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202 w. R. SCOTT: pamphlets on the woollen industries and that Arbuckle was now in close contact with his views. This incident so small in itself is very typical of the break-up of the little Shaftes- bury School ; to his other friends, Synge, William Bruce, a well-known publisher, Abernethy, a Presbyterian minister, and Bundle, Bishop of Derry, Hutcheson sends the MS. of his books ; to Arbuckle his fellow contributor to the Dublin Journal " a little bundle of thread" ! The closing years of Arbuckle's life are devoid of any event of importance. He seems to have been a man cursed by a fatal facility of expression and versatility of talents. A thinker, something of a scholar, a physician, verse-writer,, political economist and essayist, yet, with all his gifts, too indolent for sustained effort, unless encouraged by the in- fluence of an older man than himself. He had early lost Molesworth and his philosophical activity ends. Then under the guidance of Swift, he returns to literature and verse, and here again, as the tragic gloom of old age closes round his friend, his work becomes less and less- and finally ceases some years before his death which took place either in the last days of 1746 (Hutcheson died in the August of this year) or very early in 1747. Much as one may distrust the eulogy of conventional funeral sermons, there is something that rings true in that preached on 4th January, 1747, in memory of Arbuckle.. "His openness," the preacher concludes, "frankness and warm honesty of heart appeared in all his conversation and behaviour. No man could be more distant from professing anything he did not believe, or giving up anything he thought just and right, either from a feeble complaisance to others or from design. . . . The very man appeared to you at once without disguise, and one had always the same character to deal with. . . . His sound understanding and good sense, joined with largeness of heart, and warm affec- tion were excellent qualifications for the sacred offices of friendship, which he discharged with the utmost generosity,, steadfastness and fidelity." 1 AEBUCKLE'S PHILOSOPHY. Owing to Arbuckle's thought clothing itself in, what he- himself calls, the " loose and negligent " undress of the Essay, it is by no means easy to find the true starting-point of his theory. He seems to have interwoven his thoughts,, 1 Funeral Sermon, ut supra.