. 72

passage that has nothing important in it. He cared yet less for those professed disputants who, wholly taken up with the desire of coming off victorious, fortify themselves behind the ambiguity of words. Moreover, he disliked those authors that labour only to destroy, without establishing anything themselves. A building,' he used to say, 'displeases them. They find great faults in it. Let them pull it down, and welcome, provided they do their utmost to raise up another in its place.'

As regards his own mode of work as an author, and his advice to others based on his own experience, the same companion said, "He advised that, whenever we have meditated anything new, we should throw it as soon as possible upon paper, in order to be the better able to judge of it by seeing it all together; because the mind of man is not capable of retaining clearly a long chain of consequences, or of seeing, without confusion, the relation of a great number of different ideas. Besides, it often happens that what we had most admired, when considered in the gross and in a perplexed manner, appears utterly inconsistent and indefensible when we see every part of it distinctly. Mr. Locke also thought it necessary always to communicate one's thoughts to some friend, especially if one thought of offering them to the world; and this was what he always did himself. He could hardly conceive how a being of so limited a capacity as man, and so subject to error, could be bold enough to neglect this precaution."

Those testimonies of two persons who knew Locke intimately are abundantly confirmed, in nearly every particular, by the details that have been given in the foregoing pages. And they leave nothing further to be

The key to his whole character, bearing and work is presented in one apt sentence of Lady Masham's. "He was always, in the greatest and in the smallest affairs of human life, as well as in speculative opinions, disposed to follow reason, whosoever it were that suggested it; he being ever a faithful servant-I had almost said a slaveto Truth; never abandoning her for anything else, and following her, for her own sake, purely."

Locke made his will on the 11th of April, 1704. To his friend Edward Clarke, of Chipley, he left 2007., and to Clarke's daughter Elizabeth-his little "wife " Bettyanother 2007., along with a portrait of her mother. He made smaller bequests in money to his cousins, Peter Stratton and John Bonville, and to two other cousins of whom we know nothing, Mary Doleman, and Anne Hasel, wife of John Hasel, of Bishop's Sutton, in Somersetshire; to William Grigg, of Jesus College, Cambridge, doubtless the son of his "sister or cousin, Mrs. Grigg; to Anthony Collins; to Awnsham Churchill, his publisher; to Benjamin Furly, of Rotterdam; to Dr. Veen and Dr. Guenellon, and Guenellon's wife and son, in Amsterdam. He left small sums to be distributed among the poor of Publow and Pensford and High Laver, and his own and Lady Masham's servants. As marks of his good-will he bequeathed 107. apiece, with furniture and books, to Sir Francis Masham and his daughter Esther Masham. To Lady Masham he bequeathed his ruby and diamond rings, the portrait of her mother, Mrs. Cudworth, and a number of books to be selected by herself from his library. He assigned to Peter King, Anthony Collins, and Awnsham Churchill the sum of 3000l., to be held in trust by them

. 71

for Francis Cudworth Masham until he attained the age of twenty-five, with reversion, in case of his prior death and of her survival as a widow, to Lady Masham, or otherwise to Peter King, Lady Masham receiving the interest in the interval. In these ways, and some others that need not be detailed, he disposed of nearly 4500l., probably about the value of his estate in money. Half his books he left to young Masham; the other half, with all his manuscripts and the remainder of his personal property, to Peter King; and his landed property, as to the value of which we have no information, was to be divided equally between Stratton and King, the latter being appointed his sole executor. A few small bequests were added in a codicil that he signed on the 5th of September. He directed that he should be buried in the parish churchyard of High Laver, in a plain coffin, without ornament or ostentation of any kind, and that the money that would have been required for a more costly funeral should be expended in buying clothes for four labourers at Oates whom he named.1

He had hardly expected to live through the winter of 1703. "As to my lungs," he had written to King in November," they go on their course, and, though they have brought me now to be good for nothing, I am not surprised at it. They have lasted longer already than the world or I expected. How much longer they will be able to blow at the hard rate they do, I cannot precisely say; but in the race of human life, when breath is wanting for the least motion, one cannot be far from one's journey's end. I take very kindly your offer of coming

1 The probate of the will is at Somerset House. It is probable, from a passage in a letter to Clarke, quoted on p. 304, that he had made a previous will in 1695.

hither. Your kindness makes me very willing to see and enjoy you, but, at the same time, it makes me the more cautious to disturb your business. However, since you allow me the liberty, you may be assured, if there be occasion, I will send for you."

King doubtless paid several visits to his cousin during the next five months before there seemed to be special occasion to send for him. "I have received no letters from you since the 20th," Locke wrote, however, on Thursday, the 1st of June. "I remember it is the end of a term, a busy time with you, and you intend to be here speedily, which is better than writing at a distance. Pray be sure to order your matters so as to spend all the next week with me. As far as I can impartially guess, it will be the last week I am ever like to have with you; for, if I mistake not very much, I have very little time left in the world. This comfortable, and to me 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. Refuse not, therefore, to help me to pass some of the last hours of my life as easily as may be in the conversation of one who is not only the nearest but the dearest to me of any man in the world. I have a great many things to talk to you, which I can talk to nobody else about. I therefore desire you again, deny not this to my affection. I know nothing at such a time so desirable and so useful as the conversation of a friend one loves and relies on. It is a week free from business, or if it were not, perhaps you would have no reason to 1 Lord King, p. 261; Locke to King, 15 Nov., 1703.

. 71

Make

repent the bestowing a day or two upon me. haste, therefore, on Saturday, and be here early. I long till I see you. I writ to you in my last, to bring some cherries with you, but fear they will be troublesome to you; and these things that entertain the senses have lost with me a great part of their relish. Therefore, give not yourself any trouble about them; such desires are usually but the fancy seeking pleasure in one thing, when it has missed it in another, and seeks in vain for the delight which the indisposition of the body has put an end to. When I have your company, I shall forget these kind of things.'

But the end was not quite so near as he thought. In spite of his constant illness, he had spent the winter, as his letters to Collins have shown us, happily and cheerfully. And the summer, in spite of increasing weakness, was spent by him as cheerfully and happily.

Collins had been with him early in May. "I could not have believed," Locke wrote some days after his departure, "I could have had so many happy days together. I shall always pray that yours may be multiplied. Could I in the least contribute anything thereunto, I 1 Lord King, p. 261; Locke to King, 1 June, 1704.

2 In March he had sent to Sloane the register of the weather for 1696, which has been already referred to; and he intended to send the register for nine other years. "I have often thought," he said, "that, if such a register as this, or one that were better contrived, with the help of some instruments that for exactness might be added, were kept in every county in England and so constantly published, many things relating to the air, winds, health, fruitfulness, etc., might by a sagacious man be collected from them, and several rules concerning the extent of winds and rains, etc., be in time established, to the great advancement of mankind." (Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxiv., 1706, pp. 1917-87; Locke to Sloane, 15 March, 1703-4.) That hint was borne in mind and is now acted on in the barometrical observations made under government direction.