The first edition English translation of this biography of the great English philosopher John Locke, written by his friend Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736). The text was originally published in French and the present translation stands at the early English-language biography of Locke.
Jean Le Clerc one of the most remarkable men of learning of his times, editor of Erasmus, high class journalist, classical and biblical scholar, philosopher friend of John Locke (whom he had met in Amsterdam and who owned a number of his books, some of them presentation copies) and a man with many English connections which sadly failed to land him a post in England, where he fancied a chair in Oxford. It was to Le Clerc (Clericus) that Locke sent the manuscript of Newton’s Arian ‘Origins of Gentile Theology.’
As the English translator notes in his preface, the biography ‘is written in French by Mr. Le Clerc, and Publish’d in the 6th Tome of the Bibliotheque Choisie’, and all too brief of ‘one that died at the Age of 73 Years, that spent the best part of his time in Business, that convers’d with Persons of the highest Rank, that was engag’d in Matters of the greatest Consequence, and that made as much a noise in the World, as any private Gentleman ever did’. It was, nevertheless, the earliest printed life of Locke, based upon Le Clerk’s ‘own Knowledge’ and the letters of ‘the Earl of Shaftsbury, and…..Lady Masham’.
