A year after his return he made his appearance as a writer.

The _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ and the _Two Treatises of Government_ were both published in 1690.

Five years earlier the _Letter Concerning Toleration_ was published in its Latin dress; and four years afterwards an English translation appeared.

This last, however, perhaps on grounds of expediency, Locke never acknowledged until his will was published; for the time was not yet suited to such generous speculations.

Locke was thus in his fifty-eighth year when his first admitted work appeared.