order to prove that Berkeley was not, as Hoadly maintained, of ‘disordered understanding.’ She hereupon, it is added, obtained Berkeley's nomination to the deanery of Down, which fell through from the claims of the lord-lieutenant to be consulted. Dates make this story doubtful, but a letter of Berkeley's to Prior, 22 Jan. 1733–4, shows that he had been proposed for Down. At the beginning of 1734, at any rate, he was nominated to the bishopric of Cloyne; he tells his friend Prior (15 Jan. 1733–4) that he had ‘not been at the court or at the minister's but once these seven years;’ and seems to intimate that he had a claim upon government for their breach of faith in regard to the Bermuda scheme (2 March 1734). His health was weaker, and a love of retirement growing upon him. He was consecrated bishop of Cloyne in St. Paul's church, Dublin, on 19 May 1734; and he spent the next eighteen years at Cloyne, with the exception of a visit to Dublin to attend the House of Lords in the autumn of 1737.
His life was one of domestic retirement and active benevolence to his neighbours, varied by occasional manifestations of his continued interest in social and philosophical questions. The second son, George, was born in London on 28 Sept. 1733; a third, John, born on 11 April 1735, died in October 1735; a fourth, William, was born in 1736; a daughter, Julia, was born in October 1738; and another, Sarah, died in infancy in 1740. Henry, born in Newport, George, William, and Julia, thus formed the family in whose education he found his chief happiness. Though he had no ear for music, he kept an Italian master, Pasquilino, in his house to teach them the bass viol, who is recorded to have exclaimed on one occasion, ‘May God pickle ( = preserve) your lordship!’ He refers to his children with touching affection; he wishes he had twenty sons like George, and would prefer them to 20,000l. a year; he tells Johnson that he has one daughter ‘of starlight beauty,’ and says to another friend that she is ‘such a daughter!’ so ‘bright a little gem! that to prevent her doing mischief amongst the illiterate “squires,” he is resolved to treat her like a boy, and make her study eight hours a day’ (Works, iv. 267–8). Professor Fraser thinks (ib. p. 326) that over-anxiety, and perhaps too much tarwater, injured the constitutions of children unusually delicate.
Berkeley's interest in the condition of the country was shown by some remarkable compositions. In 1736 he published ‘A Discourse addressed to Magistrates, occasioned by the enormous license and irreligion of the times,’ advocating the active support of religion by the government, and occasioned, it is said, by the discovery of a ‘hellfire club,’ called the ‘Blasters,’ who used to drink the health of the devil, and were guilty of various indecencies reported to a committee of the Irish House of Commons in 1738. In 1745 he published ‘A Letter to the Roman Catholics’ of his diocese, exhorting them to remain faithful to the government; and in 1749 a tract, called a ‘Word to the Wise,’ calling upon the catholic priests to use their influence on behalf of ‘honest industry, cleanliness, and prudence.’ The catholic clergy of the diocese of Dublin expressed gratitude for this friendly admonition and circulated the letter amongst the parish priests. Berkeley's most remarkable treatise, however, was the ‘Querist,’ originally published in three parts in 1735, 1736, and 1737. A new edition, published in 1750, made considerable omissions with a few additions. The first edition is extremely rare, but the whole is now given in the Clarendon Press edition of Berkeley's works. The ‘Querist’ consists of a series of detached maxims in the form of queries, which are remarkable not only as expressing the views contained in Berkeley's other writings, but as making a large number of economical suggestions upon the uses of money and so forth, which prove how Berkeley's acuteness had anticipated—though in an unsystematic and often inaccurate way—many of the theories of Hume and Adam Smith. Some pithy ‘maxims on patriotism,’ originally published in the ‘Dublin Journal’ in 1750, are a kind of short political appendices to the ‘Querist.’
Berkeley's last philosophical work was suggested by his interest in the condition of his neighbours. The winter of 1739–40 was of terrible severity; and the following years were marked by famine, distress, and disease. Berkeley did his best to carry out the maxims of the ‘Querist.’ He left off powder in his wig, by way of setting a precedent of frugality; he distributed 20l. every Monday morning amongst the poor of Cloyne; and he did what he could to encourage local handicrafts. He tried medical experiments upon the sick. In America he had learnt the use of tarwater, and he now used it in cases of dysentery. His success appeared to him decisive. He took it up with characteristic enthusiasm, and gradually came to regard it as almost a panacea. He set up an apparatus for manufacturing it; he used it in his own family; and made an ardent proselyte of his friend, Thomas Prior. The enthusiasm lasted through his life. A ‘Letter to Thomas Prior’ was published anonymously in May 1744; a second
