No More Learning

His work is less a
translation than a travesty. He has treated Don Quixote as
Scarron treated the Aeneid. He has composed a debased fantasia
of his own upon a wellknown and beautiful theme. In other
words, he has employed an imagery as vulgar as the slang of the
tavern can make it. Rosinante, in his eyes, is a 'Dover post-horse,'
the inn keeper is 'as true a thief as ever sung psalm at Tyburn. '
The fish which Don Quixote has for his supper is ‘so ill-dress’d
as if it had been cook'd in Ram Alley or White-Fryers. ' Such
humour as anachronism will afford may be found on every page,
and, as though it were not enough to create a confusion of time,
Phillips never ceases to confound the Spain of the age of Cervantes
with the England of his own. The sail of the windmill throws the
knight sprawling, says he, 'at the distance of more yards than
would have measured Long Megg of Lincoln a gown and petticoat. '
He likens the lovers to 'young citizens and their wives in an Epsom


## p. 269 (#293) ############################################

John Phillips's Don Quixote
269
coach'; in his version, Tolosa masquerades as Betty, “the daughter
of a Cobbler in Southwark, that kept a stall under a Chandler's
shop in Kent street'; and, by way of a crowning absurdity, the lady
tells Don Ferdinand 'to read Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest. '
ow, he merely hints at a false comparison, as when he says that
Cardenio held his Lucinda 'as the Lobster held the Hair upon
Salisbury Plain. ' Now, he seems to exhaust his ingenuity in a
single passage. When the inn keeper tells Don Quixote that he,
too, had been a knight errant, he boasts, in Phillips's travesty, how
he himself had pursu'd the same Chace of Honour in his youth, travelling
through all parts of the World in search of bold Adventures; to which
purpose he had left no corner unvisited of the King's Bench Rules, the
Skulking Holes of Alsatia, the Academy of the Fleet, the Colledge of New-
gate, the Parliews of Turnbull, and Pickt Hatch, the Bordellos of St Giles's,
Banstead-Downs, Newmarket-Heath: . . . not a Publick Bowling Green
where he had not exercis'd his heels; nor an Execution-crowd, nor a Hedge-
Tavern, where he had not employ'd his pauming, topping, cogging fingers.
:
This is monumental, but it is not Cervantes. And by how many
leagues is it removed from the splendid simplicity of Shelton!
Worse still, the ingenious Phillips makes Don Quixote an
occasion for setting forth his preferences and his animosities. He
packs his pages with modern instances. He drags in Hobbes and
the Protector by the heels; nor does he lose a chance of insulting
Milton, to whom he owed such scholarship as he possessed. Thus
it is that Don Diego di Miranda describes his son's attainments:
he is a great admirer of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius—but as for the modern
poets he allows very few to be worth a straw; among the rest he has a
particular Peek against Du Bartas, and Paradise Lost, which he says has
neither Rhime nor Reason.
To defend such a work as Phillips's Don Quixote is not easy.
There is a flippant irreverence in its jests and gibes which criticism
is forced to condemn. No man has a right thus licentiously to
transform a masterpiece of literature. The very readiness with
which a writer of burlesque can achieve a laugh should warn him
that the laugh is not worth achievement. Yet, when all is said that
can be said in dispraise, we cannot but acknowledge the supreme
skill with which Phillips has performed his task. His zest never
flags, his imagery never grows tired. On every page he has a
fresh, if perverse, simile. With untiring energy, he illustrates
Cervantes from the life of the taverns which he frequented. The
vigour and levity of his style are amazing; his understanding of
the original is seldom at fault, and, though it may be said that the


## p. 270 (#294) ############################################

270 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
book should never have been done, it must be added that it is done
exceedingly well. For, if it gives us a very blurred picture of
Don Quixote, it presents the clear image of the most flippant,
restless and debauched mind of an age which ill understood the
punctilio of life or letters.
Peter Motteux, a fitting companion in literature for John
Phillips, differed widely from him in blood and breeding. His
youthful steps were not encouraged by a great poet. Thrown
early upon a country whose language he did not understand, he
was compelled to make a double conquest, first of a speech
which was not his own, and then of the town in which he was an
enforced exile. Born in 1663 at Rouen, he came to England when
the edict of Nantes was revoked, and speedily found a place among
English men of letters. So swift a change of nationality is almost
without parallel in the history of literature. The author of
Gramont is no near rival, since he was but four when he was
carried to France, and a Frenchman he remained, in all save blood,
till the end. Motteux's achievement was far more wonderful.
He left France at the age of twenty-two, probably with no training
either in English or in literature, and, within a few years, he was
writing with precisely the same accent as any other haunter of the
coffeehouses. In the preface to his Rabelais, he fears that he has
'not given his Author the graces of the English language in every
place,' and protests that he has not followed the example of
Lucullus, who wrote a book in Greek and scattered some false
Greek in it, to let the world know it was not written by a Greek.
Motteux was not guilty of a similar indiscretion. What errors may
be found in his diction, he assures us, have crept in without his
intent. He need have had no fear, nor have offered his reader any
apology. Motteux had many faults. Gallicism was not among
thein. He compared himself, proudly enough, with Livius Andro-
nicus, a Greek, and Terence, a Carthaginian, who chose Latin
for their tongue, and if he could not vie with them in purity
of style, he surpassed them, doubtless, in fluency. There was
no task to which he did not turn a ready hand. He wrote
plays, after the prescribed model, and without the smallest
distinction. He furnished the plays of others with doggerel
prologues. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, for which Le
Mercure Galant of his own land served as a model, and
was not refused the assistance of the great. Congreve and Prior
both condescend to his pages, and, as it was Dryden under whose
banner he fought, so it is the influence of Dryden which governs


## p. 271 (#295) ############################################

6
Motteux and his Translation of Rabelais 271
his journal. Frenchman though he was, he differs little enough from
his neighbours in Grub street. He might sign their works or they
his without much detriment to either side. Nevertheless, he played
a part in the literary history of his time. If he won the approval
of Dryden and Steele, he was deemed worthy the rancour of Pope,
who celebrates him as a bore,
Talkers I've learned to bear, Motteux I knew,
and, in The Art of Sinking, puts him among the eels, 'obscene
authors that wrap themselves up in their own mud, but are
mighty nimble and pert.
' And then, to prove an astonishing
adaptability, Motteux turned an honest tradesman, and sold
China and Japan wares 'cheap for a quick return. ' He did not
return to the craft of letters, and, after six years of honourable
dealing, died a mysterious and shameful death.
Had it not been for his translation of Rabelais, Motteux’s
name would not have outlived this crowning scandal. His trans-
lation gives him a place in history. The work has many faults.
It is 'nimble and pert,' like its author, and Rabelais himself
was never for a moment either pert or nimble. A still worse
fault is its diffuseness, a fault of which Motteux appears to have
been wholly unconscious. His style is as far from the Latin gravity
of the original as from the humourous eloquence of Sir Thomas
Urquhart. He is able neither to represent the one nor to carry on
the tradition of the other. Between him and the knight of Cromarty
there is not merely the difference which separates the English of
Elizabeth (for Urquhart was a belated Tudor) from the English
of Dutch William, but the difference which parts an erudite and
curious Scots pedant from the trivial, boisterous frequenter of
Will's. Motteux's phrase is simple to tawdriness. He drags
Rabelais down to his own level, and in nothing does he prove
his lack of taste so clearly as in his use of slang. Now, slang, to
the translator of Rabelais, is indispensable. The romance of
Pantagruel and Panurge cannot be turned out of its own into
any other tongue save by an artist in strange words. Urquhart
was perfectly equipped for the task, because his interest in oddly
coloured speech never tired, and because, when he was himself
at a loss, he made a liberal use of Cotgrave's Dictionary. Thus
it was that his slang had ever a literary flavour; it had already
won the freedom of humane letters; the dust of the street corner
was not thick upon it. Motteux’s slang was of another kind. It
lacked literary association. The quickwitted Frenchman had
.
picked it up in the gutter or the tavern; he had caught it fresh


## p. 272 (#296) ############################################

272 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
minted from the vulgar brains of his friends; and, though it was
lively enough to gain an instant laugh, it long since lost its humour.
Motteux makes free and frank acknowledgment of the source of
his common talk, as he calls it.
'Far be it from me,' he writes, ‘for all this to value myself upon hitting
the Words of Cant, in which my drolling Author is so luxuriant, for though
such words have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself
unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much Gibberish and Billingsgate
trash in my memory; nor could I forbear asking myself as an Italian
Cardinal said on another account. . . Where the devil didst thon make up all
these fripperies ? '
He made them up in Grub street; and, when he had contrived
them, they were ill suited to his purpose.
The only literary sources from which he gathered his 'words
of Cant' were the travesties. He was no better able than John
Phillips to escape the anachronisms of Cotton and Radcliffe.
Though he had a finer restraint than the rascal who burlesqued
Don Quixote, he could not forbear to treat the text of Rabelais
with the same kind of wantonness. His version is full of allusions
to his own time, which are wholly out of place in the Englishing
of a masterpiece of the sixteenth century, and which today no man
may understand. Nothing can be more impertinent than to inter-
rupt the narrative of Rabelais with so foolish a catchword as 'his
name's Twyford. ' To translate maitre d'eschole by 'the Busby of
the place’ is wofully to misunderstand the business of a translator.
Still less excuse has Motteux, when, instead of the simple words
'at dawn,' he indulges his fancy thus extravagantly: 'when day,
peeping in the East, made the Sky turn from Black to Red, like
a boiling Lobster. The fact that he conveyed the image from
Hudibras, where it was appropriate, to Rabelais, where it is a
tiresome excrescence, does but heighten his sin. On every page,
he affronts the reader. He calls Panurge a 'sweet babe'; like the
journalist that he was, he clips 'doctor' into 'doc. ' Worse still,
he can find no better equivalent for c'est tout ung than 'it's
all one to Frank. ' Thus, he destroys the illusion of Rabelais,
and, as though that were not enough, he drags in by the heels
all the thievish gibberish that he could pick up in the purlieus of
Newgate in Newgate's heyday.
For Roger L'Estrange, the work of translation was but a
profitable interlude in a busy, active life? He was by tempera-
ment a fighter ; by habit, a man of affairs. No man loved the
1 Cf. as to Roger L'Estrange's work as a pamphleteer and journalist, ante, pp. 2–4.


## p. 273 (#297) ############################################

Roger L'Estrange as a Translator 273
fray better than he; none defended his opinions more bravely.
For the principles of an aristocratic toryism, which he advocated
fiercely and consistently, he suffered exile and imprisonment.
The highest reward, which he obtained for his loyalty to the king,
was to be appointed some years after the restoration surveyor of
the imprimery' and one of the licensers of the press. ' To the
end of his long life, therefore, it was to his pen alone that he could
trust, and, though controversy was most to his taste, he fell to
translating with the same brisk energy which made him formidable
as a pamphleteer. It was for money, of course, that he wrote his
many lively versions ; he was paid for his Josephus at so much
a sheet, as he might be paid today; but he could prove his
preferences by his selection of authors, and a preface always gave
him an opportunity of publishing his views. Thus, the face of
the controversialist is always seen through the mask of the
translator. In his Colloquies of Erasmus, for instance, he roundly
states that he made choice of this piece and subject for his own
sake and not for the readers'. Writing at the time of the popish
plot, and with a full consciousness of the suspicion that fell upon
him, he makes clear his own position. 'Some will have the
Translator to be a Papist in Masquerade,' says he, 'for going so
far. Others again will have him to be too much of a Protestant,
because he will go no farther : so that he is crushed betwixt the
two Extremes, as they hang up Erasmus himself, betwixt Heaven
and Hell. ' In his preface to Seneca's Morals, he descends from
truth itself to his own experience with yet greater clarity. For
L'Estrange, though he spoke with another's voice, could still
advocate the causes which for him were never lost.
He did his work of translation with the utmost thoroughness.
He was the master of many tongues, and when, in Englishing
Greek, he used the French version, which lay at his hand, he was
very careful to compare the result with the original. But his chiefest
qualification for the task was his mastery of his own language.
Having spent fifty years in the service of letters, he had turned
our English speech into the ready instrument of his thought.
Whatever author he translated, he took him not only out of his
own tongue, but out of his own land. He made him, for the moment,
a true-born Englishman, speaking the slang of the moment with
the proper accent of the cockney. As we have said, there are
objections to this method. It is inevitable that all works, of what-
ever time or place, should wear the same aspect, when they have
undergone this equalising process. They cannot but lose much of
18
E. L. IX.
CH. X.


## p. 274 (#298) ############################################

274 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
their individual character if they are all brought to walk with
the same gait, to use the same gesture. When Nero 'looks big
upon disaster,' and 'carries it on at a huffing note,' the reader loses
sight of Rome and Judaea, and is instantly borne back to Gray's-
inn-gate or Little Britain. And the mere fact that L'Estrange
set upon all the works which he Englished this very stamp and
pattern of his own time, while it increased their momentary popu-
larity, prevents their general acceptance as classics. They are
translated not into English, but into the dialect of a particular
time and place, and thus, with happy exceptions, they leave
the work of interpretation to be done all over again. But
L'Estrange's method has one conspicuous merit. It removes all
signs of halting uncertainty. You read a version, composed in
accord with it, in the confidence that the idiom of the original will
never disturb you, that you may judge it not as the tortured
expression of a foreign tongue, but as a fresh and independent
experiment in style. Pepys, for instance, a critic of quick
intelligence, was not blind to the peculiar merit of L'Estrange,
thus fortunate in the appreciation of his contemporaries, who
saw and approved the end at which he aimed.
In the selection of his originals, L'Estrange displayed a true
catholicity. He turned easily from Bona's Guide to Eternity to
Tully's Offices. He took a hand in the translation of Terence and
Tacitus, and, by himself, was responsible for The Visions of Quevedo
and The Spanish Decameron. Far better than these are his
Select Colloquies out of Erasmus Roterodamus. The light touch
and merry conceit of the author are qualities after L'Estrange's
own heart. The original, moreover, being of a gay irony, was
perfectly suited to L'Estrange's licentious method. Here, he
could leave the word for the sense with a good heart; and, as
Erasmus wrote for all time, looking through the foibles of his
friends to the very nature of man, he wore, without difficulty,
the garb of an English man of the world. By a hundred happy
turns, such as 'spoken like a true tarpaulin' for orationem vere
nauticam, the translator produces the impression of a living book-
not the best of living books, truly, for there is sometimes a flippancy
of phrase in L'Estrange's version, which is not merely irksome in
itself, but wholly unwarranted by the text. However, L'Estrange
was no verbal copier' encumbered with so many difficulties at once,
that he could never disentangle himself from all. ' He kept his
freedom at the expense of propriety. Even so, he preserved a
mean which eluded most of his contemporaries. To compare his


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L'Estrange and his Originals 275
Colloquies with those done into English by Tom Brown is to
measure the distance between the scholar and the bookseller's
hack. When Brown put his hand to the Colloquies, he showed no
respect for Erasmus, little for himself. He declares that he
'keeps his Author still in sight'; but he has no scruple in making
his version ‘palatable to the English reader. ' So, he sprinkles the
text with the expletives of the hour, deems no absurdity too
bold, and hopes, for instance, to win readers by rendering nuptias
Mortis, opinor, cum Marte, by not that of death and the Cobbler,
I hope, nor of Bully-Bloody-Bones and Mother Damnable. ' Thus,
he too has produced, not a translation, but a travesty, and is
guilty of the same outrage which John Phillips committed upon
Don Quixote. L'Estrange had many faults ; he never sank to the
depth of Brown's ineptitude.
The work by which he is best known, and by which he best
deserves to be remembered, is his version of Aesop's Fables. His
language, here also, is the language of talk rather than of litera-
ture, yet, for the most part, he observes a strict economy of words,
and seldom commits the blunder of making his fables diffuse.
'A daw that had a mind to be sparkish,' says he; 'I had much rather
be knabbing of crusts,'his Country Mouse declares, 'without fear or
danger in my own little hole, than be mistress of the whole world
with perpetual cares and alarums. ' In a sensible essay upon fables
in general, he asserts that the foundations of knowledge and virtue
are laid in childhood, and, presently, with an inapposite humour,
makes his fables unfit for a child's comprehension. What child,
we wonder, would read further after being confronted by such
an opening as this: 'In days of old, when Horses spoke Greek
and Latin, and Asses made syllogisms'? The fault of taste is
doubled when it is committed in defiance of a necessary simplicity.
Yet, he sins not always, and his Aesop, stripped of its reflexions,'
still remains the best that we have. In Seneca's Morals and
The Works of Josephus, he was less happily inspired. In the
first place, he challenged comparison with the incomparably
better versions of Lodge; in the second, neither Seneca nor
Josephus gave the smallest scope for his peculiar humour : when
he was most himself, in their case he was furthest from excellence.
But, of his Josephus, it may, at least, be said that it was a marvellous
achievement for a man of eighty-six, beset, as he tells us, by
'frequent troubles, and by ill-health. Good or bad, it was a fitting
conclusion to a career of rare vigour and energy, the crowning
work of one whom Pepys found 'a man of fine conversation,' and
a
18-2


## p. 276 (#300) ############################################

276 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
whom even the grave Evelyn pronounced 'a person of excellent
parts. '
Charles Cotton, in his translations, set before himself the same
ideal as Roger L'Estrange. He hoped that his versions might have
the air of true originals. And certain it is that you may read them
without any thought of his texts. Though his style, too, errs,
now and again, on the side of the tavern, he sternly avoids the
excesses of slang, which soil the works of his contemporaries.
Moreover, he made a resolute attempt to keep close to the
sense of the authors whom he translated, and, here again, he
separated himself rigidly from the custom of his age. His versions
are made one and all from the French, and, within the limits of
this language, he permitted himself a great latitude of choice.
Corneille's Horace is among his works, and Du Vair's Moral
Philosophy of the Stoics. These he followed by Gerard's History
of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, and the admirable Commen-
taries of Blaise de Montluc. In this last, perhaps, his talent found
its worthiest expression. He bad a natural sympathy with the
original, and he translated it into an English that is both dignified
and appropriate. Narrative was in closer accord with his temper
than philosophical disquisition, and, though it is by his version of
Montaigne's Essays that he is principally remembered today, his
Commentaries of Montluc approach more nearly in style and
quality to what a translation should be.
In translating Montaigne, Cotton was at a disadvantage, of
which he himself was wholly unconscious. He followed in the
footsteps of a far greater adept in the difficult art, John Florio.
Florio had all the virtues, save accuracy. If his book fails to
represent the style of Montaigne, and not infrequently distorts his
meaning, it is none the less a piece of living prose. Perhaps, it
tells you more of Florio than of Montaigne ; but it has that enduring
quality, character, and it is unlikely that fashion will ever drive it
from the minds of admiring scholars. Cotton's version is of other
stuff. Though not always correct, though never close-knit as is
the original, it is more easily intelligible than Florio's, and gives,
may be, a clearer vision of the French. That, indeed, was Cotton's
purpose. “My design,' says he, ‘in attempting this translation was
to present my country with a true copy of a very brave original. '
Both translators use too many words for their purpose, Florio
because he delights in the mere sound of them, Cotton, because
he had not acquired the gift of concise expression, because he
did not always know how to discard the tiresome symbols which


## p. 277 (#301) ############################################

Charles Cotton and his Montaigne 277
6
encumber bis sentences as with pack-thread. Florio, on the one
hand, wrote like a fantastic, to whom embroideries were essential,
Cotton, on the other, wrote like a country gentleman, who, after
a day's fishing, turned an honest penny by the pursuits of scholar-
ship. The one lacks precision, the other distinction, and each man
will decide for himself which he prefers.
Charles Cotton, in truth, holds a place apart in the literary
history of his time. Though L'Estrange was born to an ancient
house in Norfolk, the strife of art and politics, the necessities of
his journals had driven him to London and the taverns. Cotton,
well as he knew London, remained still faithful to his dale in
Derbyshire. In Lamb's phrase, he 'smacked of the rough mag-
nanimity of the old English vein. ' It was in all sincerity that he
praised his beloved caves,
from Dog-star heats,
And hotter persecution safe retreats.
When poverty drove him to do the work of a hack, he did it
with what skill and spirit he might. If The Compleat Gamester
was unworthy his pen, his Planter's Manual is a pleasant and
practical little treatise. His verses have won the approval of
Coleridge and Lamb and Wordsworth, and his lines to his 'dear
and most worthy Friend, Mr Isaac Walton' remind us of Horace
and his Sabine farm:
A day without too bright a Beam,
A warm, but not a scorching Sun,
A Southern gale to curl the Stream,
And (master) half our work is done.
These four lines are worth the whole of Scarronides, and, doubtless,
they will be remembered when the translation of Montaigne has
faded utterly from the minds of men.
The most industrious and by no means the least distinguished
of the translators of his time was captain John Stevens. Who and
what he was we know not. There is no record of him or his
achievements, save on the title-pages of his many books. There is
no doubt that he did a signal service to English letters. It was
through his skill and learning that the history of Spain and
Spanish literature was made known to his countrymen. His
mere industry appals us. He translated nothing save the works
of Spaniards, and he accommodated his style to the style of his
originals with a variety which no other of his contemporaries
could match. Where a light and easy manner was required,
as by Quevedo, he knew how to give it, and, when he brought


## p. 278 (#302) ############################################

278 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
Mariana's History of Spain 'to speak English,' as he said, under
the auspices of the earl of Dorset, to whom it is dedicated, he did
it with a dignity and eloquence which befit the Muse of history.
The one cause of complaint which we have against him is that
he could not keep away from Shelton's Don Quixote, which
he 'revised and corrected' with a lavish hand. Nor does his
excuse better his ill-doing. He declares in a dedication that
Cervantes’s ‘successful masterpiece has not prov'd happy in its
translators, for though it has been made English twice the versions
have neither time been proportionable to the Beauty of the
Original. ' As to Shelton's work, he pronounces it ‘almost a literal
version,' and then complains that it is ‘in such unpolish'd language,
and with so many Mistakes, that there seem'd to be nothing left
but the outlines and rough Draught of this curious piece. So
Stevens took Shelton's masterpiece and amended it, bringing it,
it is true, far nearer to the original, and robbing it of what is of far
higher worth than accuracy, its style and character.
For the rest, Stevens touched nothing that he did not embellish.
Though he did not disdain romance, though we owe to his pen
Pablo de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper, and a collection of novels,
with the title The Spanish Libertines, his preference, or the
preference of his readers, was for history and travel. Sandoval's
History of Charles V followed The Spanish Rule of Trade to the
West Indies, written by Don Joseph de Veitia Linage. He took his
share in the English of a series of voyages, published in monthly
parts, thus making a link between the old method of publishing
and the practice of today. So far as we know, he was a translator
and a translator only. He seems to have played no part in the
life of his time. His dedications, couched in the terms of the
loftiest flattery, afford us little clue to his career. Perhaps, as
he inscribes his translation of The Portuguese Asia, with humble
adulation, to Catherine, queen dowager of England, he may have
professed the Catholic faith. But, by his works we know him, and
by his works alone, and they tell us that he did the journey-work
of translation with a sounder scholarship and with a more
various style than any of the men of letters, his contemporaries,
could boast.


## p. 279 (#303) ############################################

CHAPTER XI
BERKELEY AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
THE period of English thought which followed Locke's death
was fruitful both in great writers and in important movements.
Locke's own influence was felt everywhere. His new way of ap-
proaching the subject, his freedom from the traditional technicalities
of the schools, and his application of his method to a wide range
of human interests, made philosophy count for more with reflective
writers generally, and determined the line of thought taken by
greater minds. Speculation turned mainly upon three problems
-the problem of knowledge, the problem of religion and the
problem of morality. The treatment of each problem led to
striking developments; and Locke's influence affected them all,
though in unequal degrees. The idealism of Berkeley followed
directly from his fundamental positions ; the leaders of the deists
professed themselves his disciples, though they arrived at con-
clusions different from his ; the work of the moralists was less
fully determined by his speculations, though his ethical views were,
perhaps, seldom far from their minds. In the present chapter,
this division of problems will be followed ; it will treat, in
suecession, of the metaphysicians, the deists and the moralists.
Most writers, indeed, did not limit their interests to a single
problem; and their place here will have to be determined by
a view of the permanent importance of their work in different
departments. Strict chronological order, also, to some extent,
will be sacrificed. In this way, consideration of the writings of
Samuel Clarke, for instance--although he was a prominent
figure in the whole philosophical movement, and one of the
earliest to attain éminence will be postponed till the last section
of the chapter.


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280 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
I. METAPHYSICIANS.
George Berkeley was born at Dysert castle, county Kilkenny,
Ireland, on 12 March 1685, and educated at Kilkenny school and
Trinity college, Dublin, which he entered in 1700 and where he re-
mained, first as a scholar, afterwards as fellow and tutor, till January
1713. These early years are the most remarkable in Berkeley's
literary career. He published, anonymously, two mathematical
tracts in 1707; his Essay towards a new theory of vision appeared
in 1709, his Principles of Human Knowledge, part I, in 1710; and
when, in 1713, he got leave of absence from his college and set out
for London, it was 'to print his new book '-Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous—as well as 'to make acquaintance
with men of merit. ' These three books reveal the new thought
which inspired his life ; and the evidence of his Common place
Book (discovered and published by Campbell Fraser in 1871)
shows that he was barely twenty years of age when this new
thought took hold of him. Berkeley was absent from Ireland for
eight years, spending his time in London, France and Italy
(where, on a second visit, he resided four years). During this
period, he did little literary work; he made some progress, indeed,
with the second part of his Principles, but the MS was lost in his
travels, and the work was never resumed; his Latin treatise De
motu was written as he was on his way home in 1720, and published
in 1721; he collected materials for a natural history of Sicily, but
this MS also was lost; a journal written in Italy, however, and
many letters remain to show his appreciation of the beauties of
nature and art. His return to England gave a new direction to
his energy
The country was in the period of collapse which
follows a speculative mania ; and Berkeley saw the true cause
of the national disaster in the decline of religion, the decay of
public spirit and the prevalent corruption of manners. One
hundred and forty years later, Mark Pattison described the
period as an age whose poetry was without romance, whose
philosophy was without insight, and whose public men
without character? ' A similar judgment forms the burden of
Berkeley's Essay towards preventing the ruin of Great Britain,
published anonymously in 1721. He returned to Ireland and to
Trinity college later in the same year, and was presented to the
deanery of Dromore. The office attracted him because it would
give him leisure for reflection and for philanthropic work; but
1 Essays and Reviews, 1860, p. 254.
were


## p. 281 (#305) ############################################

Berkeley in America 281
a legal question arose as to the right of presentation, and his
hopes received a check. Berkeley is one of the most perfect
a
characters among men of letters; but his perfection was not
colourless. He threw himself with energy into the defence of
his rights, and at least had the satisfaction of a protracted
lawsuit. While the case was still pending, in 1724, he was
appointed to a much more valuable preferment~the deanery of
Derry. “It is said to be worth £1500 a year,' he wrote, 'but I
do not consider it with a view to enriching myself. I shall be
perfectly contented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme
of Bermuda' This scheme seems to have taken hold of Berkeley's
mind about two years previously; to it he devoted his fortune
and ten years of his life. His plan was to found a college in the
Bermudas, with the twofold object of the reformation of manners
among the English in our western plantations, and the propagation
of the gospel among the American savages. ' Berkeley spent four
years in London in endeavouring to extract a charter and grant
of money from a reluctant government and subscriptions from
an unbelieving generation; he had to frequent the court and
dispute twice a week with Samuel Clarke before queen Caroline,
then princess of Wales ; he listened to the banter of the wits
of the Scriblerus club, and then replied with such eloquence
and enthusiasm that they'rose all up together, with earnestness
exclaiming, “Let us set out with him immediately”'; he canvassed
every member of parliament with such effect that, in the Commons,
there were only two opponents of the vote; even Walpole sub-
scribed to the scheme, though he secretly determined that the
government grant of money should never be paid. Bermuda
became the fashion, and Berkeley was idolised. But he grudged
the waste of time, and, at last with only a promise from Walpole
that the grant would be paid-he set sail from Greenwich in
September 1728, with his newly-married wife. In January 1729,
he landed at Newport, Rhode island. There he remained for
nearly three years, waiting vainly for the government to fulfil
its promises. This it never did ; he never reached Bermuda, and
his college was never founded; but he left his impress upon the
early efforts of American philosophy ; his interpretation of the
material world modified the thinking of Jonathan Edwards, the
metaphysician and theologian of New England ; and the memory
of his visit has been treasured by the American mind. The new
world also affected Berkeley's imagination and led to a set of
Verses on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America.


## p. 282 (#306) ############################################

282 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
6
One of his lines—Westward the course of empire takes its way
-has come to be looked upon as prophetic; but his idea was
not geographical ; it was that better times would follow better
morals, where nature guides and virtue rules. '
Berkeley remained in London for more than two years after his
return to England; and a new period of authorship began, during
which he joined in the controversies of the age. In Alciphron, or
the Minute Philosopher (1732), written in the seclusion of his home
in Rhode island, he applied his general principles in defence of
religion against the free-thinkers. In 1733 appeared his Theory of
Vision, or Visual Language Vindicated and Explained ; and, in
the following year, he published The Analyst, in which he criticised
the positions of the new mathematics which, in his view, were
connected with a materialistic conception of the world. This bold
attempt to carry the war into the enemy's country called forth
many pamphlets on the other side. In the same year, Berkeley
returned to Ireland as bishop of Cloyne ; and, henceforth, his
literary work was divided between questions of social reform
and religious reflection. The reform is represented by The
Querist (1735), a work full of penetrating remarks ; both subjects
are combined in Siris: a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions
(1744), which begins by expounding the medicinal virtues of
tar-water, and ends in an exposition of idealism in which the
Lockean strain has given place to the Platonic. A Miscellany
containing several tracts was published in October 1752. Two
months earlier he had left Cloyne, that he might spend the
remainder of his days at Oxford ; and there he died on 14
January 1753.
When Berkeley launched his idealism upon an unsympathetic
world, he had read Descartes and Malebranche and been attracted
by the philosophy of Plato; he was also acquainted with the
works of the mathematicians and natural philosophers, and sus-
pected a trend to materialism in their theories ; but his thought
had been formed under the influence of Locke, whose Essay
found earlier recognition from the academic authorities at
Dublin than from those of English universities. At the time
when Berkeley entered Trinity college and for ten years after-
wards, the provost was Peter Browne, afterwards bishop of Cork,
a student and critic of the Essay. He had already attracted
attention by an Answer to Toland (1697). His more original
works followed after a long interval—The Procedure, extent and
limits of human understanding, in 1728, and the work called, for


## p. 283 (#307) ############################################

283
>
A New Theory of Vision
short, Divine Analogy, in 1733. These two books are connected
with Berkeley's later work, for the theory of our knowledge of God
propounded in the former is criticised in one of the dialogues of
Alciphron, and the criticisms are replied to in Browne’s Divine
Analogy. Browne could not accept Locke's account of knowledge
by means of ideas, when it came to be applied to mind. Mind and
body, he held, are not known in the same way. We have, indeed,
ideas of our mental operations as these are connected with the
body; but minds or spirits—whether divine or human-can be
known only by analogy. This view, Berkeley, in later life, attacked;
but it points to a difficulty in his own theory also—a difficulty
which he came to see, without fully resolving it. There is, how-
ever, no sufficient evidence for saying that Browne had any
direct influence upon Berkeley's early speculation.
Berkeley's theory emerges full-grown, if not fully armed. Even
in his Common-place Book, there is no hesitation in the references
to my doctrine,' 'the immaterial hypothesis. ' Only persons exist:
'all other things are not so much existences as manners of the
existence of persons. ' He knows that'a mighty sect of men will
oppose me,' that he will be called young, an upstart, a pretender,
vain; but his confidence is not shaken : 'Newton begs his prin-
ciples; I demonstrate mine. ' He did not, at first, reveal the whole
truth to the world. An Essay towards a new theory of vision
deals with one point only—the relation between the objects of
sight and those of touch. Molyneux had once set the problem
to Locke, whether a man born blind, if he recovered his sight,
would be able by sight alone to distinguish from one another a
cube and a sphere, with which he had been previously acquainted
by touch. Molyneux answered his own question in the negative,
and Locke expressed agreement with his solution and admiration
for the insight which it showed. Berkeley was of one mind with
them about the answer to the query, but for a more fundamental
If extension be an idea common to sight and touch (as
Locke held), then visible squareness must be the same as, or
have something in common with, tangible squareness. In virtue
of this, the man born blind, so soon as he is made to see,
should be able to distinguish between a visible square and a
visible circle and to identify this distinction with the distinction
between the square and the circle already known by touch.
If he is unable to do so, it is because there is nothing in
common between the visible object and the tangible. And this
is Berkeley's view.
reason,


## p. 284 (#308) ############################################

284 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
The objects of sight and touch make, if I may so say, two sets of ideas
which are widely different from each other. 'A man born blind,' he says,
'being made to see, would at first have no idea of distance by sight: the sun
and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearer, would all seem to be in
his eye, or rather in his mind. '
A great part of the Essay is devoted to an explanation of the
apparent immediateness with which the distance of an object is
seen. But the essence of the whole consists in two propositions-
that the objects (or ideas) of sight have nothing in common with
the objects of touch, and that the connection of sight and touch
is 'arbitrary' and learned by experience only. The connection
is arbitrary; but it is regular and constant. What we see suggests
to us what we may expect to touch and handle. The whole
visible world—as was further enforced in his Theory of Vision
or Visual Language-consists of a set of signs which, like a
language, have for their purpose to convey a meaning ; though
they neither resemble nor cause that meaning, nor have any
necessary connection with it. In using sight to guide our move-
ments, we interpret the language of God.
Some of the details of Berkeley's Essay need revision in the
light of modern study of the senses. But this does not obscure its
merit as one of the most brilliant pieces of psychological analysis
in the English language. A more serious objection to it is that
the author pushes too far his war against abstractions. It is true,
as he urges, that sight and touch have no common element that
can be separated from both and become an independent pre-
sentation. Against 'abstract ideas' of this sort, his polemic was
fully justified. But the different senses are not disconnected
either in genesis or in function, and reflection may discover
certain lines of similarity among their processes. Berkeley
decides too quickly that the connection is arbitrary, because of
the striking difference in their contents, and because one cannot
be called cause and another effect; and he argues too easily from
this arbitrary connection to divine volition. He never gave the
same close attention to the conceptual factor in knowledge as
he gave to sense and imagination, and in his early work the
conceptual factor is almost entirely ignored.
The Essay did not disclose all that was in Berkeley's mind.
It kept to its topic, the relation of the objects of sight to those
of touch, and it did not question the views commonly held about the
latter. The full revelation came, a year afterwards, in A Treatise
concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. This small
volume, more talked about than read at the time it took twenty-


## p. 285 (#309) ############################################

Berkeley's Idealism
285
four years to reach a second edition is one of the works which
have had a critical influence upon the course of European thought.
Its importance, in this respect, ranks it with Locke's Essay
and Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. The fresh step which
Berkeley took was short and simple and easy; when taken, it
shows us the whole world from a new point of view. Locke had
said that all the objects of knowledge are ideas, and he had thus
much difficulty-as, indeed, Descartes had had before him-in
defending the reality of the things which he supposed to be
represented by the ideas. Berkeley solves the difficulty by
denying the distinction. The ideas are the things. 'It is indeed
an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, moun-
tains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence,
natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the
understanding. But the opinion needs only to be called in
question to show the contradiction it involves; for these objects
are the things we perceive by sense, and we perceive nothing
but our own ideas. With magnificent confidence, he passes at
once to the assertion:
Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need
only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz.
that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those
bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any sub-
sistence without a mind; that their being is to be perceived or known.
As regards material things, therefore, a single phrase expresses
Berkeley's thought : 'their esse is percipi. Theirs is a passive,
‘
dependent existence. Active, independent existence can belong
to minds or persons only. From this position he never wavered,
though there is a good deal of difference between his earlier and
his later views. He saw that, as the existence of ideas consists
in being perceived, so mind must be regarded as perceiving.
'Existence. . . is percipi or percipere’ is one of his earliest state-
ments; and, as men may sleep or be rendered unconscious, he is
willing, at first, to accept the consequence that 'men die or are in
a state of annihilation oft in a day. But this solution seemed too
dangerous and was soon relinquished, and thus he held it ‘a plain
consequence that the soul always thinks. As there is no material
substance, so, also, there can be no material cause. Material
things, being our ideas and altogether passive, are related to one
another not as cause and effect but only as sign and thing
signified. We learn to understand their grouping, and thus one
idea suggests others, the like of which have followed it in previous
6


## p. 286 (#310) ############################################

286 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
experience; while further experience confirms the anticipation.
What we call laws of nature, therefore, are simply a statement
of the orderly sequences in which the ideas of the senses occur in
our minds. The material substance to which philosophers refer
these ideas as their cause is, he labours to prove, an unmeaning
and self-contradictory abstraction. Certain ideas—those which
we call ideas of imagination—are constructed by the individual
mind; but the ideas of sense, or sensible things, though they exist
only in the mind, are not caused by my mind or by any other
finite mind. There must, therefore, be 'an omnipresent eternal
Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them
to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as He
Himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the laws of nature. '
Berkeley's works, for the most part, are of the nature of
introductions, vindications, and polemics. He explained his new
principle and defended it and applied it to current controversies
with wonderful resource of argument and beauty of language, and
with the power that came from intense conviction. In Hylas and
in Alciphron, he used the dialogue form, with a skill never excelled
a
in English philosophical literature, to bring out the difficulties in
his view and to set forth their triumphant solution. But he did
not work out his spiritual interpretation of reality into a system.
He would answer an objection without following out the bearing
of his answer upon other portions of his philosophy. He began,
like Locke, by asserting that all the objects of our knowledge are
ideas; and he divided ideas into three classes : those of sense,
those of mental operations and those of memory or imagination.
To which class, then (we may ask), do knowledge of self, of other
finite spirits, of God and of the laws of nature belong? The
question does not seem to have occurred to Berkeley when, with
all the ardour of a discoverer; he wrote his Principles. But he
raises it in Hylas, and says that, in reflection, we have an
immediate knowledge of self as an active being and, by inference
therefrom, of other finite spirits and of God. This knowledge,
as well as our knowledge of laws of nature, is not through ideas,
and he calls it notion. We have, therefore, not merely ideas of
sensible things and of mental operations and of remembered or
imagined objects, but, also, notions of spirits and of laws. The
terminology was used again when he came to issue the second
edition of the Principles ; but he did not see that it required
a modification of the first sentence of that work which declares
that all the objects of human knowledge are ideas. How idea


## p. 287 (#311) ############################################

Arthur Collier
287
and notion are related to one another in knowledge, we cannot
gather from him. But this is clear : that ideas are inert and
fleeting, and that it is through notion that we become acquainted
with the permanent active forces of the real universe.
Berkeley stood at a parting of the ways in thought, though he
was hardly conscious of their divergence. On the one hand, his
principles that all knowledge is of ideas, and that all ideas are
of one or other of the three kinds enumerated by him, lead to
a view which excludes from knowledge not only material substance,
but mind, also, and the reign of law in nature. At times, especially
in his Common-place Book, he seems on the brink of drawing this
conclusion, and thus of anticipating Hume. Afterwards, he sees
it only as something to be guarded against. He could not think
of the idea as, so to speak, self-supporting. It exists only in so
far as it is 'in the mind': mind is the true reality, the only
agency; ideas exist only in minds, finite or infinite; and the
laws of nature are the order in which ideas are produced in us
by the infinite Mind. Spiritual agency, spiritual reality, is thus
his fundamental thought; and, in Siris, the last of his philosophical
works, this thought emerges from the midst of reflections on
empirical medicine and old-fashioned physiology. No longer
dominated by the Lockean heritage of the sensitive origin of
knowledge, his idealism is assimilated to the Platonic; the work is
full of comments on Neoplatonic writers, ancient and modern;
and there is an absence of the simplicity and clearness of his
earlier writings; systematic development of his theory is still
absent; but there is hardly a page without remarks of pregnant
insight, and he is everywhere loyal to the vision of truth with
which his career opened.
In 1713, three years after the appearance of Berkeley's
Principles, Arthur Collier, rector of Langford Magna, near
Salisbury, published a work entitled Clavis Universalis and
professing to be 'a demonstration of the non-existence or im-
possibility of an external world. ' Collier was born in 1680, and,
like Berkeley, seems to have formed his conclusions at an early
age: for he says that it was 'after a ten years' pause and delibera-
tion' that he decided to put his arguments before the reader. His
results are almost identical with Berkeley's; but he arrived at
them in a different way. He seems to have been uninfluenced
by Locke; Descartes, Malebranche and Norris were his favourite
authors; and there was enough, in their writings, to raise the
а


## p. 288 (#312) ############################################

288 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
question. Collier writes in a straightforward and simple style ;
he has none of Berkeley's imagination or eloquence; he does not
contend that he has the plain man on his side, nor does he apply
his results to current controversy. But he has no less confidence
than Berkeley had in the truth of his views; and his arguments
are clearly put. Often, they resemble Berkeley's; though greater
.
use is made of traditional metaphysical discussions. Among these,
the most notable is the argument from the antinomies of philo-
sophical thought. The external world, conceived as independent
of mind, has been held infinite in extent, and also it has been held
to be finite; and equally good and conclusive reasons can be
given for either alternative. Similarly, it is 'both finitely and
infinitely divisible. ' But a thing cannot have two contradictory
predicates. External matter, therefore, does not exist.
II. DEISTS.
The first half of the eighteenth century was the period of the
deistical controversy in English theology. The writers commonly
classed together as deists are Charles Blount, John Toland,
Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Woolston, Thomas
Morgan, Thomas Chubb, Peter Annet and Henry Dodwell the
younger. Among deists are also reckoned Bolingbroke and
the third earl of Shaftesbury, who differed from the rest in
paying little attention to the details of theological controversy,
and differed from one another in their philosophical interest and
importance.
The works of Charles Blount belong to the last quarter of the
seventeenth century. He accepted the 'five points' of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury? This marked him as a deist, and he did
not reject the name. In his Anima Mundi (1679), he defended
the system of natural religion, and, at the same time, emphasized
the comparative merits of the heathen religions. His Great is
Diana of the Ephesians (1680) is an attack on priestcraft. In
the same year, he published an English translation of The two first
books of Philostratus, concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus.
On each chapter of this followed 'illustrations' by the translator,
in which it was easy to find an attack on the Christian miracles
and on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. Faith,' he says,
is 'like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one
miracle as another'; whereas, his own Christianity was founded
i See vol. iv, p. 294, ante.


## p. 289 (#313) ############################################

Rational Theology
289
exclusively on reason.