Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

BLAIR WORDEN - A BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

hands than my owne.’ 32 ‘I have a multitude of defects, and need a Wise man at my Elbow to supply them’. 33 This often meant that he projected his own needs onto others; his private resolutions were sent out into the world so that he could be held to account: ‘I have talked of late to my Brothers Dr Brevint, Dr Bury, and his Lady (whom I have desired to lay up my letters before God as witnesses against mee)’. 34 Granville repeatedly appealed to be taken under Locke’s tutelage: when the virtuoso pleaded his own need for autonomy, Granville replied ‘my designe is not to Governe you , but to bee Governed by you .’ 35 Unable ‘to hit the Meane’ and achieve stability, Granville lurched from crisis to crisis. 36 The first we know of was in April 1659 when preparing for a worthy reception of the sacrament drove him to melancholy, ‘great distresse of Conscience’, and suicide attempts. As he recalled to Locke, inquiring into his own life and ‘the particulars of Christian Duty’ confronted him with insuperable difficulties ‘occasion’d by my ignorance wherein true virtue did consist and the scrupulosity of my nature’. At last ‘some sudden light and Comfort darted into my soule’ and delivered him from the snares and fetters of Satan. 37 This major crisis had been weathered, but not resolved; in 1678 he succumbed to yet another. ‘I must confesse to you, as a physitian, as well as a spirituall friend,’ he wrote to Locke in February 1679, ‘that I had of late by some indiscreet, immoderate, intense thoughtfullnesse soe Heated my Head that I was in some danger of falling into a fitt of Frenzy’ tinged with ‘melancholy’. The last three months had been given over to excessive ‘fitts of Devotion’ and he had covered more than ‘50 sheets of paper’ with his confused thoughts. 38 Slowly Granville began to rally. In June he promised his family and friends that while they may not see him as he should be, but they would see him endeavour to be so: ‘some considerable change there is I can assure you, both in my body, head, and heart more then there was possibly in Aprill 1659’. 39 Granville returned to England that summer, visiting Oxford, taking the waters at Astrop Wells, and maintaining the barrage of letters to Locke. Still possessed by 32 Locke, Correspondence , ii. 75, 90-1; i. 549. 33 Locke, Correspondence , ii. 74-5. He characterised his own defects as a lack of ‘Evennesse, and steadinesse’: as an excessive variability, at times unable to read or write, but at others able to ‘Bustle through a series of distractions’; sometimes neglecting his friends ‘and at other times [I] prove my selfe Friendly … even to Excesse’; ibid., i. 541. 34 DG to unknown friend [?Dr John Davies], Paris 27 June 1679, MS Rawl D 850, fos 13r-13v.

35 Locke, Correspondence , ii. 90. 36 Locke, Correspondence , i. 472. 37 Locke, Correspondence , i. 639. 38 Locke, Correspondence , i. 680-1. 39 MS Rawl D 850, fo.13v.

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