WE are all much in debt to Mr. Fox Bourne
for his Life of John Locke. To many, perhaps to most, of even the more serious of the multitude of English readers in our day, John Locke has been hardly more than the shadow of a great name—hardly more than the author of a philosophical treatise, which, though famous as the beginning of a new departure in modern philosophy, is better known by fame than from actual study to all except the very few who, while looking back to Locke as perhaps the greatest of their own teachers in metaphysics, have yet believed with reason that in the works of Locke's successors down to the present day there has been, and now is, a development and application of his method far more complete and more fit for the practical use of the metaphysical student than the original "Essay concerning Human Understanding." Those, indeed, who have turned to Lord King's Life and Correspondence of Locke have been able to learn from those volumes much about the man himself. But though Lord King's work is invaluable for the original letters of Locke which had come down to him from his ancestor, Locke's cousin, and useful for what narrative of events he combines with them, it is disjointed, and so far an unattractive composition. But Mr. Fox Bourne has not only reproduced all that Lord King could give from his own archives, but has drawn amply from those of the Earls of Shaftesbury, and from the Remonstrants' Library at Amsterdam, as well as from all published sources ; while he justly acknowledges his debt to Mr. Alexander Burrell, for his carefully collected information, "during his pilgrimages to the haunts of Locke, both in England and on the Continent." Mr. Fox Bourne has a right to say that "the writing of an orderly and comprehensive biography of the author of 'An Essay con- cerning Human Understanding' is for the first time attempted" —and we will add, successfully attempted—" in the following volumes." The reader may wish, according to his individual taste, that one passage had been shortened or another amplified, but no one can read these volumes through without finding that there has grown up before him, we will not say the image of a hero, since Locke was ever too modest and too humble "to threaten and command," but yet-
": A combination and a form, indeed,
- Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man !"
We are often warned by the admirers of this or that man of genius that we must be content to know him in his public works, and that we have no business to pry into his private life, or to attempt to connect the one with the other. But no such warning is necessary as to Locke. His philosophy was not only not apart from, but can only be rightly appreciated in its connection with, his daily life. The scientific method of dealing with facts on which he endeavoured to base his metaphysical investigations is illus- trated by that love of truth and reason above all things which actuated him in the smallest as well as the greatest things, and which he was always enforcing, at each fitting opportunity, on those many friends who at every period of his life were taught by him, in words as humble as they were wise. His practical piety and his cheerful endurance of unworthy persecutions may help to explain
* The Life of John Locke. By H. B. Fox Bourne. 2 vole. London; Henry B. Sing and Co. 1876. how his far-seeing views on religious toleration were not only int advance of his own times, but are so full of that toleration of in- tolerance in which our advocates of free thought are too often want- ing in the present day. At the same time, so quiet and unobtrusive was the life of this great man, that it is only in the detailed study of his life that we learn how important a part he played in politics, no less than in philosophy,—as the trusted adviser of Shaftesbury under Charles II., and of William himself, as well as of his Ministers.
The family of Locke traced their name back, through Sir Wil- liam Locke, "the greatest English merchant under Henry
to John Locke, Sheriff of London in 1460: a branch from these settled in Dorsetshire, whence a younger member, Nicholas, the grandfather of our John Locke, migrated to one of the Somerset- shire villages—Sutton Wick, Pensford, or Publow—which lie six or eight miles south of Bristol ; and the father claimed cousin. ship with an alderman (in 1642 the mayor) of that city—also a John Locke. These villages were still, as in the days of Leland, a century earlier, "occupied with clothing" for the supply of the Bristol woollen trade at home and abroad ; and here Nicholas. Locke was a prosperous clothier, apparently rather as a merchant than manufacturer of the stuffs. His eldest son, John, was the father of John Locke whose life is before us. He became &country attorney of good position, clerk of the justices of that diatrict„ and agent and general adviser of one of the chief of them, Alex- ander Popham, of Houndstreet, under whom, too, as his colonst, he served in the Parliamentary Army, and fought at Lai:Mown, and Devizes as captain of a troop of horse in a regiment of volunteers raised by his friend and employer. Ten years before, on the 29th of August, 1632, was born his eldest son, John Locke, at Wrington, a few miles from Pensford and Bristol, in a house—still standing, though not unaltered—which was occupied by the brother, as it had been by the grandfathers of the elder Locke's wife, Agnes Keene. Of the mother we know no more- than that Locke told the most intimate friend of the last years of his life that she was "a very pious woman and affectionate mother." Of the father, the same friend (Lady Masham) says that his son always spoke with great respect and affection ; and in the one letter- from Locke to his "most dear and ever-loving father" which still remains, there is abundant evidence that the son gave the father- the fullest share of that tender and thoughtful solicitude which. characterised all his relations with others throughout his life. In 1646 Locke went to Westminster School, where Dryden and Robert South were his seniors by a year. In 1652 he obtained a junior studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, and matriculated in November in that year. The great Dr. John Owen was then. Dean of Christ Church, as well as Vice-Chancellor of the Uni- versity. He was just beginning to carry out a vigorous reforma- tion of the University, the members of which had during the Civil? War degenerated into "a mere rabble" (as he himself said, in one- of his orations to them), alike in morals and in learning. Here Locke continued the studies which he had begun at Westminster, and which, both as to their substance and the methods of ac- quiring them, he held in after-life to have been to a great degree- waste of time. Yet his learning was real, and he added to it such general culture that one of his early friends, James Tyra, told Lady Masham "that Mr. Locke was there looked upon as one of the most learned and ingenious young men in the college he was of." Here were such independents and Republicans as. Owen, and such Royalists as Pococke ; and in the midst of the political life which was still expressing itself in that conflict of opinions which Milton had some years before declared to be "know- ledge in the making," Locke, like so many of his contemporaries, while still holding fast to his faith in religious and political liberty, was yet learning to accept the restored monarchy as the possible —perhaps even the best possible—condition for the maintenance- and development of such liberty. His father had intended him for- the ministry (whether Presbyterian or Episcopalian is not known) ; but Locke, after much consideration of many advantageous offers- of ecclesiastical preferment, decided against them all, believing,. as he himself said, that he was not qualified by such learning and abilities as the office required. He resolved to become a physi- cian. He had held for some years a Christ-church student- ship, and he was enabled by a royal dispensation, to which the college authoriities reluctantly submitted, to continue to hold this with its emoluments, without being obliged "to take holy orders upon him, according to the custom of the college." Be had probably been able to obtain this favour through his old schoolfellow and friend, William Godolphin ; and it was doubtless through the same influence that, when the Court was at Oxford in the year before, Locke was appointed secretary to She Waiter
Vane, who was sent on an embassy to Brandenburg, in order to obtain the neutrality, if not the alliance, of the Elector in the war with Holland.
The capital of Brandenburg was Cleve, and enough of Locke's letters from this place have been preserved to open to us a new view of his life and character. They are written to John Strachey, pro- bably the earliest of that succession of friends with whom Locke maintained such affectionate relations during his whole life, and who was now living at Sutton Court, in the immediate neigh- bourhood of Locke's Somersetshire home and family. These letters exhibit the careful observation, shrewdness, fun, humour, and personal sympathy with him he writes to, which hence- forth make Locke's correspondence so charming. Locke per- formed his duties so well as secretary to this embassy that on his return, at the end of three months, he was offered a like post with the more important embassy to Spain. But he resolved, after some consideration, to decline the employment, as he thus tells his friend Strachey :—
" Oxford, February 28, '65.
" DEAR wrote to you from London as soon as I came hither, to let you know you had a servant returned to England, but very likely to leave it again before he saw you. But those fair offers I had to go to Spain have not prevailed with me ; whether fate or fondness kept me at home, I know not ; whether I have let slip the minute that they say every one has once in his life to make himself, I cannot tell ; this I am sure, I never trouble myself for the loss of that which I never had ; and have the satisfaction that I hope shortly to see you at Sutton -Court, a greater rarity than my travels have afforded me ; for, believe it, one may go a long way before one meet a friend. Pray write by the post, and let me know how you do, and what you can tell of the concernment of your most affectionate friend, T. LOCKE."
After a visit to his friend, he returned to pursue his medical studies at Oxford ; and while his interest in politics, in philosophy, and, we may say, in all subjects of human interest, continued unabated, he made much progress in this special study. To this, as to other things, he applied the method of exact observation instead of theory and hypothesis, and that with so much ability, that Sydenbam, who in the art of medicine was establishing this as the only true method, attached the greatest value to the co- operation of Locke in his investigations, and declared him to have .among the men of his own time few equals and no superiors. And it was from Locke's reputation and his practical skill as a physician that he was brought into relations with Lord Ashley, afterwards the first Earl of Shaftesbury, which had an important effect on -his future career, and, we may add, on the course of politics and history, which were not uninfluenced by his wise counsels to the statesmen of his day. But this we must leave for a farther notice.
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