Letters, sentences and maxims

by Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

Letters, Sentences and Maxims, by Lord Chesterfield

LORD CHESTERFIELD
(Philip Dormer Stanhope).

“Viewed as compositions, they appear almost unrivalled for a serious epistolary style; clear, elegant, and terse, never straining at effect, and yet never hurried into carelessness.”—Lord Mahon, 1845.

“In point of style, a finished classical work; they contain instructions for the conduct of life that will never be obsolete. Instinct with the most consummate good sense and knowledge of life and business, and certainly nothing can be more attractive than the style in which they are set before their readers.”—Quarterly Review, vol. lxxvi., 1845.

“Lord Chesterfield’s letters are, I will venture to say, masterpieces of good taste, good writing, and good sense.”—John Wilson Croker, 1846.

PREFATORY NOTE.

BY CHARLES SAYLE.

It is a singular fate that has overtaken Lord Chesterfield. One of the more important figures in the political world of his time; one of the few Lord-Lieutenants of Ireland whose name was afterward respected and admired; the first man to introduce Voltaire and Montesquieu to England; and the personal acquaintance of men like Addison and Swift, Pope and Bolingbroke; the ally of Pitt and the enemy of three Georges; though he married a king’s daughter and took up the task of the world’s greatest emperor; yet the record of his actions has passed away, and he is remembered now only by an accident.