him to make the journey. He seems, however, to have preferred the north of London to the south of France. "I am now making haste back again to London," he said, "and then, having made you judge of my state of health, shall desire your advice what you think best to be done; wherein you are to deal with me with the same freedom, since nothing will be able to make me leave those friends I have in England but the positive direction of some of those friends for my going. But, however I dispose of myself, I shall dwell amidst the marks of your kindness, and shall enjoy the air of Hampstead Heath or Montpellier as that wherein your care and friendship hath placed me." Whatever Mapletoft advised, Locke did not go France till September in the next year, and then they went together. The Countess of Northumberland then made her long-talked-of journey, taking with her Mr. and Mrs. Blomer and the rest of her family, as she intended to make a long residence abroad. Mapletoft accompanied her as her physician, and Locke went for a little while as her guest. Lord Ashley, now the Earl of Shaftesbury, and risen high in royal favour, was not able to spare his adviser-in-chief for long; but he gave him two or three weeks' holiday, and Locke, though forty years old, evidently enjoyed his first visit to France as thoroughly as any schoolboy could. On his return he thus wrote to Mapletoft : "DEAR DOCTOR,-I want nothing to complete all the satisfaction I could expect from a journey that carried me away from you, but an assurance that you and the rest of that good company with you accomplished yours with as good success, though I hope with better weather than we did ours. For, whether it were that hardships do naturally attend the undertaking of puissant as well as errant knights, and that heaven seldom smiles upon their enterprises, or whether the tutelar angel of the country would not. favour the flight of a man that had bilked one of the most considerable men of the place for what more worthy person than a French tailor? or what greater offence can there be than to go away in his debt?—but whatever the cause, so it was, that from the time we took horse at Paris, which was within an hour or two after your departure, till we came to Calais, we had not one dry day, and, as if all the rain that was stored in the clouds had been laid up there only for us, when we got within a league of Calais, it fell on us as if it had been poured down with buckets, which violence of the storm pursued us till we just got at the gates, and, as soon as we were got to shelter, it presently broke up, and we had no rain till after we had been several days in England. "This wet was some of the worst of our story, for we had by the way some adventures worth reciting, which I must adjourn till another time, that I may do what is more necessary for me and may return those thanks which those obligations I received when I was with you call for from me. You know how little skill I have in speeches, and my ignorance in French, which is the very mint of compliment, will excuse a dull oyster if it only gape, and by that you must guess at my meaning, which is all manner of thanks and acknowledgment to that excellent lady to whose favour I owe my voyage and all the advantages of it. This you are to put in the best words you can find, and on this occasion you cannot say too much. For, if Léoncourt and Chantilly, St. Germains and the Louvre, be sights which cannot be sufficiently admired, I'm sure there cannot be enough said in return for that favour which added a grace even to those fine places, and made me value the sight of them more than otherwise I should have done. When you are about to do me this kindness, I would not have you reflect upon my declining to perfect the recovery of my health in so advantageous a way and in your company, lest you should think so inconsiderate a man unworthy of your patronage, and forbear to say something for me which may preserve me from being thought ungrateful even for that health which I have got by going so far, and which I should be glad to employ in the service of those to whose kindness I am indebted for it. But you know that our journey as well as pilgrimage in this world have their settled bounds, and none of us can go beyond the extent of that tether which certainly ties us. In that dancing country, where every one thinks he may skip up and down as he will, I know not whether you will admit of that doctrine. But, think it as extravagant as you will, I'm sure so I found it, and Mr. Vernon, if he be with you, will justify this fatal necessity. "Pray present my most humble service to Lady Betty. To Mrs. Ramsay, A with my service, give an account that her letters were safe delivered at Northumberland House. Let Dr. Blomer and my sister know that I have a great deal of service for them, and that I delivered the one's letters and the other's tokens. Dr. Tillotson was well satisfied about the books, but the two femmes are like to go together by the ears which shall have both the sleeves. They have only made a truce for so long till she can send them word whether there be any French trick to make one sleeve serve for two arms. In the meantime they grumble and desire her to remember that all the cold in the world (however she be troubled with it) is not in France, and that such scanty clothing will scarce preserve a warm remembrance of her in her friends in England this winter. Pray also remember me very kindly to my brother Scawen, to whom pray give this enclosed bill, with my service and thanks. I had writ to him myself this turn, had not my chimney been this day on fire, which filled my chamber with so much company, smoke and confusion, that I have scarce recovered breath yet, and shall not bring myself and things in order this good while. But pray tell him I sent his letters away by the post as soon as I came to town, which was that day seventhnight I parted from you, and his token to Dr. Millington I sent away since by a safe hand. "And now I come to you, beloved, first with a word of information that your cousin Collet is well, and his wife well brought to bed the day after I returned; Mr. Firmin and his wife very well. Secondly, with a use of discomfort, because there is yet no use nor principal to be got. I wish Poole hold staunch, for Mary and Maning, I fear, are leaky vessels, and hold nothing but emptiness. But of this affair your cousin Collet and I will take all the care we can; and when this is done, whatever happens, I think you will not have one sigh the more, nor will I have one laugh the less. "The prorogation of parliament till the spring I doubt not but you have heard of. Other news we have little, the king being but just returned from Newmarket. I desire to hear from you how you all do, and where you have lived, and whether anybody went along the journey with you besides your own company; for we have no news of Mr. J. S., who, if he were in England, I am confident would tell us so. I wish you all manner of happiness, and am your most humble and obedient servant, 1 European Magazine, vol. xv. (1789), p. 9; Locke to Mapletoft, 19 Oct., 1672. 270 ΟΝ CHAPTER VI. IN THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY'S FAMILY. [1672-1675.] on N the 23rd of April, 1672, in reward for his services as a minister of Charles the Second, and as a mark of his growing favour at court, Lord Ashley was raised to the peerage as Earl of Shaftesbury; the 27th of September he was made president of the council of trade and plantations; and on the 17th of November he was appointed lord high chancellor of England. As these fresh dignities and offices brought Locke into much closer and more influential relations with political affairs, their antecedents must be briefly reviewed, in order that we may understand his new position. Shaftesbury, as Lord Ashley, had held the post of chancellor of the exchequer ever since May, 1661, but his influence in the government had varied greatly at different times. Such close cohesion, mutual dependence, and joint responsibility as now exists among cabinet ministers, were then only beginning very faintly to grow up, and Ashley remained in office when he was at variance as well as when he was in harmony with Clarendon, his recognised chief, and with other members of the government. Clarendon being a tory and Ashley a whig, the points of agreement between them were few and for the Æt. 40. most part accidental. Ashley's great abilities and his weight in the country made it impossible for him to be dispensed with, but while Clarendon was in power he was not often allowed to take a prominent share in public business outside his own department, for the management of which he seems to have had no special fitness. When Clarendon fell into disgrace, however, Ashley, apparently on patriotic grounds, tempered by jealousy of the Duke of Buckingham, supported him, and this action, together with the malady by which he was then crippled, rendered it easier for his new rival to inherit the chief portion of the deposed statesman's authority. Though by no means meriting all the scorn conveyed in Dryden's famous lines upon the man who mocked him in The Rehearsal,' "A man so various that he seem'd to be Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, "1 -though showing indisputable capacities for statesmanship, and sometimes, when he could hardly be suspected of intentional dishonesty and guidance by merely selfish motives, for generous and patriotic conduct-Buckingham was too true a representative of all the worst social and political vices of Charles the Second's day to deserve more honour than posterity has generally accorded to him. The best thing that can be said of him is that all through his public career he steadily opposed 1 Absalom and Achitophel,' 11. 545-552. |