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ing three letters in arrear to a person whom the willingest hear from of any man in the world, and with whom I had rather entertain myself, and pass my hours in conversation, than with any one that I know. I should take it amiss if you were not angry with me for not writing to you all this while; for I should suspect you loved me not so well as I love you, if you could patiently bear my silence. I hope it is your civility makes you not chide me. I promise you I should have grumbled cruelly at you if you had been half so guilty as I have been. But if you are angry a little, pray be not so very much; for if you should provoke me any way, I know the first sight of a letter from you would allay all my choler immediately, and the joy of hearing you were well, and that you continued your kindness to me, would fill my mind, and leave me no other passion: for I tell you truly, that since the receipt of your letter in September last, there is scarce a day past, I am sure not a post, wherein I have not thought of my obligation and debt to you, and resolved to acknowledge it to you, though something or other has still come between to hinder me. For you would have pitied me, to see how much of my time was forced from me this winter in the country (where my illness confined me within doors) by crowds of letters, which were therefore indispensably to be answered, because they were from people whom either I knew not, or cared not for, or was not willing to make bold with; and so you, and another friend I have in Holland, have been delayed, and put last, because you are my friends beyond ceremony and formality. And I reserved myself for

you when I was at leisure, in the ease of thoughts to enjoy for, that you may not think you have been passed over by a peculiar neglect, I mention to you another very good friend of mine, of whom I have now by me a letter of an ancienter date than the first of your three, yet unanswered.

LETTER XXXVI.

MR. LOCKE TO MR. MOLYNEUX.

DEAR SIR,

Oates, 10th Jan. 1697-8.

YOUR gentle and kind reproof of my silence has greater marks of true friendship in it than can be expressed in the most elaborate professions, or be sufficiently acknowledged by a man who has not the opportunity nor ability to make those returns he would. Though I have had less health and more business since I writ to you last than ever I had for so long together in my life, yet neither the one nor the other had kept me so long a truant, had not the concurrence of other causes drilled me on from day to day, in a neglect of what I frequently purposed, and always thought myself obliged to do. Perhaps the listlessness my indispositions constantly keep me in made me too easily hearken to such excuses; but the expectation of hearing every day from Mons. Le Clerk, that I might send you his answer; and the thoughts that I should be able to send your brother an account, that his curious treatise concerning the Chafers in Ireland was printed, were at least the pretences VOL. II,

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that served to humour my laziness. Business kept me in town longer than was convenient for my health: all the day, from my rising, was commonly spent in that; and when I come home at night, my shortness of breath, and panting for want of it, made me ordinarily so uneasy that I had no heart to do any thing; so that the usual diversion of my vacant hours forsook me, and reading itself was a burden to me. In this estate I lingered along in town to December, till I betook myself to my wonted refuge, in the more favourable air and retirement of this place. That gave me presently relief against the constant oppression of my lungs, while I sit still; but I find such a weakness of them still remain, that, if I stir ever so little, I am immediately out of breath, and the very dressing or undressing me is a labour that I am fain to rest after to recover my breath; and I have not been once out of my house since I came last hither. I wish, nevertheless, that you were here with me to see how well I am; for you would find, that, sitting by the fire-side, I could bear my part in discoursing, laughing, and being merry with you, as well as ever I could in my life. If you were here (and if wishes of more than one could bring you you would be here to-day) you would find three or four in the parlour after dinner, who, you would say, passed their afternoons as agreeably and as jocundly as any people you have this good while met with. Do not, therefore, figure to yourself, that I am languishing away my last hours under an unsociable despondency and the weight of my infirmity. It is true, I do not count upon years of life to come, but, I thank God, I have not many

uneasy hours here in the four-and-twenty; and if I can have the wit to keep myself out of the stifling air of London, I see no reason but, by the grace of God, I may get over this winter, and that terrible enemy of mine may use me no worse than the last did, which, as severe and as long as it was, let me yet see another summer.

LETTER XXXVII.

MR. LOCKE TO MR. MOLYNEUX.

Oates, 6th April, 1698.

DEAR SIR, THERE is none of the letters that ever I received from you gave me so much trouble as your last of March 15. I was told that you resolved to come into England early in the spring, and lived in the hopes of it more than you can imagine. I do not mean that I had greater hopes of it than you can imagine; but it enlivened me, and contributed to the support of my spirits more than you can think. But your letter has quite dejected me again. The thing I above all things long for, is to see, and embrace, and have some discourse with you before I go out of this world. I meet with so few capable of truth, or worthy of a free conversation, such as becomes lovers of truth, that you cannot think it strange if I wish for some time with you for the exposing, sifting, and rectifying of my thoughts. If they have gone any thing farther in the discovery of truth than what I have already published, it must be by your encouragement that I must go

on to finish some things which I have already begun; and with you I hoped to discourse my other yet crude and imperfect thoughts, in which, if there were any thing useful to mankind, if they were opened and deposited with you, I know them safe lodged for the advantage of truth some time or other: for I am in doubt whether it be fit for me to trouble the press with any new matter; or if I did, I look on my life as so near worn out, that it would be folly to hope to finish any thing of moment in the small remainder of it. I hoped, therefore, as I said, to have seen you, and unravelled to you that which lying in the lump unexplicated in my mind, I scarce yet know what it is myself: for I have often had experience that a man cannot well judge of his own notions till, either by setting them down in paper, or in discoursing them to a friend, he has drawn them out, and as it were spread them fairly before himself. As for writing, my ill health gives me little heart or opportunity for it; and of seeing you I begin now to despair; and that which very much adds to my affliction in the case is, that you neglect your own health on considerations, I am sure, that are not worth your health; for nothing, if expectations were certainties, can be worth it. I see no likelihood of the parliament's rising yet this good while; and when they are up, who knows whether the man you expect to relieve you will come to you presently or at all? You must therefore lay by that business for a while which detains you, or get some other body into it, if you will take that care of your health this summer which you designed and it seems to require; and if you

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