not forward to talk, nor ever would be the leading man in the discourse, though it were on a subject that he understood better than any of the company, and would often content himself to sit still, and hear others debate in matters which he himself was more a master of. He had often the silence of a learner, where he had the knowledge of a master; and that not with a design, as is often, that the ignorance any one betrayed might give him the opportunity to display his own knowledge with the more lustre and advantage to their shame, or censure them when they were gone; for these arts of triumph and ostentation, frequently practised by men of skill and ability, were utterly unknown to him. It was very seldom he contradicted any one, or if it were necessary at any time to inform him better who was in a mistake, it was in so soft and gentle a manner that it had nothing of the air of dispute or correction, and seemed to have little of opposition in it. I never heard him say anything that put any one who was present the least out of countenance, nor ever censure, or so much as speak diminishingly, of any one that was absent." He seems to have been in simplicity and nobility of temperament very like his panegyrist. Perhaps Locke learnt something more and better than Hebrew and Arabic from him.

He was a man," Locke continued, "of no irregular appetites. If he indulged any one too much, it was that of study, which his wife would often complain of (I think not without reason), that a due consideration of his age and health could not make him abate. Though he was a man of the greatest temperance in himself, and the farthest from ostentation and vanity in his way of living, yet he was of a liberal mind and given to hospitality, which, considering the smallness of his preferments and

1652-60.

Et. 20-27.

EDWARD POCOCKE AND NATHANIEL HODGES.

59

the numerous family of children he had to provide for, might be thought to have outdone those who made more noise and show. I do not remember that in all my conversation with him I ever saw him once angry, or to be so provoked as to change colour or countenance or tone of voice. His life appeared to me one constant calm. I can say of him, what few men can say of any friend of theirs, nor I of any other of my acquaintance, that I do not remember I ever saw in him any one action that I did or could, in my own mind, blame or think amiss in him."1

It is worth noting that the man here praised so highly was the one prominent and most outspoken royalist and episcopalian in the university. This friendship must have done something to wean Locke from the puritanism that had been encouraged in him by his father.

His other university friends, men more nearly of his own age, appear to have been, though not all royalists, chosen quite as much from royalist as from puritan circles.

One of these friends was Nathaniel Hodges, who went to Christ Church from Westminster in the year in which Locke entered the school, but with whom he formed acquaintance at Oxford. Hodges took his degree as master of arts in 1657, and was proctor of the university in 1666, and afterwards professor of moral philosophy. He became chaplain to the first Earl of Shaftesbury, by whom, when he was lord chancellor and apparently through

1 Leonard Twells, 'Life of Dr. Edward Pococke,' prefixed to a collected edition of his Theological Works' (1740); Locke to Humphrey Smith, 23 July, 1703. This letter had been previously printed in A Collection of Several Pieces of John Locke' (1720), without the name of the person to whom it was addressed.

Locke's influence, he was in 1673 made prebend of Norwich and Gloucester. We have few particulars of their friendship, but it lasted long. "I hear, this post,” Locke wrote in 1700, "that my old friend Mr. Hodges is dead. He, Dr. Thomas, and I were intimate friends in our younger days in the university. They two are gone, and who could have thought that I, much the weakest and most unlikely of the three, should have outlived them?"

With David Thomas, the other friend there mentioned by Locke, we shall often meet hereafter. He was probably a native of Salisbury, where he afterwards resided, and he must have been Locke's senior by some few years. He was educated at New College, but as to the exact period of his studies we have no record. As he was made a doctor of medicine in December, 1670,' he must have been a bachelor of arts not later than 1663, and a master of arts not later than 1666; and it is most likely that he took those degrees at considerably earlier dates. The first positive information that we have about him is in the bare record that in 1665 he was appointed proctor of the university. It shows, however, that at that time he had a good standing at Oxford.

Another of Locke's early companions was James Tyrrell, who, being ten years his junior, must be regarded as in some sort his pupil as well as his friend. Tyrrell was born in London in 1642, being the eldest son of Sir Timothy Tyrrell, of Shotover, whose wife was the daughter and heiress of Archbishop Ussher. In 1657, when only fifteen years old, he became a gentleman commoner

1 Additional MSS. in the British Museum, No. 4290; Locke to Edward Clarke, 11 Nov., 1700.

2 Wood, Fasti Oxonienses,' part ii., col. 820. 3 Ibid., part ii., col. 280.

1052-60.

DAVID THOMAS AND JAMES TYRRELL.

61

of Queen's College. In 1663 he took his master's degree, and in 1665 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn.1 He does not appear to have followed his profession. Living sometimes in London, sometimes at his house near Oxford, he occupied himself with philosophical and other studies, out of which grew his 'Patriarcha non Monarcha,' published in 1681, his 'Bibliotheca Politica' in 1691, his 'Brief Disquisition of the Laws of Nature' in 1692, and the History of England,' written in later years, for which he is chiefly remembered. His quick parts and amiable disposition soon made him a favourite with Locke, whose acquaintance with him began in 1658, and also with Thomas. Both of them were fond of designating him by the complimentary epithet of Musidore." "Mr. Tyrrell tells me," wrote Lady Masham, "that Mr. Locke was then looked upon as one of the most learned and ingenious young men in the college he was of."s

We have already heard that Locke considered the time spent by him during some years in the study of philosophy to have been nearly wasted, "because the only philosophy then known at Oxford "-known, that must have been, in the lecture rooms and class-rooms-" was the peripatetic, perplexed with obscure terms and useless questions."4 "The first books, as Mr. Locke himselr

1 Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses,' vol iv., col. 520.

2 "You send me no news of Musidore," Thomas wrote in a letter to Locke in November, 1669 (Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., No. 2).

3 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Jean le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5.

* Le Clerc, 'Eloge de M. Locke' in the Bibliothèque Choisie,' tom. vi., p. 347.

has told me," said Lady Masham, "which gave him a relish of philosophical things, were those of Descartes. He was rejoiced in reading these, because, though he very often differed in opinion from this writer, he yet found that what he said was very intelligible; from whence he was encouraged to think that his not having understood others had possibly not proceeded from a defect in his understanding."1

Had Locke not yet made acquaintance with the writings of Bacon, which could hardly have been beyond the understanding of such a student? or did he regard Bacon rather as the great herald and pioneer of the new philosophy than as himself a great philosopher? There would be some warrant for that view, and though Locke's philosophical debt to Bacon was a great one, Descartes was evidently a more attractive teacher for one situated and constituted as Locke was. We can readily understand with what relief he turned from the Aristotelian and scholastic dogmas to learn from Descartes all that was good in his teaching, until he was competent to set about correcting and controverting all that seemed to him to be not good.

Widely different as were both their careers and the philosophical conclusions at which they arrived, there was a close resemblance between the early intellectual circumstances of Locke and those of Descartes. The French philosopher, after referring to the scholastic education provided for him by his Jesuit teachers, said, "As soon as I had completed all that course of study at the termination of which one is usually admitted into the ranks of the learned, I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts

1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan. 1704-5.