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the fact appears, we may safely assume that his election took place either in 1658 or early in 1659. These senior studentships, unless taken away for bad behaviour, or for some other special reason, were tenable for life, and we know that Locke held one of them till 1684.

The public lectures that he was obliged to attend as a graduate were more numerous than those prescribed for undergraduates, and they, of course, suggested the line of study in which the students might profitably spend all their working hours. But very little knowledge in addition to that required at the bachelor's examination, very little more than mere attendance at lectures and disputations, was exacted from applicants for the mastership; and thus, especially as connection with a tutor was no longer necessary, the graduates were free to spend nearly as much or as little time as they chose in study, and also to make pretty much their own choice of studies.

We have already heard, from Lady Masham, that Locke had avowed to her his discouragement at the result of all the unprofitable reading in which he was expected to engage. "This discouragement, he said," the same informant adds, "kept him from being any very hard student, and put him upon seeking the company of pleasant and witty men, with whom he likewise took great delight in corresponding by letters; and in conversation and these correspondences he, according to his own account of himself, spent for some years much of his time."1

1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. "It is scarce to be thought," Lady Masham goes on to say, "that he writ so well then as after he had lived more in the world, and been advantaged by the politer conversation of great men. Else it would be a pity that those letters should be lost; for I doubt whether Voiture excelled him in that part of writing afterwards, when he had other employment than

That statement is valuable, as confirming the inference, which might reasonably have been made without it, that Locke found more satisfaction in the society of intelligent young men of the world, than in that of beardless pedants. We are also told, on less indisputable authority, that "Mr. Locke spent a good part of his first years at the university in reading romances, from his aversion to the disputations then in fashion there.'

We must not, however, suppose that he idled away much of his time at Oxford, and paid no attention to the sterner work of the university. Though he wisely availed himself of all the relaxation and all the good influences within his reach, it is certain that he honestly conformed to the rules of work which were morally, if not legally, enforced upon him by acceptance of his Christ Church studentship.

What then were the university studies prescribed for him? He had to supplement his reading in Aristotelian logic and Aristotelian moral philosophy with reading in Aristotelian metaphysics and Aristotelian natural philosophy. He had to make some study of history. From the subjects then included in the term geometry, he had to advance to the subjects then included in the term astronomy. And to the continued study of Greek he had to add Hebrew and Arabic. He had thus to attend at least one morning and one afternoon lecture every weekday, besides occasional classes for the more practical study of the mathematical sciences and the oriental languages. He was also obliged to be respondent or opponent at least once a year at the Augustine disputa

to make this any business." For all that, "it is a pity that those letters should be lost."

1 Spence, Anecdotes' (ed. Singer), p. 107.

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tions, and to engage in some other Aristotelian wordfighting.1

His Aristotelian metaphysics Locke had to derive from one of the college lecturers, there being no university professorship established for that subject. In natural philosophy, or Aristotelian physics, he was instructed by Joshua Crosse, the Sedleian professor, about whom very little is known. From neither lecturer, though it was their business to solve the whole mystery of things animate and inanimate, is it likely that he gained much, unless it was they who sent him to Descartes and ultimately to something better than Cartesianism.

The lectures on history were, by the Laudian statutes, limited to "Lucius Florus or any other historians of ancient date and repute; " and the Camden professor of history in Locke's day was Louis du Moulin, a Leyden physician, and, according to Anthony Wood," a fiery, violent, and hot-headed independent." It would be interesting to know how the medical nonconformist discoursed on Greek and Roman myths; but the information is not extant, and perhaps the loss of it is not great as regards Locke's mental history."

Continuing for a year longer to attend the lectures of Dr. John Wallis on geometry, Locke had also to obtain instruction in astronomy from Dr. Seth Ward. Here also he was fortunate. Ward, though not so eminent a mathematician, still less as liberal-minded a man, as Wallis, was a good and able teacher. He was almost the first professor of astronomy, we are told, who lectured on 1 Ward, Oxford University Statutes.'

2 Among the Shaftesbury Papers (series viii., no. 5) is a small notebook, apparently in Locke's handwriting, and looking like a college exercise, entitled, Collections out of the History of England,' containing a bare epitome of events, down to the latter part of the eleventh century

astronomy. Before his time, no audience being obtained, the lectures had been for many years dispensed with; but he revived the class, and obtained in it a number of diligent pupils. Nor did he neglect the other subjects assigned to him. He lectured, not only on the ancient methods of astronomy, from Ptolemy downwards, and on the improvements of Copernicus, Galileo, and other moderns, but also on optics and gnomonics, on the application of mathematics to geography and navigation, and on other adaptations of mathematical science.

Neither in that science nor in its adaptations did Locke take much interest, but he made as much acquaintance with them as was necessary to the good education of a gentleman, and one in life-long communication with scientific men of all sorts. In the age of Newton it was fortunate that its other master-mind ran in a different groove; and we certainly need not regret that Locke's temperament did not lead him to derive all the special advantage that was possible to one who was a pupil of John Wallis and Seth Ward.

Besides these mathematical teachers there was one other learned professor to whose lectures it is likely that Locke paid no more attention than was prescribed by the university rules. He probably knew something of Hebrew before he left Westminster, and at Oxford, having to attend Arabic as well as Hebrew classes twice a week during two or three years, he doubtless continued these studies to a moderate extent; but he certainly never won any fame as an oriental scholar.

Yet, of all his teachers at Oxford, the one whom he most revered, perhaps the only one whom he much revered, was Dr. Edward Pococke, the regius professor of Hebrew and the Laudian professor of Arabic.

1652-00. Et 20-27.

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This good man, after spending many years at Aleppo and other places in the East, where he made excellent use of the opportunities afforded him for studying oriental languages and institutions, was in 1636 selected by Laud as the first occupant of the Arabic chair that he had just founded at Oxford. The civil war, and his devotion to the royalist cause, hindered his lecturing during several years; but as soon as peace was established, the parliamentarian authorities, as has already been mentioned, showed remarkable liberality in relieving him from the necessity of either taking the new oath of allegiance or resigning the Arabic chair. They even made him professor of Hebrew as well as of Arabic. From 1648 till his death in 1691, he was an enthusiastic worker in the learned province of literature to which he especially devoted himself; and we have Locke's testimony that his great scholarship was almost the least of his merits.

"So extraordinary an example, in so degenerate an age, Locke wrote, "deserves, for the rarity, and, I was going to say, for the incredibility of it, the attestation of all that knew him, and considered his worth. The Christian world is a witness of his great learning, that the works he published would not suffer to be concealed. But his other virtues and excellent qualities had so strong and close a covering of unaffected humility, that-though they shone the brighter to those who had the opportunity to be more intimately acquainted with him, and eyes to discern and distinguish solidity from show, and esteem virtue that sought not reputation-yet they were the less taken notice and talked of by the generality of those to whom he was not wholly unknown. Not that he was at all close and reserved; but, on the contrary, the readiest to communicate to any one that consulted him. Indeed, he was