do not only lose their pleasant smell immediately, but stink as bad as carrion." "In their gruffs, after burning (when they meet with hard rocks in their way, they make a fire upon them, that they may dig through them the easier), they find it very dangerous to go down into them, as long as there remains any fire or heat in any chinks of the rocks."

Locke also reported to his friend the result of some experiments that he made with the barometer at the base, summit, and along the ascent of "a pretty steep high hill" near the house in which he abode, on the 3rd of April; which, however, showed little more than that the barometer was at fault through the presence of air in the tube. Further experiments, he said, were prevented by the return of the plague, which, at no other time so disastrous in its effects as in the summer and autumn of 1665, continued to do much mischief, and to cause great alarm in the ensuing years. "The spreading of the contagion made it less safe to venture abroad, and hastened me out of the country sooner than I intended."

Writing thus to Boyle from Christ Church early in May, 1666, Locke remained at Oxford, with the exception of two or three short absences, until the end of March, 1667.2

1 Boyle, 'Works,' vol. v., p. 157; Locke to Boyle, 5 May, 1666. There is in this letter a paragraph indicative of Locke's modesty. Boyle seems to have asked for the barometrical experiments with a view to their being published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. "I do not think anything in this letter fit for the public," Locke wrote; "but if, for want of better, this should be thought fit to fill an empty space in the philosophical newsbook, I shall desire to have my name concealed." No. empty space was found for it.

2 From this time valuable information as to Locke's whereabouts is incidentally furnished by A Register kept by Mr. Locke,' inserted in Boyle's

Whenever it was that Locke began to apply himself to a serious and systematic study of medicine, there can be no doubt that he had made great progress in it before his short trial in diplomatic work in the winter of 1665-6, and that, this work being over, he returned with new energy to his favourite pursuit. At the same time, it is clear that he had been studying, and continued to do so, in his own way, and not in accordance with university rules.

The Oxford requirements as regards medical education were so slight, that it is not easy to understand why he should have failed to comply with them. All that was expected from an applicant for a bachelorship in physic was regular attendance during three years at the lectures of the Arabic professor and of the professors of anatomy and medicine, together with participation in a certain number of disputations in the medical school, and after that little more than a delay of four years was necessary to qualify him for the doctorship. The medi

'General History of the Air' (in vol. v. of his collected Works,') which Locke edited and prepared for publication in 1691. Locke took a great interest, all through his life, in scientific watching of the temperature and the changes of the seasons, and soon after his return to Oxford, in May, 1666, he began to keep a very careful record of the progress of the weather from day to day, which, with two important breaks, he steadily posted up, whenever he had the necessary appliances at hand, till the year 1683. Most of the entries are too technical to be of much general interest. Some, however, are of a different sort, and one is especially noteworthy as containing an account of the effect produced at Oxford by the great fire of London. Locke wrote thus, on the 3rd of September, 1666, in his Register: "Dim, reddish sunshine. This unusual colour of the air, which, without a cloud appearing, made the sunbeams of a strange red dim light, was very remarkable. We had then heard nothing of the fire of London; but it appeared afterwards to be the smoke of London then burning, which, driven this way by an easterly wind, caused this odd phenomenon."

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cine lectures, delivered every Tuesday and Friday morning during term, were limited to an exposition of the teaching of Hippocrates and Galen. For anatomy, the students had in the spring to attend the dissecting of one human body and to hear four lectures, each two hours long, upon it, and in the autumn to hear three lectures on the human skeleton. Dr. James Clayton was the professor of medicine till 1665; but, as his nerves were too delicate to allow of his presence at dissections, the anatomical teaching was neglected or done by proxy. His successor, Dr. James Hyde, was an eminent physician in his day; but his patients lived in London, so he also lectured only by proxy. The teaching provided in the schools was nearly as useless in the education of competent doctors as were Latin verse-writing and Aristotelian disputation in the education of useful politicians and sensible clergymen. We may be quite sure that Locke did not take to medicine in order that he might continue the obsolete doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen, excellent as their teachings had been in their own times, and reverenced as they must be by all their successors; yet it is strange that, paltry and inadequate as he may have considered them, he should not have complied with the formalities prescribed for claiming the diploma that would authorise him to make use of the knowledge acquired by him outside the university class-rooms.

That he failed to do that, however, is certain. On the 3rd of November, 1666, a year after the time when, in the ordinary course, he might have obtained the degree of doctor in physic, he procured from the Earl of Clarendon,

1 Laudian Statutes,' title iv., section 1, caps. 15 and 16; title vi., section 5; also 'Tomlin's Ordinances; both in Ward, Oxford University Statutes,' vol. i.

then chancellor of the university, a document of great significance. Addressing Dr. Fell, the vice-chancellor, and the several heads of houses, Clarendon thus wrote:"MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR AND GENTLEMEN,

"I am very well assured that Mr. John Locke, a master of arts and student of Christ Church, has employed his time in the study of physic to so good purpose that he is in all respects qualified for the degree of doctor in that faculty, for which he has also full time; but, having not taken the degree of bachelor in physic, he has desired that he may be dispensed with to accumulate that degree, which appears to me a very modest and reasonable request, he professing himself ready to perform the exercise for both degrees. I therefore very willingly give my consent that a dispensation to that purpose be propounded for him.

"Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen,

"Your very affectionate servant,

"CLARENDON."1

That recommendation, almost equivalent to a command, was, strange to say, not attended to. Honorary degrees of all sorts were in these years given away in abundance at Oxford, and in this case the highest authority in the university vouched that the degree need only be an honorary one because certain formalities had been neglected yet the chancellor's instruction was not heeded. It is evident that already adverse influences against Locke were at work. The high church party was dominant at Oxford; and Locke was not a high churchman.

Whatever else this instruction and its failure give us warrant for assuming, it shows conclusively that Locke had by this time resolved to devote himself to the medical profession, and felt that he needed nothing but a diploma to help him in entering upon it.

Eleven days later, doubtless on finding that Clarendon's 1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 8*.

request would be ignored by the university authorities, he obtained another document, and one that no university opposition could overrule. This did not directly assist him in the medical career that he had marked out for himself; but it enabled him to retain the Christ Church studentship, which he had lately been holding in an irregular way, and from which, now that he had finally abandoned all thought of becoming a clergyman, it is probable that some effort was being made to oust him. The document, marked in the margin, "Dispensation for Mr. Locke," and addressed "To our trusty, etc., the dean and chapter of Christ Church, in our university of Oxford," was as follows:

"TRUSTY, ETC.,

"Whereas we are informed that John Locke, master of arts and student of Christ Church, in our university of Oxford, is of such standing as by the custom of that college he is obliged to enter into holy orders or otherwise to leave his student's place there, at his humble request that he may still have further time to prosecute his studies without that obligation, we are graciously pleased to grant him our royal dispensation, and do accordingly hereby require you to suffer him, the said John Locke, to hold and enjoy his said student's place in Christ Church, together with all the rights, profits, and emoluments thereunto belonging, without taking holy orders upon him according to the custom of the college or any rule of the students in that case, with which we are graciously pleased to dispense in that behalf. And for so doing this shall be your warrant. Given at our court at Whitehall, the 14th day of November, 1666, in the eighteenth year of our reign.

"By his majesty's command,

"WILLIAM MORRICE." 1

That dispensation, signed by Charles the Second's secretary of state, was of great advantage to Locke during

1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 22. This is the original document. An official copy of it is in the Domestic Entry Book, no. xiv., p. 103, in the Record Office.