to England (1732). In 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne, and went back, after nearly ten years' absence, to Ireland. At Cloyne he proved himself a model bishop, and Berkeley's life spent his time in more projects for the good of at Cloyne. humanity. The chief of these was the propagation of tar-water, for which, on account of its legendary properties, he developed a positive mania. Tar-water was the main subject of his great book, Siris, which he published in 1744—a most extraordinary work, starting from the nature and properties of his favourite beverage, and reaching splendid heights of metaphysical speculation. In 1752 his health failed, and he went to Oxford, where he lived for six months, dying quietly and without any pain in January, 1753. In all English literature there is scarcely another instance of a man who, by his perfect goodness, so fascinated everybody. George II, not an impressionable monarch, refused to accept his resignation of Cloyne; and all the wits and statesmen of his day seem to have felt the charm of his personality. As a philosopher, the place which he occupies is most distinguished; as a philosopher who combined literary style with his philosophy, his place, in English, is absolutely unique. His work divides itself into three periods. During the first of these he was in residence at Dublin, working out his famous theory of the phe His character. His philosophy. His theory of the nonexistence of matter. nomenal nature of matter. The foundation of his theory was laid in the study of Locke, but, in its superstructure, there is a wide divergence from Locke's incipient materialism. The whole aim of Berkeley's teaching was to establish a perpetual contact between the senses of man and the eternal and unthinkable—that is, in short, to break down material barriers between the spirit of man and God. There is a prevalent misapprehension, perhaps only natural, that Berkeley attacked the qualities and accidents of matter-its weight, hardness, etc.-but, as a matter of fact, his real position is, not that our touch or sight are delusions, but that the things which we touch and see are symbols of something spiritual and eternal. This naturally brought him into conflict with the materialists and deists, and the book of his second period, Alciphron, the set of dialogues written "Alciphron" in Rhode Island and supposed to take place there, is (1732). primarily controversial, and is an attack upon the "minute philosophers" of the day. Shaftesbury and Mandeville are, with Berkeley, in the same boat; the educated scepticism of the one and the callous unbelief of the other, mutually repellent, are, to his ideal standard, equally detestable, the same thing under opposite names. Thirdly, in Siris, the doctrines of his early period are again stated; but he Berkeley's is now more completely under the influence of Plato; style. and the great value of the book lies in its magnificent rhapsodies of idealism, in which he approaches his master's "Siris" (1744): style more nearly than any other philosopher. It is in Siris, that quaint expansion of an eccentricity into a metaphysical treatise, that we can lay aside the outer obscurities of Berkeley's philosophy, and recognise him as a master of English prose, unique in his own age and in his own kind of writing. § 12. Mandeville's other opponent, WILLIAM LAW, has been treated with very little consideration by posterity. He was a High Churchman and a nonjuror, and was therefore LAW Connection between Law and the Gibbon family. not much admired in his own day; while, in later WILLIAM years, he embraced a form of mysticism which, to (1686-1761). men of his own school of thought, was incomprehensible, and is always likely to commend itself only to a very small minority. He was born at Kings Cliffe, on the Rutlandshire edge of Northamptonshire, where his father was a grocer. At Cambridge he became a fellow of Emmanuel, took Holy Orders, and was in residence till the year of great changes, 1714, when he was deprived of his fellowship. After this he seems to have lived a rather unsettled life until, some twelve years later, he became tutor to the father of Gibbon the historian. In 1729 he published his famous treatise, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. He returned to Emmanuel, during his stay with the Gibbons, as tutor to his pupil. When his pupil's father died he left the family's house at Putney and lived in Northamptonshire, first at Thrapston, and then at Kings Cliffe, where he passed the rest of his life in spiritual meditation and philanthropy. His household consisted of himself, Miss Hester Gibbon, who was a sister of his pupil, and Mrs. Hutcheson, a lady who had come under his spiritual influence. It was during this period that he attached himself to the doctrines of Jacob Behmen, the German mystic, and wrote his own mystical treatises. But, for the ordinary student of English literature, Law remains pre-eminently the author of the Serious Call, the finest devotional treatise in English since The "SeriJeremy Taylor's Holy Living. In its style there is (1729). no fine rhetoric: Law wrote simply and directly, with an admirably restrained command of humour and satire. His recommendations for the "devout and holy life" are rigorous, for he was a stringent ascetic with a firm belief in his own asceticism; and, consequently, his manual, among books of discipline, takes a prominent place for austerity. Its great literary charm is its representation of various types of the religious and worldly life under the form of portraits; its appeal to the reader is therefore more direct and concrete. The contrasted characters of the two sisters, Flavia the worldling and Miranda the anchorite, are cases in point. It is remarkable that the book had a strong influence on three people so different as Dr. Johnson, John Wesley, and John Keble. At any rate, had this been Law's only work, it would have made his name. In the history of controversy he is chiefly remembered by his ous Call" Law's place in controversy. Remarks (1724) on Mandeville's book, and his Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717-19). The Letters are fine specimens of controversial writing, indignant, intolerant with the just intolerance that springs from conviction, and models of dignified prose. Law was no great metaphysician; where philosophy was concerned, he was a reactionary; and he placed Locke, the materialists, and the deists under the same condemnation. But he was a man of unusual acuteness of observation; his mind worked rapidly and clearly; and, whatever the subject was on which he wrote he clothed it in the same vigorous, plain language-a style which, to-day, in spite of its accidental quaintnesses, has a curiously modern effect. LADY MARY WORTLEY Her marriage § 13. Law can hardly be said to belong to this or any other period, so utterly does he stand by himself in the history of literature. Beyond the fact that he was the contemporary of Pope, Swift, and Addison, he has nothing in common with them. With LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU we leave metaphysics and theology and return to polite letters and Pope's coterie. Lady Mary's distinction is that of a letter-writer. She was the daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke and Earl of Kingston and Marquess of Dorchester-these titles, however, were accumulated at various times after her birth. As a child she was remarkably clever, a great reader and student, and probably owed more to her own private studies than to the irregular tuition of Bishop Burnet, for whom, before she came of age, she translated Epictetus' Enchiridion (1710). Her accomplishments were supplemented by her good looks, and, when she was only eight years old, the Kit-Cat club is said to have elected her a toast, to her intense delight. In 1712 she secretly married and travels. and eloped with Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu, a grave and saturnine diplomatist, with whom a ashionable beauty could have had little in common. She accompanied her husband, in 1716, on his embassy to the Porte, and described her travels over Europe and the East in those delightful letters, which were circulated in manuscript and not published till 1763, the year after her death. She was the first traveller who gave a familiar, picturesque, and animated account of Oriental society, and particularly of the internal life and manners of the harem in the seraglio, to which her sex and her high position gave her unusual facilities of access. She returned from her travels in 1718. In 1739 she separated, with mutual consent, from her husband, and went to Italy, where she lived till his death. Her own took place the year after at her town house in George Street, Hanover Square. The separation was due probably to the fact that Her misfor- she and her husband were totally unsuited, and not character. to any bitter quarrel; they continued to correspond politely, but never saw each other again. Her son tunes and Compared more with the letters of Madame de Sévigné. was, however, the cause of some unhappiness to her his talents were considerable, but the vices and eccentricities of his singular and adventurous career were those of a madman. Her daughter's affection, however, may have compensated for the trouble which her son gave her. Her nature was neither warm nor affectionate, and she looked her sorrows in the face with a philosophical equanimity; but she felt for her daughter all the tenderness that she could bestow, and wrote to her some of her most lively and amus- Her letters. ing letters. Admirable common-sense, observation, vivacity, extensive reading without a trace of pedantry, and a pleasant tinge of half-playful sarcasm, are the distinguishing features of Lady Mary's correspondence. Her style is perfection; it has the simplicity and elegance of perfect breeding, and, at the same time, the ease of the thorough woman of the world. She is, of course, not always delicate-but delicacy was not the virtue of her age, and nothing in her career had encouraged it. But she had seen so much, had met so many remarkable persons, and had had such excellent opportunities of judging them, that she is always sensible and amusing. One naturally compares her letters with those of Madame de Sévigné, but the comparison is even strikingly a contrast. Lady Mary had none of that intense and even morbid maternal affection which Madame de Sévigné shows in every line of her letters to Madame de Grignan, nor did she worship the Court with that adoration with which every writer of the Louis XIV epoch invested its fetich. In wit and animation, in the power of hitting off, by a few felicitous touches, a character or a scene, it is difficult to assign the palm of superiority. Lady Mary's intellect was unquestionably far higher, and her literary development was wider. She could reason and draw inferences where Madame de Sévigné could only gossip, although with the most charming prattle in the world. The successful introduction of inoculation for the small-pox is mainly to be attri- originality. buted to Lady Mary's intelligence and courage. She had seen it practised in Turkey, and, knowing the excellent result, tried the experiment upon her own child, and with admirable constancy resisted the furious opposition of bigotry and intolerance to the bold innovation. She was at one time the intimate friend of Pope, and the object of his most ardent flattery; but a violent quarrel occurred Her friendbetween them which put an end to the friendship. Fope. ship with Pope is supposed to have admired her with a superfluous warmth, and the lady to have received his advances with a contemptuous ridicule which transformed his ardour into the most bitter and persevering malignity. In addition to her letters, Lady Mary was the author of a small collection of miscellaneous poems which have the ease, regularity, and fluency distinctive of the lighter verse of the day, and are tinged Her with a lax epicureanism, sometimes very happily expressed. One of the strongest contrasts between the social condition of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is to be found in the comparison between the tone and topics of Mrs. Hutchinson's memoirs, and the gay, worldly, satirical letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Both the one and the other show us types of female character modified by the respective influences of the two so strongly contrasted epochs. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. A.-MINOR PROSE WRITERS. (1.) ESSAYISTS, ETC. EUSTACE BUDGELL (1685-1737), a cousin and friend of Addison, who obtained for him many important posts under Government. He contributed to The Spectator all those papers which are signed X., and was supposed to have assisted the deist Tindal in his momentarily notorious works. Budgell lost all his fortune in the South Sea bubble and in unsuccessful attempts to gain a seat in Parliament, and became a ruined man. He was accused, too, and with only too good reason, of having forged Tindal's will in his own favour. We find an allusion to this charge in Pope : "Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill, And write whate'er he pleased-except his will." His circumstances at last became desperate, and he committed suicide, leaping from a boat at London Bridge. In his house was found a slip of paper on which was written "What Cato did and Addison approved Cannot be wrong." Budgell, from 1733 to 1735, published on his own account a weekly perio dical called The Bee. JOHN HUGHES (1677-1720) contributed a few papers to The Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. He also published some miscellaneous poems, a tragedy called The Siege of Damas cus (1720), several translations from the French, and an edition of Spenser's works (1715). MARY DE LA RIVIERE MANLEY (1672-1724), the daughter of Sir Roger Manley, Lieutenant-Governor of the castles of Jersey from 1667 to 1674, does not occupy a very respectable place in the literature of her age. Although probably more sinned against than sinning, she did not go out of the way to observe the ordinary proprieties of the belles lettres. She began her career as a dramatist (1696), and her first plays were well received. Her popularity, however, waned, and, falling into scandalous memoir writer. poverty, she adopted the trade of The New Atalantis (1709) was a bitter, disreputable, and amusing satire on the political and social leaders of the time, and brought her into an acquaintance with Swift, who handed over to her the editorship of The from the middle of 1711 until 1713. Examiner. She managed the paper It is satisfactory to know that her unhappy life ended more or less quietly; a London alderman, named Barber, took compassion on her, and offered her a home in his house, where she spent her last days. (2.) METAPHYSICIANS AND THEOLOGIANS. SAMUEL CLARKE (1675-1729) was a native of Norwich, was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and became chaplain to Bishop Moore of Norwich. His earliest work was |