FOOTNOTES
[1] The greatest English writer of the present day thus sums up the eighteenth century:—“An age of which Hoadly was the bishop, and Walpole the minister, and Pope the poet, and Chesterfield the wit, and Tillotson the ruling doctor.”—Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, i. 388.
[2] For another, very different, view of the life and studies at Cambridge at the time, see the Life of Ambrose Bonwicke (1694-1714).
[3] [“Pasquin. A Dramatic Satire on the Times, by Henry Fielding. Acted at the Haymarket, 1736; 1740.” (Baker.)]
[4] [“King Charles I. Hist Tr. by W. Havard, 1737.” (Ibid.).]
[5] Chesterfield says he had been accustomed to read and translate the great masterpieces to improve and form his style. His indebtedness to Milton in his Areopagitica in the above passage is obvious.
[6] See Letter CCXV., also CCXII.
[7] It is just possible, though I have nowhere seen it affirmed, that Voltaire and Chesterfield may have met, still earlier, in Holland. For in 1713 they were both there. Their attainments there were all but parallel, Voltaire succumbing to a fatal passion in 1713, which did not, to our knowledge, overtake Chesterfield till his second visit in 1729.
[8] He must just have escaped traveling from Leipzig to Berlin with Lessing. Both took the journey in February, 1749.
[9] For his fine sense of the quality of words witness: “An unharmonious and rugged period at this time shocks my ears, and I, like all the rest of the world, will willingly exchange and give up some degree of rough sense for a good degree of pleasing sound.”
[10] Characteristically, no mention is made of Shaftesbury nor of Hutcheson.
[11] Cf. Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Every Man’s Folly ought to be his greatest secret.”—(Instructions to his Son.)
[12] “A wise Atheist (if such a thing there is) would, for his own interest and character in the world, pretend to some religion.”—Letter CLXXX.
[13] In this Essay, by the late M. Sainte-Beuve, nothing has been altered, although, in one or two places, even his critical acuteness seems to have missed its point.
[14] This is no longer a conjecture, but a certainty, after what I read in the edition of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, published in London by Lord Mahon in 1847 (4 vols.). See vol. iii., page 159. I was not acquainted with this edition when I wrote my article.—C. de S. B.
[15] This was written in June, 1850.
[16] This first letter will form a key to Chesterfield’s character. It is partly badinage, and yet contains the elements of his lordship’s idea. He has already begun to teach “Mr. Stanhope,” and addresses as Monsieur a child of the mature age of five years. We have purposely omitted other letters, some in Latin, Phillipo Stanhope, adhuc puerulo, which contain merely historical and geographical information fit for a little schoolboy.
[17] Lord Chesterfield was, as will be afterwards seen, particularly anxious that his son should imbibe political, geographical, and historical knowledge, hence these details to a child of five.
[18] Young Mr. Stanhope’s tutor.
[19] In a previous letter, which has been lost, Chesterfield has been teaching rhetoric to a boy of about seven years old, for, referring to it, he says: “En vérité je crois que vous êtes le premier garcon à qui, avant l’âge de huit ans, on ait jamais parlé des figures de la rhétorique, comme j’ai fait dans ma dernière.”
[20] We learn by a subsequent reference that the little fellow wished not to be called Colas, but Polyglot, from knowing already three or four languages.
[21] Careful Imitation.—Philip Chesterfield to his dear little boy Philip Stanhope, wishing health, etc. Your last letter was very grateful to me; not only was it nicely written, but in it you promise to take great care and to win, deservedly, true praise. But I must say plainly that I much suspect you of having had the help of a good and able master in composing it; and he being your guide and adviser, it will be your own fault if you do not acquire elegancy of style, learning, and all that can make you good and wise. I entreat you, therefore, carefully to imitate so good a pattern; the more you regard him the more you will love me. [About July, 1741.]
[22] In the beginning of this letter, which contains a lesson upon Julius Cæsar, Chesterfield says: “You know so much more and learn so much better than any boy of your age, that you see I do not treat you like a boy, but write to you on subjects fit for men to consider.”
[23] So also Home,—
“Amen! and virtue is its own reward.”
Douglas, Act. iii. Sc. 1.
And Claudian, quoted by Chesterfield,
“Ipsa quidem virtus pretium sibi, solaque latè
Fortunæ secura nitet,” etc.
[24] Written in Latin. Philippus Chesterfield, Phillippo Stanhope adhuc puerulo, sed eras e pueritiâ egressuro. S. D. Dated, Kalend, Maii, 1741.
[25] In the compilation called “Lord Chesterfield’s Maxims,” wherein part of this letter is given, all the characteristic points are left out. Thus, where Chesterfield reminds his son that manner is of consequence in pleasing, especially the women, the purist has excised the words in italics.
[26] His Lordship’s badinage, or it may be sarcasm, which the little boy quickly perceived.
[27] His lordship was then Viceroy of Ireland.
[28] Mr. Stanhope was then travelling with his tutor in Germany.
[29] A good natured but somewhat silly book in which M. L’Abbé instructs certain young ladies and gentlemen by means of sundry conversations and reflections.
[30] His lordship had during this year been made one of his Majesty’s Secretaries of State.
[31] Chesterfield had inclosed in a letter from Mr. Stanhope’s mamma one from his own sister, thanking the boy for some Arquebusade water. His lordship sent a rough copy of a polite answer to this note.
[32] Lord Chesterfield had been urging his son to send a Dresden tea-service to his mother, which he did.
[33] A pun; the pillars from Canons in Middlesex.
[34] It is well, in the present state of society, to reflect upon the intimacy here shown between persons in trade and those in high life.
[35] A somewhat curious use of the phrase, but well explained by Johnson.
[36] De Retz, from whose “Mémoires” Lord Chesterfield quoted a sentence in the commencement of the letter.
[37] The author, as he says, often repeats himself; see ante, p. 180.
[38] Pic-nic. Johnson does not mention this word, nor do his predecessors, Ashe and Bailey. Richardson does not give it even in his supplement. Worcester cites Widegren, 1788; this then is the earliest use of the word by an author of weight.
[39] On a German question.
[40] An open face with a close (or secret) mind.
[41] This little note is inserted to show that Lord Chesterfield’s repetitions were not unknown to himself. The most flagrant we have omitted.
[42] As indeed did George III. teste the anecdote of Kemble: “Mr. Kemble, obleige me with a pinch of snuff.” “It would become your Majesty’s royal mouth better to say oblige.”
[43] We retain this as a picture of the morals of the time, and to satisfy the reader’s curiosity as to the subject of so much care on the part of his father.
[44] “Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, on the Idea of a Patriot King.”
[45] A notorious, wretched debauchee, who has been pilloried into a miserable and degraded immortality by Arbuthnot, Pope and Hogarth; the painter has given us his portrait in “The Harlot’s Progress,” plate 1. Pope has set him up as an instance of that hardest trial to good men, the success of the wicked:
“Should some lone temple, nodding to its fall,
For Chartres’ head reserve the nodding wall.”
And Arbuthnot wrote the most tremendously severe epitaph in the whole range of literature on him while yet alive: “Here continueth to rot the body of Colonel Francis Chartres,” etc. Finally, Chesterfield points him out to his son as the most notorious blasted rascal in the world—blasted, indeed, as by lightning. It is needless to say that this word is not used as a vulgar oath, but to point out a man whose name is, as the Bible of 1551 has it: “Marred forever by blastynge.”
[46] Benedict XIV.—the amiable Lambertini, who was thought by Chesterfield too much of a savant and a man of the world to be foolishly devout.
[47] The lady was turned fifty, and Chesterfield recommends her as a chaperone.
[48] Strong as this reprobation is, it is as much needed to-day as when written; the whole English race (if we credit Westminster Review, March, 1869), especially the upper class, is suffering from the awful effects of vice.
[49] Thus Englished by the famous Tom Brown:
“I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, the reason why I cannot tell,
But this I know and know full well, I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”
[50] The Maréchal de Richelieu.
[51] This single word implies decorum, good breeding, and propriety.
[52] As to terminations, so careful were the best French poets of their rhymes.
[53] Chesterfield had at once perceived the emptiness of the saying, which is certainly not in ipsissimis verbis of Lord Shaftesbury. “We have,” says Carlyle, in his “Essay on Voltaire,” “oftener than once endeavored to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury—which, however, we can find nowhere in his works,—that ridicule is the test of truth.” In the “Characteristics of Enthusiasm,” sec. 2, there is this sentence, which comes very near it:—“How is it, etc., that we (Christians) appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule”; but further on (p. 11, ed. 1733, vol. i.) he asks: “For what ridicule can lie against reason? or how can any one of the least justice of thought admire a ridicule wrong placed? Nothing is more ridiculous than this itself.” Shaftesbury often returns to this subject; see “Errors in Wit,” etc.
[54] Ariosto, Tasso, and Boccaccio: the Orlando, Gierusalemme, and Decamerone.
[55] See “Maxims,” p. 328.
[56] These maxims are referred to on page 324.
[57] Upon the back of the original is written, in Mr. Stanhope’s hand, “Excellent Maxims, but more calculated for the meridian of France or Spain than of England.”
[58] This Maxim, as well as several others, evidently prove they were written by a man subject to despotic government.