from undertaking office or regularly attending parliament, took always a lively interest in politics.  An interesting collection of the third earl’s letters has been published by Mr. Foster (Letters of Locke, Algernon Sidney, and the Earl of Shaftesbury), and a few letters from him to Locke are in Lord King’s Life of Locke.  I subjoin a “note” of a few original letters of the third Lord Shaftesbury in the British Museum; some of your readers who frequent the British Museum may perhaps be induced to copy them for your columns.

Letters to Des Maizeaux (one interesting, offering him pecuniary assistance) in Ags.  Cat. MSS. 4288.

Letters to Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax[1], (one introducing Toland).  Add.  MSS. 7121.

Letter to Toland (printed, I think, in one of the Memoirs of Toland). Ags.  Cat. 4295. 10.

Letter to T. Stringer in 1625.  Ib. 4107. 115.

In Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica, neither the Letters to a young Man at the University, published in 1716, nor the collection of letters of 1746, are mentioned; and confusion is made between the author of the Characteristics and his grandfather the Chancellor.  Several political tracts, published during the latter part of Charles II.’s reign, which have been ascribed to the first Earl of Shaftesbury, but of which, though they were probably written under his supervision, it is extremely doubtful that he was the actual author, are lumped together with the Characteristics as the works of one and the same Earl of Shaftesbury.

Some years ago a discovery was made in Holland of MSS. of Le Clerc, and some notice of the MSS., and extracts from them, are to be found in the following work:—­

“De Joanne Clerico et Philippo A. Limborch Dissertationes Duae.  Adhibitis Epistolis aliisque Scriptis ineditis scripsit atque eruditorum virorum epistolis nunc primum editis auxit Abr.  Des Amorie Van Der Hoeven, &c.  Amstelodami:  apud Fredericum Muller, 1843.”

Two letters of Locke are among the MSS.  Now it is mentioned by Mr. Martyn, the biographer of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, in a MS. letter in the British Museum, that some of this earl’s papers were sent by the family to Le Clerc, and were supposed not to have been returned.  I mention this, as I perceive you have readers and correspondents in Holland, in the hope that I may possibly learn whether any papers relating to the first Earl of Shaftesbury have been found among the lately discovered Le Clerc MSS.; and it is not unlikely that the same MSS. might contain letters of the third earl, the author of the Characteristics, who was a friend and correspondent of Le Clerc.

W.D.  CHRISTIE.

[Footnote 1:  Two of these—­one a letter asking the earl to stand godfather to his son, and the other a short note, forwarding a book (Qy. of Toland’s)—­are printed by Sir Henry Ellis in his Camden volume, Letters of Eminent Literary Men.—­ED.]

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