THE MIRROR
OF
LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.
| Vol. 17. No. 487.] | SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1831 | [PRICE 2d. |
BIRTHPLACE OF LOCKE.
At the village of Wrington, in Somersetshire, in a cottage bythe churchyard, was born JOHN LOCKE. What a simple, unostentatiousrecord is this of him whom the biographers call “one of themost eminent philosophers and valuable writers of his age andcountry.” Yet the cottage is not preserved with any specialcare;—there is nothing about it to denote that within itswalls the man of whom every Englishman is proud—first drewbreath. The house is now divided into tenements; and, fortuitously,one of its rooms is used as a school for young children. It isgrateful to know this, even were it only for associating theappropriation of this apartment with the master-mind of Locke, asdeveloped in his “Thoughts on Education,” and hisperspicuous “Essay on the Human Understanding.”
Locke was born August 29, 1632: his father, Mr. J. Locke, whowas descended from the Lockes of Charton Court, in Dorsetshire,possessed a moderate landed property at Pensfold and Belluton,where he lived. He was a captain in the Parliamentary army duringthe civil wars, and his fortune suffered so considerably in thosetimes, that he left a smaller estate to his son than he himself hadinherited. It is not our intention to follow the biographers ofLocke further than by quoting from the last published Life of thePhilosopher1 a brief example of his filialaffection:—
John Locke, says the biographer, was the eldest of two sons, andwas educated with great care by his father, of whom he always spokewith the greatest respect and affection. In the early part of hislife, his father exacted the utmost respect from his son, butgradually treated him with less and less reserve, and, when grownup, lived with him on terms of the most entire friendship; so muchso, that Locke mentioned the fact of his father having expressedhis regret for giving way to his anger, and striking him once inhis childhood, when he did not deserve it. In a letter to a friend,written in the latter part of his life, Locke thus expresseshimself on the conduct of a father [pg 290]towards hisson:—“That which I have often blamed as an indiscreetand dangerous practice in many fathers, viz. to be very indulgentto their children whilst they are little, and as they come to ripeyears to lay great restraint upon them, and live with greaterreserve towards them, which usually produces an ill understandingbetween father and son, which cannot but be of bad consequences;and I think fathers would generally do better, as their sons growup, to take them into a nearer familiarity, and live with them withas much freedom and friendship as their age and temper willallow.” The following letter from Locke to his father, whichis without a date, but must have been written before 1660, showsthe feeling of tenderness and affection which subsisted betweenthem. It was probably found by Locke amongst his father’spapers, and thus came again into his possession:—
“December