Et. 54.

Professors to learn Singular and Plural, You to many, and Thou to one.' His other writings show that he was an honest and earnest supporter of the tenets of the society of friends, but it is clear that he was not at all a fanatical member of the sect. Persecution or fear of persecution induced him to settle in Rotterdam, and there he became a wealthy merchant, a great student and collector of books on theology, philosophy, science, and nearly every other subject,' and a good friend to all men of parts, especially Englishmen, who happened to be in Holland.

Locke appears to have made his acquaintance by introduction from his friend Edward Clarke, of Chipley, soon after his arrival in the country; and it would seem that Furly acted as a sort of banker for him all through his stay there. "Bank money is here at 43," Locke wrote from Amsterdam in February, 1687-8. "If you can secure so much for it there, draw on Dr. Peter Guenellon for 15,000 guilders in bank, and make your bill or bills. payable at as short view as you please. Nay, if you

1 When Furly died, in 1714, his books were sold by auction, and the catalogue of the Bibliotheca Furleiana' then published, filling nearly 400 pages, is a wonderful list of valuable works in print and manuscript. Furly's correspondence was, of course, not then sold. It was retained by his family, and became the property of Dr. Thomas Forster in 1825, who in 1830 published an avowedly garbled and very incomplete selection from it as Original Letters of Locke, Algernon Sidney, and Anthony Lord Shaftesbury'; a second edition, with a few fresh letters, appearing in 1847. Careful search for this collection has been made by myself and others; but I cannot ascertain its whereabouts. Should any reader of this work be able to help me in discovering it, I should esteem his doing so a very great favour, as, from Dr. Forster's preface, it is evident that, besides what he has published, it contains a great deal that ought to see the light. In quoting from the published volume, I shall refer to it as 'Original Letters.'

cannot at 41, take 4 rather than fail, for it will be less trouble than to get the bank money sold here and then draw it in current money thither." Having at command as much money as he needed, it is clear that, while lodging with Furly at Rotterdam, as with Veen and Guenellon at Amsterdam, and with other friends elsewhere, Locke made suitable arrangements for defraying all the expenses of his maintenance.

It was probably from Furly's fine old house on the "haven" leading out into the Maas, that Locke wrote to Limborch shortly after his arrival and before he had arranged to have his English letters sent to him direct. "I wish," he said, "that there were many letters from England coming to me through you, in order that, if there were any unwelcome news in them, I might get in the same envelope something from your pen which, by its kindness, grace, and sweetness, would make the bad news easy to bear. Nothing is more refreshing, nothing more agreeable to me than your letters, in which even German theology is made attractive."2 Limborch seems to have written a great deal about German theology and its Socinian tendencies in his letters to his friend at this period. "I am entirely of your opinion about German theology," Locke said in his next letter. "There are and always have been a great many German writers, but among all their multitudinous productions there are few which do not disclose their nationality by their mode of thought. But you have a mode of thought too, which I have mastered, and it is not strange that my mind should

1 Original Letters' (ed. 1847), p. 25; Locke to Benjamin Furly, [10] 20 Feb. [1687-8].

2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Locke to Limborch, [4-] 14 Feb., 1686-7.

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be ruled and governed in harmony and sympathy with yours. To tell the truth, I am your disciple, and, though an inexpert one, I rejoice that you have led me as you have done. I acknowledge your genius, and freely resign myself to its guidance."1

"Remember me to Mr. Le Clerc," Locke wrote soon afterwards to Limborch, "and tell him that I have just received from England a new work of Sydenham's' vidently the Schedula Monitoria de Novae Febris Ingressu,' which was published in 1686-" which I have not yet read. If he desires either the book or a review of it, I will gladly send him either." Though that passage does not help us to decide whether the notice of Sydenham's treatise which subsequently appeared in the Bibliothèque Universelle' was written by Locke or by Le Clerc, it makes it tolerably clear that Locke was in some sort responsible for much, if not all, of the attention paid by the Amsterdam periodical to English literature.

Of English books he was evidently a diligent reader while in Holland. One of these books was the curious Theoria Telluris Sacra,' written by Dr. Thomas Burnet, who was senior proctor at Cambridge in 1668. The Latin treatise was published in 1681, and it so pleased William of Orange that he helped Burnet to publish an English version of it in 1684, and an English continuation of it in 1689. It was a strange contribution to geological science, and, though itself full of wild fancies and groundless theories, helped the growth of that science, then in its

1 Familiar Letters,' p. 308; Locke to Limborch, [27 Feb.-] 8 March, [1686-7].

MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Locke to Limborch, [31 March] 10 April, 1687.

feeble infancy, by the attention which was excited especially by its bold denial that the world was created in six days, according to the statements in Genesis. Boyle and the natural philosophers did not know what to make of it, and in May, 1687, we find Tyrrell sending to Boyle, in answer to his request, an extract from a letter which he had lately received from Locke on the subject. "The 'New Theory of the Earth' I have read in English," Locke had written, probably in March or April, "and cannot but like the style and way of writing upon thoughts wholly a man's own; but, though it be a good while since I read it"-" now almost two years ago," he said in another part of the letter-" and that but cursorily, yet there stick with me still some of those objections which rose in my way as I perused it, and which offered themselves against the truth or probability of his hypothesis, which made me not able to reconcile it either to philosophy, scripture, or itself."1

While reading and writing about other men's books, and finding a good deal of occupation in the political affairs that now claimed his attention, Locke seems to have been also finishing his 'Essay concerning Human Understanding,' or preparing the epitome of it which was soon to appear in the 'Bibliothèque Universelle.' "Concerning the treatise of which you require some account," he wrote to Limborch in May, "to tell you the truth I should have informed you sooner, had I not hoped before now to be in Amsterdam, and there enjoying the delightful society of friends, yourself especially, without which there would be no pleasure for me even in this pleasant springtime." 2

1 Boyle, Works,' vol. v., p. 620; Locke to Tyrrell [1687].

2 Familiar Letters,' p. 311; Locke to Limborch, [6—] 16 May, 1687.

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Soon after writing that letter Locke paid his wishedfor visit to his friends in Amsterdam, and he remained. there till some time in August. Thence he wrote two letters that claim to be quoted on account of their diverse illustrations of his temperament and leisure occupations.

The first was addressed to Benjamin Furly, and was evidently in answer to one in which Furly had complained, for himself and his wife, that they had not heard from Locke before.

"DEAR FRIEND,-One cannot take amiss the kind mistake of one's friends; but I should be very sorry to have given any just occasion to your wife's misapprehension. Had she been better acquainted with my way of living with those I am free with, she would have known that silence, when I have no business to write, is a liberty I take with none so much as with the friends I am most assured of and with whom I think myself past all ceremony. But, to confess the truth in your present case, I think I should have writ sooner, had I not every day expected that a letter from England would also bring me with it one from you, and that then I should have an occasion to answer. For I every day went or sent to Wetstein's, with hopes to find one there from you. This be sure, I was anything rather than sullen; and I was so far from taking any offence that I am not displeased at the opportunity of acknowledging, once for all, that I was never anywhere with more freedom and satisfaction. This to your wife, to whom pray give my kindest remembrance. As for yourself, if I mistake not very much, you and I are past these discourses; and therefore let me tell you that, how acute, how subtle, how learned soever you are, 'tis not you alone have the privilege to pass for a Jesuit. Other people of lower rank may, I find, sometimes arrive at that honour; and, had it not been for an envious Englishman that sat at the other end of the boat, who discovered the truth, I had in my passage hither gone clear away with that reputation. This story is too long for a letter, and must be reserved to make you laugh when I come. Only I desire you to article with the baron that he shall not pervert me when I return again to his conversation. For, being now got to be of the most orthodox society in the world, I would not be tainted with the least infection of heresy for all the gold our English chemist there is like to make; and, I make account, to die in this unspotted reputation would do one as much good as dying in St. Francis's