Others ador'd a rat, and some For that church suffer'd martyrdom; Themselves and us better than so.' "'1 "If M. Römer has given you, as he promised, the longitudes of Bayonne and Cordova, in relation to Paris, you will add much to my treasures by sending them to me," was one sentence-illustrative of Locke's habit of acquiring information of all sorts-in his next letter to Thoynard. Nearly all his correspondence with this friend is crowded with questions and answers, messages and replies, about mechanical inventions and the like. "The parliament will meet here soon," Locke added in this letter, "and then I hope to find some one among my friends who can give the measures of the stoppers. In 1 Additional MSS., no. 28753; Locke to Thoynard, 9 Feb., 1680-1. The quotation is from Hudibras,' part i., canto i., ll. 771-784; it does not, however, as regards the first, second, and fifth lines, agree with Butler's published text. "They say the elephant is the wisest of beasts," Locke said in his next letter, dated the 20th of February; "and this one well confirms the opinion, having lived sixteen or seventeen years at court without their being able to discover its sex. If they could find a pineal gland proportioned to its body, ought not Messieurs les Cartésiens to say that it is a beast with a great soul? But I would not that they should give to elephants paper and ink, if it be true that they can write, lest they should inform posterity by their memoirs that it is we men who are only machines, and that they alone possess understanding. If you have translated the burlesque verses in my last, you will admit that they have good grounds for writing thus in their philosophical treatises." Locke was fond of ridiculing the opinions of the Cartesians, and not unwilling, as in this case, to ridicule other absurdities as well. the poor state of health in which I was while I was in London, I could not inform myself as I wished about the winding machine. I see well by the interest you take in my health, and by the interpretation you put on my silence, that your friendship always inclines you in my favour, and that you can make allowance for all my infirmities."1 "You make me cherish my health by the interest you take in it," Locke said to Thoynard in another letter from Oxford, "for there is nothing makes me value my life so much as your friendship. I must not, therefore, speak of St. Helena, or the Ile de Bourbon, or Carolina, if you do not mean to go with me to any of those places. Find only some healthy, quiet spot, where I can enjoy your conversation, and you will at any moment find me. ready to follow you to that earthly paradise.' This project of going out of Europe in quest of an Atlantis elsewhere may never have been seriously entertained, but the frequent references to it help to show us very plainly how ill at ease Locke was in the corrupted and degraded England in which he found himself constrained to live. He was still hoping, though in vain, that Thoynard would at any rate visit him in England, if only to go back to France, instead of wandering with him into unknown regions. "I am altogether charmed," he wrote in April, 1681, "with the prospect of seeing you au pays d'outre mer, as you say. Let me know at once the time when you think of coming to England, and I shall not fail to be in London, ready to receive you as soon as you arrive, so as not to lose a moment of your company.' 1 Additional MSS., no. 28753; Locke to Thoynard, 20 Feb., 1680-1. 2 Ibid.; Locke to Thoynard, 1 April, 1681. 3 Ibid. "Mr. Brisbane and I supped by ourselves the other evening," he wrote from London in June, "where we drank your health, and could wish for nothing else but your presence to make us the happiest of men; and, to tell you the truth, I have never been more restless than since you raised in me the hope of seeing and embracing you here. Hasten, I do beg of you, those affairs at Orleans which have detained you so long, and give me the opportunity of making some return for the great obligations that I owe you for the most delightful friendship of my whole life."1 If the reiterated expressions of regard for his friend which Locke indulged in-and of which only a very few specimens are being here given-seem redundant, let it be remembered that they are partly characteristic of the time, and yet more characteristic of the man himself. There was a gushing fountain of tenderness in Locke's nature, which, as he had neither wife, nor child, nor sister, he poured out upon the friends whom he loved. We may smile at this if we like. It is not common to men of the world. It is not one of the ordinary marks of a philosopher. But Locke had it, and perhaps, both as a philosopher and as a man of the world, he was enriched by the possession. Very few letters written by him to Thoynard for some long time after the one last quoted from have been preserved, and we are not able very clearly to follow his movements through the last two years of his residence at this time in England. Having gone from Oakley to Oxford, at Shaftesbury's request, at the beginning of February, 1680-1, and stayed there till after the meeting of the six days' parliament in March, he appears to have 1 Additional MSS., no. 28728; Locke to Thoynard, 13 June, 1681. . 48 stayed on till the end of May. "The driest spring that hath been known," he recorded of this season, "there having been no rain from the end of March to the end of June."1 This dry weather seems to have been favourable to his health during the spring and summer of 1681, and it was also to the advantage of his health that he was not then much in London. He was in town in the middle of June, and he was probably at Thanet House on the 2nd of July, when Shaftesbury was arrested; but while Shaftesbury was in the Tower, he would not be allowed to have access to him, and there was therefore no reason for his remaining in London. He went thither from Oxford, towards the end of August, and he was doubtless with Shaftesbury during his trial and acquittal in November. But he appears to have been in Oxford or the neighbourhood during most of this year and the following year and a half. Though Locke had returned to England especially to assist Lord Shaftesbury in political affairs, and though much of the time that he could spare from those affairs. and from miscellaneous studies and occupations was spent in superintendence of young Anthony Ashley's education, he appears not yet to have abandoned his old intention of making medicine his regular profession. His other employments and the poor state of his health caused him to defer from time to time any direct action which he may have planned, and he never became in any orderly way a physician, but we shall find that to the end of his life he 1 Boyle, Works,' vol. v., p. 152. I have not thought it necessary always to quote this authority for statements as to Locke's whereabouts from time to time. continued to practise among his friends, and to accumulate notes of his own and other persons' experience in the treatment of all sorts of maladies. It may be assumed that, after leaving England, with the prospect of never returning to it, in 1683, he finally gave up his longcherished plan of life, and that thenceforth his notecollecting and his friendly practising were continued out of mere good-nature and a liking for the pursuit; but it is clear that during the four years that we are now considering, or during most of the period, he was still waiting for an opportunity of devoting himself steadily to his favourite occupation. He was still generally spoken of by his friends as Dr. Locke, and he still regarded himself as, before everything else, a doctor. Out of his journals, letters and other remains it would be easy to extract material enough to fill a volume with illustrations of his medical history. For the purposes of the present work, however, it is sufficient to give only a few specimens of this material, and such a brief account of his medical occupations as will serve to prevent this important current of his life from being lost sight of. One entry in his journal, for example, dated the 4th of June, 1679, when he had hardly been a month in England, and might be supposed to be altogether engrossed in political business, describes a case of fever and diarrhoea which he had treated and cured; and on the 12th of the month, while he was taking a short holiday in an Essex village, we find him copying out several prescriptions that had been given to him by his friends, among them one received from Lady Shaftesbury, for vomiting, one from Dr. Tuberville, for disease of the eyes, and one from Mrs. Stringer, for hernia. He constantly made such 1 Additional MSS., no. 15642. |