The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21Berkeley, George
Philosophy
The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
Berkeley, George
Philosophy -- Early works to 1800
Berkeley was not satisfied with this. He remembered what Lord Percival had
said about failure without help from Government. Accordingly he obtained a
Charter from George the First early in 1726, and after canvassing the
House of Commons, secured a grant of £20,000, with only two dissentient
votes, in May of that year. This was the beginning of his difficulties.
Payment was indefinitely delayed, and he was kept negotiating; besides,
with the help of Prior, he was unravelling legal perplexities in which the
Vanessa legacy was involved. It was in these years that he was seen at the
receptions of Caroline at Leicester Fields, when she was Princess of
Wales, and afterwards at St. James’s or at Kensington, when she became
Queen in 1727; not, he says, because he loved Courts, but because he loved
America. Clarke was still rector of St. James’s, and Butler had not yet
migrated to his parsonage at Stanhope; so their society was open to him.
The Queen liked to listen to a philosophical discussion. Ten years before,
as Princess of Wales, she had been a royal go-between in the famous
correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz. And now, Berkeley being in
London, he too was asked to her weekly reunions, when she loved to hear
Clarke arguing with Berkeley, or Berkeley arguing with Hoadley. Also in
1726 Voltaire made his lengthened visit to England, a familiar figure in
the circle of Pope’s friends, attracted to the philosophy of Locke and
Newton; and Voltaire mentions that he met “the discoverer of the true
theory of vision” during his stay in London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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