position when propounded in conjunction with others strongly appealing to their passions and prejudices. Descartes exhibited in his Metaphysical Essays' an evident attachment to Platonism, and his view of the human mind represented it as only dependent on its own power of accumulating ideas by self-reflection, or on the operation of a divine influence for all the knowledge it possessed. This theory was gladly received by a large proportion of the learned world; and the great Leibnitz himself, at a subsequent period, supported, by his immense learning and profound intellect, the chief dogmas of the French philosopher. But Hobbes, who possessed a mind as subtle as it was strong, had been placed in circumstances which tended to render him, in a peculiar manner, the opponent of the Cartesian opinions. He thought and felt as a politician, and the fierceness with which he regarded the enemies of his party prevented his viewing any subject whatever distinct from politics. The refined and purely spiritual theory of Descartes could in no way be made to combine with the degrading opinions which he had formed of man in his political relations. An intolerant royalist, he sought to exalt the authority of the laws on the prostration of humanity, and finding that the theory then in vogue would ever form a barrier to his angry project of thus lowering the dignity of man as man, he invented a system of his own, in which the first principle was, that all our knowledge is derived from sensation. From Hobbes, who flourished in the time of the commonwealth, we pass by an easy transition to Locke, and this not merely from their nearness in point of time, but from the circumstance that the latter is supposed to have derived the characteristic principle of his theory from the hints he found in the works of his predecessor. But it need scarcely be added, that the inferences which these two celebrated men drew from a similar position were of a very different kind. Locke was as warmly attached to freedom as Hobbes was to royalty, and of course considered his theory as wholly independent of the political views with which Hobbes had associated his own speculations. The same observation holds good in respect to the opposite views they took of religion. The philosopher of Malmesbury made his system dangerous to all the higher species of truth: Locke, building his on a similar foundation, was one of the most powerful advocates that appeared in the field to defend revelation against the attacks of the infidel and the scoffer. This correctness of his views, in the most momentous points of practical science, afforded considerable assistance to the circulation of his theoretical principles. When attacked as to the dangerous nature of their tendency, he defended himself with the earnestness of a man seriously interested in the cause of religion; and the defence he set up was considered, by the generality of readers, as sufficiently strong to outweigh the objections of his opponents. The progress which metaphysical science has been making since his time has served to shake the stability of many of his opinions; but the clearness with which the governing principles of human thought were expounded in his essay, the appeal which was continually made in it to common experience, and the evident application of its chief rules to the improvement of science as it then existed, secured for it at once the patronage of the learned in almost every part of Europe, and gave it an influence over the minds of scholars which will never perhaps, to any great extent, be diminished. annum. For two years after his return from Holland he struggled with his complaint, so as to remain in Loudon, where he enjoyed the continued attention of the greatest and most talented men of the metropolis. The loss of his late friend, the earl of Shaftesbury, was in a great measure supplied by the kindness of the earl of Pembroke and the earl of Peterborough, with both of whom he lived on terms of the closest intimacy. At the end, however, of the period above-mentioned, his health would no longer allow of his remaining in town, and he took up his residence with his friend Sir Thomas Masham, who allowed him to make his agreeable seat at Oates, about twenty miles from London, his constant abode for the remainder of his days. Some of the members of the government, however, exerted themselves so much in his favour, that he had not been long in the country when he was appointed a member of the council of trade, with the customary stipend of a thousand per This mark of regard had been well earned by the able manner in which he had lately written, at the request of ministers' On the state of the Coinage,'' On the Policy of Altering the rate of Interest and of Civil government in general.' But he accepted the appointment only to find that it would be vain to resist any further the encroaching infirmities of his constitution. In the letter which he sent to lord-keeper Somers, not many months after his entrance on the office, he begs him to procure his dismissal on the ground, that "the craziness of his body so ill seconded the inclination he had to serve his majesty." This letter was written from the country, and the esteem in which he was held is shown in the most striking manner by the reply of the lord-keeper. To his request, however, that he would pause before giving up this office, Locke only rendered a reluctant assent, and when King William next year desired his presence at Kensington, he firmly refused to accept the offer of place on any terms whatever. The misery he had suffered from the asthma immediately on his arriving in the vicinity of London obliged him to hasten back to Oates, as the only means of preserving life; and in his letter to Lord Somers, he says, "I should not trouble you with an account of the prevailing decays of an old pair of lungs, were it not my duty to take care his majesty should not be disappointed, and, therefore, that he lay not any expectation on that which, to my great misfortune, every way I find, would certainly fail him; and I must beg your lordship for the interest of the public, to prevail with his majesty to think on somebody else, since I do not only fear, out am sure my broken health will never permit me to accept the great honour his majesty meant me. As it would be unpardonable to betray the king's business by undertaking what I should be unable to go through, so it would be the greatest madness to put myself out of the reach of my friends during the small time I am to linger in this world, only to die a little more rich, or a little more advanced. He must have a heart strongly touched with wealth, or honours, who at my age, and labouring for breath, can find any great relish for either of them." But the infirmities which compelled him to relinquish all idea of public employment did not prevent his exerting his talents for the good of society in other ways. The year 1695 produced his Reasonableness of Christianity,' and this was followed soon after by The Commentary on the Apostolic Epistles,'-a work which, though not altogether calculated to exhibit the true spirit of these divine productions, is strongly indicative of both the piety and the learning of the author. At Oates he enjoyed the comforts of a home, and as much society as he could with safety indulge in. Lady Masham herself, the sister of Cudworth, was a woman of great acquirements and intelligence. Locke loved to converse with her on the topics which had so long engaged his attention, and to her solicitous care of his health and tranquillity he owed much of the comfort of his declining age. In the early part of the year 1704 he felt that he could last out but little longer. The return of spring and clear skies produced not its customary effect upon his feelings; and in a letter written to Mr King on the first of June, he plainly stated his conviction that death was near at hand. "This comfortable," says he, "and usually restorative season of the year has no effect upon me for the better; on the contrary, my shortness of breath and uneasiness every day increases. My stomach, without any visible cause, sensibly decays, so that all appearances concur to warn me that the dissolution of this cottage is not far off." He had calcu lated rightly. He became weaker and weaker every day, and was at length so reduced as to be incapable of supporting his sinking frame. He was still, however, in the custom of spending his days in the library, whither he was carried in an arm-chair; but on the 27th of October, Lady Masham missed him from his usual place, and on inquiring after him, found that he had declined to rise. To her questions respecting his health, he replied that he had fatigued himself too much the preceding day with rising, and that he did not know whether he should ever rise again. When some other of his friends visited him in the afternoon, he observed to them that his work was almost at an end, and he thanked God for it. He also desired that they would remember him in the evening prayer, and afterwards expressed his willingness to have the family assembled for their devotions in his chamber. On being asked whether he thought himself near death, he answered that he might perhaps die that night, but that he could not live above three or four days. At their request he then took some liquor called mum, which he considered refreshing and nourishing, and before sipping it, wished all of them happiness when he should be gone. The visitors soon after this left the chamber, Lady Masham alone remaining behind. While sitting by his bed-side he begged her "to look on this world only as a state of preparation for a better," adding as the result of his own experience," that he had lived long enough, and that he thanked God he had enjoyed a happy life; but that, after all, he looked upon this life as nothing, to be nothing but vanity." The family, as it had been proposed, assembled in his chamber for prayer, and between eleven and twelve o'clock he was so far better as to resist the wish of Lady Masham to remain in his chamber during the night. On the following morning he desired to be carried into his study, and the intervals of sleep he enjoyed in his chair appeared to revive his strength and spirits. He even requested to be dressed, and expressed a wish for some table beer. But it was the last flitting of the breeze. Lady Masham, who was sitting near him reading the Psalms to herself, began at his desire to read aloud, and he for some time manifested great attention. At length he requested her to cease. The presence of death was visible in his frame, and in a few minutes he expired. This event took place on the twenty-eighth of October, 1704, and about three o'clock in the afternoon. Those who were most intimately acquainted with this great man, who had the opportunity of judging of him in many different circumstances, and saw his conduct in situations when both his patience and virtue were put to severe trials, agreed in representing his character as in every way worthy of esteem and admiration. Nor are the persons who have thus left their tribute of affection to the name of Locke of a character themselves to be doubted. The testimony of Le Clerc, and that of the friend whom he quotes, affords the most convincing proof of the philosopher's goodness of heart as well as ability. "He was," says the latter, "the faithful servant, nay, I may add, the devoted slave of truth, which he loved for itself, and which no consideration was ever able to make him desert." In respect to his manners, it is said" that he looked on civility to be not only something very agreeable and proper to win men, but also a duty of Christianity;" and among his most conspicuous characteristics are numbered charity, fidelity in his attachments, strict attention to his word, liberality in listening to the opinions of others, and charity to all who were in distress. Of his character as a scholar and philosopher it is not necessary to say more, than that he united the rare qualities of great strength and clearness of apprehension, with a not inferior degree of industry;—that he was as honest as he was acute,-as unfettered by private prejudices as by public, and, above all, as well acquainted with business as with books, -as capable of establishing truth by experience as of searching for it in the bold spirit of a theorist. John Pomfret. BORN A. D. 1677.-died a. D. 1703. JOHN POMFRET was the son of the Rev. Mr Pomfret, rector of Luton in Bedfordshire, at which place probably our author was born. After having received his early education at a grammar-school in the country, he was sent to Cambridge, and entered at Queen's college, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1694, and that of Master of Arts in 1698. It was during his stay at the university that he wrote the greater part of his poetical compositions. He had not long quitted the university before he was presented to the rectory of Malden in Bedfordshire; and when about to receive higher preferment, the malice of some enemies was exerted with powerful vigour to disappoint his expectations. About the year 1703, he came to London, as his anonymous friend who published his 'Remains,' relates, "for institution and induction into a very considerable living; but was retarded for some time, by a disgust taken by Dr Henry Compton, then bishop of London, at these four lines in the close of his poem entitled The Choice :' 'And as I near approach the verge of life, "The parenthesis in these verses was so maliciously represented to the bishop, that his lordship was given to understand it could bear no other construction, than that Mr Pomfret preferred a mistress before a wife; though I think, the contrary is evident, the verses implying no more than the preference of a single life to marriage; unless his brethren of the gown will assert that an unmarried clergyman cannot live without a mistress. But the worthy prelate was soon convinced of the malice of Mr Pomfret's enemies towards him, he being at that time married. Yet their base opposition of his deserved merit had in some measure its effect; for, by the obstructions he met with, he sickened of the small-pox, then very rife in London, and died there, in the twenty-sixth year of his age." Dr Johnson remarks on the malicious interpretation of this passage." This reproach was easily obliterated; for it had happened to Pomfret as to all other men who plan schemes of life: he had departed from his purpose, and was then married." Dr Johnson states that Pomfret died at the age of thirty-six; but Hazlitt dates the birth of our author in 1677, and his death in 1703, making him only twenty-six. Pomfret published some of his poems in 1699. It has been observed that "he has always been the favourite of that class of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, seek only their own amusement. His Choice' exhibits a system of life adapted to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without the exclusion of intellectual pleasures: perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.' Hazlitt says of it, "its attraction may be supposed to lie rather in the subject than in the peculiar merit of the execution." Our author's own edition of his poems included all but the last two pieces in this collection, which were published in the subsequent edition by his friend. Of the poem entitled 'Reason,' the following remarks were penned by the author's friend when he inserted it in his edition. It was written by him in the year 1700, when the debates concerning the doctrine of the trinity were carried on with so much heat by the clergy, one against another, that King William was obliged to interpose his royal authority, by putting an end to that pernicious controversy, through an act of parliament, strictly forbidding any persons whatever to publish their notions on this subject. It is, indeed, a severe, though very just satire, upon the antagonists engaged in that dispute; and was published by Mr Pomfret at the time it was written. The not inserting it amongst his other poems, when he collected them into one volume, was on account of his having received very signal favours from some of the persons therein mentioned; but they, as well as he, being now dead, it is hoped that the revival of it at this juncture, will answer the same good purposes originally intended by the author." 'Dies Novissima' was printed from a manuscript under our author's own hand; it was probably his last production, and written by him at no very distant period before his decease. Dr Johnson having favourably noticed The Choice,' remarks: "In his other poems there is an easy volubility; the pleasure of smooth metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppressed with ponderous, or entangled with intricate, sentiment. He pleases many, and he who pleases many, must have some species of merit." |