a short interval of peace, for more than twenty years; and such a cessation of intercourse with what was then the great centre of literary influence in Europe could not be without its results. No gay Grammonts or Saint Evremonds were now seen at the court of Whitehall; the Frenchmen who came hither were Protestant refugees, driven forth by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. One of them, Motteux, completed Urquhart's translation of Rabelais; another, Rapin de Thoyras, wrote in his own language a history of England, which afterwards became for Englishmen the standard work on the subject until the days of David. Hume. The result of these changed conditions was doubtless to leave our literature more to its own native and insular development, to throw poets like Pope more exclusively upon Spenser and Cowley and Dryden for models, and to foster the development of the simple idiomatic prose of Defoe and Swift. French influence, however-and nearly all for good-is discernible in the essays of Temple (1690-93) and in the later work of Bolingbroke, where, however, there is still more conspicuous evidence of the growing power of political oratory as a factor in prose style. As parliamentary debate, with the introduction of constitutionalism, became more important, the art of it was naturally studied with greater care; while the widening of the audience which had to be appealed to in pamphleteering combined with the gradual spread of rationalism to favour a more curt and familiar and less pedantic style than that which, in the hands of Hooker and Milton and Taylor, had been developed in the pulpit and the college. These probably are the main causes of the steady improvement made at this time in the writing of English prose.

To French influence, we must add, the Revolution period owed its one great literary controversy, for the battle of Boyle and Bentley (1696-99) over the Letters of Phalaris was one of the sequels of the dispute about the ancients and moderns between Perrault and Boileau and Fontenelle (1688-94). Started at first by Temple's unlucky essay, the fray is memorable mainly for having given Swift the subject of one of his earliest satires, and for establishing the fame of the greatest of English scholars. Richard Bentley's is one of the three or four great names which belong peculiarly to the age of the Revolution, or which, in other

words, have won distinction by achievements that belong to the last ten or twelve years of the seventeenth century. The others are Locke, Congreve, and Newton-the last by far the greatest of all, although it belongs largely to a domain that is excluded by the strict bounds of English literature, and even of the English language. The Revolution age is indeed more notable on the scientific side than on the literary, and one can discern in it the progress of that movement which had been begun five-and-twenty years before by the formation of the Royal Society-not only in the work of men like Ray, the naturalist, and Hooke, the physicist, but also in the fantastic speculations of Dr Thomas Burnet concerning the origin and ultimate fate of the earth.

The literary condition of England at the end of the seventeenth century cannot be understood without a knowledge of the very imperfect dissemination of books, and the other difficulties in the way of reading. There were no great collections of books save at the two universities: even London had no circulating library or bookclub, and readers who did not want to purchase had to snatch a glance at the volumes in the booksellers' shops in St Paul's Churchyard. As for private libraries, even the clergy were miserably supplied, while the condition of the gentry is described in Macaulay's statement that 'an esquire passed among his neighbours for a great scholar if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarleton's Jests, and the Seven Champions of Christendom lay in his hall window among the fishing-rods and fowlingpieces.' The republication of books was slow. The last folio of Shakespeare came out in 1685, and was not followed by the first octavo till 1709; while only three editions of Paradise Lost appeared between the Revolution and the end of the century; they were all in folio, and had but a small circulation. Magazines, of course, there were none, while the newspapers which sprang up after the liberation of the press were mere news-sheets that did not always displace the antiquated and lingering newsletter. the best, John Dunton's Athenian Gazette (1691) might provide some meagre and frivolous 'answers to correspondents,' and for the rest there were sermons, pamphlets, ballad broadsheets, and an odd playbook or ponderous romance. The popularising of literature was to come in the next age, with the Tatler and the Spectator.

ROBERT AITKEN.

At

John Locke

was born at Wrington, Somerset, 29th August 1632, son of a country attorney, and from Westminster School passed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where he became lecturer on Greek and on rhetoric. He soon became disgusted with the verbal subtleties of the Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy; and experiments in medicine show his bent towards the inductive interpretation of nature. In 1665 he

went as secretary with Sir Walter Vane, envoy to the Elector of Brandenburg during the Dutch war: some lively and interesting letters written by him from Germany on this occasion were published by Lord King in 1829. Those who are acquainted with Locke only in the character of a grave philosopher will be surprised to to find

him giving to a friend at home a quite humorous description (quoted below) of some Christmas ceremonies witnessed by him in a church at Cleves.

In less than a year Locke returned to Oxford, where he received an offer of prefer

afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; and so valuable did his lordship find the medical advice and general conversation of the philosopher, that a close and permanent friendship sprang up between them, and Locke became an inmate of the Earl's house. This brought him into the society of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Halifax, and other celebrated wits of the time. While residing with Lord Ashley, Locke superintended the education first of his son, and subsequently of his grand

ment in the Irish Church if he should think fit to take orders. This, after due consideration, he declined. A man's affairs and whole course of his life,' says he in a letter to the friend who made the proposal to him, 'are not to be changed in a moment, and one is not made fit for a calling, and that in a day. I believe you think me too proud to undertake anything wherein I should acquit myself but unworthily. I am sure I cannot content myself with being undermost, possibly the middlemost, of my profession; and you will allow, on consideration, care is to be taken not to engage in a calling wherein, if one chance to be a bungler, there is no retreat.'

In 1666 he was in a kind of amateur medical practice at Oxford, though he never took a degree in medicine. Problems of society, Church and State, and, above all, toleration largely exercised him. He became acquainted with Lord Ashley,

ment.

son, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, famous as a philosophical writer and Deist in the reign of Queen Anne. In 1672, when Lord Ashley received an earldom and the office of Chancellor, he gave Locke the appointment of secretary of presentations, and then a post in the Board of Trade, which the philosopher enjoyed only till the following year, when his patron lost favour and was deprived of the seals. The delicate state of Locke's health induced him in 1675 to visit France, where he resided four years, first at Montpellier, and afterwards at Paris, where he had opportunities of cultivating the ac

quaintance of the most eminent French literary men of the day. In 1679 Shaftesbury recalled Locke to England, and on taking refuge in Holland three years afterwards, was followed thither by his friend, suspected as his confidant. After the death of his patron in 1683 Locke found it necessary to prolong his stay in Holland, and even there was obliged, by the machinations of his political enemies at home, to live for upwards of a year in concealIn 1684, by a special order from Charles II. and countersigned by Sunderland, which is still preserved in the college library, he was deprived of his studentship at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1687 he instituted at Amsterdam a literary society, the members of which-among whom were Le Clerc, Limborch, and other learned men-met weekly for the purpose of enjoying each other's conversation. The Revolution of 1688 finally restored Locke to his native country, to which he was conveyed by

the fleet that brought over the Princess of Orange. He was made a Commissioner of Appeals, with a salary of £200 a year. He now became a prominent defender of civil and religious liberty, in a succession of works which exerted a powerful influence. While in Holland he had written in Latin an expansion of an essay (dating from 1667) on toleration; this he addressed to Limborch, by whom it was published at Gouda in 1689, and translations of it were immediately published in Dutch, French, and English. The liberal opinions which it maintained were controverted by an Oxford writer, in reply to whom Locke successively wrote three additional Letters. In 1690 was published the work by which he is best known, An Essay concerning Human Understanding. On this treatise he had been engaged for eighteen years; its origin he explained in the Prefatory Epistle to the Reader: 'Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee that five or six friends meeting at my chamber [at Oxford in 1670-71], and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course, and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented.' In proceeding to treat of the subject originally proposed, he found this matter increase upon his hands, and was gradually led into other fields of investigation. In the first book of his Essay Locke treats of innate ideas. He denies altogether the doctrine of innate ideas or conscious principles in the mind: God having endued man with those faculties of knowing which he hath, was no more obliged by His goodness to implant those innate notions in his mind, than that having given him reason, hands, and materials, He should build him bridges or houses.' Knowledge must be a gradual growth dependent on fallible experience. All our ideas, the most complex as well as the simplest, refer to data presented through the senses or to operations of the mind which have been made the objects of reflection. And he argues that the idea or sense of a God is so manifest from the visible marks of wisdom and power in creation, that no rational creature could, on reflection, miss the discovery of a Deity. In the second book Locke follows up this principle or position by tracing the origin of our ideas, simple and complex, which he derives from sensation and reflection. The third book of the Essay is on language and signs as instruments of truth; and the fourth book is intended to determine the nature, validity, and limits of the understanding. In virtue of his Essay Locke ranks as father of the English empirical philosophy, and his

influence was dominant in England till Kant's work became known. He profoundly influenced French thought in the next century; although he would have strenuously repudiated and refuted the French development of sensationalism into materialism. Berkeley and Hume were in different ways continuators of Locke's mode of thought. In 1690 Locke published two Treatises on Civil Government, in defence of the principles of the Revolution against the Tories; or, as he expresses himself, 'to establish the throne of our great restorer, our present King William; to make good his title in the consent of the people, which, being the only one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly than any prince in Christendom; and to justify to the world the people of England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin.' The chief of his other writings are his very suggestive Thoughts concerning Education (1693); an admirable tract On the Conduct of the Understanding, printed after the author's death; The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), and two Vindications of that work, which was held to verge on deism (1696). He conducted a keen controversy with Stillingfleet, who had annoyed him by identifying his theological position with that of Toland and the Deists to whom, in point of fact, he had decided affinities. For Locke, and many of the best minds of the time, it seemed essential that religion should be rational, regulated by common-sense and the evidences on which it is based; enthusiasm and fanaticism had had their day, and must make way for the age of reason. Locke is a conspicuous representation of the trend of English thought in the second half of the seventeenth century towards common-sense philosophy and scientific research. His name and those of Boyle, Newton, Flamsteed, Halley, Willis, Sydenham, Ray, the vegetable physiologist Grew, and the geologist Woodward show that 'Restoration literature,' specifically so called, was but one form of the reaction against the one-sidedness of the Puritan outlook on life and the world.

Immediately after the Revolution employment in the diplomatic service was offered to Locke, who declined it on the ground of ill-health. In 1695, having aided Government with his advice on the subject of the coinage, he was appointed a member of the new Council of Trade, an office the state of his health also obliged him to resign in 1700. He wrote also on Ireland and the poor-laws; and he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. The last years of his life, from 1691 on, were mainly spent at Oates in Essex, the seat of Sir Francis Masham, who had invited him to make that mansion his home. His friend Lady Masham, a daughter of Dr Cudworth, soothed by her attention the infirmities of his declining years. Locke died 28th October 1704.

Locke's character, like his philosophy, was

marked by caution, by adherence to experience and submission to facts, by suspicion alike of abstract speculation and mystical enthusiasm, and by calm reasonableness. His philosophy was sensible and rational rather than profound or original; it does not permanently satisfy the demands of the inquiring spirit; it is a philosophy of compromise, and is not sufficiently. compact, systematic, and thorough-going to hold its own against the criticism of the Kantians. The style of the Essay, like the philosophy it expounds, is plain and straightforward, is occasionally colloquial, but on the whole is decidedly monotonous. Locke, who meant his books for general reading, hated scholastic jargon, and wrote in language intelligible to every man of commonsense. 'No one,' says his pupil, Shaftesbury (himself rather a superfine writer), 'has done more towards the recalling of philosophy from barbarity, into the use and practice of the world, and into the company of the better and politer sort, who might well be ashamed of it in its other dress.' In the non-philosophical writings, as in that on education and the political papers, there is more trenchancy, vigour, and variety.

Design of the Essay on the Human Understanding.

Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them, it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to enquire into. The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this enquiry, whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves, sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our own minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search of other things.

This, therefore, being my purpose, to enquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge; together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent; I shall not at present meddle with the physical consideration of the mind, or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists, or by what motions of our spirits or alterations of our bodies we come to have any sensation by our organs, or any ideas in our understandings; and whether those ideas do in their formation, any or all of them, depend on matter or no: these are speculations which, however curious and entertaining, I shall decline as lying out of my way in the design I am now upon. It shall suffice to my present purpose to consider the discerning faculties of a man as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with and I shall imagine I have not wholly misemployed myself in the thoughts I shall have on this occasion, if in this historical, plain method I can give any account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have, and can set down any measures of the certainty of our knowledge, or the grounds of those persuasions which are to be found amongst men, so various, different, and wholly contradic

tory; and yet asserted somewhere or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have reason to suspect that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it. It is therefore worth while to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge, and examine by what measures, in things whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent and moderate our persuasions. In order whereunto, I shall pursue this following method.

First, I shall enquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them. Secondly, I shall endeavour. to shew what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it. Thirdly, I shall make some enquiry into the nature and grounds of faith or opinion; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition as true, of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge and here we shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of

assent.

If by this enquiry into the nature of the understanding I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach ; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us: I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things to which our understandings are not suited, and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view, how far it has faculties to attain certainty, and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state. (From the Introduction to the Essay.)

Of Useless Reading.

Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understanding and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are; and yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove an hindrance to many, and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge. This I think I may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein the understanding needs a more careful and wary conduct than in the use of books; without which they will prove rather innocent amusements than profitable employments of our time, and bring but small additions to our knowledge.

There is not seldom to be found even amongst those who aim at knowledge, who with an unwearied industry employ their whole time in books, who scarce allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read, and read, and read on, yet make no great advances in real knowledge,