Born, in London, 26 Feb. 1671. Early education under tutorship of John Locke. At a private school, 1682–83; at Winchester, Nov. 1683 to 1686. Travelled on Continent, 1686–89. M.P. for Poole, May 1695; re-elected, Nov. 1695. Retired from Parliament, owing to ill-health, July 1698. Visit to Holland, 1698–99. Succeeded to Earldom, on death of his father, 10 Nov. 1699. Took his seat in House of Lords, 19 Jan. 1700. In Holland, Aug. 1703 to Aug. 1704. Married Jane Ewer, Aug. 1709. To Italy, for health, autumn of 1711. Died, in Naples, 15 Feb. 1713. Buried at St. Giles’s. Works: “An Inquiry concerning Virtue” (anon.), 1699; “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm” (anon.), 1708; “Sensus Communis” (anon.), 1709; “The Moralists” (anon.), 1709; “Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author” (anon.), 1710; “Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times” (3 vols.), 1711; “A Notion of the Historical Draught … of the Judgment of Hercules” (anon.), 1713; “Several Letters written by a Noble Lord to a Young Man at the University” (anon.), 1716. Posthumous: “Letters … to R. Molesworth,” 1721; “Letters, collected,” 1746; “Original Letters by Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury,” ed. by T. Foster, enlarged edn. 1847. He edited: B. Whichcot’s “Select Sermons,” 1689.

Personal

  As regards personal habits, Shaftesbury is reported to have been remarkably abstemious at a time when riotous living was the rule amongst the upper classes of society, and not the exception…. As an earnest student, an ardent lover of liberty, an enthusiast in the cause of virtue, and a man of unblemished life and untiring beneficence, Shaftesbury probably had no superior in his generation. His character and pursuits are the more remarkable, considering the rank of life in which he was born and the circumstances under which he was brought up. In many respects, he reminds us of the imperial philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, whose works we know him to have studied with avidity, and whose influence is unmistakably stamped upon his own productions…. Though Shaftesbury was one of the earliest of English moralists, and died so long ago as 1712–13, the present Earl is only his great-grandson.

  Shaftesbury was a man of lofty and ardent character, forced by ill-health to abandon politics for literature. He was liberal, though much fretted by the difficulty of keeping out of debt. He was resolved, as he tells his steward, not to be a slave to his estates, and never again to be “poorly rich.” He supported several young men of promise at the university or elsewhere. He allowed a pension of £20 a year to the deist Toland, after Toland’s surreptitious publication of his papers, though he appears to have dropped it in his fit of economy in 1704. He gives exceedingly careful directions for regulating his domestic affairs during his absence. His letters to his young friends are full of moral and religious advice, and the “Shaftesbury Papers” show many traces of his practical benevolence to them. He went to church and took the sacrament regularly, respecting religion though he hated the priests. He is a typical example of the whig aristocracy of the time, and with better health might have rivalled his grandfather’s fame.

  There is nothing that demands concealment in his career, whatever his mistakes or shortcomings; the more closely one presses home upon the inner motives and exalted purpose of his life the richer and more ennobling does his character appear.

General

  The generality of moralists and philosophers have hitherto agreed that there could be no virtue without self-denial; but a late author, who is now much read by men of sense, is of a contrary opinion, and imagines that men, without any trouble or violence upon themselves, may be naturally virtuous. He seems to require and expects goodness in his species, as we do a sweet taste in grapes and China oranges, of which, if any of them are sour, we boldly pronounce that they are not come to that perfection their nature is capable of. This noble writer fancies that, as man is made for society, so he ought to be born with a kind affection to the whole, of which he is a part, and a propensity to seek the welfare of it. In pursuance of this supposition, he calls every action performed with regard to the public good, virtuous; and all selfishness, wholly excluding such a regard, vice. In respect to our species, he looks upon virtue and vice as permanent realities that must ever be the same in all countries and all ages, and imagines that a man of sound understanding, by following the rules of good sense, may not only find out that “Pulchrum et Honestum” both in morality and the works of art and nature, but likewise govern himself, by his reason, with as much ease and readiness as a good rider manages a well-taught horse by the bridle…. Two systems cannot be more opposite than his Lordship’s and mine.

  More surprising that a young nobleman should have published so many tracts, so generally read by men of sense, than that there should be so few errors found in them.

  The rest of his time he employed in ordering his writings for publication, which he placed in the order they now stand. The several prints then first interspersed in the work were all designed by himself, and each device bears an exact affinity to the passage to which it refers. That no mistake might be committed, he did not leave to any other hand, even so much as the drudgery or correcting the press. In the three volumes of the “Characteristics” he completed the whole of his writings which he intended should be made public, though some people have, however, in a very ungenerous manner, without any application to his family, or even their knowledge, published several of his letters, and those too of a private nature, many of which were written in so hasty and careless a manner, that he did not so much as take copies of them.

  Had many excellent qualities, both as a man and a writer. He was temperate, chaste, honest, and a lover of his country. In his writings he has shewn how largely he has imbibed the deep sense, and how naturally he could copy the gracious manner, of Plato.

  It hath been the fate of Lord Shaftesbury’s “Characteristics,” beyond that of most other books, to be idolized by one party, and detested by another. While the first regard it as a work of perfect excellence, as containing everything that can render mankind wise and happy; the latter are disposed to rank it among the most pernicious of writings, and brand it as one continued heap of fustian, scurrility, and falsehood…. The noble writer hath mingled beauties and blots, faults and excellencies, with a liberal and unsparing hand.

  You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: 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 above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead Lord ranks with Commoners; Vanity is no longer interested in the matter, for the new road has become an old one.

  The writings of the latter breathe the virtues of his mind, for which they are much more estimable than for their style and manner. He delivers his doctrines in ecstatic diction, like one of the Magi inculcating philosophic visions to an eastern auditory.

  The philosophical manner of Lord Shaftesbury’s writing is nearer to that of Cicero than any English author has yet arrived at; but perhaps had Cicero written in English, his composition would have greatly exceeded that of our countryman. The diction of the latter is beautiful, but such beauty as, upon nearer inspection, carries with it evident symptoms of affectation. This has been attended with very disagreeable consequences. Nothing is so easy to copy as affectation, and his lordship’s rank and fame have procured him more imitators in Britain than any other writer I know; all faithfully preserving his blemishes, but unhappily not one of his beauties.

  Considerable merit, doubtless, he has. His works might be read with profit for the moral philosophy which they contain, had he not filled them with so many oblique and invidious insinuations against the christian religion; thrown out, too, with so much spleen and satire, as do no honour to his memory, either as an author or a man. His language has many beauties. It is firm, and supported in an uncommon degree; it is rich and musical. No English author, as I formerly showed, has attended so much to the regular construction of his sentences, both with respect to propriety, and with respect to cadence. All this gives so much elegance and pomp to his language, that there is no wonder it should have been highly admired by some. It is greatly hurt, however, by perpetual stiffness and affectation. This is its capital fault. His lordship can express nothing with simplicity. He seems to have considered it as vulgar, and beneath the dignity of a man of quality, to speak like other men. Hence he is ever in buskins; and dressed out with magnificent elegance. In every sentence, we see the marks of labour and art; nothing of that ease which expresses a sentiment coming natural and warm from the heart. Of figures and ornament of every kind, he is exceedingly fond, sometimes happy in them; but his fondness for them is too visible; and having once laid hold of some metaphor or allusion that pleased him, he knows not how to part with it…. Lord Shaftesbury possessed delicacy and refinement of taste, to a degree that we may call excessive and sickly; but he had little warmth of passion; few strong or vigorous feelings, and the coldness of his character, led him to that artificial and stately manner which appears in his writings. He was fonder of nothing than of wit and raillery; but he is far from being happy in it. He attempts it often, but always awkwardly; he is stiff, even in his pleasantry; and laughs in form, like an author, and not like a man.

  For a considerable time he stood in high repute as a polite writer, and was regarded by many as a standard of elegant composition: his imitators as well as admirers were numerous, and he was esteemed the head of the school of sentimental philosophy. Of late years he has been as much depreciated as he was before extolled, and in both cases the matter has been carried to an extreme.

  Grace belongs only to natural movements; and Lord Shaftesbury, notwithstanding the frequent beauty of his thoughts and language, has rarely attained it…. He had great power of thought and command over words. But he had no talent for inventing character, and bestowing life on it. The Inquiry concerning Virtue is nearly exempt from the faulty peculiarities of the author; the method is perfect, the reasoning just, the style precise and clear.

  Shaftesbury retains a certain place as one of the few disciples of idealism who resisted the influence of Locke; but his importance is purely historical. His cold and monotonous though exquisitely polished dissertations have fallen into general neglect, and find few readers and exercise no influence. The shadow of the tomb rests upon them all; a deep unbroken silence, the chill of death surrounds them. They have long ceased to wake any interest, or to suggest any enquiries, or to impart any impulse to the intellect of England.

  Shaftesbury’s relation to Christianity involves some difficult questions. If all we had to settle were simply whether or not he went with the Christianity prevalent in his time, the answer would be easy. He stood apart from the clergy, ridiculed “the heroic passion of saving souls,” and the Christian who had “his conversation in heaven.” He said, with a sneer, that he dutifully and faithfully embraced the holy mysteries, conforming to the Church by law established, and making no researches into the origin of the rites and symbols. If he were to exercise himself in such speculations, he was quite sure that the further he inquired the less satisfaction he would find; for inquiry was the sure road to heterodoxy. This was a mode of writing common with the Deists. It must have been provoking and offensive, not only to the clergy, against whom it was aimed, but to all right-minded people. It is evident, however, that he was only bantering the clergy, whose ignorance and prejudice may have been equally provoking to all sensible men. He immediately after asserts the right of every man to examine the Scriptures for himself; and not only to examine them, but to know their history, what they profess to be, and what authority they claim. If Scripture be the only religion of Protestants, we ought, surely, as Protestants, to know what Scripture is.

  He may be called the first of the intuitional school, writing without being at all aware of the difficulties of his position…. His style is highly elaborated. His first care is to be delicately melodious. He strives also to avoid the very appearance of harshness in the union of ideas. As a consequence, he is rather wanting in vigour, is driven upon affected inversions, and is obliged often to prolong his sentences to a tedious length before his smooth circumlocutions amount to a complete expression.

  The third Lord Shaftesbury is one of the many writers who enjoy a kind of suspended vitality. His volumes are allowed to slumber peacefully on the shelves of dusty libraries till some curious student of English literature takes them down for a cursory perusal. Though generally mentioned respectfully, he has been dragged deeper into oblivion by two or three heavy weights. Besides certain intrinsic faults of style to be presently noticed, he has been partly injured by the evil reputation which he shares with the English Deists. Their orthodox opponents succeeded in inflicting upon those writers a fate worse than refutation. The Deists were not only pilloried for their heterodoxy, but indelibly branded with the fatal inscription “dulness.” The charge, to say the truth, was not ill-deserved; and though Shaftesbury is in many respects a writer of a higher order than Toland, Tindal, or Collins, he cannot be acquitted of that most heinous of literary offences…. A second-rate English author of Queen Anne’s time…. Whenever he tries to be facetious he is intolerable; he reminds one of that painful jocosity which is sometimes assumed by a grave professor, who fancies, with perfect truth, that his audience is inclined to yawn, and argues, in most unfortunate conflict with the truth, that such heavy gambols as he can manage will reuse them to the smiling point. The result is generally depressing. Yet Shaftesbury is less annoying when he is writhing his grave face into a contorted grimace than when the muse, whom he is in the habit of invoking, permits him to get upon stilts. His rhapsodies then are truly dismal.

  Shaftesbury, it is plain, took great pains in the elaboration of his style, and he succeeded so far as to make his meaning transparent. The thought is always clear. We are spared the trouble of deciding between different interpretations of his doctrines, a process so wearisome in the case of most philosophical authors. But, on the other hand, he did not equally succeed in attaining elegance, an object at which he seems equally to have aimed. There is a curious affectation about his style, a falsetto note, which, notwithstanding all his efforts to please, is often irritating to the reader. The main characteristic of Shaftesbury’s style is, perhaps, best hit off by Charles Lamb, when he calls it “genteel.” He poses too much as a fine gentleman, and is so anxious not to be taken for a pedant of the vulgar, scholastic kind, that he falls into the hardly more attractive pedantry of the asthete and virtuoso. The limæ labor is almost everywhere apparent. The efforts at raillery and humour are sometimes so forced as to lose their effect, and he is too apt to inform his reader beforehand, when he is about to put on his light and airy manner.

  Nor can we permit the mere æsthetic interpreters of life to carry off Shaftesbury into their camp, on the plea that he regarded morals as only one of the fine arts, and virtue as no more than the supreme accomplishment. No doubt, it is easy to quote from him many detached sentences which are open to this construction; as when he bids you pursue the beautiful, and then the good will come of itself; and says, that virtue is moral beauty, and that the knowledge of beauty is the discipline of virtue. And it must be admitted that his own high artistic perception and culture blended too closely in himself the distinct though allied feelings of approbation and of admiration,—one of the many marks of an ethical commencement from the idea, not of Duty, but of Good. But still, these partial indications must accept the limitations which are clearly imposed upon them by other and more exact statements of his doctrine; and when this is done, he will be found to say, that the right indeed is always beautiful, but not that it is the beautiful which constitutes the right.

  He writes in a style which is consummately easy and lucid. There are none of those obscurities and experimental reaches of thought which in other thinkers one sometimes finds so puzzling and so suggestive; his meaning may not be very profound, but it is at least expressed for the better understanding of the plain man. He brings into English prose an order and a clearness of which it was beginning to stand in some need. The worst that can be said of him is that he is terribly affected—“genteel” was Charles Lamb’s epithet. He is not always in buckram; he will unbend to you; but all the same his treatises invariably smack of the superior person, the man of birth, debarred by circumstances from his natural pursuit of politics, and condescending to while away a part of his too abundant leisure in unravelling some niceties of the intellect. Unwilling to appear a pedant, he falls into the opposite vices of desultoriness and superficiality.

  Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury’s place in the history of literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief in the perfectability of human nature through the aid of culture, appealed as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.

  The influence of Shaftesbury’s “Characteristics,” 1711, was far more literary than metaphysical. He condemned metaphysics, but his philosophy, such as it was, inspired Pope and his cultivated thinking on several subjects made many writers in the next generation care for beauty and grace.

  If philosophy at the opening of the eighteenth century could give a better account of itself, it was mainly because the leading philosopher was a born writer. The third Earl of Shaftesbury has been strangely neglected by the historians of our literature, partly because his scheme of thought has long been rejected, and partly because his style,… was presently obliterated by the technical smartness of Addison and Swift…. His influence on writing in his own age and down the entire eighteenth century is highly important to us. Commonly as the fact is overlooked, Shaftesbury was one of the literary forces of the time—he was, perhaps, the greatest between Dryden and Swift…. Shaftesbury’s long residences in Holland gave him the opportunity of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the movement of Continental thought to an extent doubtless beyond any previous writer of English prose. The effect is seen on his style and temper, which are less insular than those of any of the men with whom it is natural to compare him. It is to be noted also that Shaftesbury was the earliest English author whose works in the vernacular were promptly admired abroad, and he deserves remembrance as the first who really broke down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilisation of literary Europe…. The style of Shaftesbury glitters and rings, proceeding along in a capricious, almost mincing effort to secure elegance, with a sort of colourless euphuism, which is desultory and a little irritating indeed, yet so curious that one marvels that it should have fallen completely into neglect. He is the father of æstheticism, the first Englishman who developed theories of formal virtue, who attempted to harmonise the beautiful with the true and the good. His delicate, Palladian style, in which a certain external stiffness and frigidity seem to be holding down a spirit eager to express the passion of beauty, is a very interesting feature of the period to which we have now arrived. The modern attitude of mind seems to meet us first in the graceful, cosmopolitan writings of Shaftesbury, and his genius, like a faint perfume, pervades the contemplation of the arts down to our own day. Without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater.

  Although the philosophy of Shaftesbury is thus founded on stoicism, this Philosophical Regimen is a new and brilliant presentation of that moral system. The discourses of Epictetus were uttered, it is believed, extempore. They have a popular form, but often lack in continuity of expression. The thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, on the other hand, were written down merely for personal use. They hear the evidence of private honesty, but are stated in short paragraphs which are often obscure. The merits rather than the defects of these two works are combined in the Philosophical Regimen of Shaftesbury. It is written in a style that can at all times be readily understood, and it likewise possesses all the sincerity of personal writing where the purpose is “only to improve by these, not publish, profess, or teach them.” The eloquence of the utterance is frequently such as could only have proceeded from Shaftesbury, whose method of philosophical rhapsody so captivated his contemporary Leibnitz. The permanent strength of this Regimen, however, consists in the fact that it is one of the most consistent and thorough-going attempts ever made to transform a philosophy into a life. Just as Spinoza was “God intoxicated,” so Shaftesbury was “intoxicated with the idea of virtue.” He is the greatest Stoic of modern times. Into his own life he wrought the stoical virtue for virtue’s sake. This exalted purpose he sought to attain by means of this Regimen. It thus embodies a philosophy which must compel a renewed and critical study from the stoical standpoint of his “Characteristics.” Indeed, it may be said, we believe, with perfect truth that there has been no such strong expression of stoicism since the days of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius as that contained in the Philosophical Regimen of Shaftesbury. The Greek slave, the Roman Emperor, and the English nobleman, must abide the three great exponents of stoical philosophy.