rice just shown a little, and then
put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had
learnt to value her. But circles may be complete though small;
the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'

As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the
student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence
deserve to be consulted.

[Sidenote: Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).]

'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to
be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what
they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love
to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was
reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said.
Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has
pretty well destroyed the charm.'

One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his
estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
Opinions, Times_ (1711) passed through several editions in the last
century. The first volume consists of: _A Letter concerning Enthusiasm_,
_An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour_ and _Advice to an Author_;
Vol. ii. contains _An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit_ (1699), and
_The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody_ (1709), and Vol. iii. contains
_Miscellaneous Reflections_ and the _Judgments of Hercules_.

Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian
faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and
casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in the
_Essay on Man_ that he had read the _Characteristics_, said that to his
knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England
than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem
extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to
influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his
own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work
passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author
had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear
that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
deemed so inc