Locke

Somersetshire, August 29, 1632. His family, however, resided in the village of Pensford, and the parish of Publow, within a few miles of Bristol. It was

letter quoted by Mr. Fox-Bourne in his Life of Locke, "that he was a man of parts. Mr. Locke never mentioned him but with great respect and affection. His father used a conduct towards him when young that he often spoke of afterwards with great approbation. It was the being severe to him by keeping him in much awe and at a dis

announced, in the parish church of Publow, his assent to the protest of the Long Parliament, and, a few weeks afterwards, took the field, on the Parliamentary side, as captain of a troop of horse in a regiment of volunteers. Though the fortunes of the family undou

ics; sprung from respectable and well-to-do parents, of whom the father, at least, possessed more than ordinary intelligence; accustomed, from his earliest boyhood, to watch the progress of great events, and to listen to the discussion of great and

manner in which Locke spent these years we have no definite information. The stern disciplinarian, Dr. Busby, had been head master for about eight years when he entered the school, and among his schoolfellows, senior to him by about a year, were Dryden and South. The friends whom he made at Westminster, though highly respectable in after-life, did not achiev

e the leading resident, had been recently appointed Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of the University. Owen was an Independent, and, for a divine of that age, a man of remarkably tolerant and liberal views. Though, then as now, a dignitary in Owen's position probably had and could have but little intercourse with the junior members of his society, it is not improbable that Locke may have derived his first bias to

and such other duties of religion as are proper to such a meeting." In addition to the Sunday observances, there were also, in most Colleges, if not in all, one or two sermons or religious meetings in the course of the week. Locke, if we may judge from his character in later years, must have occasionally found these tedious, and doubtless lengthy, exercises somewhat irksome and unprofitable. But we do not meet in his writings with any definite complaints of them, as we do of the scholastic disputations and some other parts of the academical course as pursued at that time. Of the disputations, which then constituted a very important element in the University curriculum, he expresses an unfavourable, perhaps too unfavourable an opinion. Writing in 1690, in the "Thoughts concerning Education," he says: "If the use and end of right reasoning be to have right notions and a right judgment of things, to distinguish between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, and to act accordingly, be sure not to let your son be bred up in the art and formality of disputing-either practising it himself or admiring it in others-unless, instead of an able man, you desire to have him an insignificant wrangler, opiniator in discourse, and priding himself in contradicting others; or, which is worse, questioning everything, and thinking there is no such thing as truth to be sought, but only victory, in disputing. There cannot be anything so disingenuous, so unbecoming a gentleman, or any one who pretends to be a rational creature, as not to yield to plain reason and the conviction of clear arguments. Is there anything more inconsistent with civil conversation, an

s regarding courses of study and attendance at lectures are apt very soon to fall into desuetude, and it is impossible now to reconstruct with any accuracy, from the perusal of merely formal documents, a plan of the student life of the Commonwealth. It is to be much regretted that Locke and his contemporaries have not left us more specific information on the su

utual confidences, the lively interchange of repartee, the free discussion of all manner of subjects in college rooms or during the afternoon walk, are often far more stimulating and informing to the intellect than the professorial lecture, however learned, or the tutorial catechising, however searching. Of this less formal and more agreeable species of educat

was Locke, who wrote a short copy of Latin, and a longer copy of English verses. These compositions do not rise much above, or sink much below, the ordinary level of such exercises; but what is curious is that Locke's first published efforts in literature should have been in verse, e

its divisions, found in his father's memorandum-book. These reflections afford evidence that he had already beg

asons to grow, and improve both Physic a

acknowledgeth to belong and appertain to man's nature, as the things in which we

l Philosophy, and experience (which is a tr

egrees was anticipated, but irregularities of this kind were not then infrequent. On the 24th of December, 1660, he was appointed Greek Lecturer at Christ Church for the ensuing year, thus taking his place among the authorized teachers of his college, and so entering on a new phase of university life. Very shortly after this

*

-Bourne attributes an unpublished and till recently unknown Essay, entitled "Reflections upon the Roman Commonwealth." Many of the remarks in this Essay already show what we should call liberal opinions in religion and politics, and anticipate views long afterwards propounded in the works on government and toleration. The religion instituted by Numa is idealized, as having ins

with disdain the assurances of compromise and moderation contained in the king's declaration on ecclesiastical affairs, issued at the beginning of his reign. Locke at that time, like many other moderate men, seems to have entertained the most sanguine hopes of pacification and good government under the rule of the new monarch. "As for myself," he writes, "there is no one can have a greater respect and veneration for authority than I. I no sooner perceived myself in the world, but I found myself in a storm, which ha