made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an _Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year, _Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things, some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to time and experience.' In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a 'tender-hefted nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of the most fragrant of memories. That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502). He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too, Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.