whatsoever (see Fox's Diary,* ed. P. L. Parker; Ellwood's History,* ed. Crump, 1900; Combe's Révélation Intérieure, 1894; W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience).

The best edition of Burnet's History is that in course of publication by the Clarendon Press (Routh and Airy), with a supplement of Burnet's collected material and a commentary by Miss Foxcroft the capable editor of the Marquis of Halifax. Charles Lamb writes to Manning, "I am reading Burnet's Own Times. Did you ever read that garrulous pleasant history? He tells his story like an old man past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in public transactions when his old cap was new.' Full of scandal, which all true history is." See also Prof. A. J. Grant's English Historians, 1906. The standard edition of Ludlow's Memoirs is that of Prof. Firth, also published at Oxford, with a valuable introduction. There is an excellent three-volume edition of the Lives of the Norths by Canon Jessopp, with portraits and full index (Bohn). Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson was re-edited by Prof. Firth in 1885; new editions of this book and of Reresby's Memoirs and Travels have recently appeared among the Dryden House Memoirs (published in Gerrard Street, close by the site of Dryden's old house). The Memoirs of Evelyn, containing the Diary, were first published by William Bray in 1818-19; re-edited by Upcott in 1827, and by Wheatley in 1879 and 1906. There are recent editions in the Newnes Library, both of the Diary (1903) and of the Life of Mary Godolphin (1904). Some of Evelyn's gardening books and his Sylva, or discourse on forest trees, and Pomona, on fruit trees, of 1664, have recently been resuscitated. His travels of 1641-46 in France and Italy, as related in the Diary, gain in interest as illustrating the contemporary rambles of John Milton and the imaginary John Inglesant, and as exhibiting the charm of foreign travel before quick trains and cheap tourist agencies had robbed it of the last vestiges of magic.

CHAPTER V

JOHN LOCKE AND THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

"The philosophy of Locke is still the system of the English, and all their new additions to morality are saturated with his spirit."-LYTTON, England and the English.

The Essay on the Human Understanding-The Star Chamber and the Press-Some early newspapers-Newspapers and style.

JOHN LOCKE, son of a country attorney, who joined the Parliamentary side in 1642, born at Wrington, Somerset, August 29th, 1632, was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he became lecturer on Greek and rhetoric. Obtaining exemption, however, from taking orders, as his office prescribed, Locke devoted himself to the study of physics, and especially of medicine, with intent to becoming a doctor. After thirteen years' residence at Christ Church, in 1665, disgusted with the verbal subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy, he went on a diplomatic mission to the Elector of Brandenburg (some interesting letters written by him from Germany on this occasion were published by Lord King in 1829). In 1666, though never having taken a degree in medicine, he practised as a kind of amateur assistant to Dr. David Thomas, and through his medical skill became an intimate friend of Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, who attached the young scholar to his household as tutor to his son. In the Earl's house Locke was brought into the society of the most distinguished wits of the day, notably the Duke of Buckingham and the Marquis of Halifax. In 1672, through Shaftesbury's influence, Locke ob

tained the post of Secretary to the Board of Trade, which he only held for a year, his patrons falling out of favour.

In 1675 his health, about which he frequently consulted his friend Sydenham, being in a specially delicate state, Locke visited France, where he resided for four yearsfirst at Montpelier, and afterwards at Paris, where he made the acquaintance of the most eminent French literary men. He returned to England in 1679, and, Shaftesbury being again in power, he acted as his private adviser; but Shaftesbury falling for the second time, they both fled to the Low Countries, where Shaftesbury died in 1683, and Locke was deprived of his studentship at Christ Church by a special order from Charles II., and denounced as a dangerous heresiarch in philosophy. During this exile his first essays appeared in Le Clerc's Bibliothèque Universelle, which was to be for many years the chief European organ of men of letters. The Revolution of 1688 restored Locke to his native country, and he was made a Commissioner of Appeals with a salary of £200 a year. In 1695, having aided the Government with his advice on the subject of the reissue of the coinage, he was made a member of the new Council of Trade, which office the state of his health obliged him to resign in 1700, and he resided during the last four years of his life at Oates, in Essex, the seat of his friend Sir Francis Masham, where the infirmities of his declining years were soothed by Lady Masham, daughter of Dr. Cudworth. Locke died on October 28th, 1704, and was buried at High Laver, near Oates.

Locke was a homely thinker-the only kind of thinker likely profoundly to influence the typical Englishman of the eighteenth century. His foundations in metaphysics were broad and obvious, but they were foundations. He tried to bring his philosophy down to the level of cheerfulness and common sense, and the obligation of practising his own philosophy was one which he emphatically did not

shirk. He was indeed one of those men like Benjamin Franklin who, without possessing any soaring spirit, yet by their constant and systematic industry, zeal for work, and concentration upon the practically useful subjects of contemplation helped to raise the standard of living about him to an extent almost incredible in a single individual. His familiar works, all of them assuming the characteristic form of pamphlets addressed to the public with a view to clearing the way towards some immediate end, might be termed the Synthetic Philosophy of the eighteenth century. Unlike a later system, however, they influenced political thinkers in the same kind of way that Burke and Adam Smith began to influence them a century later, and all the English philosophers and most of the French ones (notably Berkeley, Hume, and Rousseau) used Locke's essay as the foundation of their own speculations.

Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding (1690, the result of twenty years' thought, for which he received £30) formed the cornerstone of his system. It is in brief a very straightforward plea for the free exercise of reason (for no province of our knowledge can be regarded as independent of reason), together with an analysis of ideas and of the language in which alone we can communicate them. He attempts to show that ideas are not innate, but are the outcome of reflection working upon the records of sensation. The reason is in consequence the one safe guide. Formulæ, doctrines, assumptions leading to acts and modes of life without ideas are the dangers from which reason is our refuge. Custom from which reason has departed is the stumbling-block of humanity.

In full harmony with the teaching of this famous essay is that of A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), in which he is at pains to demonstrate that Christianity (in which he was a firm believer) was essentially reasonable. Similarly in his Treatise of Government (1690) he shows

that civil government is not the outcome of a contract such as Hobbes had described, but of a free contract, in which the guiding principle must be the intelligence between governors and governed, and completely of a piece with the rest of the system is Thoughts concerning Education (1693), in which in an admirably lucid form he develops the distinctively English tenets that wisdom and character rather than knowledge of erudition should be the proximate aims of the teachers of youth. This pellucid and admirable rationality invaded every activity of his life. He loved order; he went about the most trifling things always with some good reasons, and he esteemed the employments of men in proportion to the good they were capable of producing. The sense of responsibility that he endeavoured to implant in every one of the obligation to prove a useful member of society became one of the root ideas in England, where the idea of duty acquired a significance elsewhere unknown.

We have seen in a previous chapter how printers were restricted in number by law; how it was in 1534 prohibited to import books which were printed abroad for the wholesale market in England; how functionaries were appointed to licence books, and patents granted which carried with them a monopoly of the printing of certain individual books such as the Bible, or classes of books such as law books or music books. The committee of the Privy Council, known as the Star Chamber, in 1637 increased the penalties of those who issued unlicenced books to whipping and the pillory. The Puritans, if possible, took an even stricter view of their responsibility in regard to the stamping out of objectionable books than the Cavaliers. Powers were granted by the Long Parliament to break open private houses in search of unlicenced printing presses. After the Restoration a strict system of licencing was adopted, and in 1662 it was sought to control the selling of books