Chapter Livingstone to Locker-Lampson of L by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

During his last years he lived with Sir Francis and Lady Masham at Oates in Essex, where Lady M., who was a daughter of Ralph Cudworth (q.v.), and an old friend, assiduously tended his last years. The services of Locke to his country in civil and religious matters were various and great; but it is upon his philosophical writings, and chiefly on his Essay on the Human Understanding (1690) that his fame rests. It is divided into four books, of which the first treats of innate ideas (the existence of which he denies), the second traces the origin of ideas, the third deals with language, and the fourth lays down the limits of the understanding. Other works of his are Thoughts concerning Education (1693), On the Conduct of the Understanding (published posthumously), The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), Treatise on Government, and Letters on Toleration. If not a very profound or original philosopher Locke was a calm, sensible, and reasonable writer, and his books were very influential on the English thought of his day, as well as on the French philosophy of the next century. His style is plain and clear, but lacking in brightness and variety.

Lives by Lord King (1829), and Bourne (1876). Works edited by Professor A. C. Fraser (1894). See also T. H. Green’s Introduction to Hume (1874).

Locker-Lampson, Frederick (1821-1895).—Poet, son of the secretrayof Greenwich Hospital, held appointments in Somerset House and the Admiralty. He wrote a number of clever vers de societé, which were collected as London Lyrics (1857). He also compiled Lyra Elegantiarum, an anthology of similar verse by former authors, and Patchwork, a book of extracts, and wrote an autobiography, My Confidences (1896).