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Updated: June 2, 2025
Professor Fraser has earned the thanks of all students of philosophy for the conscientious labour which he has bestowed upon his new edition of the works of Berkeley; in which, for the first time, we find collected together every thought which can be traced to the subtle and penetrating mind of the famous Bishop of Cloyne; while the "Life and Letters" will rejoice those who care less for the idealist and the prophet of tar-water, than for the man who stands out as one of the noblest and purest figures of his time: that Berkeley from whom the jealousy of Pope did not withhold a single one of all "the virtues under heaven;" nor the cynicism of Swift, the dignity of "one of the first men of the kingdom for learning and virtue;" the man whom the pious Atterbury could compare to nothing less than an angel; and whose personal influence and eloquence filled the Scriblerus Club and the House of Commons with enthusiasm for the evangelization of the North American Indians; and even led Sir Robert Walpole to assent to the appropriation of public money to a scheme which was neither business nor bribery.
Berkeley's genius and his eloquent prose made tar-water as popular as both had made Bermuda some twenty years earlier. The later years of his life at Cloyne are tinged with melancholy.
In 1734 he returned to Ireland for the last time, and dwelt for eighteen years in his bishopric of Cloyne in studious seclusion with his family, wandering among the myrtle-hedges his own hand planted, reading Plato and Hooker, teaching his cherished daughter, suffering from domestic losses, and proclaiming to an astounded world that tar-water was a panacea for all human ills.
Don't you know how good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one else do all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian enough to have a talk with your Giovanna." "Giovanna has taken care of me and my malanni for years. She gives me tar-water, and rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea, and cassia.
Day used to bring the dose, the horrible tar-water, every morning with a 'Drink this, Miss Maria! and how she dared not resist, though she thought she saw something of kindness and pity beneath all his apparent severity. Severity was the order of those times. The reign of sugar-plums had scarcely begun.
Thomas Day, with his trials and experiments of melted sealing-wax upon little girls' bare arms, and his glasses of tar-water so inflexibly administered. Miss Edgeworth, who suffered from her eyes, recalls how Mr.
Bread slices sopped in saffron, with fish, garnished with small crabs, to be chewed up, shell and all. Artichokes, raw, with oil and vinegar. Oranges with pepper and salt. On the table were glass jugs with tar-water, and I observed that over half those present drank their wine diluted with this tar-water. One day in summer I was at table-d'hote in France when I saw a very fine melon on the table.
Fielding therefore resolved, he says, to visit a little country house of his "which stands at Ealing, in the county of Middlesex, in the best air, I believe, in the whole kingdom." Towards the end of the month, he had resort to a long forgotten eighteenth century panacea, the tar-water discovered by Bishop Berkeley; and very soon experienced effects far beyond his "most sanguine hopes."
Success beyond Fielding's most sanguine hopes must have been great indeed; and accordingly we hear how this tar-water, from the very first, lessened his illness, increased his appetite, and very slowly added to his bodily strength.
Berkeley at this time long before days of "Siris" and tar-water was too ignorant and hasty to understand how inane all spiritual or poetic ideals would be did they not express man's tragic dependence on nature and his congruous development in her bosom. He lived in an age when the study and dominion of external things no longer served directly spiritual uses.
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