Locke's denial of innate ideas. He then made preparations for a critical edition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ His material he entrusted to his friend Dr. Dampier, but Newton's proposals for his edition under the patronage of Pulteney, earl of Bath, prevented its publication. Dr. Dampier's son, the bishop of Ely, however, communicated Stillingfleet's notes to Henry John Todd [q. v.], who made use of them in his edition of 1801. The original manuscript is interleaved in a copy of Bentley's edition of 1723, now in the library of the British Museum, with which is bound up Stillingfleet's unpublished ‘Monody to the Memory of Lord Henry Spencer.’
In 1746 Price married a sister of Lord Barrington, and they persuaded Stillingfleet to make his chief home with them at Foxley, though to maintain his independence he insisted on living in a neighbouring cottage. In 1748 he contributed to Dodsley's ‘Collection’ ‘An Essay on Conversation,’ which Dr. Doran styles (A Lady of the Last Century, p. 296) his contribution ‘towards the social reform commenced by Johnson, Miss Mulso (Mrs. Chapone), and Mrs. Montagu. … It rings with echoes of Pope, and lays down some very excellent rules that, implicitly followed, would make conversation impossible.’ The poem, which consists of about three hundred rhyming couplets, is addressed to Windham. It was about this time that Mrs. Agmondesham Vesey began at Bath those evening assemblies for rational conversation without card-playing in which she was rivalled by Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu [q. v.], and to which the name ‘Blue Stocking’ or ‘Bas Bleu’ afterwards attached. There seems little doubt that this nickname arose from the grey or blue worsted stockings that Stillingfleet habitually wore at these assemblies, which his conversation tended more than anything else to enliven (cf. Boswell, Life of Johnson, chap. lxxiii.; D'Arblay, Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii, 262–3; and see art. Montagu, Elizabeth).
His health being delicate and his eyes becoming subject to inflammation, Stillingfleet, who had refused several offers of travelling tutorships, began to devote himself first to field sports, then to gardening, and then to botany, beginning this last study with the works of Gerard, Parkinson, and Ray, consulting Theophrastus and Dioscorides in the original; and, probably through his friend Robert Marsham, making the acquaintance between 1750 and 1755 of the Linnæan system, of which he became one of the earliest defenders. He was also a proficient performer on the violoncello, and his intercourse with Price kept up his interest in music. In ‘The Letters of Mrs. Montagu’ (1813, vol. iv.), is one from Stillingfleet, dated 1757 or 1758, giving an account of the early days of Malvern as a watering-place.
In 1759 Stillingfleet published ‘Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Natural History, Husbandry, and Physick; translated from the Latin, with Notes,’ being six essays from Linnæus's ‘Amœnitates Academicæ,’ with a preface of thirty pages and ‘Observations on Grasses’ by the translator. This preface has been styled ‘the first fundamental treatise on the principles of’ Linnæus published in England, so that the issue of this work ‘may be considered as the æra of the establishment of Linnæan botany in England’ (Archdeacon Coxe, Life of Stillingfleet, p. 123). With his friend Price, Stillingfleet made occasional tours, and the journal of one in Wales undertaken in 1759, and printed in Coxe's ‘Life’ (pp. 126–50), to some extent anticipates such ‘tours in search of the picturesque’ as those of William Gilpin [q. v.]
In February 1760 he wrote the drama of ‘Moses and Zipporah,’ intended to be set as an oratorio by his friend, John Christopher Smith [q. v.], the pupil and successor of Handel, and, probably about the same time, those of ‘Joseph,’ ‘David and Bathsheba,’ and ‘Medea,’ two acts of the latter being actually set, though abandoned as too horrible for the stage. These dramas were printed, but never published, only eighteen copies being struck off. ‘Paradise Lost,’ an oratorio, also set to music by Smith, was performed twice at Covent Garden during 1760, and published with a dedication to Mrs. Montagu, the whole edition of one thousand copies being sold for the author's benefit on the first night. In the same year was published ‘The Honour and Dishonour of Agriculture,’ translated from the Spanish (of Father Feijoo) ‘by a farmer in Cheshire,’ which is stated in Nichols's ‘Literary Anecdotes’ (ii. 336) to have been ‘edited, if not translated,’ by Stillingfleet, and it is noteworthy that Stillingfleet is stated by Sir James Edward Smith in Rees's ‘Cyclopædia’ to have directed William Hudson (1730?–1793) [q. v.] to the writings of Linnæus, and persuaded him to write his ‘Flora Anglica’ (1762).
In 1760 Lord Barrington, then secretary for war, at the instance of his brother-in-law Price, appointed Stillingfleet surveyor of the barracks in the Savoy, and the guardroom at the Tilt-yard, St. James's, and Kensington. This produced an income of
