Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/13

Rh expressed, than it can be in any separate exposition of each verse with all the repetitions usual in eastern writings, and all the disadvantages arising from the very inaccurate division of their periods, as is hinted in the judicious preface to that work.

4. A letter to Mrs. Cockburn, not inserted before in any collection of Mr. Locke's pieces. It was sent with a present of books to that lady, on her being discovered to have written a Defence of his Essay against some Remarks made upon it by Dr. T. Burnet, author of the Theory of the Earth, &c. Dr. Burnet's Remarks appeared without his name in three parts, the first of which was animadverted on by Mr. Locke at the end of his Reply to Bishop Stillingfleet in 1697; the two others were left to the animadversion of his friends. Mrs. Cockburn, to whom the letter under consideration is addressed, finished her Defence of the Essay in December, 1701, when she was but twenty-two years old, and published it in May, 1702, the author being industriously concealed: which occasioned Mr. Locke's elegant compliment of its being "a generosity above the strain of that groveling age, and like that of superior spirits, who assist without showing themselves." In 1724 the same lady wrote a letter to Dr. Holdsworth on his injurious imputations cast upon Mr. Locke concerning the Resurrection of the same Body, printed in 1726; and afterwards an elaborate Vindication of Mr. Locke's Christian Principles, and his controversy on that subject, first published, together with an account of her works, by Dr. Birch, 1751, and the fore-mentioned letter added here below. Vol. x. p. 314.

5. Of the same kind of correspondence is the curious letter to Mr. Bold, in 1699, (which is also inserted in the tenth vol. p. 315), as corrected from the original. Mr. Bold, in 1699, set forth a piece, entitled, Some Considerations on the principal Objections and Arguments which have been published against Mr. Locke's Essay; and added in a collection