'Prayer,' &c. These 'four books' of meditations are followed firstly by 'Five Moral Meditations' of 'Concord and Peace, Chastity, Constancy, Courtesy, and Gravity;' and secondly by 'Five Divine and Moral Meditations' of 'Frugality, Providence, Diligence, Labour and Care, and Death.' The whole closes with 'A Funerall Elegy, consecrated to the memory of his ever honoured lord John King, late Lord Bishop of London.' We gather from the volume two personal facts, (a) that his 'muse' had been 'whilome swayd by lust of youth' to spend 'her strength in idle wanton toys,' but was now summoned to holy strains; (b) that he was in 1654 a sufferer from ague (p. 476). The 'Divine and Moral Speculations' were probably published separately long before 1654. Earlier impressions are found of two other poems by Aylett: 'Svsanna, or the Arraignment of the Two Unjust Elders' (in four books), and 'Joseph, or Pharaoh's Favorite' — both of which are often bound up with the 'Speculations,' and usually dated 1654. Of 'Svsanna ' an anonymous R. C. (wrongly assigned to Richard Crashaw) wrote:—

In all thy poems thou dost wondrous well, But thy Susanna doth them all excell.

Of 'Joseph' another wrote :—

Susanna was of all thy poems best, But Joseph her excels, as she the rest.

'Peace with her Four Gardens' (1622) (mentioned along with others in Censura Literaria, vol. v.) was incorporated with the 'Meditations' above enumerated, as was 'Thrift's Equipage' (1622).

Anthony à Wood queried whether Dr. Aylett were not author of 'Britannia Antiqua Illustrata,' published under the name of Aylett Sammes. Aylett disappears about 1655.

[Works, ut supra; Cens. Liter.; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 328, ii. 363; Granger's Portraits; Hazlitt's Handbook.]  AYLIFFE, JOHN, LL.D. (1676–1732), jurist, was born at Pember, Hampshire, in 1676. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he matriculated February 1690, became B.A. 1699, M.A. 1703, LL.B. and LL.D. 1710. Up to 1710 he practised as a proctor in the chancellor's court, and 'had a prospect,' he tells us, 'of succeeding to some chancellorship or other preferment in the church of the like nature.' But his political opinions stood in the way. He was an ardent whig at a time when Oxford was the home of Jacobitism; and as he seems to have omitted no occasion of making his opinions known, he was subjected, according to his own account, to 'lawsuits and other persecutions, for the sake of my adhering to the principles of the Revolution; which shall be the test of my loyalty so long as I live.' What these lawsuits and other persecutions were we have no means of knowing; but the publication of the book from which we quote this complaint brought his sufferings to a climax. In 1712, on the advice of his friends, he issued a specimen of a work on Oxford for which he had collected materials while practising in the chancellor's court; but, whether from a belief that he would so sketch the history of the university as to malign the Stuarts, or that he would pry too curiously into the internal affairs of colleges, the scheme was received with such disfavour that he had thoughts of abandoning it. The book was published, however, in 1714, about a week before the queen's death. A few months afterwards Ayliffe was summoned before the university court at the suits of Dr. Gardiner, then vice-chancellor, and of Dr. Braithwaite, the former vice-