BOOKS.

BERKELEY AND PERCIVAL.*

THE great philosopher Berkeley was a most delightful writer of intimate letters. Mr. Benjamin Rand has just brought out a complete edition of his correspondence with Sir John Percival. The book should find many readers, and none should be deterred by a fear that it will prove too difficult reading for those who in this pressing, strenuous time desire distraction rather than instruction. If the reader wants to learn about Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of matter, be must read his Dialogues or his .efleiphron, not his letters. They tell of his friends, his travels, his children, and his friends' children. They make us understand his fascination (the fascination against which even Pope was not proof), not his philosophy. The friendship between Berkeley and Percival began when both were young. Fellow-students at Dublin University, they discussed the future on paper when they could not talk. Their views upon marriage are entertaining, and they show a cool-headed wisdom which we should hardly

expect to encounter nowadays in men of their age. In the year 1709 Sir John Percival is engaged in looking

for a wife. He regards marriage as " a voluntary confine- ment which I desire to make as agreeable as possible, the rather because 'tie a confinement for life." Berkeley gently reproves his cynicism, and Percival writes again describing the sort of woman he would like to marry. The letter is entertaining, but hardly so entertaining as one written on the same subject to another correspondent, for which Mr. Rand makes room in his "Biographical Commentary":— "In a complete wife there are six things desirable, viz., good nature, beauty, sense, breeding, birth, and fortune. 'Tie seldom that all these meet in one, nay and almost impossible, and therefore • Berkeley and Percival. By Benjamin Band. Cambridge: at the University Press. [9s. net.] where they don't, respect must be bad to those qualifications that cannot be spared, and men must be contented to go without those that can; such as fortune, which I've put last because of smallest moment, and next to that family, which may likewise be spared, if all the other things hit. The other four must join to make a man happy; good nature, or a husband has no peace at home; beauty, or he has no delight; sense, or his affairs go to wreck; and breeding, or the world reflects on his choice; but I have par- ticular reason to desire my wife to be a handsome person, because I love home and intend to be furiously constant. As to the two separable qualities, they are not to be despised, though inferior to the rest, for a good family is seldom attended with beggarly rela- tions, and generally afford friends in power to assist one on occasion ; but this is a needless consideration for me who am of so distant a country where indigent relations would have no courage to follow me, and who have fortune enough, but no ambitious views to gratify."

The man who asked so much married soon and was entirely happy. Lady Percival shared her husband's friendship for Berkeley to the full. The great philosopher became devoted to her children, writing of them with a detailed tenderness very rare in the early half of the eighteenth century, and interesting himself in their mother's smallest concerns. He sends her prescriptions for the children's ailments and her own, and rejoices in their recoveries as though his favourite " tar water" bad brought them about. He wrote as he talked,

seriously or lightly as the mood took him, or rather perhaps

according to the mood in which he expected to find the recipient of his letter. A passing allusion to a very serious- minded correspondent may have caused Sir John and his lady to smile:—

"I wrote to Mr. Clarke and desired he would favour me with his thoughts on the subject of God's existence, and the proofs he thought most conclusive of it, which I imagined would prove a grateful entertainment while his sore eyes prevented his reading. But never since have I heard one word from him, either on that or any other subject."

Seemingly his friendly intention failed of its object.

But to return to the Percivals. We hear a great deal about "Miss and Master" Percival. Upon one occasion Berkeley visits them in the absence of their parents. He was informed at the door that-

" The little Lady and Esquire were withdrawn to their apart- ment. Miss indeed was in her deshabille, but for all that I was admitted to visit her, and she entertained me with a familiarity and frankness greater than I had observed before. Both her com- plexion and carriage are altered for the better, the one being very fair, and the other free from those stately and affected airs which methought she had in Capel Street. In a word she is grown a very charming and conversible Lady, and seemed not at all dis- pleased at my visit. But good manners obliged me to shorten it, so after a little discourse about her absent friends I left her, and my entertainment fell to the Esquire's share who acquitted himself very obligingly. Wo took a turn in the gallery and then walked in the gardens and avenue. You must not now imagine a child held up by leading strings that has not a word to say, but a brisk young gentleman who walks alone and bears his part in conversa- tion. 1 told him what news I had heard of my Lady, Mrs. Parker and yourself, with which he was very much pleased. But I observed his discourse ran chiefly on my Lady, whom he often mentioned, and seemed to long for her company to that degree, that if you still think of making the same stay you intended, I don't know but that he may send you a letter to desire you to hasten your return. He shall not want an amanuensis to write what he dictates in case he cannot do it himself."

Later on Berkeley has children of his own. By this time he is settled in America, and we hear: "For my amusement in this new world I have got a little son." Nothing could exceed the pathos with which he writes of the death of his favourite and youngest son : "I was a man relieved from the amusement of politics, visits, and what the world calls pleasure. I bad a little friend educated always under my own eye, whose paint- ing delighted me, whose music ravished me, and whose lovely gay spirit was a continual feast. It has pleased God to take him hence."

Two hundred years ago every traveller took his life in his hands. Berkeley's letters from Italy will fill the ordinary man or woman who journeys thither once in two or three years with admiration and sympathetic alarm. This is how our philosopher crossed the Mont Cenis Pass in the year 1716:

" I never thought I should pass Mount Cenis a second time in winter. But we have now passed in a worse condition than it was when I saw it before. It blew and snowed bitterly all the time. The snow almost blinded us and reached above the waists of the men who carried us. They let me fall six or seven times, and thrice on the brinks of horrid precipice; the snow having covered the path so that it was impossible to avoid making false steps. The porters assured us they never in their lives had passed the mountain in such an ill road and weather. However, blessed be

God, we arrived at Turin two nights ago, and design to set out from hence towards Milan to-morrow."

Italy did not throw the spell over Berkeley which it has thrown for years innumerable over so many strangers. He doubts whether the climate is as healthy as that of Ireland, and Dublin seems to him to hold its own against most of the towns of Europe. Naples delights his eyes, but he is not altogether delighted with the Neapolitans. Even the nobles strike him as lacking something which his own people possess. " They are not the politest people in the world. To-day I had the honour to dine with three Princes, besides half a dozen Counts and Dukes, the first nobility in the land, and I assure you it was not without some surprise that I found myself to be one of the politest persons at table." In remoter places he is struck by the simplicity of the peasantry. " As riches and honours have no footing here, the people are unacquainted with the vices that attend them, but in lieu thereof they have got an ugly habit of murdering one another for trifles."

In France, more than seventy years before the Revolution, Berkeley is shocked at the approach to worship exacted from the people for the King. He has seen at Lyons a "pretty singular" ceremony. A statue of Louis XIV. was set up in " the great place." " The mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs were drawn out in their formalities, and bare-headed to salute the statue, The mayor made a speech to it, I am told it will be printed." He is horrified that a prince should "reduce even the minds of his subjects to such a degree of slavery."

These letters fall, roughly speaking, into four divisions— those written when Berkeley lived in Dublin as a Fellow of Trinity College, where he remained for something like thirteen years, and where be conceived his theory of matter and wrote his first book ; those which relate to life in London, where for some eight years he lived among the wits of Queen Anne's reign, the friend of Addison, of Steele, of Pope, of Dr. Arbuthnot, and enjoyed a popularity which perhaps no other man of the time enjoyed ; the years during which he travelled in Europe or the three or four during which he lived in America ; and last, the eighteen years of his life which he spent in Ireland as Bishop of Cloyne. We wish we had more details of his life at Rhode Island, and more pictures of the people he knew and loved in London. But, like all greatly beloved men of letters, he has learned to tame his pen. He avoids personalities. He does not gossip so much as we could wish. We know he was liked by the early Quakers at Newport. We know he did not altogether like them. We want to know why. If only he had drawn a few portraits! But it is no bad compliment to letters to wish them longer. We congratulate Mr. Rand. He has compiled a charming book.