The Sun.
London, England, 1829-07-06 00:00:00

LITERATURE. -

LIFE OF LOCKE, BY LORD KING.
LownoN : 1829.

Among the first and foremost of our true
philosophers—of those who gave themselves up
wholly to the discovery and propagation of
truth, and its disentanglement from error and the
deceitful snares of the fancy,—is John Locke.
He it was %%Ito beyond any man that ever existed
(with the single exception of Bacon) shook the
tyranny of the old schools of logic and philo-
sophy ; overthrew the casuistries, the subtilties,
the small, teazing, mindless, but still imposing
subtleties of Aristotle and that class of rhetori-
cians; and established knowledge on the immut-
able basis of truth. To effect this great but noise-
less triumph his chief engine was common
sense. The rams' horns with which this Joshua
of true philosophy blew down the Jericho of
scholastic bigotry, was reason—cool,dispassionate,
unprejudiced reason. He had little assistance
from the fancy, still less from the feeling ; he
appealed not to the interests, he excited not the
passions, he enlisted not the vanities of man-
kind on his side ; he addressed himself solely to
their good sense; and though he spoke to them
from the elevated heights ofhis own intellect, took
care that the distance at which he stood above them,
should not impair the power of his exhortation.
In reading the works of Locke, the first thing that
strikes us—and this remark applies particularly
to the valuable volume before us—is the very
unassuming character of his mind. Though
conversant with the abstrusest points of, thought
and argument ; though full to overflowing with
the knowledge, both natural and acquired,
that can grace the man and elevate the scholar;
though a politician, a philosopher, a physician,
he never seems to be aware of his extraordinary
faculties; but suffers his learning to fall naturally
and noiselessly from him like the stealthy un-
ostentatious droppings of a mild summer's dew.
His very style is humble and Quaker-like in its
bearing ; replete with thought, but so easy in
the arrangement of that thought ; so natural, so
unforced in the style of its premises, so correct
and so convincing in its conclusions; that none
but the ‘, deaf adder that stoppeth her ear"
can fail to be persuaded by it. One
thing, however, Locke wants, and that is
earnestness. He is never impassioned—sel-
dom impressive; he never touches the heart and
the imagination like Jeremy Taylor, or fills and
sublimes them like Sir Thomas Brown ; but
pleads the cause of truth by the unadorned
energies of his common sense. He has a grave
and quiet dignity about him from which he never
departs, a presence of mind and ready furnished
aptitude of thought and expression that never
even for an instant desett him.

When we speak of Locke's want of earnest-
ness, we are far from imputing it to him as
any very serious defect. A more impassioned
style might have given him too much the ap-
pearance of a hot-headed partizan, and interfered
with that clearness and distinctness of expres-
sion which we now so much admire in his
works. Had he given way to his feelings, or
sunk the philosopher in the man, though he
might still have been the champion of truth and
proclaimed her sovereignty to the world, he
would never have procured her Coronation in the
Temple of his own erection. It was his busi-
ness to overthrow prejudice and build up reason
on the ruins, and this he felt he could best do
by appealing to the cool undisturbed common-
sense, rather than to the impetuous undiscrimi-1
nating passions of society.
The Memoirs and Journals of this great man,
with which Lord King has here presented us,
abound in entertainment and instruction. As
the first, though scanty, are well known, we
shall forbear saying any thing of them, further
than that they present us with the lively image
of a quiet unassuming scholar, whom circum-
stances drew forth for a time into public life,
among scenes wholly foreign to his inclinations.
With respect to the Journals, they consist for
the most part of observations, philosophical, zoo-
logical, literary, and theological, made during a
short excursion to the Continent. These, as
might be expected from such a writer as Locke,
are acute—learned—practical—taking little for
granted, and every where evidencing originality.
Among them at intervals are scattered reflections
on metaphysical subjects, hints for the formation
of character, and fragments of essays, one of
which, entitled " Study," is a perfect gem, being
full of thought, the result of experience_on those
points which most interest mankind. In the
course of this able treatise, Locke, after discri-
minating between false and true knowledge, and
inculcating his favourite notion of ideas in
preference to words, puts forth the follow-
ing remark with respect to study, and the
way it should be followed up :—" The
mind has sympathies and antipathies as well
as the body ; it has a natural preference
often of one study before another. It would
be well if one had a perfect command of them ;
but generally it is better to follow the bent and
tendency of the mind itself." Sir W. Scott, in
an unpublished letter (which we have seen) to a
young man who requested his advice, has pre-
cisely the same remark as Locke. "It matters
little," says this immortal novelist, " what you
read ; that, perhaps, is the best, for which your
inclination most fits you." We have instanced
these two remarks, not so much from any particu-
lar originality they possess, as because we conceive
' it a curious circumstance that two such oppo-
site writers as Scott and Locke ; the one the
champion of imagination—the other its distrust-
ing foe ; the one wild, irregular, discursive—the
other cold, precise, logical—should yet agree on
the same important subject of education.
Passing by the merits of Locke as a philoso-
pher, which it would now be idle and superfluous
to insist upon, we come to him as a humourist.
In this character he is probably new to most of
our readers ; we, therefore, prefer exhibiting him
in it. In a letter dated Cleve, 1665, ye have the