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.

Lord Chesterfield lives by that which he never intended for publication, while that which he published has already passed from the thoughts of men. It is one more example of the fact that our best work is that which is our heart’s production. We have Lord Chesterfield’s secret, and it bears witness to the strength of that part of him in which an intellectual anatomist has declared him to be deficient—a criticism which is but another proof of that which has been somewhere said of him, that he has had the fate to be generally misunderstood. Yet nothing is more certain than that Lord Chesterfield did not mean to be anything but inscrutable. “Dissimilation is a shield,” he used to say, “as secrecy is armor.” “A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be, and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.” It is still worth while attempting to solve the problem which is offered to us by his inscrutability, not only on its own account, but because Lord Chesterfield is a representative spirit of the eighteenth century.[1]

I.

Philip Dormer Stanhope did not experience in his youth either of those influences which are so important in the lives of most of us. His mother died before he could know her, and his father was one of those living nonentities whom his biographer sums up in saying that “We know little more of him than that he was an Earl of Chesterfield.” Indeed, what influence there may have been was of a negative kind, for he had, if anything, an avowed dislike for his son. Naturally under these conditions he had to endure the slings and arrows of fortune alone and uncounselled. One domestic influence was allowed him in the mother of his mother, whose face still looks out at us from the pages of Dr. Maty, engraved by Bartolozzi from the original of Sir Peter Lely—a face sweet, intellectual, open—over the title of Gertrude Savile, Marchioness of Halifax. She it was who undertook, at any rate to some small degree, the rearing of her daughter’s child. Lord Chesterfield is rather a Savile than a Stanhope.

He heard French from a Normandy nurse in his cradle, and he received, when he grew a little older, “such a general idea of the sciences as it is a disgrace to a gentleman not to possess.” But it is not till he gets to Cambridge at the age of eighteen that we hear anything definite. He writes to his tutor of former days, whom he seems to have made a real friend, from Trinity Hall:

“I find the college where I am infinitely the best in the university; for it is the smallest, and filled with lawyers who have lived in the world, and know how to behave. Whatever may be said to the contrary, there is certainly very little debauchery in the university, especially amongst people of fashion, for a man must have the inclinations of a porter to endure it here.”

Thirty-six years later he draws for his son this picture of his college-life:

“As I make no difficulty of confessing my past errors, where I think the confession may be of use to you, I will own that, when I first went to the university, I drank and smoked, notwithstanding the aversion I had to wine and tobacco, only because I thought it genteel, and that it made me look a man.”

This touch of nature it is interesting to find in one who gave so much to the Graces. But to get at what he really did we may take the following:

“It is now, Sir, I have a great deal of business upon my hands; for I spend an hour every day in studying civil law, and as much in philosophy; and next week the blind man [Dr. Sanderson] begins his lectures upon the mathematics; so that I am now fully employed. Would you believe, too, that I read Lucian and Xenophon in Greek, which is made easy to me; for I do not take the pains to learn the grammatical rules; but the gentleman who is with me, and who is a living grammar, teaches me them all as I go along. I reserve time for playing at tennis, for I wish to have the corpus sanum as well as the mens sana: I think the one is not good for much without the other. As for anatomy, I shall not have an opportunity of learning it; for though a poor man has been hanged, the surgeon who used to perform those operations would not this year give any lectures, because, he says, ... the scholars will not come.

“Methinks our affairs are in a very bad way, but as I cannot mend them, I meddle very little in politics; only I take a pleasure in going sometimes to the coffee house to see the pitched battles that are fought between the heroes of each party with inconceivable bravery, and are usually terminated by the total defeat of a few tea-cups on both sides.”[2]

He only stayed in Cambridge two years, and then travelled abroad to Flanders and Holland. He had just left The Hague when the news reached him across the water which only then was not stale—Queen Anne was dead.

It was the turning point of his career, for his great-uncle, who had influence and position at the court, obtained for him from George I. the post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. At the same time he obtained a pocket-borough in Cornwall, and appeared in the House of Commons. He was not yet of age, of which fact a friend in the opposition politely and quietly informed him after he had made his first speech. He was, therefore, not only debarred from voting, but liable to a fine of £500. He made a low bow, left the House, and posted straightway to Paris.

He was not there long. Advancing months soon removed the objection of age, and we find him again frequently in the House. His position on the Schism and Occasional Conformity Bills was one which he himself in after years regretted. He was still, however, swimming with the stream, and the stream led on to fortune. In 1723 he was made Captain of the Yeomen of the Guards, and two years later, when the Order of the Bath was revived, was offered by the King the red ribbon. But this he refused; and not contented with so much discourtesy, objected to others accepting it. He wrote a ballad on Sir William Morgan, who had received the same offer. The ballad came to the ears of the King; and for this, or for other reasons, Stanhope the courtier lost his place.

At this juncture two changes took place, to him of equal importance. George I. died and brought Stanhope’s former master to the throne; and Lord Chesterfield died, leaving his son his title. The latter event raised him to the House of Lords—the Hospital for Incurables, as Lord Chesterfield calls it. The former should have raised him to higher office still; but that policy of scheming for which Lord Chesterfield has become almost as famous as Macchiavelli in this case played him false. Believing that where marriage begins, love, as a necessary consequence, ends, he had paid all his attentions to the new King’s mistress, while he was still Prince of Wales, and none to his queen. And Caroline of Anspach took precaution that when George II. came to the throne the courtier’s negligence should be treated as it deserved. Thus at the age of thirty-three, while still a young man, Chesterfield was cut off from the Court: and he was already in opposition to Walpole. The King as a subterfuge offered him the post of Ambassador to Holland, and the offended courtier was thus removed. But political events were moving rapidly, and in two years’ time it was rumored that Chesterfield would be reinstated in favor. The King, however, was still obdurate, and instead of Secretary of State he was made High Steward of the Household. Chesterfield remained in Holland, gambling and watching events. “I find treating with two hundred sovereigns of different tempers and professions,” he writes, “is as laborious as treating with one fine woman, who is at least of two hundred minds in one day.”

The game went on for a year more. Then he was by his own wish recalled. On the 2d of May of this same year he was presented with a son by Mme. Du Bouchet. “A beautiful young lady at The Hague,” says one writer, “set her wits against his and suffered the usual penalty; she fell, and this son was the result.” This son was the object of all Lord Chesterfield’s care and affection. It was to him that his now famous letters were written. The father, we find, on his return to England, in the House talking indefatigably as ever. It was the year of Walpole’s Excise Bill which was to have freed the country by changing the system of taxation from direct to indirect methods. It was a good measure and a just one. Every part of Walpole’s scheme has been since carried into effect. But then there was a general cry raised against it. The liberties of the people, it was said, were being attacked. Chesterfield, with the rest of the Patriots, and with the country behind them, fought hard, and the Bill was dropped (11th April, 1731). Two days afterward, going up the steps of St. James’ Palace, he was stopped by a servant in the livery of the Duke of Grafton, who told him that his master must see him immediately. He drove off at once in the Duke’s carriage, and found that he was to surrender the White Staff. He demanded an audience at Court, obtained it, and was snubbed. Of course he left it immediately.

We could have wished perhaps that Lord Chesterfield’s affection and character had prevented him from falling—especially so soon after the affair at The Hague—into so unpraiseworthy an undertaking as a mariage de convenance. Yet whether it was to spite his royal enemy, or because in financial difficulties he remembered the existence of the will of George I.—or even from love; at any rate in the following year he married, in lawful wedlock, Melusina de Schulenberg, whom, though merely the “niece” of the Duchess of Kendale, George the First had thought fit to create Lady Walsingham and the possessor by his will of £20,000. Scandal or truth has been very busy about the relationship of Lady Walsingham and her aunt. Posterity openly declares her to have been the daughter of that lady by a royal sire. But good Dr. Maty, as though by the quantity of his information, wishing to override its quality, tells us that her father was none other than one “Frederick Achatz de Schulenburg, privy counsellor to the Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburg, Lord of Stehler, Bezendorff, Angern,” etc. But we may well remember Lord Chesterfield’s own words here: “It is a happy phrase that a lady has presented her husband with a son, for this does not admit anything of its parentage.” Anyhow Lord Chesterfield lost the money, for George the Second, on being shown his father’s will by the Archbishop of Canterbury, put it in his pocket and walked hastily out of the room. It never was seen again.

But to have quarrelled with George II. had one recommendation. It made him a friend of the Prince of Wales. No sooner was Lord Chesterfield married than the Prince and Princess sent round their cards, and the rest of their Court, of course, followed them. It seems to have been Lord Chesterfield’s fate to be opposed to the reigning power. His opposition now, however, was quite spontaneous.

We need not follow him through all the political entanglements of the time. Smollet said of him that he was the only man of genius employed under Walpole, and though history has hardly justified such praise, yet it certainly illustrates a truth. We may take his speech in 1737 against the Playhouse Bill as a sample of his oratory. I borrow from Lord Mahon:

“[The speech] contains many eloquent predictions, that, should the Bill be enacted, the ruin of liberty and the introduction of despotism would inevitably follow. Yet even Chesterfield owns that ‘he has observed of late a remarkable licentiousness in the stage. In one play very lately acted (Pasquin[3]) the author thought fit to represent the three great professions, religion, physic, and law as inconsistent with common sense; in another (King Charles the First[4]), a most tragical story was brought upon the stage—a catastrophe too recent, too melancholy, and of too solemn a nature, to be heard of anywhere but from the pulpit. How these pieces came to pass unpunished, I do not know.... The Bill, my Lords, may seem to be designed only against the stage; but to me it plainly appears to point somewhere else. It is an arrow that does but glance upon the stage: the mortal wound seems designed against the liberty of the press. By this Bill you prevent a play’s being acted, but you do not prevent it being printed. Therefore if a license should be refused for its being acted, we may depend upon it the play will be printed. It will be printed and published, my Lords, with the refusal, in capital letters, upon the title-page. People are always fond of what is forbidden. Libri prohibiti are, in all countries, diligently and generally sought after. It will be much easier to procure a refusal than it ever was to procure a good house or a good sale; therefore we may expect that plays will be wrote on purpose to have a refusal; this will certainly procure a good house or a good sale. Thus will satires be spread and dispersed through the whole nation; and thus every man in the kingdom may, and probably will, read for sixpence what a few only could have seen acted for half a crown. We shall then be told, What! will you allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed, which you will not allow to be acted? If we agree to the Bill now before us, we must, perhaps, next session, agree to a Bill for preventing any plays being printed without a license. Then satires will be wrote by way of novels, secret histories, dialogues, or under some such title; and thereupon we shall be told, What! will you allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed, only because it does not bear the title of a play? Thus, my Lords, from the precedent now before us, we shall be induced, nay, we can find no reason for refusing, to lay the press under a general license, and then we may bid adieu to the liberties of Great Britain.’”[5] Of course it is impossible from single passages, even perhaps from single speeches, to infer that he was ever a great orator, but Horace Walpole has declared one of his speeches the finest that he had ever listened to, and, as Lord Mahon justly observes, “Horace Walpole had heard his own father; had heard Pitt; had heard Pulteney; had heard Windham; had heard Carteret; yet he declares in 1743 that the finest speech he had ever listened to was one from Lord Chesterfield.”

He was, with the other “Patriots,” in clamoring for war with Spain, pursuing Walpole with an opposition which has been characterized as “more factious and unprincipled than any that had ever disgraced English politics” (Green). In 1739, it will be remembered, Walpole bowed to the storm. The following extract from An Ode to a Number of Great Men, published in 1742, will show underneath its virulence who were expected to take the lead:

“But first to C[arteret] fain you’d sing,

Indeed he’s nearest to the king,

Yet careless how to use him,

Give him, I beg, no labor’d lays,

He will but promise if you praise,

And laugh if you abuse him.

“Then (but there’s a vast space betwixt)

The new-made E[arl] of B[ath] comes next,

Stiff in his popular pride:

His step, his gait describe the man,

They paint him better than I can,

Wabbling from side to side.

“Each hour a different face he wears,

Now in a fury, now in tears,

Now laughing, now in sorrow,

Now he’ll command, and now obey,

Bellows for liberty to-day,

And roars for power to-morrow.

“At noon the Tories had him tight,

With staunchest Whigs he supped at night,

Each party thought to have won him:

But he himself did so divide,

Shuffled and cut from side to side,

That now both parties shun him.

“More changes, better times this isle

Demands, oh! Chesterfield, Argyll,

To bleeding Britain bring ’em;

Unite all hearts, appease each storm,

’Tis yours such actions to perform,

My pride shall be to sing ’em.”

Affairs in Holland again compelled him to seek that Court, and it is thence that he was summoned to Ireland in 1744. “Make Chenevix an Irish Bishop,” he had written. “We cannot,” was the reply, “but any other condition.” “Then make me Lord-Lieutenant,” he wrote back. They took him at his word, and Chenevix soon obtained his place.

Chesterfield had always looked forward to the post with longing. “I would rather be called the Irish Lord-Lieutenant,” he had said, “than go down to Posterity as the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.” It was, as has been truly observed, the most brilliant and useful part of his career. I shall be pardoned for quoting again from Mahon. “It was he who first, since the revolution, had made that office a post of active exertion. Only a few years before the Earl of Shrewsbury had given as a reason for accepting it, that it was a place where a man had business enough to hinder him from falling asleep, and not enough to keep him awake. Chesterfield, on the contrary, left nothing undone nor for others to do.... [He] was the first to introduce in Dublin the principle of impartial justice. It is very easy, as was formerly the case, to choose the great Protestant families as managers; to see only through their eyes, and to hear only through their ears; it is very easy, according to the modern fashion, to become the tool and the champion of Roman Catholic agitators; but to hold the balance even between both; to protect the Establishment, yet never wound religious liberty; to repress the lawlessness, yet not chill the affection of that turbulent but warm-hearted people; to be the arbiter, not the slave of parties; this is the true object worthy that a statesman should strive for, and fit only for the ablest to attain! ‘I came determined,’ writes Chesterfield many years afterward, ‘to proscribe no set of persons whatever; and determined to be governed by none. Had the Papists made any attempt to put themselves above the law, I should have taken good care to have quelled them again. It was said that my lenity to the Papists had wrought no alteration, either in their religion or political sentiments. I did not expect that it would; but surely there was no reason of cruelty toward them.’... So able were the measures of Chesterfield; so clearly did he impress upon the public mind that his moderation was not weakness, nor his clemency cowardice, but that, to quote his own words, ‘his hand should be as heavy as Cromwell’s upon them if they once forced him to raise it.’ So well did he know how to scare the timid, while conciliating the generous, that this alarming period [1745] passed over with a degree of tranquillity such as Ireland has not often displayed even in orderly and settled times. This just and wise—wise because just—administration has not failed to reward him with its meed of fame; his authority has, I find, been appealed to even by those who, as I conceive, depart most widely from his maxims; and his name, I am assured, lives in the honored remembrance of the Irish people, as perhaps, next to Ormond, the best and worthiest in their long Viceregal line.”

We know that it was a complete success, so far as it went. But he held the post only for four years. He had held the highest offices, he had attained his highest wishes; yet his membership in the Cabinet had been made nominal rather than real, and his power was ever controlled by the hand of the King. Nowhere, in whatever direction he might care to turn his eyes along the political landscape, could he see anything but what was rotten and revolting. In 1748 he retired.

We cannot call his political career an unsuccessful one. It was probably as brilliant as it was possible for a man of his parts to enjoy. He was a good talker and an incomparable ambassador. His action in Holland had permanent influence on the politics of Europe. But indeed, if he had been freed from the opposition of a profligate Court and all that it entailed; if, as has been implied by some, he would have been a greater man had not the death of his father driven him into the House of Lords; if he would then have risen to be anything greater than a second-rate Minister: this we may doubt. Yet we are not entitled to draw an estimate of his character before we have studied its other side.

Chesterfield did not entirely give up attendance or even speaking at the House, but his energies henceforward were devoted to literary rather than political matters. One further act he performed before he left for good; he carried out three years later the reform of the English Calendar, an account of which he gives in one of his letters, and I cannot equal his words.[6] This was the last important public event in his life. Next year he was attacked with deafness, which incapacitated him of necessity from affairs. It does not seem that he was ever sorry to leave them. Ever and anon the old political fire breaks out, and we find him keeping an observant eye on the course of events. But he was thoroughly despondent of the prestige and ascendancy of England by the time of the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. “Nation!” he had cried, “we are no longer a nation.” We find him sympathizing with Wilkes, and to the end on the side of Pitt. But about 1765 his letters begin to bear the mark of decrepitude, and his brains to be unable to cope with the situations that arose.

“I see and hear these storms from shore, suave mari magno, &c. I enjoy my own security and tranquillity, together with better health than I have reason to expect at my age and with my constitution: however, I feel a gradual decay, though a gentle one; and I think I shall not tumble, but slide gently to the bottom of the hill of life. When that will be I neither know nor care, for I am very weary.”

And in the following August, anticipating alike the autumn of his life and of the year, he writes:

“I feel this beginning of the autumn, which is already very cold; the leaves are withered, fall apace, and seem to intimate that I must follow them, which I shall do without reluctance, being extremely weary of this silly world.”—(Letter CCCLV.)

Yet even a year later we find him giving dinner parties to the Duke of Brunswick, and wishing that he had both the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, that they should, “together with some of their allies, take Lorraine and Alsace from France.” (Letter CCCLXIV.) For a few more years he lingered on, gardening, reading, and writing, and then in 1773, almost alone, he parted with “this silly world.”

II.

I have omitted from this sketch of Lord Chesterfield’s political life any reference to the literary side of his character. I have, however, spoken of his friendship with Voltaire. Voltaire came to England in the same year that Chesterfield’s father died, to obtain, among other things, a publisher for the Henriade. Chesterfield and Bolingbroke at once took him up and introduced him into high places.[7] Voltaire never forgot him nor the services which he had rendered; and one of the most charming lights thrown upon the end of Lord Chesterfield’s career is in a letter from the old sage of Ferney to his friend of younger days, now grown old as himself. Chesterfield was always a great admirer of Voltaire’s, though by no means a blind one:

“I strongly doubt,” he writes, “whether it is permissible for a man to write against the worship and belief of his country, even if he be fully persuaded of its error, on account of the terrible trouble and disorder it might cause; but I am sure it is in no wise allowable to attack the foundations of true morality, and to break unnecessary bonds which are already too weak to keep men in the path of duty.”

But differences upon points of morality and religion did not prevent his having an immense regard for Voltaire’s genius.

There is yet the other transaction in which Lord Chesterfield was engaged, and it will probably be as long remembered against him as the letters—his ill-famed treatment of Dr. Johnson. It is too well known how Johnson came to his door, and how Chesterfield, who could never be impolite, received the ill-mannered Doctor. But either the Earl objected to having the old man annoying his guests at table, or else he was not sufficiently pressing with his money; anyhow, the Doctor felt repelled, left off calling, and never sought another patron. Years afterward, when he brought out his Dictionary (1755), there was a letter prefixed to the first edition, entitled “The Blast of Doom, proclaiming that patronage shall be no more.” Boswell solicited the Doctor for many years to give him a copy, but he did not do so until 1781, and then gave it from memory:

“... Seven years, my lord, have passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work under difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect; for I never had a patron before....

“Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations, where no benefit has been received; or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which providence has enabled me to do for myself.

“Having carried on my work thus far, with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed, though I should conclude it, if possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so much exaltation, my lord, your lordship’s most humble and most obedient servant,

“Samuel Johnson.”

Such a transaction is but little to the praise of Lord Chesterfield, who would have posed as the Mæcenas of the eighteenth century. But there the matter rests. It is another proof of what the Earl was not, but with the slightest bend of his body might have been. He lost the Dedication to one of the greatest achievements of the time.

III.

Let us turn to Lord Chesterfield’s son. Sainte-Beuve says of him—he was “one of those ordinary men of the world of whom it suffices to say there is nothing to be said.” But there is so much melancholy interest attaching to his history that we may well try to discern some of the features of the youth. No portrait of Philip Stanhope, so far as I am aware, has ever been given to the public, though we know from his father’s letters that one, if not more than one, was executed at Venice during his stay there, so that I am unable, as yet, to surmise anything from physical feature of form and angle. We know that his father sent him to Westminster School, and that there he was slovenly and dirty. Of his intellectual qualities we hear nothing. His father’s letter to the boy, then sixteen, is subtle:

“Since you do not care to be an Assessor of the Imperial Chamber, and desire an establishment in England, what do you think of being Greek Professor at one of our Universities? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little knowledge (much less than, I hope, you have already) of that language. If you do not approve of this, I am at a loss to know what else to propose to you.”

The old earl, six months later, added as follows:

“The end I propose by your education, and which (if you please) I shall certainly attain, is, to unite in you all the knowledge of a scholar, with the manners of a courtier, and to join what is seldom joined in any of my countrymen, Books and the World. They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the Fellows of their College. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin; but not one word of Modern History or Modern Languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad, as they call it; but, in truth, they stay at home all that while; for, being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good, but dine and sup with one another at the tavern. Such example, I am sure you will not imitate, but carefully avoid.”

Young Stanhope went abroad with a tutor, Mr. Harte, to the chief towns, first, of Germany, followed everywhere by letters from his father, though, as his father says in one of them, “God knows whether to any purpose or not.” He never escaped from the paternal care. Wherever you are “I have Arguses with a hundred eyes,” his father told him. The boy was affectionately fond of his father, though he did not inherit his father’s epistolary taste. Yet we find him on corresponding terms with Lady Chesterfield. He was inclined to be stout, a fault which his father tells him to remedy by abstaining from Teutonic beer. He wore long hair. “I by no means agree to your cutting off your hair.” (Stanhope had suggested this as a remedy for headaches.) “Your own hair is at your age such an ornament; and a wig, however well made, such a disguise that I will upon no account whatever have you cut off your hair.” We hear that he was already within two inches of his father’s height. Boswell met him at Dresden, and has left us the following picture of him:—“Mr. Stanhope’s character has been unjustly represented as being diametrically opposed to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross, awkward, but I knew him at Dresden when he was envoy to that Court, and though he could not boast of the Graces, he was, in fact, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man.” And what he was as envoy he seems to have been all his life. Lord Chesterfield sent him to Berlin first,[8] and Turin afterward, as there was to be found the next fittest training in Europe at that Court. Nothing could exceed his father’s care in warning him against such dangers as usually attend Court life. Against evils of all kind he cautions and guards him. Yet there is this continual insistence on the Graces. “The Graces! The Graces!” he writes, “Remember the Graces! I would have you sacrifice to the Graces.” By no means must a man neglect the Graces if he would pursue his object, the object of getting on.

After all this schooling he went to Paris, and seems to have made a tolerable début. There must have been a strange measuring up of qualities when father and son met. At twenty-two Lord Chesterfield obtained for him a seat in the House, but he was never a brilliant speaker. He, like the younger Pitt, was a parliamentary experiment; but it was not given to Stanhope to succeed. In 1757 he goes to Hamburg. Two years later his health broke down, and he came to England. But feeling better again, in 1763 he obtained a post at Ratisbon, whence he was once summoned to vote in the English Parliament. Next year he went to Dresden as envoy, but there his constitution was ruined, and he set off for Berlin, and afterward for France. In the spring of 1767 he returned to Dresden, fancying himself better, but in the following year the old symptoms returned, and he died on the 17th of October, 1768, near Avignon. It was then only that his father discovered he was the father of two children—by a secret marriage. And these, together with their mother, were thrown upon Lord Chesterfield for support. It is one of the examples of his characteristic traits that he supported and loved all three. There is no more charming pendant to the whole series of letters than a short one of three paragraphs which he wrote to the two children of his illegitimate son only two years before he left them forever.

Here my biographical notice of the three generations ends. But the lives of father and son will ever remain full of interest and suggestion to those who would study human character.

There are several portraits of the Earl of Chesterfield. The most striking, and at the same time probably the most faithful which we have, is that by Bartolozzi in the Maty Memoirs. It is clear, mobile, and benevolent. The features are very large, and the eyes of that cold meditative species which look as though they were the altar stone of that fire of wit and quaint humor which we know he possessed. It is a fine intellectual, if somewhat too receding, forehead, with protruding temples and clear-cut eyebrows; the nose prominent, and the mouth pronounced. There is a great diversity however in the portraits, and he seems sometimes to have been unable to hide the traits of sensuality. Yet, on the whole, it is as inscrutable as his own scheming diplomatic soul could ever have wished for its earthly representative in clay.

IV.

If we ask ourselves what is the moral of the Letters, and what is their significance, we are met with a varied reply. We have here the outpourings of a man’s soul in penetralibus. As such the book stands for its time unique. Chesterfield, when he wrote these letters, was not actuated by the criticisms of Grub Street, nor indeed any criticisms. He never for a moment dreamt that his letters would be published, and they are therefore bereft of that stifling self-consciousness which is the bane of so many writers. It is this which makes so frequently a man’s letters more living than his published works, at any rate more real. So far, of course, Lord Chesterfield shares this distinction with other writers. But his letters are noteworthy for more than this. They combine with it a complete system of education, a system which was thought out without opposition and expressed without fear. In such a case, of course, we do not look for style; but so perfect and so equal was the man that we are even told that these letters are not exceeded in style by anything in the language.[9]

Manuals, of course, there have been many. In the age gone by there had been Walsingham’s, there had been Burghley’s Advice, there had been Sir Walter Raleigh’s; but from the time that Cicero wrote his De Officiis for his own child down to these, we come upon but few of this sort. There had been Castiglione’s Cortegiano, and in a few years Della Casa’s Galateo; there is Roger Ascham’s Scholemaster. Chesterfield had found much to his taste and method in the Moral Reflections of La Rochefoucauld and the Characters of La Bruyère. In England had just appeared Locke’s Essay on Education, and this he sends for his son to read.[10] In 1759 Lessing and Wieland were writing on the same subject; and in 1762 Rousseau published Emile. Everywhere education was, to use a common phrase, in the air. Chesterfield loved his son passionately and unremittingly. He had been much in France, and admired the French nation; and he determined that his son should combine the good qualities of both nationalities—the ideal statesman and the ideal polished man of society. He did not forget that on Philip Stanhope would ever remain the brand of the bar sinister; but we may well believe that this was only one more daring reason for the experiment which he chose to make. He was playing for high stakes, and he was not careless of the issue. “My only ambition,” he writes in 1754, “remaining is to be the counsellor and minister of your rising ambition. Let me see my own youth revived in you; let me be your mentor, and I promise you, with your parts and knowledge you shall go far.”—(Letter CCLXXIV.)

It is seldom that we have such a continuous series of original letters as these. From the first badinage to his son, then five years old, who was then in Holland, in which he explains what a republic is, and how clean is Holland in comparison with London; from the times when he explains how Poetry is made, and who the Muses are, and sends his little son accounts of all the Greek and Roman legends; from the times when he writes, “Let us return to our Geography that we may amuse ourselves with maps;” and in the middle of a letter of affection, having mentioned Cicero, starts off “apropos of him,” and gives his little son his whole history, and that of Demosthenes after him; to the times when the boy is able to retort on him for inconsistency in calling Ovidius Ovid, and not calling Tacitus Tacit; through all his explanations of what Irony is and is not; through his pedantic “by the ways;” his definitions (pace Professor Freeman) of Ancient and Modern History; his sarcasms and his descriptions: down to the time when his advice is about quadrille tables and ministers and kings, the series is absolutely unbroken and of unflagging interest.

They are at the best, as he says himself, “what one man of the world writes to another.” “I am not writing poetry,” he says, “but useful reflections.” “Surely it is of great use to a young man before he starts out for a country full of mazes, windings and turnings, to have at least a good map of it by some experienced traveller.” And so the old man gives us his map of life as he had seen it. It is exactly the same estimate in result as Cicero gave in the De Oratore: “Men judge most things under the influence of either hate, or love, or desire, or anger, or grief, or joy, or hope, or fear, or error, or some other passion, than by truth, or precepts, or standard of right, or justice, or law.”

“The proper study of mankind is man,”

and if we disapprove of the morality of Cicero and his epoch no less than of Chesterfield’s, we must yet remember that in the one instance, as in the other, their precepts were the purveyors of very soundest advice. His standard is, as has been already pointed out, that of the eighteenth century. “Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.” “It is an active, cheerful, seducing good breeding which must gain you the good-will and first sentiments of the men and affections of the women. You must carefully watch and attend to their passions, their tastes, their little humors and weaknesses, and aller au devant.” “Make love to the most impertinent beauty that you meet with, and be gallant with all the rest.”

It would be a not uninteresting task to see how many of his moral sentiments would stand fire at the present day. We know all the facts of his life, and we have here his opinions on nearly every matter. His opinions are as concise as they are outspoken. “The best of us have had our bad sides, and it is as imprudent as it is ill-bred to exhibit them,”[11] he says. It is this absence of ceremony which makes him so living and real. Even in Dr. Johnson’s time the merit as well as the demerit of this series of letters had been settled for the standard of that day. “Take out the immorality,” said the worthy Doctor, “and it should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.”

The training to which he subjected his son was in many ways admirable. Rise regularly, however late o’ nights; work all the morning; take exercise in the afternoon; and see good company in the evening. The impressing of this advice upon his son has left us in the possession of one of the most charming examples of Lord Chesterfield’s most playful style.—(Letter CLXI.)

Lord Chesterfield was all for modern to the disadvantage of a classical education. Learn all the modern history and modern languages you can, and if at the same time you can throw in a little Latin and Greek, so much the better for you. Roman history study as much as you will, for of all ancient histories it is the most instructive, and furnishes most examples of virtue, wisdom, and courage. History is to be studied morally, he says, but not only so.

When we turn to his judgment of the ancients we are considerably startled. He seems to have preferred Voltaire’s Henriade to any epic. “Judge whether,” he writes, “I can read all Homer through tout de suite. I admire his beauties; but, to tell you the truth, when he slumbers I sleep. Virgil, I confess, is all sense, and therefore I like him better than his model; but he is often languid, especially in his five or six last books, during which I am obliged to take a good deal of snuff....”

If his views on Milton should be known, he adds, he would be abused by every tasteless pedant and every solid divine in England. His criticism of Dante it will be best for the reader to discover.

The weightier questions and the weightiest he pushed altogether aside. “I don’t speak of religion,” he writes. “I am not in a position to do so—the excellent Mr. Harte will do that.” At any rate, Chesterfield knew his own ground. Incidentally we find his position cropping up. “The reason of every man is, or ought to be, his guide; and I should have as much right to expect every man to be of my height and temperament as to wish that he should reason precisely as I do.” It was the doctrine of the French school that he had adopted, with something of a quietism of his own. “Let them enjoy quietly their errors,” he says somewhere, “both in taste and religion.”[12] It would be interesting to compare in these matters the relative positions of Chesterfield and Bolingbroke.

Of the movement headed by Wesley, as we have seen earlier in his career, Chesterfield seems to have taken as little heed as the younger Pliny did of the first holders of Wesley’s faith.

It is a harder and more delicate question which we are met with in discussing Lord Chesterfield’s position with regard to morality. Johnson’s criticism of the Letters, that “they taught the morals of a courtesan and manners of a dancing master,” even though epigrammatic, yet bears within it traces of the sting which the lexicologist felt about the matter of the Dedication. Of the Earl’s opinions we have seen something in former extracts and in his own life. He speaks quite openly—“I wish to speak as one man of pleasure does to another.” “A polite arrangement,” he says elsewhere, “becomes a gallant man.” Anything disgraceful or impolite he will not stand.

Yet as a human Picciola does Lord Chesterfield guard the soul of his son within its prison-house of life. He never speaks, however, to his son pulpitically. It is ever as a wise counsellor: and his tendency is always the same.

It is suggestive of much to turn aside from the petitesses of these instructions to the thoughts which were occupying the brain of the author of Emilius about the same time. From very much the same foundations and the same materials how different is the result! In the one we breathe the fresh air of the country, of the rustic home and the carpenter’s shop: in the other we are stifled by the perfumes of the court-room and suffocated by tight lacing. In the one we are never for a moment to wear a mask: in the other we are never for a moment to move without it. Yet, though the one is built up of social theories by an enthusiastic dreamer, and the other is a cold, practical experiment by a man of the world, and “an imperfect man of action, whom politics had made a perfect moralist,” there is the same verdict of failure to be pronounced upon them both. Voltaire said of Emilius that it was a stupid romance, but admitted that it contained fifty pages which he would have bound in morocco. Lord Chesterfield’s was no romance, but its pages deserve perhaps as careful treatment. “It is a rich book,” says Sainte-Beuve; “one cannot read a page without finding some happy observation worthy of being mentioned.” Yet, as a system of education, it is blasted with the foul air of the charnel-house.

V.

If we look at the result we must pronounce his experiment no less a failure. The odds were too heavy in the first instance, and a man of less energy and stability than Lord Chesterfield would not have dared to have played at such high stakes. He ought to have considered what an infliction he was casting upon his son, and respected the feelings of others rather than his own ambition. He has reaped the harvest which he had sown. When Philip Stanhope tried to obtain an appointment at the embassy in Brussels the Marquis de Botta made so much to do on the ground of his illegitimacy that his claim was disallowed. When there was a chance of his receiving an appointment at Venice, the king objected on the same grounds. Not one word of displeasure is handed down to us in these familiar letters, but we know that both felt it deeply and never forgave. But even Philip Stanhope himself must have disappointed his father. When his widow, with her two children, walked up the hall of Chesterfield House, where the Earl sat alone in solitary childless grandeur, it must have seemed a strange answer to the question which he had asked Time some thirty-eight years before. He may well have grown weary of sitting at the table at which he had staked his all and lost.

Vivacious, sincere, plain, and liberal-minded, his memory may well pass down to posterity as that of a great man with mean aspirations. That ambition was not wanting in his composition is true, and it was this which encompassed his ruin. He reminds us of the melancholy structure of S. Petronio at Bologna, begun in emulation of the Florentine Duomo by the Bolognese. One sees the outline of the structure which was to have been raised, but for two centuries it has stood uncompleted, a monument to her greatness and her shame.

Careless of the interests of those around him; careless and callous of what was demanded of man by men; careless of speech so long as he could create a bon mot or a well-balanced phrase, Lord Chesterfield’s life is characteristic of his time.

Chesterfield, if we may make one more comparison, is like one of those great trees that we see upon the banks of a river, which, while drawing its nurture half from its native soil and the stream by its side, and half from the sky above it, has had that very soil worn away by the current of the stream, so that the tree, by its own natural weight and under the force of adverse winds and circumstance, has bowed itself over toward the waves, losing its natural height and grandeur for ever.

Dead to the higher interests of humanity; dead to the deeper influences which keep us sober and thoughtful and earnest; dead, again, to any ideal save such as might serve his own designs:—such was the man who deemed himself called upon, or fitted, to perform the sacred office of Education to his darling child.

CRITICAL ESSAY.

BY C. A. SAINTE-BEUVE.[13]

Each epoch has produced its treatise intended for the formation of the polite man, the man of the world, the courtier, when men only lived for courts, and the accomplished gentleman. In these various treatises on knowledge of life and politeness, if opened after a lapse of ages, we at once see portions which are as antiquated as the cut and fashion of our forefathers’ coats; the model has evidently changed. But looking into it carefully as a whole, if the book has been written by a sensible man with a true knowledge of mankind, we shall find profit in studying these models which have been placed before preceding generations. The letters that Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son, and which contain a whole school of savoir vivre and worldly science, are interesting in this particular, that there has been no idea of forming a model for imitation, but they are simply intended to bring up a pupil in the closest intimacy. They are confidential letters, which, suddenly produced in the light of day, have betrayed all the secrets and ingenious artifices of paternal solicitude. If, in reading them nowadays, we are struck with the excessive importance attached to accidental and promiscuous circumstances, with pure details of costume, we are not less struck with the durable part, with that which belongs to human observation in all ages; and this last part is much more considerable than at a superficial glance would be imagined. In applying himself to the formation of his son as a polite man in society, Lord Chesterfield has not given us a treatise on duty as Cicero has; but he has left letters which, by their mixture of justness and lightness, by certain lightsome airs which insensibly mingle with the serious graces, preserve the medium between the Mémoires of the Chevalier de Grammont and Télémaque.

Before going into detail, it will be necessary to know a little about Lord Chesterfield, one of the most brilliant English wits of his time, and one most closely allied to France. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, was born in London on the 22d of September, 1694, the same year as Voltaire. The descendant of an illustrious race, he knew the value of birth, and wished to sustain its honor; nevertheless, it was difficult for him not to laugh at genealogical pretensions when carried too far. To keep himself from this folly, he had placed amongst the portraits of his ancestors two old figures of a man and a woman: beneath one was written, “Adam de Stanhope”; and beneath the other “Eve de Stanhope.” Thus, while upholding the honor of race, he put his veto upon chimerical vanities arising from it.

His father paid no attention whatever to his education; he was placed under the care of his grandmother, Lady Halifax. From a very early age he manifested a desire to excel in everything, a desire which later he did his utmost to excite in the breast of his son, and which for good or ill is the principle of all that is great. It appears that, in his early youth, he was without guidance, he was deceived more than once in the objects of his emulation, and followed some ridiculous chimera. He confesses that at one period of inexperience he gave himself up to wine, and other excesses, for which he was not at all inclined by nature, but it flattered his vanity to hear himself cited as a man of pleasure. In this way he plunged into play (which he considered a necessary ingredient in the composition of a young man of fashion), at first without passion, but afterwards without being able to withdraw himself from it, and by that means compromised his fortune for years. “Take warning by my conduct,” said he to his son, “choose your own pleasures, and do not let others choose them for you.”

The desire to excel and to distinguish himself did not always lead him astray, and he often applied it rightly; his first studies were the best. Placed at the University of Cambridge, he studied all that was there taught, civil law and philosophy; he attended the mathematical classes of Saunderson, the blind professor, he read Greek fluently, and sent accounts of his progress in French to his old tutor, M. Jouneau, a French clergyman and refugee. Lord Chesterfield had, when a child, learnt our tongue from a Norman nurse who attended him. When he visited Paris the last time, in 1744, M. de Fontenelle having remarked a slight Norman accent in his pronunciation, spoke of it to him, and asked him if he had not first been taught French by a person from Normandy, which turned out to be the case.

After two years of university life, he made his Continental tour, according to the custom of young Englishmen. He visited Holland, Italy, and France. He wrote from Paris to M. Jouneau on the 7th of December, 1714, as follows:

“I shall not tell you what I think of the French, because I am being often taken for a Frenchman, and more than one of them has paid me the highest possible compliment, by saying: ‘Monsieur, you are quite one of ourselves.’ I shall only tell you that I am impudent; that I talk a great deal very loudly and with an air of authority; that I sing; that I dance in my walk; and, finally, that I spend immense sums in powder, feathers, white gloves, etc.”

In this extract one recognizes the mocking, satirical, and slightly insolent wit, who makes his mark for the first time at the expense of the French; he will do justice later to our serious qualities. In his letters to his son, he has pictured himself the first day he made his entrée into good society, still covered with the rust of Cambridge, shamefaced, embarrassed, silent; and, finally, forcing his courage with both hands to say to a beautiful woman near him: “Madame, don’t you find it very warm to-day?” But Lord Chesterfield told his son that to encourage him, and to show what it is necessary to pass through. He makes himself an example to embolden him, and to draw the boy more readily to him. I shall be careful not to take his word for this anecdote. If he was for a moment embarrassed in the world, the moment was assuredly very short, nor was he much concerned with it.

Immediately on the death of Queen Anne, Chesterfield hailed the accession of the house of Hanover, of which he became an avowed champion. He had at first a seat in the House of Commons, and made his début there with fair credit. But a circumstance, in appearance frivolous, kept him, it is said, in check, and in some measure paralyzed his eloquence. One of the members of the House, who was distinguished by no talent of a superior order, had that of imitating and counterfeiting to perfection the orators to whom he replied. Chesterfield was afraid of ridicule; it was one of his weaknesses, and he kept silence more than he otherwise would have done for fear of giving occasion for the exercise of his colleague and opponent’s talent. He inherited a large property on the death of his father, and was raised to the Upper House, which was, perhaps, a better setting for the grace, finish, and urbanity of his eloquence. He found no comparison between the two scenes with regard to the importance of the debates and the political influence to be acquired.

“It is surprising,” he said later of Pitt, at the time when that great orator consented to enter the Upper House as Lord Chatham, “it is surprising that a man in the plenitude of his power, at the very moment when his ambition has obtained the most complete triumph, should leave the House which procured him that power, and which alone could ensure its maintenance, to retire into that Hospital for Incurables, the House of Lords.”

It is not my intention here to estimate the political career of Lord Chesterfield. Nevertheless, if I hazarded a judgment upon it as a whole, I should say that his ambition was never wholly satisfied, and that the brilliant distinctions with which his public life was filled, covered, at bottom, many lost desires and the decay of many hopes. Twice, in the two decisive circumstances of his political life, he failed. Young, and in the first heat of ambition, he took an early opportunity of staking his odds on the side of the heir presumptive to the throne, who became George the Second. He was one of those who, at the accession of that prince, counted most surely upon his favor, and upon enjoying a share of power. But this clever man, wishing to turn himself to the rising sun, knew not how to accomplish it with perfect justice; he had paid court to the prince’s mistress, believing in her destined influence, and he had neglected the legitimate wife, the future queen, who alone had the real power. Queen Caroline never pardoned him, and this was the first check in the political fortune of Lord Chesterfield, then thirty-three years old, and in the full flush of hope. He was in too great a hurry and took the wrong road. Robert Walpole, less active, and with less apparent skill, took his measures and made his calculations better.

Thrown with éclat into the opposition, especially from 1732, the time when he had to cease his court duties, Lord Chesterfield worked with all his might for ten years for the downfall of Walpole, which did not take place until 1742. But even then he inherited none of his power, and he remained out of the new ministries. When two years afterward, in 1744, he became one of the administration, first as ambassador to The Hague and Viceroy of Ireland, then as Secretary of State and member of the Cabinet (1746-1748), the honor was more nominal than real. In a word, Lord Chesterfield, at all times a noted politician in his own country, whether as one of the chiefs of the opposition, or as a clever diplomatist, was never a powerful, or even a very influential, minister.

In politics he certainly possessed that far-sightedness and those glimpses into the future which belong to very wide intelligence, but he possessed those qualities to a much greater degree than the patient perseverance and constant practical firmness that are so necessary to the members of a government. It may truly be said of him, as of Rochefoucauld, that politics served to make an accomplished moralist of the imperfect man of action.

In 1744, when he was only fifty years of age, his political ambition, seemed, in part, to have died out, and the indifferent state of his health led him to choose a private life. And then the object of his secret ideal and his real ambition we know now. Before his marriage he had, about the year 1732, by a French lady (Madame de Bouchet) whom he met in Holland, a natural son to whom he was tenderly attached. He wrote to this son, in all sincerity: “From the first day of your life, the dearest object of mine has been to make you as perfect as the weakness of human nature will allow.” Toward the education of this son all his wishes, all his affectionate and worldly predilections tended. And whether Viceroy of Ireland or Secretary of State in London, he found time to write long letters full of minute details to him, to instruct him in small matters and to perfect him in mind and manner.

The Chesterfield, then, that we love especially to study is the man of wit and experience, who knew all the affairs and passed through all phases of political and public life only to find out its smallest resources, and to tell us the last mot; he who from his youth was the friend of Pope and Bolingbroke, the introducer into England of Montesquieu and Voltaire, the correspondent of Fontenelle and Madame de Teucin, he whom the Academy of Inscriptions placed among its members, who united the wit of the two nations, and who, in more than one intellectual essay, but particularly in his letters to his son, shows himself to us as a moralist as amiable as he is consummate, and one of the masters of life. It is the Rochefoucauld of England of whom we speak. Montesquieu, after the publication of L’Esprit des Lois, wrote to the Abbé de Guasco, who was then in England: “Tell my Lord Chesterfield that nothing is so flattering to me as his approbation; but that, though he is reading my work for the third time, he will only be in a better position to point out to me what wants correcting and rectifying in it; nothing could be more instructive to me than his observations and his critique.” It was Chesterfield who, speaking to Montesquieu one day of the readiness of the French for revolutions, and their impatience at slow reforms, spoke this sentence, which is a résumé of our whole history: “You French know how to make barricades, but you never raise barriers.”

Lord Chesterfield certainly appreciated Voltaire; he remarked, à propos of the Siècle de Louis XIV.: “Lord Bolingbroke had taught me how to read history; Voltaire teaches me how it should be written.” But, at the same time, with that practical sense which rarely abandons men of wit on the other side of the Straits, he felt the imprudences of Voltaire, and disapproved of them. When he was old, and living in retirement, he wrote to a French lady on the subject thus:

“Your good authors are my principal resource: Voltaire especially charms me, with the exception of his impiety, with which he cannot help seasoning all that he writes, and which he would do better carefully to suppress, for one ought not to disturb established order. Let every one think as he will, or rather as he can, but let him not communicate his ideas if they are of a nature to trouble the peace of society.”

What he said then, in 1768, Chesterfield had already said more than twenty years previously, writing to the younger Crebillon, a singular correspondent and a singular confidant in point of morality. Voltaire was under consideration, on account of his tragedy of Mahomet, and the daring ideas it contains:

“What I do not pardon him for, and that which is not deserving of pardon in him,” wrote Chesterfield to Crebillon, “is his desire to propagate a doctrine as pernicious to domestic society as contrary to the common religion of all countries. I strongly doubt whether it is permissible for a man to write against the worship and belief of his country, even if he be fully persuaded of its error, on account of the trouble and disorder it might cause; but I am sure that it is in no wise allowable to attack the foundations of true morality, and to break necessary bonds which are already too weak to keep men in the path of duty.”

Chesterfield, in speaking thus, was not mistaken as to the great inconsistency of Voltaire. His inconsistency, in a few words, was this: Voltaire, who looked upon men as fools or children, and who could never laugh at them enough, at the same time put loaded firearms into their hands, without troubling himself as to the use they would put them to.

Lord Chesterfield himself, in the eyes of the Puritans of his country, has been accused, I should state here, of a breach of morality in the letters addressed to his son. The strict Johnson, who was not impartial on the subject, and who thought he had cause to complain against Chesterfield, said, when the letters were published, that “they taught the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of a dancing master.”

Such a judgment is supremely unjust, and if Chesterfield, in particular instances, insists upon graces of manner at any price, it is because he has already provided for the more solid parts of education, and because his pupil is not in the least danger of sinning on the side which makes man respectable, but rather on that which renders him agreeable. Although more than one passage in these letters may seem very strange, coming from a father to a son, the whole is animated with a true spirit of tenderness and wisdom. If Horace had had a son, I imagine he would not have written to him very differently.

The letters begin with the A B C of education and instruction. Chesterfield teaches his son in French the rudiments of mythology and history. I do not regret the publication of these first letters. He lets slip some very excellent advice in those early pages. The little Stanhope is no more than eight years old when his father suits a little rhetoric to his juvenile understanding, and tries to show him how to use good language, and to express himself well. He especially recommends to him attention in all that he does, and he gives the word its full value. “It is attention alone,” he says, “which fixes objects in the memory. There is no surer mark of a mean and meagre intellect in the world than inattention. All that is worth the trouble of doing at all deserves to be done well, and nothing can be well done without attention.” This precept he incessantly repeats, and varies the application of it as his pupil grows, and is in a condition to comprehend it to its fullest extent. Whether pleasure or study, everything one does must be done well, done entirely and at its proper time, without allowing any distraction to intervene. “When you read Horace pay attention to the accuracy of his thoughts, to the elegance of his diction, and to the beauty of his poetry, and do not think of the ‘De Homine et Cive’ of Puffendorf; and when you read Puffendorf do not think of Madame de St. Germain; nor of Puffendorf when you speak of Madame de St. Germain.” But this strong and easy subjugation of the order of thought to the will only belongs to great or very good intellects. M. Royer-Collard used to say that “what was most wanting in our day was respect in the moral disposition, and attention in the intellectual.” Lord Chesterfield, in a less grave manner, might have said the same thing. He was not long in finding out what was wanting in this child whom he wished to bring up; whose bringing up was, indeed, the end and aim of his life. “On sounding your character to its very depths,” he said to him, “I have not, thank God, discovered any vice of heart or weakness of head so far; but I have discovered idleness, inattention, and indifference, defects which are only pardonable in the aged, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits give way, have a sort of right to that kind of tranquillity. But a young man ought to be ambitious to shine and excel.” And it is precisely this sacred fire, this lightning, that makes the Achilles, the Alexanders, and the Cæsars to be the first in every undertaking, this motto of noble hearts and of eminent men of all kinds, that nature had primarily neglected to place in the honest but thoroughly mediocre soul of the younger Stanhope: “You appear to want,” said his father, “that vivida vis animi which excites the majority of young men to please, to strive, and to outdo others.” “When I was your age,” he again says, “I should have been ashamed for another to know his lesson better, or to have been before me in a game, and I should have had no rest till I had regained the advantage.” All this little course of education by letters offers a sort of continuous dramatic interest; we follow the efforts of a fine distinguished, energetic nature as Lord Chesterfield’s was, engaged in a contest with a disposition honest but indolent, with an easy and dilatory temperament, from which it would, at any expense, form a masterpiece accomplished, amiable and original, and with which it only succeeded in making a sort of estimable copy. What sustains and almost touches the reader in this strife, where so much art is used, and where the inevitable counsel is the same beneath all metamorphoses, is the true fatherly affection which animates and inspires the delicate and excellent master, as patient as he is full of vigor, lavish in resources and skill, never discouraged, untiring in sowing elegances and graces on this infantile soil. Not that this son, the object of so much culture and zeal, was in any way unworthy of his father. It has been pretended that there could be no one duller or more sullen than he was, and Johnson is quoted in support of the statement. There are caricatures which surpass the truth. It appears from the best authorities, that Mr. Stanhope, without being a model of grace, had the air of a man who had been well brought up, and was polite and agreeable. But do you not think that that is the most grievous part of all? It would have been better worth while, almost, to have totally failed, and to have only succeeded in making an original in the inverse sense, rather than with so much care and expense to have produced nothing more than an ordinary and insignificant man of the world, one of those about whom it suffices to say, there is nothing to be said of them; he had cause to be truly grieved and pity himself for his work if he were not a father.

Lord Chesterfield had early thought of France to polish his son, and to give him that courtesy which cannot be acquired late in life. In private letters written to a lady at Paris, whom I believe to be Madame de Monconseil,[14] we see that he had thought of sending him to France from his childhood.

“I have a boy,” he wrote to this friend, “who is now thirteen years old; I freely confess to you that he is not legitimate; but his mother was well born and was kinder to me than I deserved. As to the boy, perhaps it is partiality, but I think him amiable; he has a pretty face; he has much sprightliness, and I think intelligence, for his age. He speaks French perfectly; he knows a good deal of Latin and Greek, and he has ancient and modern history at his fingers’ ends. He is at school at present, but as they never dream of forming the manners of young people, and they are almost all foolish, awkward, and unpolished, in short such as you see them when they come to Paris at the age of twenty or twenty-one, I do not wish my boy to remain here to acquire such bad habits; for this reason, when he is fourteen I think of sending him to Paris. As I love the child dearly, and have set myself to make something good of him, as I believe he has the stuff in him, my idea is to unite in him what has never been found in one person before—I mean the best qualities of the two nations.”

And he enters into the details of his plan, and the means he thinks of using: a learned Englishman every morning, a French teacher after dinner, but above all the help of the fashionable world and good society. The war which broke out between France and England postponed this plan, and the young man did not make his début in Paris until 1751, when he was nineteen years old, and had finished his tour through Switzerland, Germany, and Italy.

Everything has been arranged by the most attentive of fathers for his success and well-being upon this novel scene. The young man is placed at the Academy with M. de la Guérinière; the morning he devotes to study, and the rest of the time is to be consecrated to the world. “Pleasure is now the last branch of your education,” this indulgent father writes; “it will soften and polish your manners; it will incite you to seek and finally to acquire graces.” Upon this last point he is exacting, and shows no quarter. Graces, he returns continually to them, for without them all effort is vain. “If they are not natural to you, cultivate them,” he cries. He indeed speaks confidently; as if to cultivate graces, it is not necessary to have them already!

Three ladies, friends of his father, are especially charged to watch over and guide the young man at his début; they are his governantes: Madame de Monconseil, Lady Hervey, and Madame de Bocage. But these introducers appear essential for the first time only; the young man must afterward depend upon himself, and choose some charming and more familiar guide. Upon this delicate subject of women, Lord Chesterfield breaks the ice: “I shall not talk to you on this subject like a theologian, or a moralist, or a father,” he says; “I set aside my age, and only take yours into consideration. I wish to speak to you as one man of pleasure would to another if he has taste and spirit.” And he expresses himself in consequence, stimulating the young man as much as possible toward polite arrangements and delicate pleasures, to draw him from common and coarse habits. His principle is that “a polite arrangement becomes a gallant man.” All his morality on this point is summed up in a line of Voltaire:

“Il n’est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie.”

It is at these sentences more especially that the modesty of the grave Johnson is put to the blush; ours is content to smile at them.

The serious and the frivolous are perpetually mingling in these letters. Marcel, the dancing master, is very often recommended, Montesquieu no less. The Abbé de Guasco, a sort of toady to Montesquieu, is a useful personage for introductions. “Between you and me,” writes Chesterfield, “he has more knowledge than genius; but a clever man knows how to make use of everything, and every man is good for something. As to the Président of Montesquieu, he is in all respects a precious acquaintance: He has genius, with the most extensive reading in the world. Drink of his fountain as much as possible.”

Of authors, those whom Chesterfield particularly recommends at this time, and those whose names occur most frequently in his counsels, are La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère. “If you read some of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims in the morning, consider them, examine them well, and compare them with the originals you meet in the evening. Read La Bruyère in the morning, and see in the evening if his portraits are correct.” But these guides, excellent as they are, have no other use by themselves than that of a map. Without personal observation and experience, they would be useless, and would even be conducive to error, as a map might be if one thought to get from it a complete knowledge of towns and provinces. Better read one man than ten books. “The world is a country that no one has ever known by means of descriptions; each of us must traverse it in person to be thoroughly initiated into its ways.”

Here are some precepts or remarks which are worthy of those masters of human morality:

“The most essential of all knowledge, I mean the knowledge of the world, is never acquired without great attention, and I know a great many aged persons who, after having had an extensive acquaintance, are still mere children in the knowledge of the world.”

“Human nature is the same all over the world; but its operations are so varied by education and custom that we ought to see it in all its aspects to get an intimate knowledge of it.”

“Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual; search into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different effects of the same passion in different people. And when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.”

“If you wish particularly to gain the good graces and affection of certain people, men or women, try to discover their most striking merit, if they have one, and their dominant weakness, for every one has his own, then do justice to the one, and a little more than justice to the other.”

“Women, in general, have only one object, which is their beauty, upon which subject hardly any flattery can be too gross to please them.”

“The flattery which is most pleasing to really beautiful or decidedly ugly women, is that which is addressed to their intellect.”

On the subject of women, again, if he seems disdainful now and then, he makes reparation elsewhere; and, above all, whatever he thinks of them, he never allows his son to slander them too much. “You appear to think that from the days of Eve to the present time they have done much harm: as regards that lady I agree with you; but from her time history teaches you that men have done more harm in the world than women; and to speak truly, I would warn you not to trust either sex more than is absolutely necessary. But what I particularly advise you is this: never to attack whole bodies, whatever they may be.”

“Individuals occasionally forgive, but bodies and societies never do.”

In general, Chesterfield counsels his son to be circumspect and to preserve a sort of prudent neutrality, even in the case of the knaves and fools with which the world abounds. “After their friendship there is nothing more dangerous than to have them for enemies.” It is not the morality of Cato nor of Zeno, but that of Alcibiades, of Aristippus, or Atticus.

Upon religion he shall speak, in reply to some trenchant opinion that his son had expressed: “The reason of every man is and ought to be his guide; and I shall have as much right to expect every man to be of my height and temperament, as to wish that he should reason precisely as I do.”

In everything he is of the opinion that the good and the best should be known and loved, but that it is not necessary to make one’s self a champion for or against everything. One must know even in literature how to tolerate the weaknesses of others: “Let them enjoy quietly their errors both in taste and religion.” Oh! how far from such wisdom is the bitter trade of criticism, as we do it!

He does not, however, advise lying; he is precise in this particular. His precept always runs thus: do not tell all, but never tell a lie. “I have always observed,” he frequently repeats, “that the greatest fools are the greatest liars. For my part, I judge of the truth of a man by the extent of his intellect.”

We see how really he mixes the useful and the agreeable. He is perpetually demanding from the intellect something resolute and subtle, sweetness in the manner, energy at bottom.

Lord Chesterfield thoroughly appreciated the serious state of France and the dread events that the eighteenth century brought to light. According to him, Duclos, in his Reflections, is right when he says that “a germ of reason is beginning to appear in France.” “What I can confidently predict,” adds Chesterfield, “is that before the end of this century the trades of king and priest will have lost half their power.”

Our revolution has been clearly predicted by him since 1750.

He warned his son from the beginning against the idea that the French are entirely frivolous. “The cold inhabitants of the north look upon the French as a frivolous people who sing and whistle and dance perpetually; this is very far from being the truth, though the army of fops seems to justify it. But these fops, ripened by age and experience, often turn into very able men.” The ideal, according to him, would be to unite the merits of the two nations; but in this mixture he still seems to lean toward France: “I have said many times, and I really think, that a Frenchman who joins to a good foundation of virtue, learning, and good sense, the manners and politeness of his country, has attained the perfection of human nature.” He unites sufficiently well in himself the advantages of the two nations, with one characteristic which belongs exclusively to his race—there is imagination even in his wit. Hamilton himself has this distinctive characteristic, and introduces it into French wit. Bacon, the great moralist, is almost a poet by expression. One cannot say so much of Lord Chesterfield; nevertheless, he has more imagination in his sallies and in the expression of his wit than one meets with in Saint Evremond and our acute moralists in general. He resembles his friend Montesquieu in this respect.

If in the letters to his son we can, without being severe, lay hold of some cases of slightly damaged morality, we should have to point out, by way of compensation, some very serious and really admirable passages, where he speaks of the Cardinal de Retz, of Mazarin, of Bolingbroke, of Marlborough, and of many others. It is a rich book. One cannot read a page without finding some happy observation worthy of being remembered.

Lord Chesterfield intended this beloved son for a diplomatic life; he at first found some difficulties in the way on account of his illegitimacy. To cut short these objections, he sent his son to Parliament; it was the surest method of conquering the scruples of the court. Mr. Stanhope, in his maiden speech, hesitated a moment, and was obliged to have recourse to notes. He did not make a second attempt at speaking in public. It appears that he succeeded better in diplomacy, in those second-rate places where solid merit is sufficient. He filled the post of ambassador extraordinary to the court of Dresden. But his health, always delicate, failed before he was old, and his father had the misfortune to see him die before him when he was scarcely thirty-six years old (1768). Lord Chesterfield at that time lived entirely retired from the world, on account of his infirmities, the most painful of which was complete deafness. Montesquieu, whose sight failed, said to him once, “I know how to be blind.” But he was not able to say as much; he did not know how to be deaf. He wrote of it to his friends, even to those in France, thus: “The exchange of letters,” he remarked, “is the conversation of deaf people, and the only link which connects them with society.” He found his latest consolations in his pretty country-house at Blackheath, which he had called by the French name of Babiole. He employed his time there in gardening and cultivating his melons and pineapples; he amused himself by vegetating in company with them.

“I have vegetated here all this year,” he wrote to a French friend (September, 1753), “without pleasures and without troubles; my age and deafness prevented the first; my philosophy, or rather my temperament (for one often confounds them), guaranteed me against the last. I always get as much as I can of the quiet pleasures of gardening, walking, and reading, and in the meantime I await death without desiring or fearing it.”

He never undertook long works, not feeling himself sufficiently strong, but he sometimes sent agreeable essays to a periodical publication, The World. These essays are quite worthy of his reputation for skill and urbanity. Nevertheless, nothing approaches the work—which was no work to him—of those letters, which he never imagined any one would read, and which are yet the foundation of his literary success.

His old age, which was an early one, lasted a long time. His wit gave a hundred turns to this sad theme. Speaking of himself and one of his friends, Lord Tyrawley, equally old and infirm: “Tyrawley and I,” he said, “have been dead two years, but we do not wish it to be known.”

Voltaire, who under the pretence of being always dying, had preserved his youth much better, wrote to him on the 24th of October, 1771, this pretty letter, signed “Le vieux malade de Ferney”:

“Enjoy an honorable and happy old age, after having passed through the trials of life. Enjoy your wit and preserve the health of your body. Of the five senses with which we are provided, you have only one enfeebled, and Lord Huntingdon assures me that you have a good stomach, which is worth a pair of ears. It will be perhaps my place to decide which is the most sorrowful, to be deaf or blind, or have no digestion. I can judge of all these three conditions with a knowledge of the cause; but it is a long time since I ventured to decide upon trifles, least of all upon things so important. I confine myself to the belief that, if you have sun in the beautiful house that you have built, you will spend some tolerable moments; that is all we can hope for at our age. Cicero wrote a beautiful treatise upon old age, but he did not verify his words by deeds; his last years were very unhappy. You have lived longer and more happily than he did. You have had to do neither with perpetual dictators nor with triumvirs. Your lot has been, and still is, one of the most desirable in that great lottery where good tickets are so scarce, and where the Great Prize of continual happiness has never been gained by any one. Your philosophy has never been upset by chimeras which have sometimes perplexed tolerably good brains. You have never been in any sense a charlatan, nor the dupe of charlatans, and that I reckon as a rare merit, which adds something to the shadow of happiness that we are allowed to taste of in this short life.”

Lord Chesterfield died on the 24th of March, 1773. In pointing out his charming course of worldly education, we have not thought it out of place even in a Democracy,[15] to take lessons of savoir vivre and politeness, and to receive them from a man whose name is so closely connected with those of Montesquieu and Voltaire, who, more than any other of his countrymen in his own time, showed singular fondness for our nation; who delighted, more than was right, perhaps, in our amiable qualities; who appreciated our solid virtues, and of whom it might be said, as his greatest praise, that he was a French wit, if he had not introduced into the verve and vivacity of his sallies that inexplicable something of imagination and color that bears the impress of his race.

LORD CHESTERFIELD’S LETTERS, SENTENCES, AND MAXIMS.

Travel in Holland.—On me dit, Monsieur! que vous vous disposez à voyager, et que vous débutez par la Hollande. De sorte j’ai crû de mon devoir, de vous souhaiter un bon voyage, et des vents favorables. Vous aurez la bonté, j’espère, de me faire part de votre arrivée à la Haye; et si après cela, dans le cours de vos voyages, vous faites quelques remarques curieuses, vous voudrez bien me les communiquer.

La Hollande, où vous allez, est de beaucoup la plus belle, et la plus riche des Sept Provinces-Unies, qui, toutes ensemble, forment la République. Les autres sont celles de Gueldres, Zélande, Frise, Utrecht, Groningue, et Over-Yssel. Les Sept Provinces composent, ce qu’on appelle les Etats Généraux des Provinces-Unies, et font une République très-puissante, et très-considérable.[16]

Translation.—I am informed, sir, that you are about to travel, and that you will start with Holland. Therefore I have thought it my duty to wish you a pleasant journey and favorable winds. You will, I am sure, be so good as to acquaint me with your arrival at The Hague; and afterward, if in your travels you should observe anything curious, will you let me know?

Holland, where you are going, is by far the finest and richest of the seven united provinces, which together form the Republic. The other provinces are Guelderland, Zealand, Friesland, Utrecht, Groningen, and Overyssel; these seven provinces form what is called the States-General of the United Provinces, etc.[17]

True Decency.—One of the most important points of life is decency; which is to do what is proper, and where it is proper; for many things are proper at one time, and in one place, that are extremely improper in another; for example, it is very proper and decent that you should play some part of the day; but you must feel that it would be very improper and indecent if you were to fly your kite, or play at nine-pins while you are with Mr. Maittaire.[18] It is very proper and decent to dance well; but then you must dance only at balls and places of entertainment; for you would be reckoned a fool if you were to dance at church or at a funeral. I hope, by these examples, you understand the meaning of the word decency, which in French is bienséance; in Latin, decorum; and in Greek, πρέπον. Cicero says of it, Sic hoc decorum quod elucet in vitâ, movet approbationem earum quibuscum vivatur, ordine et constantiâ, et moderatione dictorum omnium atque factorum: by which you see how necessary decency is to gain the approbation of mankind. And, as I am sure you desire to gain Mr. Maittaire’s approbation, without which you will never have mine, I dare say you will mind and give attention to whatever he says to you, and behave yourself seriously and decently while you are with him; afterward play, run, and jump as much as ever you please. [July 24, 1739.]

The Art of Speaking.—You cannot but be convinced that a man who speaks and writes with elegance and grace; who makes choice of good words, and adorns and embellishes the subject upon which he either speaks or writes, will persuade better, and succeed more easily in obtaining what he wishes, than a man who does not explain himself clearly; speaks his language ill; or makes use of low and vulgar expressions; and who has neither grace nor elegance in anything that he says. Now it is by rhetoric that the art of speaking eloquently is taught; and, though I cannot think of grounding you in it as yet, I would wish, however, to give you an idea of it suitable to your age.[19]

The first thing you should attend to is, to speak whatever language you do speak, in its greatest purity, and according to the rules of grammar; for we must never offend against grammar, nor make use of words which are not really words. This is not all; for not to speak ill, is not sufficient; we must speak well; and the best method of attaining to that, is to read the best authors with attention; and to observe how people of fashion speak, and those who express themselves best; for shopkeepers, common people, footmen, and maid-servants all speak ill. [Bath, Oct. 17, 1739.]

Oratory.—The business of oratory is to persuade people; and you easily feel that to please people is a great step toward persuading them. You must, then, consequently, be sensible how advantageous it is for a man, who speaks in public, whether it be in Parliament, in the pulpit, or at the bar (that is, in the courts of law), to please his hearers so much as to gain their attention: which he can never do without the help of oratory. It is not enough to speak the language he speaks in its utmost purity, and according to the rules of grammar; but he must speak it elegantly; that is, he must choose the best and most expressive words, and put them in the best order. He should likewise adorn what he says by proper metaphors, similes, and other figures of rhetoric; and he should enliven it, if he can, by quick and sprightly turns of wit. [November, 1739.]

The Folly of Ignorance.—An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all. There is a very pretty French epigram upon the death of such an ignorant, insignificant fellow, the sting of which is, that all that can be said of him is, that he was once alive, and that he is now dead. This is the epigram, which you may get by heart:

“Colas est mort de maladie,

Tu veux que j’en pleure le sort,

Que diable veux-tu que j’en dis?

Colas vivoit. Colas est mort.”

Take care not to deserve the name of Colas,[20] which I shall certainly give you, if you do not learn well. [No date.]

Philippus Chesterfield parvulo suo Philippo Stanhope, S. P. D.

Pergrata mihi fuit epistola tua, quam nuper accepi, eleganter enim scripta erat, et polliceris te summam operam daturum, ut veras laudes meritò adipisci possis. Sed ut planè dicam; valde suspicor te, in ea scribenda, optimum et eruditissimum adjutorem habuisse; quo duce et auspice, nec elegantia, nec doctrina, nec quicquid prorsus est dignum sapiente bonoque, unquam tibi deesse poterit. Illum ergo ut quam diligenter colas, te etiam atque etiam rogo; et quo magis eum omni officio, amore, et obsequio persequeris, eo magis te me studiosum, et observantem existimabo.[21]

A Study in Verse.—To use your ear a little to English verse, and to make you attend to the sense, too, I have transposed the words of the following lines; which I would have you put in their proper order, and send me in your next:

“Life consider cheat a when ’tis all I

Hope the fool’d deceit men yet with favor

Repay will to-morrow trust on think and

Falser former day to-morrow’s than the

Worse lies blest be shall when and we says it

Hope new some possess’d cuts off with we what.”

[This is curious, and truly no bad way of teaching a child the structure of verse. The citation, a fine one, is from Dryden:

“When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat,

Yet fool’d with hope men favor the deceit.”

The reader may puzzle out the rest.]

Virtue Discouraged.—If six hundred citizens of Athens gave in the name of any one Athenian, written upon an oyster-shell (from whence it is called ostracism), that man was banished Athens for ten years. On one hand, it is certain, that a free people cannot be too careful or jealous of their liberty; and it is certain, too, that the love and applause of mankind will always attend a man of eminent and distinguished virtue; and, consequently, they are more likely to give up their liberties to such-a-one than to another of less merit. But then, on the other hand, it seems extraordinary to discourage virtue upon any account; since it is only by virtue that any society can flourish, and be considerable. There are many more arguments, on each side of this question, which will naturally occur to you; and when you have considered them well, I desire you will write me your opinion, whether the ostracism was a right or a wrong thing, and your reasons for being of that opinion. Let nobody help you, and give me exactly your own sentiments and your own reasons, whatever they are. [October, 1740.]

Ambition.—Everybody has ambition of some kind or other, and is vexed when that ambition is disappointed; the difference is, that the ambition of silly people is a silly and mistaken ambition; and the ambition of people of sense is a right and commendable one. For instance, the ambition of a silly boy, of your age, would be to have fine clothes, and money to throw away in idle follies; which, you plainly see, would be no proofs of merit in him, but only of folly in his parents, in dressing him out like a jackanapes, and giving him money to play the fool with. Whereas a boy of good sense places his ambition in excelling other boys of his own age, and even older, in virtue and knowledge. His glory is in being known always to speak the truth, in showing good nature and compassion, in learning quicker, and applying himself more than other boys. These are real proofs of merit in him, and consequently proper objects of ambition; and will acquire him a solid reputation and character. This holds true in men as well as in boys; the ambition of a silly fellow will be to have a fine equipage, a fine house, and fine clothes; things which anybody, that has as much money, may have as well as he; for they are all to be bought; but the ambition of a man of sense and honor is to be distinguished by a character and reputation of knowledge, truth, and virtue—things which are not to be bought, and that can only be acquired by a good head and a good heart. [Not dated.]

Humanity.—It is certain that humanity is the particular characteristic of a great mind; little, vicious minds are full of anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the exalted pleasure of forgiving their enemies, and of bestowing marks of favor and generosity upon those of whom they have gotten the better. Adieu![22]

Novels and Romances.—A novel is a kind of abbreviation of a romance; for a romance generally consists of twelve volumes, all filled with insipid love nonsense, and most incredible adventures. The subject of a romance is sometimes a story entirely fictitious, that is to say, quite invented; at other times a true story, but generally so changed and altered that one cannot know it. For example: in “Grand Cyrus,” “Clelia,” and “Cleopatra,” three celebrated romances, there is some true history; but so blended with falsities and silly love adventures, that they confuse and corrupt the mind, instead of forming and instructing it. The greatest heroes of antiquity are there represented in woods and forests, whining insipid love tales to their inhuman fair one; who answers them in the same style. In short, the reading of romances is a most frivolous occupation, and time merely thrown away. [The little boy was then reading the historical novel of “Don Carlos,” by the Abbé de St. Real. (Not dated.)]

Virtue.—Virtue is a subject that deserves your and every man’s attention; and suppose I were to bid you make some verses, or give me your thoughts in prose, upon the subject of virtue, how would you go about it? Why, you would first consider what virtue is, and then what are the effects and marks of it, both with regard to others and one’s self. You would find, then, that virtue consists in doing good, and in speaking truth; and that the effects of it are advantageous to all mankind, and to one’s self in particular. Virtue makes us pity and relieve the misfortunes of mankind; it makes us promote justice and good order in society; and, in general, contributes to whatever tends to the real good of mankind. To ourselves it gives an inward comfort and satisfaction which nothing else can do, and which nothing can rob us of. All other advantages depend upon others, as much as upon ourselves. Riches, power, and greatness may be taken away from us by the violence and injustice of others or inevitable accidents, but virtue depends only on ourselves and nobody can take it away. [Headed only Sunday.]

The Reward of Virtue.—If a virtuous man be ever so poor or unfortunate in the world, still his virtue is his own reward and will comfort him under his afflictions. The quiet and satisfaction of his conscience make him cheerful by day and sleep sound of nights; he can be alone with pleasure and is not afraid of his own thoughts. Besides this, he is esteemed and respected; for even the most wicked people themselves cannot help admiring and respecting virtue in others. A poet says:

“Ipsa quidem virtus, sibimet pulcherrima merces.”[23]

Politeness a Necessity.—Know, then, that as learning, honor, and virtue are absolutely necessary to gain you the esteem and admiration of mankind; politeness and good breeding are equally necessary, to make you welcome and agreeable in conversation and common life. Great talents, such as honor, virtue, learning, and parts, are above the generality of the world; who neither possess them themselves, nor judge of them rightly in others; but all people are judges of the lesser talents, such as civility, affability, and an obliging, agreeable address and manner; because they feel the good effects of them, as making society easy and pleasing.

Good Breeding and Good Sense.—Good sense must, in many cases, determine good breeding; because the same thing that would be civil at one time, and to one person, may be quite otherwise at another time, and to another person; but there are some general rules of good breeding, that hold always true, and in all cases. [About February, 1741.]

Rudeness and Civility.—I dare say I need not tell you how rude it is, to take the best place in a room, or to seize immediately upon what you like at table, without offering first to help others; as if you consider nobody but yourself. On the contrary, you should always endeavor to procure all the conveniences you can to the people you are with. Besides being civil, which is absolutely necessary, the perfection of good breeding is, to be civil with ease, and in a gentlemanlike manner. For this, you should observe the French people; who excel in it, and whose politeness seems as easy and natural as any other part of their conversation. Whereas the English are often awkward in their civilities, and, when they mean to be civil, are too much ashamed to get it out.

Mauvaise Honte.—Pray, do you remember never to be ashamed of doing what is right; you would have a great deal of reason to be ashamed, if you were not civil; but what reason can you have to be ashamed of being civil? And why not say a civil and an obliging thing, as easily and as naturally, as you would ask what o’clock it is? This kind of bashfulness, which is justly called, by the French, mauvaise honte, is the distinguishing character of an English booby; who is frightened out of his wits when people of fashion speak to him; and when he is to answer them, blushes, stammers, can hardly get out what he would say, and becomes really ridiculous, from a groundless fear of being laughed at; whereas a well bred man would speak to all the kings in the world with as little concern and as much ease as he would speak to you.

Youthful Emulation.—This is the last letter I shall write to you as to a little boy; for, to-morrow, if I am not mistaken, you will attain your ninth year; so that for the future I shall treat you as a youth. You must now commence a different course of life, a different course of studies. No more levity; childish toys and playthings must be thrown aside, and your mind directed to serious objects. What was not unbecoming of a child would be disgraceful to a youth. Wherefore, endeavor, with all your might, to show a suitable change; and, by learning, good manners, politeness, and other accomplishments, to surpass those youths of your own age, whom hitherto you have surpassed when boys.[24] May the Almighty preserve you and bestow on you his choicest blessings.

True Respect.—The strictest and most scrupulous honor and virtue can alone make you esteemed and valued by mankind; [remember] that parts and learning can alone make you admired and celebrated by them; but that the possession of lesser talents is most absolutely necessary, toward making you liked, beloved, and sought after in private life. Of these lesser talents, good breeding is the principal and most necessary one, not only as it is very important itself; but as it adds great lustre to the more solid advantages both of the heart and the mind.

Manner.—An easy manner and carriage must be wholly free from those odd tricks, ill habits, and awkwardnesses, which even very worthy and sensible people have in their behavior. [May, 1741.]

Manner—Absence—Awkwardness—Attention.—However trifling a genteel manner may sound, it is of very great consequence towards pleasing in private life, especially the women; which (sic), one time or other, you will think worth pleasing; and I have known many a man, from his awkwardness, give people such a dislike of him at first, that all his merit could not get the better of it afterwards. Whereas a genteel manner prepossesses people in your favor, bends them towards you and makes them wish to like you. Awkwardness can proceed but from two causes: either from not having kept good company, or from not having attended to it. As for your keeping good company, I will take care of that; do you take care to observe their ways and manners, and to form your own upon them. Attention is absolutely necessary for this, as, indeed, it is for everything else; and a man without attention is not fit to live in the world. When an awkward fellow first comes into a room it is highly probable that his sword gets between his legs, and throws him down, or makes him stumble at least; when he has recovered this accident, he goes and places himself in the very place of the whole room where he should not; there he soon lets his hat fall down, and, in taking it up again, throws down his cane; in recovering his cane, his hat falls a second time; so that he is a quarter of an hour before he is in order again. If he drinks tea or coffee, he certainly scalds his mouth, and lets either the cup or the saucer fall, and spills the tea or coffee in his breeches. At dinner his awkwardness distinguishes itself particularly, as he has more to do; there he holds his knife, fork, and spoon differently from other people; eats with his knife to the great danger of his mouth, picks his teeth with his fork, and puts his spoon, which has been in his throat twenty times, into the dishes again. If he is to carve, he can never hit the joint; but, in his vain efforts to cut through the bone, scatters the sauce in everybody’s face. He generally daubs himself with soup and grease, though his napkin is commonly stuck through a buttonhole, and tickles his chin. When he drinks, he infallibly coughs in his glass and besprinkles the company. Besides all this, he has strange tricks and gestures; such as snuffing up his nose, making faces, putting his fingers in his nose, or blowing it and looking afterward in his handkerchief, so as to make the company sick. His hands are troublesome to him when he has not something in them, and he does not know where to put them; but they are in perpetual motion between his bosom and his breeches; he does not wear his clothes, and, in short, does nothing like other people. All this, I own, is not in any degree criminal; but it is highly disagreeable and ridiculous in company, and ought most carefully to be avoided by whoever desires to please.

From this account of what you should not do, you may easily judge what you should do; and a due attention to the manners of people of fashion, and who have seen the world, will make it habitual and familiar to you.

There is, likewise, an awkwardness of expression and words, most carefully to be avoided; such as false English, bad pronunciation, old sayings, and common proverbs; which are so many proofs of having kept bad and low company. For example: if, instead of saying that tastes are different, and that every man has his own peculiar one, you should let off a proverb, and say, “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison”; or else, “Every one as they like, as the good man said when he kissed his cow”; everybody would be persuaded that you had never kept company with anybody above footmen and housemaids.

Attention will do all this; and without attention nothing is to be done; want of attention, which is really want of thought, is either folly or madness. You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe, at once, all the people in the room; their motions, their looks, and their words; and yet without staring at them, and seeming to be an observer. This quick and unobserved observation is of infinite advantage in life, and is to be acquired with care; and, on the contrary, what is called absence, which is a thoughtlessness and want of attention about what is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a madman, that, for my part, I see no real difference. A fool never has thought, a madman has lost it; and an absent man is, for the time, without it.[25] [Dated Spa, July 25, N. S. 1741.]

True Praise.—Laudari a viro laudato was always a commendable ambition; encourage that ambition and continue to deserve the praises of the praiseworthy. While you do so you shall have everything you will from me; and when you cease to do so you shall have nothing.

An Awkward Mind.—I have warned you against odd motions, strange postures, and ungenteel carriage. But there is likewise an awkwardness of the mind that ought to be, and with care may be, avoided; as, for instance, to mistake or forget names; to speak of Mr. What-d’ye-call-him, or Mrs. Thingum, or How-d’ye-call-her, is excessively awkward and ordinary. To call people by improper titles and appellations is so, too; as my Lord for sir; and sir for my Lord. To begin a story or narration, when you are not perfect in it, and cannot go through with it, but are forced, possibly, to say in the middle of it, “I have forgot the rest,” is very unpleasant and bungling. One must be extremely exact, clear, and perspicuous in everything one says, otherwise, instead of entertaining or informing others, one only tires and puzzles them. The voice and manner of speaking, too, are not to be neglected; some people almost shut their mouths when they speak, and mutter so, that they are not to be understood; others speak so fast and sputter so, that they are not to be understood neither; some always speak as loud as if they were talking to deaf people; and others so low that one cannot hear them. All these habits are awkward and disagreeable; and are to be avoided by attention; they are the distinguishing marks of the ordinary people, who have had no care taken of their education. You cannot imagine how necessary it is to mind all these little things; for I have seen many people with great talents ill received, for want of having these talents, too; and others well received only from their little talents, and who had no great ones.

Oratory and Hard Work.—Demosthenes, the celebrated Greek orator, thought it so absolutely necessary to speak well, that though he naturally stuttered, and had weak lungs, he resolved, by application and care, to get the better of those disadvantages. Accordingly, he cured his stammering by putting small pebbles into his mouth; and strengthened his lungs gradually, by using himself every day to speak aloud and distinctly for a considerable time. He likewise went often to the seashore, in stormy weather, when the sea made most noise, and there spoke as loud as he could, in order to use himself to the noise and murmurs of the popular assemblies of the Athenians, before whom he was to speak. By such care, joined to the constant study of the best authors, he became at last the greatest orator of his own or any other age or country, though he was born without any one natural talent for it. Adieu! Copy Demosthenes. [(?) August, 1741.]

Keep your Word.—I am sure you know that breaking of your word is a folly, a dishonor, and a crime. It is a folly, because nobody will trust you afterward; and it is both a dishonor and a crime, truth being the first duty of religion and morality; and whoever has not truth cannot be supposed to have any one good quality, and must become the detestation of God and man. Therefore I expect, from your truth and your honor, that you will do that, which independently of your promise, your own interest and ambition ought to incline you to do; that is, to excel in everything you undertake. When I was of your age, I should have been ashamed if any boy of that age had learned his book better, or played at any play better than I did; and I would not have rested a moment till I had got before him. Julius Cæsar, who had a noble thirst of glory, used to say that he would rather be the first in a village than the second in Rome; and he even cried when he saw the statue of Alexander the Great, with the reflection of how much more glory Alexander had acquired, at thirty years old, than he at a much more advanced age. These are the sentiments to make people considerable; and those who have them not will pass their lives in obscurity and contempt; whereas those who endeavor to excel all, are at least sure of excelling a great many. [June, 1742.]

Good Breeding.—Though I need not tell one of your age,[26] experience, and knowledge of the world, how necessary good breeding is, to recommend one to mankind; yet, as your various occupations of Greek and cricket, Latin and pitch-farthing, may possibly divert your attention from this object, I take the liberty of reminding you of it, and desiring you to be very well bred at Lord Orrery’s. It is good breeding alone that can prepossess people in your favor at first sight; more time being necessary to discover greater talents. This good breeding, you know, does not consist in low bows and formal ceremony; but in an easy, civil, and respectful behavior. You will therefore take care to answer with complaisance, when you are spoken to; to place yourself at the lower end of the table, unless bid to go higher; to drink first to the lady of the house, and next to the master; not to eat awkwardly or dirtily; not to sit when others stand; and to do all this with an air of complaisance, and not with a grave, sour look, as if you did it at all unwillingly. [No date, Letter 70.]

Letter Writing.—Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able—I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops; for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them, just what we should say to the persons if we were with them. [No date, Letter 72.]

The Results of Carelessness.—To this oscitancy we owe so many mistakes, hiatus’s (sic), lacunæ, etc., in ancient manuscripts. It may be here necessary to explain to you the meaning of the oscitantes librarii; which I believe you will easily take. These persons (before printing was invented) transcribed the works of authors, sometimes for their own profit, but oftener (as they were generally slaves) for the profit of their masters. In the first case, dispatch, more than accuracy, was their object; for the faster they wrote the more they got; in the latter case (observe this), as it was a task imposed on them, which they did not dare to refuse, they were idle, careless, and incorrect; not giving themselves the trouble to read over what they had written. The celebrated Atticus kept a great number of these transcribing slaves, and got great sums of money by their labors. [November, 1745.]

Greek Epigrams.—I hope you will keep company with Horace and Cicero among the Romans; and Homer and Xenophon among the Greeks, and that you have got out of the worst company in the world, the Greek epigrams. Martial has wit and is worth your looking into sometimes, but I recommend the Greek epigrams to your supreme contempt. Good-night to you. [Same date.]

Dancing Trifling.—Dancing is in itself a very trifling, silly thing; but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And, though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do, well. There is no one thing so trifling, but which (if it is to be done at all) ought to be done well. And I have often told you that I wished you even played at pitch and cricket better than any boy at Westminster. For instance: dress is a very foolish thing; and yet it is a very foolish thing for a man not to be well dressed, according to his rank and way of life; and it is so far from being a disparagement to any man’s understanding, that it is rather a proof of it, to be as well dressed as those whom he lives with. The difference in this case between a man of sense and a fop is, that the fop values himself upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time that he knows he must not neglect it. There are a thousand foolish customs of this kind, which not being criminal must be complied with, and even cheerfully, by men of sense. Diogenes the cynic was a wise man for despising them, but a fool for showing it. Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so. [Dublin Castle, Nov. 19, 1745.[27]]

The Passions.—Whenever you would persuade or prevail, address yourself to the passions; it is by them that mankind is to be taken. Cæsar bade his soldiers, at the battle of Pharsalia, aim at the faces of Pompey’s men; they did so, and prevailed. I bid you strike at the passions; and if you do, you, too, will prevail. If you can once engage people’s pride, love, pity, ambition (or whichever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you. [Same date.]

My Dear Boy:—

“Sunt quibus in Satirâ videar nimis acer.”

I find, sir, you are one of those; though I cannot imagine why you think so, unless something that I have said, very innocently, has happened to be very applicable to somebody or other of your acquaintance. He makes the satire, who applies it, qui capit ille facit. I hope you do not think I meant you, by anything I have said; because, if you do, it seems to imply a consciousness of some guilt, which I dare not presume to suppose, in your case. I know my duty too well, to express, and your merit too well to entertain, such a suspicion. I have not lately read the satirical authors you mention, having very little time here to read. [Dublin, February, 1746.]

Inattention.—There is no surer sign in the world of a little, weak mind, than inattention. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention. It is the sure answer of a fool, when you ask him about anything that was said or done where he was present, that “truly he did not mind it.” And why did not the fool mind it? What had he else to do there, but to mind what was doing? A man of sense sees, hears, and retains everything that passes where he is. I desire I may never hear you talk of not minding, nor complain, as most fools do, of a treacherous memory. Mind, not only what people say, but how they say it; and, if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look what they will, and their looks frequently discover what their words are calculated to conceal. The most material knowledge of all—I mean the knowledge of the world—is not to be acquired without great attention. [Feb. 26, 1746.]

Women—Classes of Men—Judgment.—Before it is very long, I am of opinion that you will both think and speak more favorably of women than you do now. You seem to think, that, from Eve downward, they have done a great deal of mischief. As for that lady, I give her up to you; but, since her time, history will inform you that men have done much more mischief in the world than women; and, to say the truth, I would not advise you to trust either more than is absolutely necessary. But this I will advise you to, which is, never to attack whole bodies of any kind; for, besides that all general rules have their exceptions, you unnecessarily make yourself a great number of enemies, by attacking a corps collectively. Among women, as among men, there are good as well as bad, and it may be full as many, or more, good than among men. This rule holds as to lawyers, soldiers, parsons, courtiers, citizens, etc. They are all men, subject to the same passions and sentiments, differing only in the manner, according to their several educations; and it would be as imprudent as unjust to attack any of them by the lump. Individuals forgive sometimes; but bodies and societies never do. Many young people think it very genteel and witty to abuse the clergy; in which they are extremely mistaken; since, in my opinion, parsons are very like other men, and neither the better nor the worse for wearing a black gown. All general reflections, upon nations and societies, are the trite, threadbare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to commonplace. Judge of individuals from your own knowledge of them, and not from their sex, profession, or denomination. [April, 1746.]

How to Travel.—I am very well pleased to find that you inform yourself of the particulars of the several places you go through. You do mighty right to see the curiosities in those several places; such as the golden Bull at Frankfort, the tun at Heidelberg, etc. Other travellers see them and talk of them; it is very proper to see them, too; but remember, that seeing is the least material object of, travelling; hearing and knowing are the essential points.[28] [September, 1746. From Bath.]

False Delicacy.—As for the mauvaise honte, I hope you are above it; your figure is like other people’s, I hope you will take care that your dress is so, too. Why, then, should you be ashamed? Why not go into mixed company with as little concern as you would into your own room? [Bath, September.]

The Well Bred Man.—Feels himself firm and easy in all companies; is modest without being bashful, and steady without being impudent; if he is a stranger, he observes, with care, the manners and ways of the people the most esteemed at that place, and conforms to them with complaisance. Instead of finding fault with the customs of that place, and telling the people that the English ones are a thousand times better (as my countrymen are very apt to do), he commends their table, their dress, their houses, and their manners, a little more, it may be, than he really thinks they deserve. But this degree of complaisance is neither criminal nor abject; and is but a small price to pay for the good-will and affection of the people you converse with. As the generality of people are weak enough to be pleased with these little things, those who refuse to please them, so cheaply, are, in my mind, weaker than they. [Same month, O. S., 1746.]

“L’Art de Plaire.”—There is a very pretty little French book written by L’Abbé de Bellegarde, entitled “L’Art de Plaire dans la Conversation”[29]; and, though I confess that it is impossible to reduce the art of pleasing to a system, yet this principle I will lay down, that the desire of pleasing is at least half the art of doing it; the rest depends only upon the manner, which attention, observation, and frequenting good company will teach. But if you are lazy, careless, and indifferent whether you please or not, depend upon it you never will please. [Same date.]

Chesterfield’s Intention.—Do not think I mean to dictate as a parent; I only mean to advise as a friend, and an indulgent one, too; and do not apprehend that I mean to check your pleasures; of which, on the contrary, I only desire to be the guide, not the censor. Let my experience supply your want of it and clear your way in the progress of your youth of those thorns and briers which scratched and disfigured me in the course of mine. [Bath, Oct. 4, 1746.]

His Son’s Utter Dependence.—I do not, therefore, so much as hint to you how absolutely dependent you are on me—that you neither have nor can have a shilling in the world but from me; and that as I have no womanish weakness for your person, your merit must, and will, be the only measure of my kindness—I say, I do not hint these things to you because I am convinced that you will act right, upon more noble and generous principles; I mean for the sake of doing right, and out of affection and gratitude to me. [Same date.]

No Smattering.—Mr. Pope says, very truly,

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Castalian spring.”

And what is called a smattering of everything infallibly constitutes a coxcomb. I have often, of late, reflected what an unhappy man I must now have been, if I had not acquired in my youth some fund and taste of learning. What could I have done with myself, at this age, without them? I must, as many ignorant people do, have destroyed my health and faculties by setting away the evenings; or, by wasting them frivolously in the tattle of women’s company, must have exposed myself to the ridicule and contempt of those very women; or, lastly, I must have hanged myself, as a man once did, for weariness of putting on and pulling off his shoes and stockings every day. My books, and only my books, are now left me, and I daily find what Cicero says of learning to be true: “Hæc studia” (says he) “adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium, ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.” [October, 1746.]

Foolish Talk.—The conversation of the ignorant is no conversation, and gives even them no pleasure; they tire of their own sterility, and have not matter enough to furnish them with words to keep up a conversation. [Same date.]

World Knowledge.—Do not imagine that the knowledge, which I so much recommend to you, is confined to books, pleasing, useful, and necessary as that knowledge is; but I comprehend in it the great knowledge of the world, still more necessary than that of books. In truth, they assist one another reciprocally; and no man will have either perfectly, who has not both. The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. Books alone will never teach it you; but they will suggest many things to your observation, which might otherwise escape you; and your own observations upon mankind, when compared with those which you will find in books, will help you to fix the true point. [November, 1746.]

Old Fools.—To know mankind well requires full as much attention and application as to know books, and, it may be, more sagacity and discernment. I am, at this time, acquainted with many elderly people, who have all passed their whole lives in the great world, but with such levity and inattention, that they know no more of it now than they did at fifteen. [Same date.]

Introspection.—You must look into people, as well as at them. Almost all people are born with all the passions, to a certain degree; but almost every man has a prevailing one, to which the others are subordinate. Search every one for that ruling passion; pry into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different workings of the same passion in different people. And, when you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him, where that passion is concerned. Work upon him by it, if you please; but be upon your guard yourself against it, whatever professions he may make you. [Same date.]

Young Stanhope’s Character.—In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weakness of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and indifference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Cæsar, “Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.” You seem to want that “vivida vis animi,” which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the desire and attention necessary to please, you never can please. “Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,” is unquestionably true, with regard to everything except poetry. [November, 1746.]

How to Dress.—Take great care always to be dressed like the reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or too much studied. [Same date.]

Absent People.—What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, with whom yesterday he appeared to live in intimacy. He takes no part in the general conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not able to bear above one object at a time; or so affected, that it would be supposed to be wholly engrossed by, and directed to, some very great and important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or six more, since the creation of the world, may have had a right to absence, from that intense thought which the things they were investigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company. [Same date.]

Insult and Injury.—However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them by your inattention that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. [Same date.]

Flattery.—Most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses; they have their aversions and their likings to such and such things; so that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese (which are common antipathies), or, by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way where you could prevent it, he would, in the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted; and would remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, shows him that he is at least an object of your attention, flatters his vanity, and makes him possibly more your friend than a more important service would have done. With regard to women, attentions still below these are necessary, and, by the custom of the world, in some measure due, according to the laws of good breeding.

His Letters.—My long and frequent letters, which I send you, in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we called messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I will content myself now, as I did then, if some of my present messages do but stick to you.

Employment of Time.—I hope you employ your whole time, which few people do; and that you put every moment to profit of some kind or other. I call company, walking, riding, etc., employing one’s time, and, upon proper occasions, very usefully; but what I cannot forgive in anybody is sauntering, and doing nothing at all with a thing so precious as time, and so irrecoverable when lost. [Dec. 9, O. S., 1746.[30]]

Vulgar Pleasures.—Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name. They often mistake so totally as to imagine that debauchery is pleasure. You must allow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scrapes, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one’s nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body. [March, 1747.]

A Gentleman’s Pleasures.—The true pleasures of a gentleman are, those of the table, but within the bounds of moderation; good company, that is to say, people of merit; moderate play, which amuses without any interested views; and sprightly, gallant conversations with women of fashion and sense.

These are the real pleasures of a gentleman: which occasion neither sickness, shame, nor repentance. Whatever exceeds them becomes low vice, brutal passion, debauchery, and insanity of mind; all of which, far from giving satisfaction, bring on dishonor and disgrace. Adieu. [Same date.]

Virtue and Gold.—Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value; but if they are not polished they certainly lose a great deal of their lustre; and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. What a number of sins does the cheerful, easy, good breeding of the French frequently cover? Many of them want common sense, many more common learning; but, in general, they make up so much by their manner for those defects, that frequently they pass undiscovered. I have often said, and do think, that a Frenchman, who, with a fund of virtue, learning, and good sense, has the manners and good breeding of his country, is the perfection of human nature. [Same date.]

Pleasure.—Do not think that I mean to snarl at pleasure like a stoic, or to preach against it like a parson; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it like an epicurean; I wish you a great deal, and my only view is to hinder you from mistaking it. [March 6, 1747.]

Goodness.—You know what virtue is; you may have it if you will; it is in every man’s power, and miserable is the man who has it not. [Same date.]

The Man of Pleasure.—The character which most young men first aim at is that of a man of pleasure; but they generally take it upon trust; and, instead of consulting their own taste and inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever those with whom they chiefly converse are pleased to call by the name of pleasure; and a man of pleasure, in the vulgar acceptation of that phrase, means only a beastly drunkard, an abandoned whoremaster, and a profligate swearer and curser. As it may be of use to you, I am not unwilling, though at the same time ashamed, to own that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my silly resolution of being what I heard called a man of pleasure, than from my own inclinations. I always naturally hated drinking; and yet I have often drunk, with disgust at the time, attended by great sickness the next day, only because I then considered drinking as a necessary qualification for a fine gentleman and a man of pleasure. [March 27, 1747.]

Gambling.—The same as to gaming. I did not want money, and consequently had no occasion to play for it; but I thought play another necessary ingredient in the composition of a man of pleasure, and accordingly I plunged into it, without desire at first; sacrificed a thousand real pleasures to it; and made myself solidly uneasy by it for thirty the best years of my life.

I was even absurd enough, for a little while, to swear, by way of adorning and completing the shining character which I affected; but this folly I soon laid aside upon finding both the guilt and the indecency of it.

Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleasures, I lost real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution shattered, are, I must confess, the just punishment of my errors.

Take warning then by them; choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. Follow nature, and not fashion; weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common-sense determine your choice. [Same date.]

A Life of Real Pleasure.—Were I to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginary pleasure. I would enjoy the pleasures of the table and of wine; but stop short of the pains inseparably annexed to an excess in either. I would not, at twenty years, be a preaching missionary of abstemiousness and sobriety; and I should let other people do as they would, without formally and sententiously rebuking them for it; but I would be most firmly resolved not to destroy my own faculties and constitution, in complaisance to those who have no regard to their own. I would play to give me pleasure, but not to give me pain; that is, I would play for trifles, in mixed companies, to amuse myself, and conform to custom; but I would take care not to venture for sums which, if I won, I should not be the better for; but which, if I lost, I should deeply regret. [Same date.]

Coarse and Vulgar Pleasures.—Does good company care to have a man reeling drunk among them? Or to see another tearing his hair and blaspheming, for having lost at play more than he is able to pay? Or a whoremaster with half a nose, and crippled by coarse and infamous debauchery? No; those who practise, and much more those who brag of them, make no part of good company; and are most unwillingly, if ever, admitted into it.

Fashionable Vices.—A real man of fashion and pleasure observes decency; at least, neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy, and secrecy. I have not mentioned the pleasures of the mind (which are the solid and permanent ones), because they do not come under the head of what people commonly call pleasures; which they seem to confine to the senses. The pleasure of virtue, of charity, and of learning is true and lasting pleasure; which I hope you will be well and long acquainted with. Adieu! [March, 1747.]

A Fine Edition.—If I am rightly informed, I am now writing to a fine gentleman, in a scarlet coat laced with gold, a brocade waistcoat, and all other suitable ornaments. The natural partiality of every author for his own works, makes me very glad to hear that Mr. Harte has thought this last edition of mine worth so fine a binding; and, as he has bound it in red, and gilt it upon the back, I hope he will take care that it shall be lettered too. A showish binding attracts the eyes, and engages the attention of everybody; but with this difference, that women, and men who are like women, mind the binding more than the book, whereas men of sense and learning immediately examine the inside, and, if they find that it does not answer the finery on the outside, they throw it by with the greater indignation and contempt. I hope that when this edition of my works shall be opened and read, the best judges will find connection, consistency, solidity, and spirit in it. Mr. Harte may recensere and emendare as much as he pleases; but it will be to little purpose if you do not co-operate with him. The work will be imperfect. [April 3, O. S., 1747.]

Two Kinds of Salt.—Swiss salt is, I dare say, very good, yet I am apt to suspect it falls a little short of the true Attic salt, in which there was a peculiar quickness and delicacy. The same Attic salt seasoned all Greece; a great deal of it was exported afterwards to Rome, where it was counterfeited by a composition called urbanity, which, in some time, was brought to very near the perfection of the original Attic salt. The more you are powdered with these two kinds of salt the better you will keep, and the more you will be relished. [April, 1747.]

One Thing at a Time.—If at a ball, a supper, or a party of pleasure, a man were to be solving, in his own mind, a problem in Euclid, he would be a very bad companion, and make a very poor figure in that company; or if, in studying a problem in his closet, he were to think of a minuet, I am apt to believe that he would make a very poor mathematician. There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. [Same date.]

Letter Writing.—The best models[31] that you can form yourself upon, are Cicero, Cardinal d’Ossat, Madame Sevigné, and Comte Bussy Rabutin. Cicero’s epistles to Atticus and to his familiar friends are the best examples that you can imitate, in the friendly and the familiar style. The simplicity and clearness of Cardinal d’Ossat’s letters show how letters of business ought to be written; no affected turns, no attempt at wit, obscure or perplex his matter; which is always plainly and clearly stated, as business always should be. For gay and amusing letters, for enjouement and badinage, there are none that equal Comte Bussy’s and Madame Sevigné’s. They are so natural, they seem to be the extempore conversations of two people of wit, rather than letters; which are commonly studied, though they ought not to be so. I would advise you to let that book be one in your itinerant library. [July 20, 1747.]

Personal Cleanliness.—As you must attend to your manners, so you must not neglect your person; but take care to be very clean, well dressed, and genteel; to have no disagreeable attitudes, nor awkward tricks; which many people use themselves to, and then cannot leave them off. Do you take care to keep your teeth very clean, by washing them constantly every morning, and after every meal? This is very necessary, both to preserve your teeth a great while, and to save you a great deal of pain. Mine have plagued me long, and are now falling out, merely for want of care when I was of your age. Do you dress well, and not too well? Do you consider your air and manner of presenting yourself enough, and not too much? neither negligent nor stiff. All these things deserve a degree of care, a second-rate attention; they give an additional lustre to real merit. My Lord Bacon says that a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation. It is certainly an agreeable forerunner of merit and smooths the way for it. [July 30, 1747.]

Truth.—Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it. It is, therefore, as unjust to persecute as it is absurd to ridicule people for those several opinions which they cannot help entertaining upon the conviction of their reason. [Same date.]

Lying.—I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later. If I tell a malicious lie, in order to affect any man’s fortune or character, I may indeed injure him for some time; but I shall be sure to be the greatest sufferer myself at last; for as soon as ever I am detected (and detected I most certainly shall be), I am blasted for the infamous attempt; and whatever is said afterward, to the disadvantage of that person, however true, passes for calumny. If I lie, or equivocate, for it is the same thing, in order to excuse myself for something that I have said or done, and to avoid the danger or the shame that I apprehend from it, I discover at once my fear, as well as my falsehood; and only increase instead of avoiding the danger and the shame; I show myself to be the lowest and the meanest of mankind, and am sure to be always treated as such. Fear, instead of avoiding, invites danger; for concealed cowards will insult known ones. If one has had the misfortune to be in the wrong, there is something noble in frankly owning it; it is the only way of atoning for it, and the only way of being forgiven. Equivocating, evading, shuffling, in order to remove a present danger or inconveniency, is something so mean, and betrays so much fear, that whoever practises them always deserves to be, and often will be, kicked. There is another sort of lies, inoffensive enough in themselves, but wonderfully ridiculous; I mean those lies which a mistaken vanity suggests, that defeat the very end for which they are calculated, and terminate in the humiliation and confusion of their author, who is sure to be detected. These are chiefly narrative and historical lies, all intended to do infinite honor to their author. He is always the hero of his own romances; he has been in dangers from which nobody but himself ever escaped; he has seen with his own eyes whatever other people have heard or read of; he has had more bonnes fortunes than ever he knew women; and has ridden more miles post, in one day, than ever courier went in two. He is soon discovered, and as soon becomes the object of universal contempt and ridicule. Remember, then, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded. It is not only your duty, but your interest; as a proof of which you may always observe that the greatest fools are the greatest liars. For my own part, I judge of every man’s truth by his degree of understanding. [Sept. 21, 1747.]

Perception of Character.—Search, therefore, with the greatest care into the characters of all those whom you converse with; endeavor to discover their predominant passions, their prevailing weaknesses, their vanities, their follies, and their humors; with all the right and wrong, wise and silly springs of human actions, which make such inconsistent and whimsical beings of us rational creatures. A moderate share of penetration, with great attention, will infallibly make these necessary discoveries. This is the true knowledge of the world; and the world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one’s self to be acquainted with it. The scholar, who in the dust of his closet talks or writes of the world, knows no more of it than that orator did of war, who judiciously endeavored to instruct Hannibal in it. Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in. [Oct. 2, 1747.]

Good Breeding.—Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at. A conformity and flexibility of manners is necessary in the course of the world; that is, with regard to all things which are not wrong in themselves. The versatile ingenium is the most useful of all. It can turn itself instantly from one object to another, assuming the proper manner for each. It can be serious with the grave, cheerful with the gay, and trifling with the frivolous. Endeavor, by all means, to accommodate this talent, for it is a very great one. [Same date.]

Self-Love.—Do not let your vanity and self-love make you suppose that people become your friends at first sight, or even upon a short acquaintance. Real friendship is a slow grower, and never thrives unless ingrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit. There is another kind of nominal friendship, among young people, which is warm for the time, but, by good luck, of short duration. This friendship is hastily produced, by their being accidentally thrown together, and pursuing the same course of riot and debauchery. A fine friendship, truly! and well cemented by drunkenness and lewdness. It should rather be called a conspiracy against morals and good manners, and be punished as such by the civil magistrate. The next thing to the choice of your friends is the choice of your company. Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you. There you rise as much as you sink with people below you; for, as I mentioned before, you are whatever the company you keep is. Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them. [Oct. 9, 1747.]

Good Company.—There are two sorts of good company; one, which is called the beau monde, and consists of those people who have the lead in courts, and in the gay part of life; the other consists of those who are distinguished by some peculiar merit, or who excel in some particular and valuable art or science. For my own part, I used to think myself in company as much above me, when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope, as if I had been with all the princes in Europe. What I mean by low company, which should by all means be avoided, is the company of those, who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think they are honored by being in your company, and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them. The pride of being the first of the company is but too common; but it is very silly, and very prejudicial. Nothing in the world lets down a character more than that wrong turn.

You may possibly ask me, whether a man has it always in his power to get into the best company? and how? I say, yes, he has, by deserving it; provided he is but in circumstances which enable him to appear upon the footing of a gentleman. Merit and good breeding will make their way everywhere. Knowledge will introduce him, and good breeding will endear him to the best companies; for, as I have often told you, politeness and good breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatsoever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable. [Same date.]

Local Propriety.—Remember that there is a local propriety to be observed in all companies; and that what is extremely proper in one company may be, and often is, highly improper in another. [Same date.]

The jokes, the bon mots, the little adventures, which may do very well in one company, will seem flat and tedious, when related in another. The particular characters, the habits, the cant of one company may give merit to a word, or a gesture, which would have none at all if divested of those accidental circumstances. Here people very commonly err; and, fond of something that has entertained them in one company, and in certain circumstances, repeat it with emphasis in another, where it is either insipid, or, it may be, offensive, by being ill-timed or misplaced.

Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to follow. Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough, to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking that she must, in some degree, be conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends for it. If her figure is deformed, her face, she thinks, counterbalances it. If they are both bad, she comforts herself that she has graces; a certain manner; a je ne sçais quoi, still more engaging than beauty. This truth is evident, from the studied and elaborate dress of the ugliest women in the world. An undoubted, uncontested, conscious beauty is, of all women, the least sensible of flattery upon that head; she knows it is her due, and is therefore obliged to nobody for giving it her. She must be flattered upon her understanding; which, though she may possibly not doubt of herself, yet she suspects that men may distrust. [Oct. 16, 1747.]

There are a great many people, who think themselves employed all day, and who, if they were to cast up their accounts at night, would find that they had done just nothing. They have read two or three hours, mechanically, without attending to what they read, and, consequently, without either retaining it, or reasoning upon it. From thence they saunter into company, without taking any part in it, and without observing the characters of the persons, or the subjects of the conversation; but are either thinking of some trifle, foreign to the present purpose, or, often, not thinking at all; which silly and idle suspension of thought they would dignify with the name of absence and distraction. They go afterwards, it may be, to the play, where they gape at the company and the lights; but without minding the very thing they went to, the play. [Oct. 30, 1747.]

Action! Action!—Remember the hoc age; do what you are about, be that what it will; it is either worth doing well, or not at all. Wherever you are, have (as the low, vulgar expression is) your ears and eyes about you. Listen to everything that is said, and see everything that is done. Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth, than from what they say. [Same date.]

Value of Time.—I knew, once, a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used frequently to say: “Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves.” This was a just and sensible reflection in a miser. I recommend to you to take care of the minutes; for hours will take care of themselves. I am very sure that many people lose two or three hours every day, by not taking care of the minutes. Never think any portion of time, whatsoever, too short to be employed; something or other may always be done in it. [Nov. 6, 1747.]

Young People.—The young leading the young is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.” The only sure guide is he who has often gone the road which you want to go. Let me be that guide; who have gone all roads; and who can consequently point out to you the best. If you ask me why I went any of the bad roads myself? I will answer you, very truly, that it was for want of a good guide; ill example invited me one way, and a good guide was wanting, to show me a better. But if anybody, capable of advising me, had taken the same pains with me, which I have taken, and will continue to take with you, I should have avoided many follies and inconveniences, which undirected youth ran me into. My father was neither desirous nor able to advise me; which is what, I hope, you cannot say of yours. [Nov. 24, 1747.]

From Home.—I send you, by a person who sets out this day for Leipsic, a small packet from your mamma, containing some valuable things which you left behind; to which I have added, by way of New Year’s gift, a very pretty toothpick case; and, by the way, pray take great care of your teeth, and keep them extremely clean. I have likewise sent you the Greek roots, lately translated into English from the French of the Port Royal. Inform yourself what the Port Royal is. To conclude with a quibble: I hope you will not only feed upon these Greek roots, but likewise digest them perfectly. Adieu. [Same date.]

Time.—There is nothing which I more wish that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in everybody’s mouth; but in few people’s practice. Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time. The sundials, likewise, all over Europe, have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders away their time without hearing and seeing, daily, how necessary it is to employ it well, and how irrecoverable it is if lost. But all these admonitions are useless, where there is not a fund of good sense and reason to suggest them, rather than receive them. By the manner in which you now tell me that you employ your time, I flatter myself that you have that fund: that is the fund which will make you rich indeed. I do not, therefore, mean to give you a critical essay upon the use and abuse of time; I will only give you some hints, with regards to the use of one particular period of that long time which, I hope, you have before you; I mean, the next two years. Remember then, that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe. [Dec. 11, 1747.]

Knowledge.—Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old. [Same date.]

A Classical Student.—I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, read them first, and then sent them down a sacrifice to Cloacina; this was so much time fairly gained. [Same date.]

Young Stanhope.—Hitherto I have discovered nothing wrong in your heart, or your head; on the contrary, I think I see sense in the one, and sentiments in the other. This persuasion is the only motive of my present affection; which will either increase or diminish, according to your merit or demerit. If you have the knowledge, the honor, and the probity which you may have, the marks and warmth of my affection shall amply reward them. [Dec. 18, 1747.]

Fashionable Ladies.—The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men’s company, can only be acquired in women’s. [Dec. 29, 1747.]

Talent and Breeding.—Remember always, what I have told you a thousand times, that all the talents in the world will want all their lustre, and some part of their use too, if they are not adorned with that easy good breeding, that engaging manner, and those graces which seduce and prepossess people in your favor at first sight. A proper care of your person is by no means to be neglected; always extremely clean; upon proper occasions, fine. Your carriage genteel, and your motions graceful. Take particular care of your manner and address, when you present yourself in company. Let them be respectful without meanness, easy without too much familiarity, genteel without affectation, and insinuating without any seeming art or design. [Same date.]

Polish.—Now, though I would not recommend to you to go into woman’s company in search of solid knowledge or judgment, yet it has its use in other respects; for it certainly polishes the manners, and gives une certaine tournure, which is very necessary in the course of the world; and which Englishmen have generally less of than any people in the world. [Jan. 2, 1748.]

A Good Supper.—I cannot say that your suppers are luxurious, but you must own they are solid; and a quart of soup, and two pounds of potatoes, will enable you to pass the night without great impatience for your breakfast next morning. One part of your supper (the potatoes) is the constant diet of my old friends and countrymen, the Irish, who are the healthiest and the strongest men that I know in Europe. [Same date.]

A Greek Professor.—Since you do not care to be an assessor of the Imperial Chamber, and desire an establishment in England; what do you think of being Greek professor at one of our universities? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little knowledge (much less than, I hope, you have already) of that language. [Jan. 15, 1748.]

A Politician.—Mr. Harte tells me that you set up for a πολιτικὸς ανὴρ; if so, I presume it is in the view of succeeding me in my office; which I will very willingly resign to you, whenever you shall call upon me for it. But, if you intend to be the πολιτικὸς ανὴρ, or the βεληφόρος ανὴρ, there are some trifling circumstances, upon which you should previously take your resolution. The first of which is, to be fit for it; and then, in order to be so, make yourself master of ancient and modern history and languages. To know perfectly the constitution, and form of government of every nation; the growth and decline of ancient and modern empires; and to trace out and reflect upon the causes of both. To know the strength, the riches, and the commerce of every country. These little things, trifling as they may seem, are yet very necessary for a politician to know; and which therefore, I presume, you will condescend to apply yourself to. There are some additional qualifications necessary, in the practical part of business, which may deserve some consideration in your leisure moments; such as an absolute command of your temper, so as not to be provoked to passion, upon any account: patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.

Three mails are now due from Holland, so that I have no letters from you to acknowledge. I therefore conclude with recommending myself to your favor and protection when you succeed. [Same date.]

Congealed Speech.—I find by Mr. Harte’s last letter, that many of my letters to you and him have been frozen up in their way to Leipsic; the thaw has, I suppose, by this time set them at liberty to pursue their journey to you, and you will receive a glut of them at once. Hudibras alludes, in this verse,

“Like words congeal’d in northern air,”

to a vulgar notion, that in Greenland words were frozen in their utterance, and that upon a thaw a very mixed conversation was heard in the air of all those words set at liberty. [Jan. 29, 1748.]

Political Ignorance of the English.—We are in general in England ignorant of foreign affairs and of the interests, views, pretensions, and policy of other courts. That part of knowledge never enters into our thoughts, nor makes part of our education; for which reason we have fewer proper subjects for foreign commissions than any other country in Europe; and, when foreign affairs happen to be debated in Parliament, it is incredible with how much ignorance. The harvest of foreign affairs being then so great, and the laborers so few, if you make yourself master of them, you will make yourself necessary: first as a foreign, and then as a domestic minister for that department. [Feb. 9, 1748.]