Chapter III: Part 3

In 1768 the Royal Academy was instituted, and Mr. Reynolds, holding unquestionably the first rank in his profession, was elected President. On his elevation to this office he received the honour of knighthood. As President he delivered to the students and professors those celebrated discourses, which have reflected so much lustre on his name. Their excellence in a theoretical point of view, the elegance of their composition, and on the other hand the apparent contradictions they sometimes contain, have been the theme of frequent observation and discussion. The other writings of Sir Joshua are the ‘Tour to Flanders and Holland,’ consisting of notes on the paintings seen by him in those countries in the year 1781; ‘Notes on Du Fresnoy’s Poem;’ and three papers in the Idler. Among the last, the Essay on Beauty was not so original as is generally supposed, the same theory having been previously promulgated by the Père Buffier in his ‘Cours des Sciences par des principes nouveaux. Paris, 1732.’ Among the historical and mythological pictures produced by Sir Joshua, that of the Infant Hercules strangling the Serpents, executed in 1786 for the Empress of Russia, is one of the most considerable: it is pretty closely copied, as to invention and composition, from a description of an antique painting of the same subject in Philostratus. This work, so different from the taste of the Russian painters and connoisseurs, was long treated with neglect; but in consequence of the enquiries of English travellers it has lately been cleaned, and placed in the gallery of the Hermitage. It is said to be in a fine state of preservation, and one of the best works of Reynolds. The celebrated picture of Ugolino was produced by an accidental circumstance. The subject was suggested to Sir Joshua by Goldsmith, or, according to others, by Burke, who was struck with the expression of an old emaciated head, among the unfinished studies of the painter, and observed that it corresponded exactly with Dante’s description of Count Ugolino. The head was inserted in a larger canvas, and the rest of the composition added. For the Shakspeare Gallery Sir Joshua painted three pictures,—the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, the Cauldron Scene in Macbeth, and Puck from Midsummer Night’s Dream. The designs for the window of the New College Chapel in Oxford are among the finest of his sacred compositions.

In 1789, finding his eyesight begin to fail, Sir Joshua was compelled to give up the practice of his art. In December, 1790, he pronounced his farewell Address at the Royal Academy, and on that occasion repeated and confirmed, as with his dying voice, his admiration of Michael Angelo. His infirmities confined him much during the short remaining portion of his life, and he died at his house in Leicester Fields, February 23, 1792. He was buried in the crypt of the cathedral of St. Paul, near the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren. The honours of his funeral, as may be imagined, corresponded with his justly-earned fame; and the day after his death a well-known eulogium by Burke appeared in the public papers, so characteristic both of the writer and the great artist to whose memory it was dedicated, that it was called the panegyric of Apelles, pronounced by Pericles. It concludes thus:—“His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters, his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.”

For a list of the pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and ample details of his life, the memoir of him by Northcote, who had been his scholar, may be consulted; as well as the accounts prefixed to the various editions of his literary works; and that by Allan Cunningham, in his Lives of the most eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

]

_Engraved by B. Holl._

SWIFT.

_From the Picture in the Bodleian Library, Oxford._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

SWIFT.

Jonathan Swift, by an account in his own handwriting, was the son of an attorney in the city of Dublin. He was born in 1667. Some doubt has been felt concerning his origin, in consequence of his own angry or capricious declaration, when out of humour with Ireland,—“I am not of this vile country; I am an Englishman;” and Sir William Temple has been said to be his real father. This piece of scandal, however, is disproved by circumstances of time and place. Swift was placed at Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of fourteen. Whether through idleness, or contempt of the prescribed studies, at the end of four years he could only obtain his Bachelor’s degree _speciali gratiâ_; a term denoting want of merit. This disgrace so affected him, that for the following seven years he studied eight hours a day. In 1688 Sir William Temple, whose lady was related to Swift’s mother, took him under his protection, and paid the expenses of his residence at Oxford for a Master’s degree. On quitting that University, Swift lived with Temple as his domestic companion. To a long illness contracted during this period in consequence of a surfeit he ascribed that frequently recurring giddiness which annoyed him through life, and sent him to the grave deprived of reason.

While under Sir William Temple’s roof, Swift rendered material assistance in the revision of his patron’s works, and corrected and improved his own ‘Tale of a Tub,’ which had been sketched out previously to his quitting Dublin. It was published in 1704. He never avowed himself its author; but he did not deny it when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchess of Somerset, according to some accounts, showed it to Queen Anne, and thereby debarred him from a bishopric. From Temple’s conversation Swift much increased his political knowledge; and his early impressions were naturally in favour of the Whigs: but he suspected his patron of neglecting to provide for him, from a desire of retaining his services. This produced a quarrel, and the friends parted in 1694. Swift took orders, and obtained a prebend in the north of Ireland; but at Temple’s earnest request he soon resigned that preferment, and returned to England. A sincere reconciliation took place, and they lived together in the utmost harmony till Sir William’s death in 1699. Swift, in testimony of his esteem, wrote ‘The Battle of the Books,’ of which his friend is the hero; and Temple by his will left him a legacy in money, and the profit as well as care of his posthumous works. Swift had indulged hopes, not without good reason, of being well provided for in the English church, through Temple’s interest. Failing in these hopes, he accepted the post of private secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, on the appointment of that nobleman to be one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. By this new patron he seems to have been ill used. He was soon displaced from his post, on the plea of its unfitness for a clergyman. He was then promised the rich deanery of Derry; but that preferment was bestowed on another person, and Swift could only procure the livings of Laracor and Rathbeggin, which together did not amount to more than half the value of the deanery. During his residence at Laracor, he performed the duties of a parish priest with punctuality and devotion, notwithstanding some occasional sallies of no very decorous or well-timed humour, which coupled with the suspicions founded on the anonymous ‘Tale of a Tub,’ fixed on him an imputation of insincerity in his Christian profession, from which the opinion of posterity seems to have absolved him.

During his incumbency at Laracor, he invited to Ireland a lady with whom he became acquainted while with Sir William Temple. She was the daughter of Temple’s steward, whose name was Johnson. About the year 1701, at the age of eighteen, she went to Ireland, to reside near Swift, accompanied by Mrs. Dingley, a lady fifteen years older than herself. Miss Johnson was Swift’s celebrated Stella. Whether Swift’s first impulse in giving this invitation had a view to marriage, or the cultivation of friendship only, is uncertain. His whole conduct with respect to women was most mysterious: apparently highly capricious, and, whatever might be its secret motive, utterly unwarrantable. The reason assigned by the two ladies for transferring their residence to Ireland was, “that the interest of money was higher than in England, and provisions cheap.” Every possible precaution was taken to prevent scandal: Swift and Miss Johnson did not live together, nor were they ever known to meet except in presence of a third person. Owing to this scrupulous prudence, the lady’s fame, during fifteen years, was never questioned, nor was her society avoided by the most scrupulous. In 1716 they were privately married, but with no change in their mode of life: she never lodged in the Deanery, except during those fits of giddiness and approaching mental aberration, during which a woman, then of middle age, might venture without breach of decorum to nurse an elderly man.

In 1701 Swift had published his ‘Dissensions in Athens and Rome;’ his first political work, in behalf of King William and his ministers, against the violent proceedings of the House of Commons. According to Lord Orrery, from that year to 1708 he did not write any political pamphlet; but he made frequent journeys to England during the whole of Queen Anne’s reign. Between 1708 and 1710 he changed his politics, worked hard against the Whigs among whom he had been educated, and plunged into political controversy, with a view to open the road to power for the Tories. The year 1710 produced the ‘Examiner,’ of which he wrote thirty-three papers. In that year commenced his acquaintance with Harley, who introduced him to St. John and the rest of the ministers. At this period he dined every Saturday at Harley’s, with the Lord Keeper, Mr. Secretary St. John, and Lord Rivers, to the exclusion of all other persons. He may, therefore, be considered at this time as the confidential friend of the ministry, and almost a member of their cabinet. The company was afterwards enlarged to sixteen, including Swift; all men of the first class in society. He now put forth all his strength in support of the Tory party, in pamphlets, periodical papers, and political poems. Amidst all this political agitation, he wrote down the occurrences of every day, whether consisting of conferences with ministers, or quarrels with his own servant, in a regular journal to Stella.

In 1712, ten days before the meeting of parliament, he published a pamphlet, entitled ‘The Conduct of the Allies,’ to facilitate peace, on which the stability, almost the personal safety of the ministers, seemed to depend. He professes that this piece cost him much pains, and no writer was ever more successful. A sale of eleven thousand copies in two months was in those days unprecedented: the Tory members in both houses drew their arguments from it, and the resolutions of parliament were little more than a string of quotations. During that year and the next he continued to exert himself with unwearied diligence. In 1713 he carried to the then latest date the first sketch of the ‘History of the last four Years of Queen Anne.’ Lord Bolingbroke, when called on for his opinion, was sincere enough to speak of it as “a seasonable pamphlet for the administration, but a dishonour to just history.” Swift himself was proud of it, but professed his willingness to sacrifice it to his friend’s opinion. It was, however, published, but with no addition to the author’s fame.

The Queen is said to have intended to promote him to a bishopric; but the story is involved in obscurity. That Archbishop Sharpe had dissuaded her from so doing by representing his belief in Christianity as questionable, is not ascertained by any satisfactory evidence; but whether that were so or not, Johnson’s suggestion seems probable, that the difficulty arose from those clerical supporters of the ministry, “who were not yet reconciled to the author of the ‘Tale of a Tub,’ and would not, without much discontent and indignation, have borne to see him installed in an English cathedral.” The deanery of St. Patrick, in Dublin, was therefore offered to him, and he accepted it. With high pretensions to independent equality with the ministers, and a disinterested support of their measures, it cannot be doubted that he viewed this Irish preferment as a sentence of exile, and was bitterly disappointed. But his temper was too intractable to submit to play the part of a courtier; and it is probable that his English friends were not ill pleased to promote him to competence and dignity at a distance. His feelings are characteristically expressed in one of his letters: “I use the ministry like dogs, because I expect they will use me so. I never knew a ministry do anything for those whom they made companions of their pleasures; but I care not.”

He had indeed little reason to rejoice at first in the land where his lot had fallen: on his arrival in Ireland to take possession of his deanery, he found the country under the strongest excitement of party violence. The populace looked on him as a Jacobite, and threw stones at him as he walked the streets. His chapter received him with reluctance, and thwarted him in whatever he proposed. Ordinary talents and firmness must have sunk under such general hostility. But the revolutions of the Dean’s life were strange; and he, who began with the hatred of the Irish mob, lived to govern them with the authority of a despot.

He had not been in Ireland more than a fortnight when he returned to England for the purpose of attempting, but in vain, a reconciliation between the Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke. While in England, he wrote his ‘Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs.’ He was probably still watching the issues of time or chance; but the Queen’s death sealed his political and clerical doom, and he returned to Ireland. To the interval between 1714 and 1720 Lord Orrery ascribes ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ His mind was at this time much engrossed by a remarkable circumstance. He had formed an intimacy in England with the family of a Dutch merchant, named Vanhomrigh. The eldest daughter, strangely enough, became enamoured of Swift’s mind, for it could not be of a most homely person, nearly fifty years of age. She proposed marriage: this he declined, and wrote his poem of ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’ on the occasion. On her mother’s death, the young lady and her sister followed him to Ireland; the intercourse was continued, and the proposal renewed on her part. This it was absolutely necessary to decline, as the Dean was already married; but he lived with Stella on the same distant footing as before, and was reluctant either to inflict pain, or to forego his own pleasure, by an avowal of the insuperable obstacle. Vanessa continued to receive his visits, but so guardedly as not absolutely to forfeit her good name. She became however more and more urgent; and peremptorily pressed him to accept or reject her as his wife. Failing to obtain a direct answer, she addressed a note to Miss Johnson, desiring to know whether she were married to him, or not. Stella sent this note to Swift, who in a paroxysm of anger rode to Vanessa’s house, threw a paper containing her own note on the table, and quitted her without a word. This blow she did not survive many weeks. She died in 1723, having first cancelled a will in the Dean’s favour.

Vanessa by will ordered her correspondence with Swift to be published, as well as ‘Cadenus and Vanessa,’ in which he had proclaimed her excellence and confessed his love. The letters were suppressed; the poem was published. This, whether meant as an apology for herself, or as a posthumous triumph over her more successful rival, occasioned a great shock and distress both to Stella and the Dean. It is said that at length, probably as a softening to the mortification incident to the public discovery of his passion for Vanessa, he desired that Stella might be publicly owned as his wife; but her health was rapidly declining. She said, perhaps petulantly, “It is too late,” and insisted that they should continue to live as before. To this the Dean consented, and allowed her to dispose of her fortune, by her own name, in public charity. She died in 1727.

By Stella’s death Swift’s happiness was deeply affected. He became by degrees more misanthropic, and ungovernable in temper; and more miserly in his personal habits, while at the same time he devoted to charity a large part, it is said one-third, of his income. In 1736 his deafness and giddiness became alarming, and his mental powers gradually declined. In 1741 his friends found it necessary that guardians should be appointed over his person and estate. In 1742 his reason was entirely overthrown; he became lethargic and, except at short intervals, speechless. On the 30th of November his housekeeper told him that the customary preparations were making to celebrate his birthday: he found words to answer, “It is all folly; they had better let it alone.” He died the latter end of October, 1745; in his seventy-eighth year. With the exception of some few legacies, he left his fortune, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, to the building of an hospital for idiots and lunatics.

The extent and variety of Swift’s writings render it necessary to confine our notice to two or three of his most curious productions. Of the ‘Tale of a Tub,’ which, being regarded as an attack upon all religion, brought down a weight of censure on the author, against which he protested in the preface to a later edition, Dr. Johnson says that “it has little resemblance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction, such as he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is a mode so distinct and peculiar, that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that is not true of anything else which he has written. In his other works is found an equable tenor of easy language, which rather trickles than flows.”

‘Gulliver’s Travels’ are now probably better known to the public than any other of his productions. That work is a moral and political romance, exhibiting a wonderful specimen of irregular genius. Not only are human actions placed in the most unfavourable light, but human nature itself is libelled. His wayward temper and his ill-concealed disappointment had put him out of conceit with the world; misanthropy had made some inroad into his heart, and, with his pen in his hand, he indulged in the expression of it with affected exaggeration. But however offensive to good feeling the satire might be, the imagination and wit which pervade this extraordinary work will always attract some readers, while the simple, circumstantial air of truth with which such extravagant fictions are related is a source of amusement to less refined tastes.

Neither are the ‘Drapier’s Letters,’ written in 1724, less remarkable, although the temporary nature of the subject has divested them of all interest, except as samples of the powers of his mind and the character of his style. Lord Orrery calls them “those brazen monuments of his fame.” A patent had been taken out by one Wood for a copper coinage for Ireland, to the amount of one hundred and eighty thousand pounds in halfpence and farthings, by which the projector, at least as was alleged by the opponents of the ministry, would have gained exorbitant profit, and the nation would of course have incurred proportionate loss. The Dean, in the character of a Drapier, wrote a series of letters, exposing the folly and mischief of giving gold and silver for a debased coin probably not worth a third of its nominal value. He urged the people to refuse this copper money; and the nation acted on the Drapier’s advice. The government took the alarm at this seditious resistance to the King’s patent, and offered three hundred pounds reward for the discovery of the author of the fourth letter; but his precautions were so well taken, and his popularity so universal, that, though known to be the author, the proclamation failed to touch him. The popular indignation rose to such a height that Wood was compelled to withdraw his patent, and the base money was totally suppressed. From this time forward the Dean, who at his first arrival in Ireland had been most unpopular, possessed unlimited influence; he was consulted on all measures of domestic policy; persons of all ranks either courted or feared him; national gratitude was expressed by all ranks in their various ways; the Drapier was a toast at every convivial meeting, and the sign of his head insured custom to an ale-house.

His letters are remarkable for the pure English of their style: there is little of solid information to be derived from them; but the most trifling anecdotes of distinguished men find ready acceptation with a large class of readers.

As a poet, in the higher sense of the word, we rank Swift’s claims to honour very humbly. But he possessed uncommon power of correct, easy, and familiar versification; which, with his racy vein of humour, will secure him admirers among those who can pardon his offensive grossness.

Delany, an Irishman to the backbone, gives the following character of him: “No man ever deserved better of any country, than Swift did of his; a steady, persevering, inflexible friend; a wise, a watchful, and a faithful counsellor, under many severe trials and bitter persecutions, to the manifest hazard both of his liberty and fortune.” With respect to his conversation and private economy some particulars may be worth mentioning. His rule never to speak more than a minute at a time, and to wait for others to take up the conversation, it were well if professed talkers would adopt. He excelled in telling a story, but told the same too often; an infirmity which grew on him, as it does on others, in advancing life. He was churlish to his servants, but in the main a kind and generous master. He was unceremonious and overbearing, sometimes brutal; but in company which he respected, not coarse, although his politeness was in a form peculiar to himself. He considered wealth as the pledge of independence; but his frugality towards the close of his life amounted to avarice. As we have represented some features of his character in no very amiable light, we will conclude with an anecdote which shows the kindly portion of his nature to advantage. In the high tide of his influence, he was often rallied by the ministers for never coming to them without a Whig in his sleeve: whatever might have been his expectations from the unsolicited gratitude of his party, he never pressed his own claims personally; but he often solicited favours from Lord Oxford in behalf of Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and Steele. Personal merit rather than political principles directed his choice of friends. His intimacy with Addison was formed when they used to meet at the parties of Lord Halifax or Lord Somers, who were leaders of the Whigs; but it continued unabated when the Tories had gained the ascendency.

Swift’s works have gone through many editions in various forms. The latest and best is that of Sir Walter Scott. That man must be considered fortunate in his biographers, of whom memoirs have been handed down, with more or less detail, by Lord Orrery, Dr. Delany, Dr. Hawkesworth, Dr. Sheridan, Dr. Johnson, and Sir W. Scott.

]

_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

LOCKE.

_From the original Picture by Sir G. Kneller in the Hall of Christ
Church, Oxford._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

LOCKE.

John Locke was born August 29, 1632, at Wrington, a village of Somersetshire, about eight miles from Bristol. He was the eldest of two sons of John Locke, a man of some property, who had been bred to the law, but became afterwards a captain under Cromwell. In those turbulent times he met with losses which diminished his fortune, and he left an inconsiderable inheritance to his son. Locke received his education at Westminster School, and Christ Church, Oxford. While an undergraduate he was chosen to write a welcome on the occasion of a visit which Cromwell paid to that University, just after the conclusion of his peace with the Dutch. This he did in a laudatory copy of verses in English and Latin, comparing the great Protector to Julius for warlike, and to Augustus for peaceful, accomplishments. This and some Latin verses, prefixed to a work of Sydenham’s, are Locke’s only poetical attempts. There is little merit in either. He was a great admirer of the meagre verse of Sir Richard Blackmore, which is no great evidence of his poetical taste. Between the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts he was elected Student of his college. From that time he applied himself diligently, for many years, to the study of medicine, without, however, practising it as a matter of gain. The weakness of his health probably gave this turn to his thoughts: his brother died of consumption; and he himself was apprehensive through life of falling a victim to the same disease. In 1664 he went abroad as secretary to Sir W. Swan, envoy to the court of Brandenburg; and on his return to Oxford the year following, he applied himself to the discovery of the effects of the air on the human frame. His first work, published in 1667, was a register of the variations in the atmosphere, determined between certain periods by the common instruments, as a supplement to a work by Boyle.

He was amusing himself with such enquiries, when one of the slight but important accidents of life brought him an acquaintance, whose influence determined his future course. A friend, being obliged to take a journey, desired Locke to make his excuses to Lord Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) for not having procured for him some mineral waters against his arrival in Oxford. When Lord Ashley did arrive, Locke carried this message to him. They were mutually pleased with each other, and this acquaintance speedily grew up into a strict friendship. Locke’s advice determined Lord Ashley to submit to a surgical operation, by which, it is said, the life of the patient was saved; and he was received into the house, and practised his profession in the family and amongst a few private friends of his noble patron. While living in this way, his thoughts were turned into the channel of politics by the advice of his new associates; and, taking up that study earnestly, he was soon able to advise and assist Ashley in all his plans of state, becoming at the same time the referee of his private affairs. This warm friendship is singular, considering the purity of Locke’s life, and the notoriously bad character, public and private, of his noble patron. But the latter was an eloquent orator, and an admirable talker; and it was probably this latter quality which attached Locke so much. He had so great an esteem for good conversation, as to give it a first place in the formation of a man’s mind, calling books the raw material, and social talk, with meditation, the true architects of our mental constructions. In 1668 Locke attended the Earl and Countess of Northumberland to France. But some accident caused him soon to return to his old residence with Shaftesbury, for whom he drew up the fundamental laws of Carolina, which had just been granted to him and other lords. Two of the articles of this settlement gave great offence to the clergy, and were expunged. They are remarkable, and should be mentioned. One was, “That no man that doth not acknowledge a God, and that God publicly worshipped, should be a freeman or inhabitant of Carolina.” The other was a proposition, that any seven persons agreeing in a form of worship should be esteemed a church, and be supported by the state. The Church of England, however, was alone established in that colony. In 1671 Locke began to form his great Essay on the Human Understanding; but his engagements with Shaftesbury prevented its immediate completion. The year following, his patron becoming Chancellor, Locke was made secretary of presentations, which office he speedily lost on the partial disgrace of the Earl, who, still remaining President of the Board of Trade, appointed him secretary to a commission of inquiry into the state of trade, and the colonial plantations. This office he also lost in the same manner, upon Lord Shaftesbury’s total disgrace in 1674.

Having retained his studentship, Locke then retired to Oxford, partly for his health’s sake, and partly to pursue his old medical studies. He took the degree of Bachelor of Medicine in this year. It appears that he continued to pay some attention to these studies until an advanced age: for in 1697 he communicated to the Royal Society the history of a curious case which he had seen at the great hospital of La Charité, during his residence in Paris. In 1675, in hope of obtaining relief from an asthmatical complaint, he went to Montpellier. There was also another reason for this journey. He had just published an anonymous pamphlet for Shaftesbury, blaming the conduct of the House of Lords in the matter of the Test Act, containing a vehement abuse of the bishops, and of what he called their favourite doctrine, “the divine right” of kings and priests. This pamphlet does not appear in the folio edition of his works; it was anonymous, like most of his other productions. The odium consequent upon it made his absence from England expedient, if not necessary. During his stay abroad Locke kept a journal of what he saw, did, and thought. In it we find the heads of many of his future works, which are very concise and valuable; but the narrative is dry, and the attempts at humour not very successful: he seems however to have been as observant of what relates to the external world, as he was of the intellectual. In 1679, Shaftesbury, on being made President of the Council, summoned Locke to England. But the old statesman’s favour was short lived: he was committed to the Tower in July, 1681, and soon after his release, retired to Holland, where he died in January, 1683. Locke accompanied him, and continued his faithful services until death. For seventeen years he had been Shaftesbury’s constant partizan and adviser; and the odium attached to that nobleman clung to himself, and prevented his return to England for many years. In 1683 he was reported by the English envoy at the Hague to be on terms of intimacy with the malcontents in Holland; upon which the secretary (Sunderland) wrote to Dr. Fell, the Dean of Christ Church, ordering his expulsion from college. This mandate was not immediately complied with: the Dean declared that for many years he had watched the conduct of Locke, and even tried to entrap him into an exposure of his political sentiments, but had always found him too wary. He allowed Locke time to come and defend himself, which he would not do, and then expelled him from his studentship.

On the accession of James II., William Penn, the quaker of Pennsylvania, being in some favour with the King, would have procured a pardon for Locke, but he refused the offer, through a friend, as having been guilty of no crime. In May, 1685, the English ambassador demanded him of the States-General, of the pretext that he was concerned in the unsuccessful expedition of the Duke of Monmouth. It is supposed that he owed this bad turn partly to the malice of the envoy himself, as his name did not appear in the list of those required which was sent from England. He neither liked the person nor the invasion of the duke, and was at Utrecht when the armament of that unfortunate nobleman sailed from the Texel. Locke was not given up, but was obliged to hide himself for about a year in the house of his friend M. Veen, at Amsterdam, receiving assurance from the local authorities that timely warning should be given him of pressing danger. He was obliged to conceal himself so closely as only to take his exercise during the night. It is probable that the real cause of this persecution was his first letter on Toleration, written in Latin about this time, and addressed to his friend Limborch, the sentiments of which were peculiarly offensive to the English court.

Locke had now time to attend to his own affairs, being no longer taken up with those of a patron. He busied himself in the completion of his Essay concerning Human Understanding, which was not, however, printed till 1689. The extracting of passages from various works for reviewal in Le Clerc’s literary journal, the Bibliothèque Universelle, the formation and continuation of a small society for the weekly discussion of all subjects, the members of which were his friends Le Clerc, Limborch, Guenelon, and others, and the abridgment of his Essay, served to fill up his time during the remainder of his stay in Holland. In 1689 he published a second letter on Toleration, and early in the same year returned to his native country in the fleet which conducted the Princess of Orange to the throne of England. The Revolution had completely changed the face of affairs in Locke’s favour; he was considered a martyr to its principles, and was esteemed accordingly by its authors. On his return he immediately petitioned William to cause him to be reinstated in his studentship; but the College refused to restore him, offering at the same time to make him a supernumerary student. This he would not accept; because he felt it not to be a full reparation of the injustice he had suffered. He allowed the matter to drop.

If Locke had been ambitious, his path to political advancement was now open. William offered him the ambassadorship to the Imperial Court, or to that of Brandenburg. He refused both these high appointments; but accepted a Commissionership of Appeals from his friend Lord Mordaunt, afterwards Earl of Peterborough. This office was worth only £200 a year. His friends Sir Francis and Lady Masham (a daughter of the celebrated Cudworth) prevailed on him to take apartments in their house at Oates in Essex; between which place and his office in London he spent the remainder of his life. In 1690 Locke published his Treatise on Civil Government. The folio edition of his Essay, and a Letter on Education, appeared in the latter part of the same year. In 1692 he produced a third Letter on Toleration. The state of the coinage being a subject of great importance at that time, he took it into consideration, and published ‘Certain Thoughts on the State of English Silver Money, &c.,’ in a letter to a member of parliament. This treatise was thought so good, that when the matter was inquired into by the government, Locke was consulted, and his advice taken with respect to the new coinage. In consequence of this important assistance, he received from William III. a Commissionership of Foreign Trade and Plantations, the value of which was £1000 a year. The King was exceedingly desirous of a comprehension with the dissenters, and to forward his views Locke wrote his ‘Reasonableness of Christianity.’ This book involved him in a religious controversy with Dr. Edwards, who attacked its opinions in his ‘Socinian Unmasked,’ to which Locke replied by two vindications, each of them longer than the original work. No sooner had he finished this labour than he was called upon to encounter a fresh and more able antagonist. Toland and some other Unitarians having turned to their own use some of the arguments in Locke’s Essay, Dr. Stillingfleet, the learned Bishop of Worcester, confounded Locke with that party. In his defence of the doctrine of the Trinity the Bishop severely censured various passages of Locke’s great work, as tending to subvert some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity; Locke replied, and there was an alternation of answers between them till the Bishop’s death. That event took place soon after Locke’s third answer, which was the last thing he ever published. These replies of Locke are reputed to be most finished specimens of a grave and subtle irony, too refined perhaps to be generally perceived by the uninitiated eye.

In 1700 Locke’s weak state of health induced him to retire from public life. He resigned his situation in a personal interview with the King, giving no previous notice of his intention to the conductors of the government, and refusing the pension which his master wished him to accept. He took up his residence at Oates, where he passed the remainder of his life in reading and contemplating the Scriptures. He often regretted that he had not more occupied himself in this study. The piety of his latter years was without formality or ostentation, not arising from that sense of disappointment, or irksomeness for want of employment, which often leads men to seek refuge in a late devotion. Neither Locke’s mental nor bodily senses failed him to his last moments, though the year before his death was passed in extreme weakness. On taking the sacrament he declared “that he was in peace with all men, and in sincere union with the Church of Christ, by whatever name distinguished.” The affectionate attentions of Lady Masham softened the pain of his last illness, and he died gently in his chair while she was reading to him one of the Psalms of David, October 28, 1704, in his seventy-third year. He died, unmarried, from the natural decay of an originally weak constitution. He was buried in the churchyard at High Laver, near Oates, under a decent monument. His epitaph had been written some years before, by himself, in Latin[3]. He left behind him many unpublished works, among which his ‘Conduct of the Understanding’ stands highest. ‘An Examination of Malebranche’s opinion of seeing all things in God; ‘A Discourse of Miracles;’ part of a fourth letter on the subject of Toleration; some imperfect memorial sketches of the life of the Earl of Shaftesbury; a new method for a commonplace-book; and paraphrases of several of the epistles of St. Paul, make up the list of his posthumous works, almost all of which were translated into French by Le Clerc and others, and appeared (together with those published by himself) in three folio volumes, not many years after his death. A great many of his letters to his friends Molyneux and Limborch are also published in this edition. There remain many more which have been given to the world by various hands, addressed to the Earl of Peterborough, Dr. Mapletoft, &c., and to Newton. In Lord King’s life of Locke his correspondence with the latter is given at full length, and is very curious,—chiefly relating to subjects they were both engaged in, the prophecies and miracles.

Footnote 3:

“Siste, viator; juxta situs est J. L. Si qualis fuerit rogas,
mediocritate suâ contentum se vixisse respondet. Literis innutritus
eousque tantum profecit ut veritati unicà studeret. Hoc ex scriptis
illius disce; quæ, quod de eo reliquum est, majori fide tibi
exhibebunt, quam epitaphii suspecta elogia. Virtutis si quas habuit,
minores sane quam quas sibi laudi, tibi in exemplum proponeret. Vitia
una sepeliantur. Morum exemplum si quæras, in evangelio habes
(vitiorum utinam nusquam), mortalis certè quod prosit hic et ubique.
Natum . . . . Mortuum . . . . Memorat hac tabula brevi et ipsa
interitura.”

That which has assured to Locke imperishable fame is the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ This great work, however, met with considerable obloquy at first: the heads of colleges at Oxford even endeavoured to prevent its being read in their University. The Essay is in the hands of all; the writings of its opponents, comparatively speaking, are forgotten. It will be generally admitted, that in it Locke laid the foundation of modern metaphysical philosophy.

Two of Locke’s chief works, the ‘Treatise on Civil Government,’ and ‘Essay on Education,’ are more capable of a short analysis. The former may be taken as an expression of his own opinions in defence of the Revolution. It is divided into two parts. The first contains an exposure of the fallacies of Sir Robert Filmer’s ‘Patriarcha,’ arguing that Adam had not such natural or gifted right of dominion as Filmer pretends; that if he had, his heirs had not; that if they had, yet there is no general law, divine or human, which determines the right of succession, much less of bearing rule; lastly, that if such right had been determined, yet the eldest line from Adam being unknown, no man can pretend more than another to that right of inheritance; consequently, that some other source of political power must be found than “Adam’s private dominion and paternal jurisdiction.” Locke proceeds in the second part to declare his opinion as to what this other source may be. He argues, that originally the executive power was in the hands of each individual; but, by mutual consent, for mutual benefit, as men grew into societies, political power was created, and given to persons chosen from the whole body by the major part of such societies. He protests against absolute power, as not expressing the will of the majority; but defends prerogative, as a discretionary power lodged in the hands of the executive government. He maintains that this compact must be held sacred, but reverts to the society if its duration was declared temporary, or upon the misconduct of rulers or delegates. When forfeited, the will of the society may create new forms of government; or, under the old form, continue it in other hands.

The Essay on Education is expressly for the use of gentlemen, since “if that class be properly tended the rest will follow of course.” The child, he says, should have much air and exercise, should be accustomed to little sleep and early habits. That superstitious terrors, and the frequent use of the rod should be carefully avoided; that the boy should be used to suffer pain gradually, to harden him, but not as a punishment; that the parents’ authority should be perfect over the child, and be gradually taken off, till the relation between them becomes a confiding friendship; that particular attention be paid to his manners, so that his courage, learning, wit, plainness, and good-nature, do not turn to brutality, pedantry, buffoonery, rusticity, and fawning. He says, that the child’s curiosity should be encouraged; that he should learn by games, and his attainments never be forced; that he should not be left to flounder in difficulties, but helped through them. Locke prefers a careful tutor to a public school: he says that a boy stands a better chance of being both virtuous and well-bred under the care of the former. What he should know is Latin, Greek, a little mathematics, how to keep accounts; the less of logic the better; he should write a good hand; and a virtuous youth so bred, “one may turn loose into the world with great assurance that he will find employment and esteem everywhere.” He further recommends that the boy should travel between the ages of eight and sixteen, rather than between sixteen and twenty one; and that when he comes of age he had better not marry according to the usual custom, but wait some years, that his children “may not tread too closely on his heels.”

The habit of Locke’s mind was perhaps originally severe; but from constant social intercourse with men of all characters and opinions, was rendered mild and equable. Nothing seems to have provoked him into a loss of temper so much as being forced into argument with professed logicians. He calls the logical method taught at Oxford an ill, if not the worst way of acquiring knowledge and seeking truth. He was fond of the society of children, and would enter into the enjoyments of riper youth with facility. He was entrusted by his patron with the education and marriage of his son, who was the father of the author of the ‘Characteristics.’ The latter nobleman (the third Earl of Shaftesbury) owed much to Locke’s care, and was his eulogist.

Locke was of a cautious if not timid disposition. This appears from many of his letters, and may be inferred from the anonymous publication of most of his writings. His weak health, the political persecution to which he was exposed during great part of his life, and the discipline to which he was subjected in childhood, which was strict and severe, in some measure account for this failing. His friendships were very steady; witness his close adherence to his patron Shaftesbury. Sydenham’s contemporary and friendly character of Locke is remarkable: he says, in a prefatory letter to one of his works, that “if we consider his genius, his penetrating and exact judgment, and the strictness of his morals, he has scarcely any superior, and few equals now living.”

]

_Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._

SELDEN.

_From a Picture attributed to Sir Peter Lely in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

SELDEN.

John Selden was born at Salvington, a hamlet of Tarring, near Worthing, in the county of Sussex, December 16, 1584 (O.S.). His father, according to Wood, “was a sufficient plebeian,” who, through some skill in music, obtained as his wife Margaret Baker, a daughter of a knightly family of the county of Kent. The baptism of his eminent son, as well as his own musical talents, are noticed in an existing parish registry in these words: “1584.—Johnne, sonne of John Selden, the minstrell, was baptised the XXX^{th} day of December.” The house in which the family lived was called Lacies, and the estate of the father consisted, in 1606, of eighty-one acres, of the annual value of about twenty-three pounds. John Selden, the son, received his early education at the Free Grammar-School of Chichester. At the age of fourteen he entered at Hart Hall, Oxford. After residing four years at the University, he was admitted, in 1602, a member of Clifford’s Inn, one of the dependencies of the greater inns of court, in which students of law were formerly accustomed to commence their legal education. He removed in May, 1604, to the Inner Temple. His attention appears to have been early drawn to the study of civil and legal history, and antiquities; he did not court the more active business of his profession, and his employment at the bar was limited. In 1607, he prepared for the press his first work, entitled ‘Analectωn Anglo-Britannicωn,’ being a collection of civil and ecclesiastical matters relating to Britain, of a date anterior to the Norman conquest. This was soon followed by three other works of a similar character, and in 1614 he printed his ‘Treatise upon Titles of Honour.’ The last of these works has been considered in our courts of law to be of great authority, and has been usually spoken of with much commendation. Pursuing his legal inquiries, he edited, in 1616, two treatises, one of Sir John Fortescue, the other of Sir Ralph Hengham, and in the same year wrote a ‘Discourse on the Office of Lord Chancellor.’ In the next year he printed a work, ‘De Diis Syris,’ which added to his celebrity, but is not compiled with that attention to the value of the respective authorities cited, so essentially necessary to the accurate consideration of historical questions. His next work was a ‘History of Tithes,’ printed in 1618, which excited against him the bitter hostility of the clergy. The doctrine of divine right, as the foundation of many ecclesiastical claims, was at this time jealously maintained, and was considered to be peculiarly connected with the right of the clergy to tithes. Selden drew no direct conclusion against the divine nature of the right to tithes, but he had so arranged his authorities as to render such a conclusion inevitable. The nature only of the title was contested, and so far from the clergy having had any reason to look upon Selden as an enemy, he in fact strengthened their claim to tithes by placing it upon the same footing as any ordinary title to property. As soon as the ‘History’ appeared it was attacked. The High Commission Court summoned Selden before it, and to this tribunal he was compelled to apologise. The terms of his submission very accurately state the offence, and are expressive of regret that “he had offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance _jure divino_ of the ministers of the gospel.” The work received several answers, but Selden was forbidden by James I., under a threat of imprisonment, to notice them. “All that will,” said he, “have liberty, and some use it, to write and preach what they will against me, to abuse my name, my person, my profession, with as many falsehoods as they please, and my hands are tied: I must not so much as answer their calumnies. I am so far from writing more, that I have scarce ventured for my own safety so much as to say they abuse me, though I know it.”

Hardly had this storm passed, when he became involved in the disputes between the Crown and the House of Commons. One of the earliest steps of that body, upon the convocation of Parliament in 1621, was to present a remonstrance on the state of public affairs. This was succeeded by the memorable protestation of December 18, in which the liberty of the subject was asserted, and the right of the Commons to offer advice to the Crown was insisted on. This protestation was erased from the journals of the House by the King’s own hands, and the parliament was dissolved. Selden, whose advice, though he was not then a member, had been requested by the House in this dispute, was in consequence imprisoned, and detained in confinement five weeks. His release was owing to the intercession of Bishop Williams, who represented him to be “a man who hath excellent parts, which might be diverted from an affectation of pleasing idle people to do some good and useful service to his Majesty.” On his release, he dedicated to Williams his edition of Eadmer’s contemporary ‘History of England, from the Norman Conquest to the death of Henry I.,’ which he had prepared for the press during his confinement.

When the next parliament assembled in 1624, Selden sat in it as member for the borough of Lancaster. Though nominated upon several committees, he took no active share in the general business of the House. About this time also he was appointed one of the readers of the Inner Temple; but he refused the office, and was in consequence for some time disabled to be advanced to the rank of a bencher of the inn. Upon the accession of Charles I. a new parliament was called, in which Selden sat for the borough of Great Bedwin. This parliament was almost immediately dissolved, and another summoned, to which Selden was again returned for the same borough as before. The Commons immediately entered upon a consideration of the conduct of the Duke of Buckingham, and his impeachment being resolved on, Selden was one of the members appointed to prepare the articles, and was named a manager for their prosecution. These proceedings were stopped by another dissolution of parliament in June, 1626. But the necessities of the Crown requiring those supplies which parliament refused without a redress of grievances, forced loans were resorted to in the exercise of certain pretended owners of the prerogative. In several instances these loans were refused; among others by Sir Edward Hampden, who was imprisoned in consequence: and the illegality of his commitment was very ably argued by Selden in the King’s Bench. In the third parliament, called by Charles I. in 1628, Selden sat for the borough of Ludgershall; and in the debates which immediately took place upon illegal commitments, the levy of tonnage and poundage, and the preparation of the Petition of Rights, he took a very active share. The attack upon the Duke of Buckingham was renewed, and it was proposed by Selden, that judgment should be demanded against him upon the impeachment of the former parliament. As affecting a great constitutional question, only finally determined in 1791, of the continuance of impeachments, notwithstanding a dissolution of parliament, the suggestion was remarkable. Further proceedings were, however, stopped by the assassination of the Duke.