The proper study of mankind
J. Enoch Powell
ESMOND DE BEER(1895-1990): SCHOLAR AND BENEFACTOR by Michael Strachan Michael Russell, £12, pp. 74 Te Oxford University Press has produced six volumes of the Correspon- dence of John Locke and eight volumes of John Evelyn's Diary. The formidable task of editing was the work of one man who in the early years of the century as a Magdalen student at Oxford was a pupil of Sir Charles Firth. It was, especially considering the singularly careful research with which it was prepared, an important editorial effort, which in the case of Locke amounted to a detailed biography by the editor, Esmond de Beer.
But there is a special reason for welcom- ing the biography of the editor which has been compiled in scholarly fashion by Michael Strachan, already credited with the publication of biographies of Thomas Coryat and Sir Thomas Roe. It is a glimpse into a world of its own. A well-heeled scholar, living apparently without work, devotes himself to the pursuit and annota- tion of all possible detailed evidence for two important 17th-century figures, and finds fulfilment in performance of this voluntary service.
Interestingly, the background to the hero of the book, a descendant of German immigrants to New Zealand, is a miniature example of the sort of input which the antipodean members of the Common- wealth have made into the mother country. The wealth which went to edit Evelyn and Locke came, as the editor himself admit- ted, 'as a result of decent government and private commercial expansion. It became possible to have an income derived from investments with no managerial require- ments' — an intimate photograph of a typi- cal (albeit successful) specimen of the `leisured class' from overseas investing in the fabric of the mother country.
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