Notes and Queries, Number 09, December 29, 1849 | Page 3

one of several rich suits which he provided for his marriage outfit; and then follows a list of costly gloves and presents, and all the lavish outlay of this his "desperate quarter."
In some future number, too, if acceptable to your readers, you shall be furnished with a list of other and better objects of expenditure from this household book; for Sir Edward, albeit, as Clarendon depicts him, the victim of his own vanity, was worthy of better fame than is yet been his lot to acquire.
He was a most accomplished scholar and a learned antiquary. He had his foibles, it is true, but they were redeemed by qualities of high and enduring excellence. The eloquence of his parliamentary speeches has elicited the admiration of Southey; to praise them therefore now were superfluous. The noble library which he formed at Surrenden, and the invaluable collection of charters which he amassed there, during his unhappily brief career, testify to his ardour in literary pursuits. The library and a large part of the MSS. are unhappily dispersed. Of the former, all that remains to tell of what it once was, are a few scattered notices among the family records, and the titles of books, with their cost, as they are entered in the weekly accounts of our "household book." Of the latter there yet remain a few thousand charters and rolls, some of them of great interest, with exquisite seals attached. I shall be able occasionally to send you a few "notes" on these heads, from the "household book," and, in contemplating the remains of this unrivalled collection of its day, I can well bespeak the sympathy of every true-hearted "Chartist" and Bibliographer, in the lament which has often been mine--"Quanta fuisti cum tant? sint reliqui?!"
LAMBERT B. LARKING.
Ryarsh Vicarage, Dec. 12. 1849.
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BERKELEY'S THEORY OF VISION VINDICATED.
In reply to the query of "B.G." (p. 107. of your 7th No.), I beg to say that Bishop Berkeley's Theory of Vision Vindicated does not occur either in the 4to. or 8vo. editions of his collected works; but there is a copy of it in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, from which I transcribe the full title as follows:--
"The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language, shewing the immediate Presence and Providence of a Deity, vindicated and explained. By the author of Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher.
"Acts, xvii. 28.
"_In Him we live, and move, and have our being_.
"Lond. Printed for J. Tonson in the Strand.
"MDCCXXXIII."
Some other of the author's tracts have also been omitted in his collected works; but, as I am now answering "a _Query_," and not making "a _Note_," I shall reserve what I might say of them for another opportunity. The memory of Berkeley is dear to every member of this University; and therefore I hope you will permit me to say one word, in defence of his character, against Dugald Stewart's charge of having been "provoked," by Lord Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, "to a harshness equally unwonted and unwarranted."
Mr. Stewart can scarcely suppose to have seen the book upon which he pronounces this most "unwarranted" criticism. The tract was not written in reply to the _Characteristics_, but was an answer to an anonymous letter published in the _Daily Post-Boy_ of September 9th, 1732, which letter Berkeley has reprinted at the end of his pamphlet. The only allusion to the writer of this letter which bears the slightest tinge of severity occurs at the commencement of the tract. Those who will take the trouble of perusing the anonymous letter, will see that it was richly deserved; and I think it can scarcely, with any justice, be censured as unbecomingly harsh, or in any degree unwarranted. The passage is as follows:--
[After mentioning that an ill state of health had prevented his noticing this letter sooner, the author adds,] "This would have altogether excused me from a controversy upon points either personal or purely speculative, or from entering the lists of the declaimers, whom I leave to the triumph of their own passions. And indeed, to one of this character, who contradicts himself and misrepresents me, what answer can be made more than to desire his readers not to take his word for what I say, but to use their own eyes, read, examine, and judge for themselves? And to their common sense I appeal."
The remainder of the tract is occupied with a philosophical discussion of the subject of debate, in a style as cool and as free from harshness as Dugald Stewart could desire, and containing, as far as I can see, nothing inconsistent with the character of him, who was described by his contemporaries as the possessor of "every virtue under heaven."
JAMES H. TODD.
Trin. Coll. Dublin, Dec. 20. 1849.
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BISHOP BARNABY.
Mr. Editor,--Allow me, in addition to the Note inserted