Page images
PDF
EPUB

1680-1

Et. 48.

MISCELLANEOUS OCCUPATIONS.

443

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, 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." 2

if

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 lbid.

"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, 18 June, 1681.

1681.

Et. 48.

MISCELLANEOUS OCCUPATIONS.

445

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." 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.

1679.

Et. 46.

MEDICAL STUDIES AND PRACTICE.

447

entries, including among them, not only the prescriptions that he knew or thought to be the best, but also all others, not palpably improper, that he could collect from non-professional as well as professional friends. Whenever a cure or mode of treatment of any sort was reported to him, with anything at all to recommend it, he appears to have noted it down in order to examine it at leisure, and obtain from it all the help he could towards the collection of a complete body of prescriptions based on experience as well as on theory.

In a letter written to Mapletoft nine years before this time, which has already been quoted from, Locke spoke of a Mr. Beavis, who was then expected to die, and in his correspondence are several later references to Mrs. Beavis, who seems to have been a member of Lady Northumberland's family. What were his precise relations with these persons, or who they were, is not recorded; but Mr. Beavis, having recovered from his old ailment, was again dangerously ill at Olantigh, and thither, on the 18th of August, 1679, Locke posted down to attend upon him. In his journal are minute records of the progress and treatment of Mr. Beavis's malady, entered daily for a fortnight, and after that at intervals during the following month.1 With Mr. Beavis's illness we need not concern ourselves. It is important, however, as showing us that Locke was now paying so much attention to medical work that, encouraged thereto perhaps by regard for his friend, he broke away from his occupations in London and spent several weeks in the country as a skilled physician called down to consult with the doctor employed on the spot.

An episode of this visit to the Kentish village, more1 Additional MSS., no. 15642.

« PreviousContinue »