Lost memoir paints revered philosopher John Locke as ‘vain, lazy and pompous’

Rediscovered papers thought to record the memories of a longstanding friend say the ‘father of liberalism’ plagiarised and lied about never reading Thomas Hobbes

John Locke is regarded today as one of England’s greatest philosophers, an Enlightenment thinker known as the “father of liberalism”. But a previously unknown memoir attributed to one of his close friends paints a different picture – of a vain, lazy and pompous man who “amused himself with trifling works of wit”, and a plagiarist who “took from others whatever he was able to take”.

Dr Felix Waldmann, a history lecturer at Cambridge, found the short memoir at the British Library while looking through the papers of 18th-century historian Thomas Birch, who had acquired a trove of manuscripts from his contemporaries. Among these were drafts of a preface to an edition of Locke’s minor works by Huguenot journalist Pierre des Maizeaux. Sandwiched between Des Maizeaux’s drafts were five pages written in French, in which the journalist had recorded an interview with an anonymised “Mr …” about Locke.

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