THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
1. +The First Half.+-- Under the wise and able rule of Queen Elizabeth,
this country had enjoyed a long term of peace. The Spanish Armada had
been defeated in 1588; the Spanish power had gradually waned before the
growing might of England; and it could be said with perfect truth, in
the words of Shakespeare:--
“In her days every man doth eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.”
The country was at peace; and every peaceful art and pursuit prospered.
As one sign of the great prosperity and outstretching enterprise of
commerce, we should note the foundation of the East India Company on the
last day of the year 1600. The reign of James I. (1603-1625) was also
peaceful; and the country made steady progress in industries, in
commerce, and in the arts and sciences. The two greatest prose-writers
of the first half of the seventeenth century were +Raleigh+ and +Bacon+;
the two greatest poets were +Shakespeare+ and +Ben Jonson+.
2. SIR WALTER RALEIGH (+1552-1618+).-- +Walter Raleigh+, soldier,
statesman, coloniser, historian, and poet, was born in Devonshire, in
the year 1552. He was sent to Oriel College, Oxford; but he left at the
early age of seventeen to fight on the side of the Protestants in
France. From that time his life is one long series of schemes, plots,
adventures, and misfortunes-- culminating in his execution at
Westminster in the year 1618. He spent “the evening of a tempestuous
life” in the Tower, where he lay for thirteen years; and during this
imprisonment he wrote his greatest work, the +History of the World+,
which was never finished. His life and adventures belong to the
sixteenth; his works to the seventeenth century. Raleigh was probably
the most dazzling figure of his time; and is “in a singular degree the
representative of the vigorous versatility of the Elizabethan period.”
Spenser, whose neighbour he was for some time in Ireland, thought highly
of his poetry, calls him “the summer’s nightingale,” and says of him--
“Yet æmuling[18] my song, he took in hand
My pipe, before that æmulëd of many,
And played thereon (for well that skill he conn’d),
Himself as skilful in that art as any.”
Raleigh is the author of the celebrated verses, “Go, soul, the body’s
guest;” “Give me my scallop-shell of quiet;” and of the lines which were
written and left in his Bible on the night before he was beheaded:--
“Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!”
Raleigh’s prose has been described as “some of the most flowing and
modern-looking prose of the period;” and there can be no doubt that, if
he had given himself entirely to literature, he would have been one of
the greatest poets and prose-writers of his time. His style is calm,
noble, and melodious. The following is the last sentence of the +History
of the World+:--
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou
hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all
the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and
despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness,
all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over
with these two narrow words _Hic jacet_.”
[Footnote 18: Emulating.]
3. FRANCIS BACON (+1561-1626+), one of the greatest of English thinkers,
and one of our best prose-writers, was born at York House, in the
Strand, London, in the year 1561. He was a grave and precocious child;
and Queen Elizabeth, who knew him and liked him, used to pat him and
call him her “young Lord Keeper”-- his father being Lord Keeper of the
Seals in her reign. At the early age of twelve he was sent to Trinity
College, Cambridge, and remained there for three years. In 1582 he was
called to the bar; in 1593 he was M.P. for Middlesex. But his greatest
rise in fortune did not take place till the reign of James I.; when, in
the year 1618, he had risen to be Lord High Chancellor of England. The
title which he took on this occasion-- for the Lord High Chancellor is
chairman of the House of Lords-- was +Baron Verulam+; and a few years
after he was created +Viscount St Albans+. His eloquence was famous in
England; and Ben Jonson said of him: “The fear of every man that heard
him was lest he should make an end.” In the year 1621 he was accused of
taking bribes, and of giving unjust decisions as a judge. He had not
really been unconscientious, but he had been careless; was obliged to
plead guilty; and he was sentenced to pay a fine of £40,000, and to be
imprisoned in the Tower during the king’s pleasure. The fine was
remitted; Bacon was set free in two days; a pension was allowed him; but
he never afterwards held office of any kind. He died on Easter-day of
the year 1626, of a chill which he caught while experimenting on the
preservative properties of snow.
4. His chief prose-works in English-- for he wrote many in Latin-- are
the +Essays+, and the +Advancement of Learning+. His +Essays+ make one
of the wisest books ever written; and a great number of English thinkers
owe to them the best of what they have had to say. They are written in a
clear, forcible, pithy, and picturesque style, with short sentences, and
a good many illustrations, drawn from history, politics, and science. It
is true that the style is sometimes stiff, and even rigid; but the
stiffness is the stiffness of a richly embroidered cloth, into which
threads of gold and silver have been worked. Bacon kept what he called a
+Promus+ or Commonplace-Book; and in this he entered striking thoughts,
sentences, and phrases that he met with in the course of his reading, or
that occurred to him during the day. He calls these sentences
“salt-pits, that you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle as you will.”
The following are a few examples:--
“That that is Forced is not Forcible.”
“No Man loveth his Fetters though they be of Gold.”
“Clear and Round Dealing is the Honour of Man’s Nature.”
“The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty Flatterers have
intelligence, is a Man’s Self.”
“If Things be not tossed upon the Arguments of Counsell, they will
be tossed upon the Waves of Fortune.”
The following are a few striking sentences from his +Essays+:--
“Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.”
“A man’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him
seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.”
“A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures,
and talk but a tinkling cymbal, when there is no love.”
No man could say wiser things in pithier words; and we may well say of
his thoughts, in the words of Tennyson, that they are--
“Jewels, five words long,
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle for ever.”
5. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (+1564-1616+) has been already treated of in the
chapter on the sixteenth century. But it may be noted here that his
first two periods-- as they are called-- fall within the sixteenth, and
his last two periods within the seventeenth century. His first period
lies between 1591 and 1596; and to it are ascribed his early poems, his
play of +Richard II.+, and some other historical plays. His second
period, which stretches from 1596 to 1601 holds the Sonnets, the
+Merchant of Venice+, the +Merry Wives of Windsor+, and a few historical
dramas. But his third and fourth periods were richer in production, and
in greater productions. The third period, which belongs to the years
1601 to 1608, produced the play of +Julius Cæsar+, the great tragedies
of +Hamlet+, +Othello+, +Lear+, +Macbeth+, and some others. To the
fourth period, which lies between 1608 and 1613, belong the calmer and
wiser dramas,-- +Winter’s Tale+, +The Tempest+, and +Henry VIII+. Three
years after-- in 1616-- he died.
6. +The Second Half.+-- The second half of the great and unique
seventeenth century was of a character very different indeed from that
of the first half. The Englishmen born into it had to face a new world!
New thoughts in religion, new forces in politics, new powers in social
matters had been slowly, steadily, and irresistibly rising into
supremacy ever since the Scottish King James came to take his seat upon
the throne of England in 1603. These new forces had, in fact, become so
strong that they led a king to the scaffold, and handed over the
government of England to a section of Republicans. Charles I. was
executed in 1649; and, though his son came back to the throne in 1660,
the face, the manners, the thoughts of England and of Englishmen had
undergone a complete internal and external change. The Puritan party was
everywhere the ruling party; and its views and convictions, in religion,
in politics, and in literature, held unquestioned sway in almost every
part of England. In the Puritan party, the strongest section was formed
by the Independents-- the “root and branch men”-- as they were called;
and the greatest man among the Independents was Oliver Cromwell, in
whose government +John Milton+ was Foreign Secretary. Milton was
certainly by far the greatest and most powerful writer, both in prose
and in verse, on the side of the Puritan party. The ablest verse-writer
on the Royalist or Court side was +Samuel Butler+, the unrivalled
satirist-- the Hogarth of language,-- the author of +Hudibras+. The
greatest prose-writer on the Royalist and Church side was +Jeremy
Taylor+, Bishop of Down, in Ireland, and the author of +Holy Living+,
+Holy Dying+, and many other works written with a wonderful eloquence.
The greatest philosophical writer was +Thomas Hobbes+, the author of the
+Leviathan+. The most powerful writer for the people was +John Bunyan+,
the immortal author of +The Pilgrim’s Progress+. When, however, we come
to the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and the new influences which
their rule and presence imparted, we find the greatest poet to be +John
Dryden+, and the most important prose-writer, +John Locke+.
7. +The Poetry of the Second Half.+-- The poetry of the second half of
the seventeenth century was not an outgrowth or lineal descendant of the
poetry of the first half. No trace of the strong Elizabethan poetical
emotion remained; no writer of this half-century can claim kinship with
the great authors of the Elizabethan period. The three most remarkable
poets in the latter half of this century are +John Milton+, +Samuel
Butler+, and +John Dryden+. But Milton’s culture was derived chiefly
from the great Greek and Latin writers; and his poems show few or no
signs of belonging to any age or generation in particular of English
literature. Butler’s poem, the +Hudibras+, is the only one of its kind;
and if its author owes anything to other writers, it is to France and
not to England that we must look for its sources. Dryden, again, shows
no sign of being related to Shakespeare or the dramatic writers of the
early part of the century; he is separated from them by a great gulf; he
owes most, when he owes anything, to the French school of poetry.
8. JOHN MILTON (+1608-1674+), the second greatest name in English
poetry, and the greatest of all our epic poets, was born in Bread
Street, Cheapside, London, in the year 1608-- five years after the
accession of James I. to the throne, and eight years before the death of
Shakespeare. He was educated at St Paul’s School, and then at Christ’s
College, Cambridge. He was so handsome-- with a delicate complexion,
clear blue eyes, and light-brown hair flowing down his shoulders-- that
he was known as the “Lady of Christ’s.” He was destined for the Church;
but, being early seized with a strong desire to compose a great poetical
work which should bring honour to his country and to the English tongue,
he gave up all idea of becoming a clergyman. Filled with his secret
purpose, he retired to Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had
bought a small country seat. Between the years 1632 and 1638 he studied
all the best Greek and Latin authors, mathematics, and science; and he
also wrote +L’Allegro+ and +Il Penseroso+, +Comus+, +Lycidas+, and some
shorter poems. These were preludes, or exercises, towards the great
poetical work which it was the mission of his life to produce. In
1638-39 he took a journey to the Continent. Most of his time was spent
in Italy; and, when in Florence, he paid a visit to Galileo in prison.
It had been his intention to go on to Greece; but the troubled state of
politics at home brought him back sooner than he wished. The next ten
years of his life were engaged in teaching and in writing his prose
works. His ideas on teaching are to be found in his +Tractate on
Education+. The most eloquent of his prose-works is his +Areopagitica,
a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing+ (1644)-- a plea for the
freedom of the press, for relieving all writings from the criticism of
censors. In 1649-- the year of the execution of Charles I.-- Milton was
appointed Latin or Foreign Secretary to the Government of Oliver
Cromwell; and for the next ten years his time was taken up with official
work, and with writing prose-volumes in defence of the action of the
Republic. In 1660 the Restoration took place; and Milton was at length
free, in his fifty-third year, to carry out his long-cherished scheme of
writing a great Epic poem. He chose the subject of the fall and the
restoration of man. +Paradise Lost+ was completed in 1665; but, owing to
the Plague and the Fire of London, it was not published till the year
1667. Milton’s young Quaker friend, Ellwood, said to him one day: “Thou
hast said much of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise
Found?” +Paradise Regained+ was the result-- a work which was written in
1666, and appeared, along with +Samson Agonistes+, in the year 1671.
Milton died in the year 1674-- about the middle of the reign of Charles
II. He had been three times married.
9. +L’Allegro+ (or “The Cheerful Man”) is a companion poem to +Il
Penseroso+ (or “The Meditative Man”). The poems present two contrasted
views of the life of the student. They are written in an irregular kind
of octosyllabic verse. The +Comus+-- mostly in blank verse-- is a
lyrical drama; and Milton’s work was accompanied by a musical
composition by the then famous musician Henry Lawes. +Lycidas+-- a poem
in irregular rhymed verse-- is a threnody on the death of Milton’s young
friend, Edward King, who was drowned in sailing from Chester to Dublin.
This poem has been called “the touchstone of taste;” the man who cannot
admire it has no feeling for true poetry. The +Paradise Lost+ is the
story of how Satan was allowed to plot against the happiness of man; and
how Adam and Eve fell through his designs. The style is the noblest in
the English language; the music of the rhythm is lofty, involved,
sustained, and sublime. “In reading ‘Paradise Lost,’” says Mr Lowell,
“one has a feeling of spaciousness such as no other poet gives.”
+Paradise Regained+ is, in fact, the story of the Temptation, and of
Christ’s triumph over the wiles of Satan. Wordsworth says: “‘Paradise
Regained’ is most perfect in execution of any written by Milton;” and
Coleridge remarks that “it is in its kind the most perfect poem extant,
though its kind may be inferior in interest.” +Samson Agonistes+
(“Samson in Struggle”) is a drama, in highly irregular unrhymed verse,
in which the poet sets forth his own unhappy fate--
“Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.”
It is, indeed, an autobiographical poem-- it is the story of the last
years of the poet’s life.
10. SAMUEL BUTLER (+1612-1680+), the wittiest of English poets, was born
at Strensham, in Worcestershire, in the year 1612, four years after the
birth of Milton, and four years before the death of Shakespeare. He was
educated at the grammar-school of Worcester, and afterwards at
Cambridge-- but only for a short time. At the Restoration he was made
secretary to the Earl of Carbery, who was then President of the
Principality of Wales, and steward of Ludlow Castle. The first part of
his long poem called +Hudibras+ appeared in 1662; the second part in
1663; the third in 1678. Two years after, Butler died in the greatest
poverty in London. He was buried in St Paul’s, Covent Garden; but a
monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey. Upon this fact Wesley
wrote the following epigram:--
“While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give;
See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.
The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown,--
He asked for bread, and he received a stone.”
11. The +Hudibras+ is a burlesque poem,-- a long lampoon, a laboured
caricature,-- in mockery of the weaker side of the great Puritan party.
It is an imaginary account of the adventures of a Puritan knight and his
squire in the Civil Wars. It is choke-full of all kinds of learning, of
the most pungent remarks-- a very hoard of sentences and saws, “of
vigorous locutions and picturesque phrases, of strong, sound sense, and
robust English.” It has been more quoted from than almost any book in
our language. Charles II. was never tired of reading it and quoting from
it--
“He never ate, nor drank, nor slept,
But Hudibras still near him kept”--
says Butler himself.
The following are some of his best known lines:--
“And, like a lobster boil’d, the morn
From black to red began to turn.”
“For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game:
True as the dial to the sun,
Altho’ it be not shin’d upon.”
“He that complies against his will,
Is of his own opinion still.”
12. JOHN DRYDEN (+1631-1700+), the greatest of our poets in the second
rank, was born at Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire, in the year 1631. He
was descended from Puritan ancestors on both sides of his house. He was
educated at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
London became his settled abode in the year 1657. At the Restoration, in
1660, he became an ardent Royalist; and, in the year 1663, he married
the daughter of a Royalist nobleman, the Earl of Berkshire. It was not a
happy marriage; the lady, on the one hand, had a violent temper, and, on
the other, did not care a straw for the literary pursuits of her
husband. In 1666 he wrote his first long poem, the +Annus Mirabilis+
(“The Wonderful Year”), in which he paints the war with Holland, and the
Fire of London; and from this date his life is “one long literary
labour.” In 1670, he received the double appointment of
Historiographer-Royal and Poet-Laureate. Up to the year 1681, his work
lay chiefly in writing plays for the theatre; and these plays were
written in rhymed verse, in imitation of the French plays; for, from the
date of the Restoration, French influence was paramount both in
literature and in fashion. But in this year he published the first part
of +Absalom and Achitophel+-- one of the most powerful satires in the
language. In the year 1683 he was appointed Collector of Customs in the
port of London-- a post which Chaucer had held before him. (It is worthy
of note that Dryden “translated” the Tales of Chaucer into modern
English.) At the accession of James II., in 1685, Dryden became a Roman
Catholic; most certainly neither for gain nor out of gratitude, but from
conviction. In 1687, appeared his poem of +The Hind and the Panther+, in
which he defends his new creed. He had, a few years before, brought out
another poem called +Religio Laici+ (“A Layman’s Faith”), which was a
defence of the Church of England and of her position in religion. In
+The Hind and the Panther+, the Hind represents the Roman Catholic
Church, “a milk-white hind, unspotted and unchanged,” the Panther the
Church of England; and the two beasts reply to each other in all the
arguments used by controversialists on these two sides. When the
Revolution of 1688 took place, and James II. had to flee the kingdom,
Dryden lost both his offices and the pension he had from the Crown.
Nothing daunted, he set to work once more. Again he wrote for the stage;
but the last years of his life were spent chiefly in translation. He
translated passages from Homer, Ovid, and from some Italian writers; but
his most important work was the translation of the whole of Virgil’s
+Æneid+. To the last he retained his fire and vigour, action and rush of
verse; and some of his greatest lyric poems belong to his later years.
His ode called +Alexander’s Feast+ was written at the age of sixty-six;
and it was written at one sitting. At the age of sixty-nine he was
meditating a translation of the whole of Homer-- both the Iliad and the
Odyssey. He died at his house in London, on May-day of 1700, and was
buried with great pomp and splendour in Poets’ Corner in Westminster
Abbey.
13. His best satire is the +Absalom and Achitophel+; his best specimen
of reasoning in verse is +The Hind and the Panther+. His best ode is his
+Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew+. Dryden’s style is
distinguished by its power, sweep, vigour, and “long majestic march.” No
one has handled the heroic couplet-- and it was this form of verse that
he chiefly used-- with more vigour than Dryden; Pope was more correct,
more sparkling, more finished, but he had not Dryden’s magnificent march
or sweeping impulsiveness. “The fire and spirit of the ‘Annus
Mirabilis,’” says his latest critic, “are nothing short of amazing, when
the difficulties which beset the author are remembered. The glorious
dash of the performance is his own.” His prose, though full of faults,
is also very vigorous. It has “something of the lightning zigzag vigour
and splendour of his verse.” He always writes clear, homely, and pure
English,-- full of force and point.
Many of his most pithy lines are often quoted:--
“Men are but children of a larger growth.”
“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He that would search for pearls must dive below.”
“The greatest argument for love is love.”
“The secret pleasure of the generous act,
Is the great mind’s great bribe.”
The great American critic and poet, Mr Lowell, compares him to “an
ostrich, to be classed with flying things, and capable, what with leap
and flap together, of leaving the earth for a longer or a shorter space,
but loving the open plain, where wing and foot help each other to
something that is both flight and run at once.”
14. JEREMY TAYLOR (+1613-1667+), the greatest master of ornate and
musical English prose in his own day, was born at Cambridge in the year
1613-- just three years before Shakespeare died. His father was a
barber. After attending the free grammar-school of Cambridge, he
proceeded to the University. He took holy orders and removed to London.
When he was lecturing one day at St Paul’s, Archbishop Laud was so taken
by his “youthful beauty, pleasant air,” fresh eloquence, and exuberant
style, that he had him created a Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford.
When the Civil War broke out, he was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary
forces; and, indeed, suffered imprisonment more than once. After the
Restoration, he was presented with a bishopric in Ireland, where he died
in 1667.
15. Perhaps his best works are his +Holy Living+ and +Holy Dying+. His
style is rich, even to luxury, full of the most imaginative
illustrations, and often overloaded with ornament. He has been called
“the Shakespeare of English prose,” “the Spenser of divinity,” and by
other appellations. The latter title is a very happy description; for he
has the same wealth of style, phrase, and description that Spenser has,
and the same boundless delight in setting forth his thoughts in a
thousand different ways. The following is a specimen of his writing. He
is speaking of a shipwreck:--
“These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all
their designs. A dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a
broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dash in pieces the
fortune of a whole family; and they that shall weep loudest for the
accident are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered
shipwreck.”
His writings contain many pithy statements. The following are a few of
them:--
“No man is poor that does not think himself so.”
“He that spends his time in sport and calls it recreation, is like
him whose garment is all made of fringe, and his meat nothing but
sauce.”
“A good man is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly.”
16. THOMAS HOBBES (+1588-1679+), a great philosopher, was born at
Malmesbury in the year 1588. He is hence called “the philosopher of
Malmesbury.” He lived during the reigns of four English sovereigns--
Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Charles II.; and he was
twenty-eight years of age when Shakespeare died. He is in many respects
the type of the hard-working, long-lived, persistent Englishman. He was
for many years tutor in the Devonshire family-- to the first Earl of
Devonshire, and to the third Earl of Devonshire-- and lived for several
years at the family seat of Chatsworth. In his youth he was acquainted
with Bacon and Ben Jonson; in his middle age he knew Galileo in Italy;
and as he lived to the age of ninety-two, he might have conversed with
John Locke or with Daniel Defoe. His greatest work is the +Leviathan+;
or, +The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth+. His style is clear,
manly, and vigorous. He tried to write poetry too. At the advanced age
of eighty-five, he wrote a translation of the whole of Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey into rhymed English verse, using the same quatrain and the same
measure that Dryden employed in his ‘Annus Mirabilis.’ Two lines are
still remembered of this translation: speaking of a child and his
mother, he says--
“And like a star upon her bosom lay
His beautiful and shining golden head.”
17. JOHN BUNYAN (+1628-1688+), one of the most popular of our
prose-writers, was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the year 1628--
just three years before the birth of Dryden. He served, when a young
man, with the Parliamentary forces, and was present at the siege of
Leicester. At the Restoration, he was apprehended for preaching, in
disobedience to the Conventicle Act, “was had home to prison, and there
lay complete twelve years.” Here he supported himself and his family by
making tagged laces and other small-wares; and here, too, he wrote the
immortal +Pilgrim’s Progress+. After his release, he became pastor of
the Baptist congregation at Bedford. He had a great power of bringing
persons who had quarrelled together again; and he was so popular among
those who knew him, that he was generally spoken of as “Bishop Bunyan.”
On a journey, undertaken to reconcile an estranged father and a
rebellious son, he caught a severe cold, and died of fever in London, in
the year 1688. Every one has read, or will read, the +Pilgrim’s
Progress+; and it may be said, without exaggeration, that to him who has
not read the book, a large part of English life and history is dumb and
unintelligible. Bunyan has been called the “Spenser of the people,” and
“the greatest master of allegory that ever lived.” His power of
imagination is something wonderful; and his simple, homely, and vigorous
style makes everything so real, that we seem to be reading a narrative
of everyday events and conversations. His vocabulary is not, as Macaulay
said, “the vocabulary of the common people;” rather should we say that
his English is the English of the Bible and of the best religious
writers. His style is, almost everywhere, simple, homely, earnest, and
vernacular-- without being vulgar. Bunyan’s books have, along with
Shakespeare and Tyndale’s works, been among the chief supports of an
idiomatic, nervous, and simple English.
18. JOHN LOCKE (+1632-1704+), a great English philosopher, was born at
Wrington, near Bristol, in the year 1632. He was educated at Oxford; but
he took little interest in the Greek and Latin classics, his chief
studies lying in medicine and the physical sciences. He became attached
to the famous Lord Shaftesbury, under whom he filled several public
offices-- among others, that of Commissioner of Trade. When Shaftesbury
was obliged to flee to Holland, Locke followed him, and spent several
years in exile in that country. All his life a very delicate man, he
yet, by dint of great care and thoughtfulness, contrived to live to the
age of seventy-two. His two most famous works are +Some Thoughts
concerning Education+, and the celebrated +Essay on the Human
Understanding+. The latter, which is his great work, occupied his time
and thoughts for eighteen years. In both these books, Locke exhibits the
very genius of common-sense. The purpose of education is, in his
opinion, not to make learned men, but to maintain “a sound mind in a
sound body;” and he begins the education of the future man even from his
cradle. In his philosophical writings, he is always simple; but, as he
is loose and vacillating in his use of terms, this simplicity is often
purchased at the expense of exactness and self-consistency.