60 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters, 
propagandist, whose writings, by reason of their manner and 
matter, became immediately popular and affected deeply the specu¬ 
lations of the time. 
Elsewhere instances of a nature different from those cited below 
have been multiplied to show how Shaftesbury insinuated himself 
upon the thought of the age.® In many cases the borrowings have 
been immediate; in others, they are apparently secondhand. But 
this by no means lessens the importance of our figure. Whether 
the idea of a subsequent writer came from Shaftesbury, or Pope, 
or Akenside, or Hutcheson, or any one of a dozen others, matters 
little. The fact remains that Shaftesbury was a brilliant initiator, 
whose disciples helped to spread his doctrines broadcast. Socrates 
taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle, and Aristotle taught Alex¬ 
ander the Great; but this does not lessen the greatness of the first 
of this illustrious quartette,—quite the contrary. Shaftesbury 
taught Hutcheson, Pope, and Thomson, and they, in turn, taught 
an increasingly large number of writers; but Shaftesbury remains 
the source whence the streams of optimism and sentimentalism of 
a certain hue flow. 
II. 
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the son of Dryden’s ‘‘shapeless lump” 
and the grandson of his “ Achitophel, ” had the good fortune to be 
ushered into this world with Locke as the attending physician. 
By the grandfather, to this already famous philosopher was en¬ 
trusted the health and mental development of the child. Applying 
his own theories of education, Locke had young Ashley instructed 
in Latin and Greek by the conversational method. The success of 
the method and the precocity of the youngster both find support 
in the fact that at the age of seven the coming Earl could read 
both languages readily—a fact that needs to be kept in mind 
when dealing with his indebtedness to the ancients. His travels 
on the continent after leaving school in 1686, his year in Holland 
after his enforced retirement from Parliament in 1698, his year 
in Holland in 1703-1704 when his health was “mightily impaired 
by fatigue in public affairs,” and his withdrawal to Italy in 1711, 
all helped to make him the cosmopolitan that he was. His politi¬ 
cal positions gave him prestige and wide associations at home; 
and his affability and mental vigor made him the acceptable com- 
® See note 4 supra; The Influence of Shaftesbury on English Literature in the 
Eighteenth Century, by the present writer, in MS in the library of the University of 
Wisconsin. 
