Letter LIII

Summary

My dearest Mr. B.

I will continue my Subject, altho’ I have not had an Opportunity to know whether you approve ofmy Notions or not, by reason of the Excursions you have been pleas’d to allow me to make in your beloved Company, to the Sea-ports of this Kingdom, and to the more noted inland Towns of Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Dorsetshire, which have given me infinite Delight and Pleasure, and inlarg’d my Notions of the Wealth and Power of the Kingdom, in which God's Goodness has given you so considerable a Stake.

My next Topick will be upon an Home Education, which Mr. Locke prefers, for several weighty Reasons, to a School one, provided such a Tutor can be procur’d, as he makes next to an Impossibility to procure. The Gentleman has set forth the Inconveniencies of both, and was himself so discourag’d on a Review of them, that he was ready, as he says, to throw up his Pen. My chief Cares, dear Sir, on this Head, are threefold: ist, The Difficulty, which, as I said, Mr. Locke makes almost insuperable, to find a Tutor qualify’d. 2dly, The Necessity there is, according to Mr. Locke, of keeping the Youth out of the Company of the meaner Servants, who may set him bad Examples. And, next, Those still greater Difficulties, which will arise from the Examples of his Parents, if they are not very discreet and circumspect.

As to the Qualifications of the Tutor, Mr. Locke supposes, that he is to be so learned, so discreet, so wise, in short, so perfect a Man, that, I doubt, and so does Mr. Locke, such an one is hardly possible to be met with for this humble and slavish Imployment. I presume, Sir, to call it so, because of the too little Regard that is generally paid to these useful Men in the Families of the Great, where they are too frequently put upon a Foot with the uppermost Servants, and the rather, if they happen to be Men of Modesty.

“I would,” says this Gentleman, “from Childrens first beginning to talk, have some discreet, sober, nay, wise Person about them, whose Care it should be to fashion them right, and to keep them from all Ill; especially the Infection of bad Company.”