98 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 37. 



great, worthy, and excellent Bishop, the Lord of Sa- 

 lisburv. This is one of the circumstances" [then the 

 letter iirocceds exactly as in the printed Letter X., and 

 the MS. letter concludes;] "God send you all true 

 Christianity, with that temper, life, and manners which 

 become it. 



" I am, your hearty friend, 



" Shaftesbury." 



I quote tlie printed bejiinning of Letter X., 

 on account of the eulogy on Bishop Burnet : — 



" I believed, indeed, it was your expecting me every 

 day at that prevented your writing since you re- 

 ceived orders from the good Bishop, my Lord of Salis- 

 bury ; who, as he has done more than any man living 

 for the good and honour of the Church of England 

 and the Reformed Religion, so he now suffers more 

 than any man from the tongues and slander of those 

 ungrateful Churchmen, who may well call themselves 

 by that single term of distinction, having no claim to 

 that of Christianity cr Protestant, since they have 

 thrown oflf all the temper of the former and all con- 

 cern or interest with the latter. I hope whatever ad- 

 vice the great and good Bishop gave you, will sink 

 deeply into your mind." 



Mr. Singer has extracted from the eiahtli printed 

 letter one or two sentences on Locke's denial of 

 innate ideas. A discussion of Locke's views on 

 this subject, or of Lord Shaftesbury's contrary 

 doctrine of a "moral sense," is not suited to your 

 columns ; and I only wish to say that I think 

 Mr. Singer has not made it sufficiently clear that 

 Lord Shaftesbury's remarks apply only to the 

 speculative consequences, according to his own 

 view, of a denial of innate ideas; and that Lord 

 Shaftesbury, in another passage of the same Letters, 

 renders the following tribute of praise to the 

 £!ssa)j on the Human Understanding : — 



" I am not sorry that I lent you Mr. Locke's Essay 

 on the Human Understanding, which may as well qualify 

 for business and the world as for the sciences and a 

 University. No one has done more towards the re- 

 calling of philosophy from barbarity into use and prac- 

 tice of the world, and into tlie company of the better 

 and politer sort, who might well be ashamed of it in 

 its other dress. No one has opened a better or clearer 

 way to reasoning; and, above all, I wonder to hear him 

 censured so much by any Church of England men, for 

 advancing reason and bringing the use of it so much 

 into religion, when it is by this only that we fight 

 against the enthusiasts and repel the great enemies of 

 our Church." 



A life of the author of the Characteristics is 

 hardly less a desideratum than that of his grand- 

 father, the Lord Chancellor, and would make an 

 interesting work, written in connection with the 

 politics as well as literature of the reigns of 

 AVilliam and Anne ; for the third Lord Shaftes- 

 bur)-, though prevented by ill-health from under- 

 taking office or regularly attending parliament, 

 took always a lively interest in politic.^;. An in- 

 tercstiuf' "collection of the third earl's letters has 



been published by Mr. Foster (Letters of Locke, 

 Algernon Sidney, and the Earl of Shafteshiiri/), and 

 a few letters from him to Locke are in Lord 

 King's Life of Locke. I sidijoin a "note" of a 

 few original letters of the third Lord Shaftesbury 

 in the Britisli Museum ; some of your readers 

 who frequent tlie British Museum may perhaps 

 be induced to copy them for your columns. 



Letters to Des Maizeaux (one interesting, offer- 

 ing hiin pecuniary assistance) in Ags. Cat. MSS. 

 4288. 



Letters to Charles JNIontagu, Enrl of Halifiix*, 

 (one introducing Toland). Add. MSS. 7121. 



Letter to Toland (printed, I think, in one 

 of the Memoirs of Toland). As^s. Cat. 4295. 10. 

 Letter to T. Stringer in 1625. lb. 4107. 115. 

 In Watt's Bihliotheca Britannica, neither the 

 Letters to a young Man at the Unicersity, published 

 in 1716, nor the collection of letters of 1746, are 

 mentioned ; and confusion is made between the 

 author of the Characteristics and his grandfixther 

 the Chancellor. Several political tracts, published 

 during the latter part of Charles II.'s reign, which 

 have been ascribed to the first Earl of Shaftesbury, 

 but of which, though they were probably written 

 under his supervision, it is extremely doubtful that 

 he was the actual .author, are lumped together with 

 the Characteristics as the works of one and the 

 same Earl of Shaftesbury. 



Some vears ago a discovery was made in Hol- 

 land of TklSS. of Le Clerc, and some notice of the 

 MSS., and extracts from them, are to be found in 

 the following work : — 



" De Joanne Clerico et Philippo A. Limbi rch Dis- 

 sertationes Diiae. Adhibitis Epistolis aliisque Scriptis 

 inedltis scri])sit atque eruditonmi vircrum epistolis 

 nunc primum editis auxit Abr. Des Amorie Van Der 

 Hoeven, &c. Amstelodarai: apud Fredericum Muller, 

 1843." 



Two letters of Locke are among the MSS. Now 

 it is mentioned by ]\Ir. Martyn, the biographer 

 of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, in a i\IS. letter in 

 the British I\Iuseum, that some of this earl's pa- 

 pers were sent by the family to Le Clerc, and were 

 supposed not to have been returned. I mention 

 this, as I perceive you have readers and corre- 

 spondents in Holland, in the hope that I may pos- 

 sibly learn whetlier any papers relating to the first 

 Earl of Shaftesbury have been found among the 

 lately discovered Le Clerc MSS.; and it is not 

 unlikely that the same MSS. might contain letters 

 of the third earl, the author of the Characteristics, 

 ■who was a friend and correspondent of Le Clerc. 



W. D. Christie. 



* Two of these — one a letter asking the earl to stand 

 godfather to his son, and the other a short note, for- 

 warding a book (Qy. of Toland 's") — are printed by Sir 

 Henry Ellis in his Camden volume, Letters of Eminent 

 Literary Msn. — En. 



