John Locke in France
Locke's Travels in France. Edited by John Lough. (Cambridge University Press. 40s.)
IN November, 1675, when he was forty-three, John Locke left England to spend three-and-a-half years in France. On his travels, as at home, he kept a journal in a series of bound almanacs which now repose in the Bodleian Library (except for one, which is itt the British Museum), Lord King, in his almost comically inaccurate biography of Locke, published in 1829 a selection from the entries in each of these journals. Professor Lough now offers a very much more generous selection, all taken from Locke's years in France. It has been no easy task, for Locke wrote in a crabbed and sometimes cryptic English, in bad French, or in a shorthand of his own devising, but Mr. Lough has done it remarkably well, and the Cambridge University Press has made the book a very handsome one. The only disappointment is that the edition is not complete. Mr. Lough has had to leave out a large number of Locke's entries, including, besides the Biblical and the bibliographical, all Locke's medical notes. This last omission is the more regrettable in view of the circumstances which preceded Locke's visit to France. At the age of forty-two he wished, for one reason or another, some release from the duties of eminence grise to the first Earl of Shaftesbury, and his inclinations returned to medicine. Thus in January, 1675, Locke secured one of the medical studentships at Christ Church, and in the following month he received from the Chancellor of Oxford University a faculty to practise as a physician. Hence, when he went to France in Noveinber of that year, he chose (though not at first intending to stay as long as he did stay) to go from Paris to Montpellier, for Montpellier possessed one of the greatest medical schools in Europe. Montpellier had the further advantage of being virtually a health- resort, and Locke had not been well for some years. Mr. Lough says he was consumptive, and certainly Locke thought he was. I believe he was simply asthmatic. There is a letter in the Bodleian Library from Dr. William Cole of Worcester, who examined Locke in 1690, and found his fears of phthisis unfounded. "Most thinking men (physicians not excepted)," Dr. Cole told Locke, "form dreadful ideas" as a result of "too close reflection on their diseases." Locke reflected on his own afflictions more than readers of Mt. Lough's edition will realise, for hypochondria has been excluded from these pages, together with the generality of medicine. What remains is largely social history and the narrative of travel. It cannot be pretended that Locke was a good travel writer. Put him in Versailles—and he was there on more than one occasion in the presence of Le Rol Soleil himself—and the best he can find to say about it concerns the mechanics of the waterworks; from the Tuileries and the Invalides our philosopher (and philosopher he already was although he published nothing until 1689, for an entry in the journal shows he had De Intellectu Humane in his bag) offers little more than carefully paced-out measurements of the gardens. A meat-packer on vacation from Ohio could scarcely do worse.
In cathedrals and churches Locke is better value, for there his wits were galvanised by his anti-Catholic fervour, and his journal comes to life. He recorded, conscientiously and contemptuously, any sacred relics that were shown him. On one .occasion, when he was not shown but told, he wrote sarcastically (for he lacked the gift if irony): "Being told by a spiritual guide of the infallible church, we believed." He was also quick to note down any scandals from clerical life. Cardinal Bonzi, he reports, "keeps a very fine mistress in the town, which some of the very Papists complain of, and hath some very fine boys in his train." Locke also observed with suit- able liberal indignation the Bourbon policy of curbing the power of proirincial governors and of taxing the poor to sustain the rich, but Mr. Lough's references to other authorities suggest that Locke's testimony is not altogether reliable on these matters, although else- where the editor says that where he has been able to check Locke's facts " they are seldom found to be inaccurate."
Like most travellers, Locke has moments of ordeal to report from the inns where he lodged. He writes of a "whole bill of fare" as "nothing but a cabbage and a frog that was caught in it," and he seems to have been "ill treated" hardy less often than he was "well treated." There are interesting entries on the making of wine and olive oil, and a few recipes : one recommends wrapping up stale cheese in wet chestnuts to revive it. In Paris it is probable that Locke saw several of Moliere's plays, but he confided no comment to his journal besides the world "Play" and the cost of admission.
He had always a sharp eye on his money. MAURICE CRANSTON.
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