1829.] 



C 209 ] 



BIONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 



Lockers Life and Correspondence, by 



Lord Kitig. 4to. 1829 Of so eUiinent a 



man as Locke — filling so large a space in 

 tlie literary world as he did and does, and 

 not unconnected with political matters — it 

 is singular how little has ever been known 

 and written. The only account of any au- 

 thority the world has of him was written by 

 Le Clerc, in his " Bibliotlieque Choisie," 

 and that is as arid and meagre as any thing 

 the annals of biography can furnisli — signi- 

 ficant of nothing so much as the lack of 

 adequate information in the writer. Le 

 Clerc was a personal friend of Locke ; but 

 his friendship commenced late in life, at a 

 period after whicli every thing relative to 

 him is well known, and every thing which 

 he tells of his early life, except a few bare 

 facts, seems to rest on little authority— and 

 no competent motives are supplied for half 

 he says. 



Locke's papers, which were exceedingly 

 voluminous, fell into Lord King's hands by 

 inheritance— his ancestor, the Chancellor 

 King, was a nepliew of Locke — and the 

 possession seems to liave prompted the pre- 

 sent publication, which consists, mainly, 

 of extracts from a Journal kept during a 

 Tour and Residence in France — others 

 from his commin-place books — and some 

 from liis extensive correspondence — all so 

 arranged as, by the help of a few connecting 

 statements and explanations, to make him, 

 as Lord King happily phrases it, " his own 

 biographer." The Journal supplies abun- 

 dant proof of Locke's activity of observation, 

 but nothing, we think, it may be said, of 

 particular importance. Nor in the extracts, 

 which concern his opinions on more weighty 

 matters — government, economy, morals, re- 

 ligion — have we observed, in glancing over 

 the contents, any tiling to make a fuss 

 about, whicli was not worked up afterwards 

 by the author himself, in one place or other, 

 in his printed labours. Some of them, ap- 

 parently, are the Jirsi sketches of what was 

 afterwards matured — interesting, and highly 

 so, as literary history — while others are 

 more full and finished discussions ; but, by 

 any person at all familiar with his works, 

 scarcely any thing fresh will be recognized. 

 The sentiments are every where old ac- 

 quaintance, and often the very language is 

 the same. Nor is any, or very little, light 

 let in upon his personal history, or his lite- 

 rary career, or political actions. 



lie was educated, as is known, at West- 

 minster, and his Master's degree was ac- 

 quired at Oxford in 105(i. At Christ 

 Church he resided as a " Student," appa- 

 rently without much interruption, till IWJj, 

 wlien he accompanied Sir William Vane as 

 Secretary of Legation to tlie court of IJran- 

 denburgli, on a .special mission. Ilis letters, 

 written to his friends, during his residence 

 at (.'levcH of about three months, are (juite 



^l.M.NewSerict VOL.VIII.No. 44. 



amusing, from the vigorous struggles he 

 makes to be funny ! Just peep at a spe- 

 cimen : — 



The place wliere tlje Elector commonly eats is a 

 large room into which you enter at the lower 

 end by an ascent of some few steps ; just without 

 this is a lobby : as, this evening, I was passing 

 througli it into the court, I saw a company of 

 soldiers very close together, and a steam rising 

 from the midst of thera. I, as strangers used to 

 be, being a little curious, drew near to these men 

 of mettle, where I found three or four earthen 

 fortifications, wherein were entrenched pease- 

 pnrridgi', and stewed turnips or apples, most va- 

 liantly stormed by those men of war. They stood 

 just opposite to the Duke's tab'e, and within view 

 of it; and had the Duke been theie at supper, 

 as it was very near his supper-time, I should 

 have thought they had been set there to provoke 

 his appetite by example, and serve, as the cocks 

 have done in some countries before battle, to 

 fight the soldiers into courage ; and certainly these 

 soldiers might cat others into stomachs. Here 

 you might have seen the court and camp drawn 

 near together — there a supper prepariiig with 

 great ceremony — and, just by it, a hearty meal 

 made without stool, trencher, table-cloth, or nap- 

 kins, and, for aught 1 could see, without bread, 

 beer, or salt ; but I stayed not long, for me- 

 thought 'twas a dangerous place, and eo I left 

 them in the engagement.— ^Et. 34. 



For some reason, quite unknown for 



though Locke talks of the matter in his letters, 

 he does not explain — he declined more than 

 one offer of appointment in the diplomatic 

 'line,' and also the acceptance of preferment 

 in the church, and returned quietly again to 

 Oxford, where he seems to havebeen occupied 

 with the study of medicine. Certainly, as 

 a person esteemed qualified to give medical 

 advice, he was introduced, while at Oxford, 

 the following year, to Lord Shaftesbury, 

 with whom he soon became very closely 

 and permanently connected, and stuck to 

 him, through all that very cunning states- 

 man's ciianges, with a fidelity or a tenacity, 

 not now perhaps explainable. Versatile, 

 as at least Lord Shaftesbury must be allow- 

 ed to have been, it surprises, and perhaps 

 shocks the admirer of Locke, whom we all 

 consider as a man of the most inflexible 

 principle — as the very personification of 

 prudence and wisdom — to find in his epi- 

 taph on Lord Shaftesbury these grounds of 

 encomium : " Constanlia, fide, vix parem 

 alibi invenias, snperiorcm certe nutlibi." 

 But this miffht refer solely to private con- 

 nexions, and especially to his treatment of 

 Locke himself. To see him, however, de- 

 scribed as " Libertutis civilis propuynutor 

 slrenwis, indefe.ssits,''' is too much for gra- 

 vity. Locke never could have been de- 

 ceived to this extent — he must have known 

 he sat on the trials of the regicides — was 

 one of the Cabal whose infamous aims are 

 notorious, and a persecutor in the affair of 



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