King kept Locke well posted in all that went on in Parliament, and seems also to have been a constant visitor at Oates. Soon after his election, Sir Francis Masham had considerately proposed to Locke that his cousin should "steal down sometimes with him on Saturday, and return on Monday." On one of these occasions, in the Easter holidays of 1701, King was accompanied by young Lord Ashley, now become the third Earl of Shaftesbury. Locke had then surmounted his winter troubles, and his old pupil pronounces him as well as he had ever known him.
Amongst Locke's correspondents in these years was the celebrated physician, Dr. Sloane, now Secretary of the Royal Society, afterwards created Sir Hans Sloane. In writing to him at the end of the century, evidently in answer to a request, Locke proposes a scheme for rectifying the calendar. Notwithstanding the reformation which had already taken place in many foreign countries, it will be recollected that the English year then began on the 25th of March, instead of the 1st of January, and that, by reckoning the year at exactly 365¼ days, or at 11 m. 14 sec. longer than its actual length, our time lagged ten days behind that of most other European countries, as well as the real solar time. The inconvenience, especially in transactions with foreign merchants, had become very great. The advent of the new century, inasmuch as the centenary year would be counted as a leap-year in England, but not in other countries where the new style or Gregorian calendar prevailed, would add an eleventh day to the amount of discrepancy, and hence the subject was now attracting more than ordinary attention. Locke's remedy was to omit the intercalar day in the year 1700, according to the rule of the Gregorian calendar, as also for the ten next leap-years following, "by which easy way," he says, "we should in forty-four years insensibly return to the new style." "This," he adds, "I call an easy way, because it would be without prejudice or disturbance to any one's civil rights, which, by lopping off ten or eleven days at once in any one year, might perhaps receive inconvenience, the only objection that ever I heard made against rectifying our account." He also suggested that the year should begin, as in most other European countries, on the 1st of January. No change, however, was made till, by an Act of Parliament passed in 1750-51, it was ordered that the year 1752 should begin on the 1st of January, and that the day succeeding the 2nd of September in that year should be reckoned as the 14th. Locke's other correspondence with Sloane shows the interest which he still took in medical matters, and how ready he always was to expend time and thought on attending to the ailments of his poor neighbours at Oates.
During the latter years of Locke's life his principal literary employment consisted in paraphrasing and writing commentaries on some of St. Paul's epistles. He thought that this portion of Scripture offered peculiar difficulties, and finding, as he says, that he did not understand it himself, he set to work, rather for his own sake, and perhaps also that of the household at Oates, than with any view of publication, to attempt to clear up its obscurities. The labour was a work of love; and to a man of Locke's devout disposition, with almost a child-like confidence in the guidance of Scripture, the occupation must have afforded a peculiar solace in the intervals of his disease, and as he felt that he was rapidly approaching the confines of that other world which had so long been familiar to his thoughts. Though he was induced to consent to the publication of these commentaries, and though he himself prepared an introduction to them, they did not appear till after his death. They were then issued by instalments, coming out at intervals between 1705 and 1707 inclusively.
Locke's political interests, always keen, were specially active in the winter of 1701-02. England was just then on the point of engaging in the war of the Spanish Succession. In the previous September an alliance against France and Spain had been concluded between the emperor and the two great maritime powers, England and Holland. Almost immediately after the conclusion of this treaty, James the Second had died at St. Germain, and not only had the French king allowed his son to be proclaimed King of England but had himself received him with royal honors at the court of Versailles. The patriotic and Protestant feeling of the country was thoroughly roused, and the new Parliament, which met on the 30th of December, was prepared to take the most energetic measures for the purpose of supporting the national honor and the Protestant succession. The king's speech, on opening the Parliament, excited an outburst of enthusiasm throughout the nation. He conjured the members to disappoint the hopes of their enemies by their unanimity. As he was ready to show himself the common father of his people, he exhorted them to cast out the spirit of party and division, so that there might no longer be any distinction but between those who were friends to the Protestant religion and the present establishment, and those who wished for a popish prince and a French government. The speech was printed in English, Dutch, and French, framed, and hung up, as an article of furniture, in the houses of good Protestants, both at home and abroad. Locke, writing to Peter King four days after the meeting of Parliament, asks him to send a copy of the king's speech, "printed by itself, and without paring off the edges." He suggests that, in addition to what the two Houses had done, the city of London and counties of England should, "with joined hearts and hands return his Majesty addresses of thanks for his taking such care of them." "Think of this with yourself," he says, "and think of it with others who can and ought to think how to save us out of the hands of France, into which we must fall, unless the whole nation exert its utmost vigour, and that speedily." He is specially urgent on his cousin not to leave town, or to think of circuit business, till the kingdom has been put in an effectual state of defence. "I think it no good husbandry for a man to get a few fees on circuit and lose Westminster Hall." By losing Westminster Hall he does not, apparently, mean losing the chance of a judgeship, but forfeiting those rights and liberties, and that personal and national independence which the Revolution had only so lately restored. "For, I assure you, Westminster Hall is at stake, and I wonder how any one of the house can sleep till he sees England in a better state of defence, and how he can talk of anything else till that is done." But a majority, at least, of the House of Commons was fully alive to its responsibilities; enormous supplies were voted, and almost every conceivable measure was taken for securing the Protestant succession to the crown. A few days after Locke wrote the letter last quoted, King William died. His reflections on that event or on the political prospects under William's successor, we do not possess.
As the war proceeded, Locke's old friend, the Earl of Monmouth, now become Earl of Peterborough, was entrusted with a naval expedition against the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. He had a great desire to see Locke before his departure, and, Locke being unable to come up to London, he and the Countess drove down to Oates about the middle of November, 1702. It is characteristic of the times that Locke was "much in pain" about their getting back safely to town, the days being then so short. His young friend, Arent Furly, who was also a protégé and frequent correspondent of Lord Shaftesbury, went out as Lord Peterborough's secretary, and seems to have acquitted himself in the position with marked diligence and success. The early promise which he gave, however, was soon blighted. This young play-fellow and foster-child, as he might almost have been called, of Locke, died only a few years after him, in 1711 or 1712. Before accompanying Lord Peterborough on his expedition, he had been living for some time, first at Oates, and afterwards in lodgings in the neighbourhood, for the purpose of learning English.
It is gratifying to find that, during the autumn of this year, Locke had received a visit from Newton. During the discussion of the re-coinage question, and the active operations which followed for the purpose of carrying out the decisions of Parliament, they must have been thrown a good deal together. Montague declared that, had it not been for the energetic measures taken by Newton, as Warden of the Mint, the re-coinage would never have been effected. When, however, Newton came down to visit Locke at Oates, in 1702, their conversation seems to have turned mainly on theological topics. Locke showed Newton his notes upon the Corinthians, and Newton requested the loan of them. But, like most borrowers, he neglected to return them, nor did he take any notice of a letter from Locke, who was naturally very anxious to recover his manuscript. Peter King was asked to try to manage the matter. He was to call at Newton's residence in Jermyn Street, to deliver a second note, and to find out, if he could, the reasons of Newton's silence, and of his having kept the papers so long. But he was to do this "with all the tenderness in the world," for "he is a nice man to deal with, and a little too apt to raise in himself suspicions where there is no ground." The emissary was also, if he could do it with sufficient adroitness, to discover Newton's opinion of the Commentary. But he was by no means to give the slightest cause of offence. "Mr. Newton is really a very valuable man, not only for his wonderful skill in mathematics, but in divinity too, and his great knowledge in the Scriptures, wherein I know few his equals. And therefore pray manage the whole matter so as not only to preserve me in his good opinion, but to increase me in it; and be sure to press him to nothing but what he is forward in himself to do." In this letter Locke, notwithstanding the caution with which he felt it necessary to approach one of so susceptible a temperament, says, "I have several reasons to think him truly my friend." And in this generous judgment there can be little doubt he was right. The friends probably never met again, but Newton is said to have paid a visit, on one of his journeys perhaps from London to Cambridge, to Locke's tomb at High Laver. Peter King succeeded in recovering the manuscript, and at the same time or soon afterwards there came a letter, criticising one of Locke's interpretations, but expressing a general opinion that the "paraphrase and commentary on these two epistles is done with very great care and judgment."
Something should here be said of two friends whom Locke had made in later life, one of whom seems to have been constantly about him during his last years. The less intimate of these was Samuel Bolde, a Dorsetshire clergyman, who had come forward, in 1697, to defend the Reasonableness of Christianity against Edwards' attacks, and who afterwards did Locke a similar service in replying to the assailants of the Essay. He was one of Locke's correspondents, and once at least paid him a visit at Oates. Bolde's outspokenness and independence of judgment naturally excited Locke's admiration. There are some memorable sentences in a letter written to him in 1699. "To be learned in the lump by other men's thoughts, and to be in the right by saying after others, is the much easier and quieter way; but how a rational man, that should inquire and know for himself, can content himself with a faith or a religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile submission of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion makes passable among men, is to me astonishing. I do not wonder you should have, in many points, different apprehensions from what you meet with in authors. With a free mind, which unbiassedly pursues truth, it cannot be otherwise." After expanding these thoughts, and applying them to the study of Scripture, he goes on to advise Bolde how to supply a mental defect that he had complained of, namely, that "he lost many things because they slipped from him." The simple method was to write them down as they occurred. "The great help to the memory is writing," Bacon had said. Locke emphasizes the dictum, and adds, "If you have not tried it, you cannot imagine the difference there is in studying with and without a pen in your hand." "The thoughts that come unsought, and as it were dropped into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again."
The other friend, whose acquaintance had only been made during these later years, was Anthony Collins, who was not more than twenty-eight years of age when Locke died. Collins afterwards attained great celebrity as a Deistical writer, but none of his theological works appeared till some time after Locke's death. Locke, with his sincere and simple belief in the divine origin of the Christian Revelation, would doubtless, had he lived to see them, have been shocked with their matter, and still more with their style. But at the present time Collins presented himself to him simply in the light of an ingenuous young man, with rare conversational powers and wide interests, and with what Locke valued far more, an eager desire to find out the truth. No one can have read the tracts, An Enquiry concerning Human Liberty, and Liberty and Necessity, without recognizing the acuteness and directness of Collins' intellect, and these, we know, were qualities always peculiarly acceptable to Locke. Moreover, to encourage and bring forward younger men had invariably been one of his main delights. Hence we may, perhaps, abate our surprise at the apparently exaggerated language in which he addresses this friend, who was so much his junior in age, and who must have become known to him only so recently. "Why do you make yourself so necessary to me? I thought myself pretty loose from the world; but I feel you begin to fasten me to it again. For you make my life, since I have had your friendship, much more valuable to me than it was before." "If I were now setting out in the world, I should think it my great happiness to have such a companion as you, who had a relish for truth, would in earnest seek it with me, from whom I might receive it undisguised, and to whom I might communicate freely what I thought true. Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues, and, if I mistake not, you have as much of it as I ever met with in anybody." Then he adds pathetically, but with a tone of hopefulness in the labours of others which is not commonly found amongst old men, "When I consider how much of my life has been trifled away in beaten tracks, where I vamped on with others only to follow those that went before us, I cannot but think I have just as much reason to be proud as if I had travelled all England, and, if you will, France too, only to acquaint myself with the roads and be able to tell how the highways lie, wherein those of equipage, and even the herd too, travel. Now, methinks—and these are often old men's dreams—I see openings to truth and direct paths leading to it, wherein a little industry and application would settle one's mind with satisfaction, and leave no darkness or doubt. But this is at the end of my day, when my sun is setting; and though the prospect it has given me be what I would not for anything be without—there is so much irresistible truth, beauty, and consistency in it—yet it is for one of your age, I think I ought to say for yourself, to set about it." What were those "openings to truth and direct paths leading to it?" Were they merely the delusive visions of an old man's fancies, or had he really formed wider conceptions of science, and pictured to himself more precise and fertile methods of reaching it? The sciences, it is needless to observe, have grown vastly since Locke's day; the methods of scientific research are far more numerous, more accurate, richer in their results. Had Locke, in his thoughts at this time, at all anticipated the courses which inquiry and knowledge have since taken?
The letter to Collins, from which I have just quoted, was written on Oct. 29, 1703. Within a year of that date the end came. The wonder, indeed, is that, with his persistent malady, aggravated apparently in these latter years with other disorders, Locke's life had continued so long. The reasons are probably to be sought in his unfailing cheerfulness, in the variety of interests which diverted his mind from the thought of his own ailments, and in the judicious manner in which he regulated his exercise and diet. Of these personal traits something may conveniently here be said. The remarkable cheerfulness of his disposition, his lively sense of humour, and his power of extracting amusement from all that was going on around him, have frequently come before us in the course of this biography. His temper was not moody, like that of so many men of letters, but pre-eminently sociable. When not actually engaged in his studies, he always liked to be in company, and enjoyed especially the society of young people and children. He had a happy knack of talking to his companions for the time being on the subjects which interested them most, and in this way he gained a very extensive knowledge of the various kinds of business, and of a variety of arts and crafts. To working people he was often able to give very useful hints as to their own employments. This union of conversational qualities, grave and gay, invariably made him a welcome addition to any company, young or old, gentle or simple. An even temper, and a combination of happy gifts of this kind, will carry a man through much suffering, bodily and mental. From any mental troubles, on his own account, Locke seems, during these latter years of his life, to have been remarkably free. From bodily suffering he was rarely exempt, but he always endured it with resignation, and endeavoured to obviate its causes by every precaution, which his prudence or medical skill suggested. Thus, we have seen that, whenever it was possible, he preferred the quiet life and pure air of the country to the many attractions which the capital must have offered to a man with his wide acquaintance, and with so many political and literary interests. In diet he practised an abstemiousness very rare among men of that age. His ordinary drink was water, and to this habit he attributed not only his length of years, but also the extraordinary excellence of his eyesight. Till recently, a curious relic of Locke's water-drinking habits was preserved in the shape of a large mortar of spongy stone, which acted as a natural filter, and which he used to call his brew-house. He was assiduous in taking exercise, and was specially fond of walking and gardening. In the latter years of his life he used to ride out slowly every day after dinner. When advising his friend Clarke about his health, he says, "I know nothing so likely to produce quiet sleep as riding about gently in the air for many hours every day," and then, like a truly wise doctor, he adds, "If your mind can be brought to contribute a little its part to the laying aside troublesome ideas, I could hope this may do much." At last, when he was no longer able to sit on horseback, he commissioned Collins to have an open carriage specially made for him, the principle on which it was to be constructed being that "convenient carries it before ornamental."
In November, 1703, the Heads of Houses at Oxford—who at that time constituted the governing body, and through whose repressive and reactionary administration the evil genius of Laud then and long afterwards continued to cast a blight on the University—resolved to discourage the reading of Locke's Essay. The attempt was futile, as they relied, not on coercion, but on the influence of their authority, which appears to have been held very cheap. Locke was now far too eminent a man to be troubled by so anile a demonstration of folly. "I take what has been done as a recommendation of my book to the world," he says, in a letter to Collins; and then he promises himself and his friend much merriment on the subject when they next meet.