used to be. He then desired lady Masham, who was reading the psalms low, while he was dressing, to read aloud: she did so, and he appeared very attentive, till the approach of death preventing him, he desired her to break off, and a few minutes after expired, on October 28, 1704, in the seventy-third year of his age. He was interred in the church-yard of High Lever, in Essex, and the following inscription, placed against the churchwall, was written by himself:

6

SISTE VIATOR, Hic juxta situs est Joannes Locke. Si qualis fuerit rogas, mediocritate sua contentum se 'vixisse respondet. Literis innutritus, eousque profecit, ut veritati unice litaret. Hoc ex scriptis illius 'disce; quæ, quod de eo reliquum est, majori fide tibi ' exhibebunt, quam epitaphii suspecta elogia. Virtutes 'si quas habuit, minores sane quam sibi laudi, tibi in exemplum proponeret. Vitia una sepeliantur. Morum exemplum si quæras, in evangelio habes; vitiorum utinam nusquam: mortalitatis, certe, quod prosit, • hic et ubique.'

Natum An. Dni. 1632, Aug. 29°.

Mortuum 1704, Oct. 28°.

Memorat hac tabula

Brevi et ipsa peritura.

Thus died this great and most excellent philosopher, who, after he had bestowed many years in matters of science and speculation, happily turned his thoughts to the study of the scriptures, which he carefully examined with the same liberty he had used in the study of the other sciences.

There is no occasion to attempt a panegyric on our author. His writings are now well known, and valued, and will last as long as the English language. Some account of these has been given in the editor's preface, and a farther description of them occurs in Des Maizeaux's dedication, towards the middle of our last vol. His character, by P. Coste, is likewise delivered at large in the same place, and need not be repeated here, as it inadvertently was in a former edition.

AN

ESSAY

CONCERNING

HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

IN FOUR BOOKS.

As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones

do

grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh all things.

Eccles. xi. 5.

Quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista effutientem nauseare atque ipsum sibi displicere!

Cic. de Nat. Deor. Lib. 1.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THOMAS,

Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery,

Baron Herbert of Cardiff, Lord Ross of Kendal, Par, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St. Quintin, and Shurland; Lord President of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Wilts, and of South-Wales.

MY LORD,

THIS Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection, which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginningofa book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the Reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth, than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach, or