father's life was once intended to have been prefixed to the new edition of the Characteristics, though upon considering further on it that thought was laid aside." The second paragraph begins: "I hope I need not make any apology for prefixing the following relation of my father's life to this edition of the Characteristics." There is no note explaining the discrepancy, but it would hardly take an exponent of the 'higher criticism' to supply one.
As already indicated, one division of the book (the third) consists of the more important unpublished letters of Shaftesbury. The editor points out that these begin in 1689, when the philosopher was eighteen years of age, and continue for the most part "with desirable regularity" until the time of his death in 1713. As biographical material, therefore, they are of undoubted value, though the personality of the writer was hardly such as to make them greatly interesting as mere letters, and though they can hardly be said to reveal any new phase of the philosopher's character. At the same time, if it were necessary to prove that Shaftesbury's praise of virtue in his published works was more than literary or academic, passages like the following to the head steward of his estate at St. Giles would be conclusive. "If my estate cannot, besides my house and rank, yield me five or six hundred pounds a year to do good with (as that rank requires), my house and rank may both go together … for I shall never think of supporting them, since I have not wherewithal to do it and that which is more necessary" (pp. 316–317). In truth, while the letters are by no means wholly free from the artificial style which detracts somewhat from the effectiveness of Shaftesbury's published works, they are nevertheless in the deeper sense genuine throughout, and form an inspiring record of the noble life of one who, in spite of physical infirmity, did much to show what a 'working aristocracy' might really achieve.
The second division of the book, about equal in length to that devoted to the letters, consists of the unpublished work, called by the editor Philosophical Regimen, which can hardly be regarded as a fortunate translation of the author's title, Ἀσκήματα. Dr. Rand says: "The manuscript material of this portion is to be found in two notebooks among the Shaftsbury Papers of the London Record Office. The earliest writing in these books is dated Holland, 1698, and the latest, Naples, 1712. Their contents thus cover almost the entire period of the author's literary activity, but center chiefly, however, about his two 'retreats' into Holland, the one in 1698 and the other in 1703–4." It is natural that the editor of a hitherto unpublished
