Gossip master …

… His Gimlet Eye | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip Dave Lull.)

Aubrey, a restless purveyor of the thumbnail sketch, defies easy summary himself. He had diverse talents, but no real occupation; many interests, but no clear vocation; reams of notes, but only one published work at the time of his death. Aubrey's friends didn't quite know what to make of him, just as generations of readers haven't quite known what to make of his principal legacy, a collection of his anecdotes about the great and the powerful called Aubrey's Brief Lives.