to find him all affability, good-humour, and complaisance. If there was any thing which he could not bear, it was ill-manners, with which he was always disgusted, unless when it proceeded from ignorance; but when it was the effect of pride, ill-nature, or brutality, he detested it. Civility he considered to be not only a duty of humanity, but of the Christian profession, and what ought to be more frequently pressed and urged upon men than it commonly is. With a view to promote it, he recommended a treatise in the moral essays written by the gentlemen of Port Royal, "concerning the means of preserving peace among men ;" and also the Sermons of Dr. Wichcote on this and other moral subjects. He was exact to his word, and religiously performed whatever he promised. Though he chiefly loved truths which were useful, and with such stored his mind, and was best pleased to make them the subjects of conversation; yet he used to say, that, in order to employ one part of this life in serious and important occupations, it was necessary to spend another in mere amusements; and, when an occasion naturally offered, he gave himself up with pleasure to the charms of a free and facetious conversation. He remembered many agreeable stories, which he always introduced with great propriety; and generally made them yet more delightful, by his natural and pleasant manner of telling them. He had a peculiar art, in conversation, of leading people to talk concerning what they best understood. With a gardener, he conversed of gardening; with a jeweller of jewels; with a chemist of chemistry, &c. "By this," said he, "I please those men, who commonly can speak pertinently upon nothing else. As they believe I have an esteem for their profession, they are charmed with showing their abilities before me; and I, in the meanwhile, improve myself by their discourse." And, indeed, he had by this method acquired a very good insight into all the arts. He used to say too, that the knowledge of the arts contained more true philosophy, than all those fine learned hypotheses, which, having no relation to the nature of things, are fit only to make men lose their time in inventing or comprehending them. By the several questions which he would put to artificers, he would find out the secret of their art, which they did not understand themselves; and often give them views entirely new, which sometimes they put in practice to their profit. He was so far from assuming those affected airs of gravity, by which some persons, as well learned as unlearned, love to distinguish themselves from the rest of the world, that, on the contrary, he looked upon them as infallible marks of impertinence. Nay, sometimes he would divert himself with imitating that studied gravity, in order to turn it the better into ridicule; and upon such occasions he always recollected this maxim of the duke de la Rochefoucault, which he particularly admired, "that gravity is a mystery of the body, invented to conceal the defects of the mind." One thing, which those who lived any time with Mr. Locke could not help observing in him was, that he used his reason in every thing he did; and that nothing that was useful seemed unworthy of his attention and care. He often used to say, that "there was an art in every thing;" and it was easy for any one to see it, from the manner in which he went about the most trifling things. As Mr. Locke kept utility in view in all his disquisitions, he esteemed the employments of men only in proportion to the good which they were capable of producing. On this account he had no great value for those critics, or mere grammarians, who waste their lives in comparing words and phrases, and in coming to a determination in the choice of a various reading, in a passage of no importance. He valued yet less those professed disputants, who, being wholly possessed with a desire of coming off with victory, fortify themselves behind the ambiguity of a word, to give their adversaries the more trouble; and whenever he had to argue with such persons, if he did not beforehand strongly resolve to keep his temper, he was apt to grow somewhat warm. For his natural disposition was irritable; but his anger never lasted long. If he retained any resentment, it was against himself, for having given way to such a ridiculous passion, which, as he used to say, may do a great deal of harm, but never yet did the least good. He was charitable to the poor, excepting such as were idle or profane, and spent their Sundays in ale-houses, instead of attending at church. And he particularly compassionated those, who, after they had laboured as long as their strength would permit, were reduced to poverty. He said, that it was not enough to keep them from starving, but that a provision ought to be made for them, sufficient to render them comfortable. In his friendships he was warm and steady; and, therefore, felt a strong indignation against any discovery of treachery or insincerity in those in whom he confided. It is said, that a particular person, with whom he had contracted an intimate friendship in the earlier part of his life, was discovered by him to have acted with great baseness and perfidy. He had not only taken every method privately of doing Mr. Locke what injury he could in the opinion of those with whom he was connected, but had also gone off with a large sum of money which was his property, and at a time too when he knew that such a step must involve him in considerable difficulties. Many years after all intercourse had, by such treachery, been broken off between them, and when Mr. Locke was one of the lords of trade and plantations, information was brought to him one morning, while he was at breakfast, that a person shabbily dressed requested the honour of speaking to him. Mr. Locke, with the politeness and humanity which were natural to him, immediately ordered him to be admitted; and beheld, to his great astonishment, his false friend, reduced by a life of cunning and extravagance to poverty and distress, and come to solicit his forgiveness, and to implore his assistance. Mr. Locke looked at him for some time very stedfastly, without speaking one word. At length, taking out a fifty-pound note, he presented it to him with the following remarkable declaration: "Though I sincerely forgive your behaviour to me, yet I must never put it in your power to injure me a second time. Take this trifle, which I give, not as a mark of my former friendship, but as a relief to your present wants, and consign to the service of your necessities, without recollecting how little you deserve it. No reply! It is impossible to regain my good opinion; for know, friendship once injured is for ever lost." Mr. Locke was naturally very active, and employed himself as much as his health would permit. Sometimes he diverted himself by working in the garden, at which he was very expert. He loved walking; but being prevented by his asthmatic complaint from taking much of that exercise, he used to ride out after dinner, either on horseback or in an open chaise, as he was able to bear it. His bad health occasioned disturbance to no person but himself; and persons might be with him. without any other concern than that created by seeing him suffer. He did not differ from others in the article of diet; but his ordinary drink was only water; and this he thought was the cause of his having his life prolonged to such an age, notwithstanding the weakness of his constitution. To the same cause, also, he thought that the preservation of his eye-sight was in a great measure to be attributed; for he could read by candle-light all sorts of books to the last, if they were not of a very small print, and he had never made use of spectacles. He had no other disorder but his asthma, excepting a deafness of six months' continuance about four years before his death. Writing to a friend, while labouring under this affliction, he observed, that since it had entirely deprived him of the pleasures of conversation, "he did not know but it was better to be blind than deaf." Among the honours paid to the memory of this great man, that of queen Caroline, consort of king George II., ought not to be overlooked; for that princess having erected a pavilion in Richmond park in honour of philosophy, placed in it our author's bust, with those of Bacon, Newton, and Clarke, as the four prime English philosophers. Mr. Locke left several MSS. behind him, from which his executors, sir Peter King, and Anthony Collins, Esq. published, in 1705, his Paraphrase and Notes upon St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, in quarto, which were soon followed by those upon the Corinthians, Romans, and Ephesians, with an essay prefixed, for the understanding of St. Paul's Epistles, by consulting St. Paul himself. In 1706, Posthumous Works of Mr. Locke were published in octavo, comprising a treatise On the Conduct of the Understanding, supplementary to the author's essay; An Examination of Malebranche's Opinion of seeing all Things in God, &c. In 1708, Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several of his Friends were also published in octavo; and in 1720, M. des Maizeaux's Collection, already noticed by us. But all our author's works have been collected together, and frequently reprinted, in three vols. folio, in four vols. quarto, and in ten vols. octavo. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY. BARON HERBERT OF CARDIFF, LORD ROSS OF KENDAL, PAR, HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL, AND LORD MY LORD, THIS Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection, which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than a fair, unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond |