^ 
 
 
 o 
 
 7=*
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD 
 
 (Philip Dormer Stanhope).
 
 LETTERS, SENTENCES * 
 ^ * * AND MAXIMS 
 
 By LORD CHESTERFIELD 
 
 WITH A PREFATORY NOTE BY CHARLES SAYLE 
 
 AND A CRITICAL ESSAY BY C. A. SAINTE- 
 
 BEUVE, DE L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE 
 
 "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; 
 Drink deep, or taste not the Castalian spring." 
 
 POPE. 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 NEW YORK * *
 
 "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 at- 
 tractive than the style in which they are set before their read- 
 ers." Quarterly Review, vol. Ixxvi., 1845. 
 
 "Lord Chesterfield's letters are, I will venture to say, mas- 
 terpieces of good taste, good writing, and good sense." JOHN 
 WILSON CROKEK, 1846. 
 
 2073837
 
 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 after- 
 ward respected and admired ; the first man to intn> 
 duce 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 pub- 
 lished 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 defi- 
 
 5
 
 6 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 cient 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. "Dis- 
 similation 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.* 
 
 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 nega- 
 tive kind, for he had, if anything, an avowed dislike 
 
 * The greatest English writer of the present day thus sums 
 up the eighteenth century: "An age of which Hoadly was 
 the bishop, and Walpole the minister, and Pope the poet, and 
 Chesterfield the wit, and Tillotson the ruling doctor." Nevr- 
 man, Essays Critical and Historical, i. 388.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 7 
 
 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 dis- 
 grace 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 de- 
 bauchery 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;
 
 8 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 "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 
 metis 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 ter- 
 minated by the total defeat of a few tea-cups on both sides."* 
 
 He only stayed in Cambridge two years, and then 
 travelled abroad to Flanders and Holland. He had 
 
 * For another, very different, view of the life and studies at 
 Cambridge at the time, see the Life of Ambrose Bonwicke 
 (1694-1714).
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 9 
 
 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 mqnths 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 dis- 
 courtesy, objected to others accepting it. He wrote
 
 10 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 / 
 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 rai'sed 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. Believ- 
 ing 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 opposi- 
 tion 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
 
 PREFATORY NOTE.^ 11 
 
 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 taxa- 
 tion 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
 
 13 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 attacked. Chesterfield, with the rest of the Patriots, 
 and with the country behind them, fought hard, and 
 the Bill was dropped (nth 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 audi- 
 ence at Court, obtained it, and was snubbed. Of 
 course he left it immediately. 
 
 We could have wished perhaps that Lord Chester- 
 field's affection and character had prevented him 
 from falling especially so soon after the affair at 
 The Hague into so unpraiseworthy an undertak- 
 ing as a manage 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
 
 PKEFATORY NOTE. 13 
 
 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 Chester- 
 field'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.
 
 14 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 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 predic- 
 tions, 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 (Pas- 
 quin*) the author thought fit to represent the three 
 great professions, religion, physic, and law as incon- 
 sistent with common sense; in another (King 
 Charles the Firstf), 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 
 
 * ["Pasquin. A Dramatic Satire on the Times, by Henry 
 Fielding. Acted at the Haymarket, 1736; 1740." (Baker.) ] 
 
 t [" King Charles I. Hist Tr. by W. Havard, 1737." 
 (Ibid.).]
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 15 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly 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,
 
 16 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 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.' "* 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 oppo- 
 sition which Has been characterized as "more fac- 
 tious 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 Cfarteret] fain you'd sing, 
 Indeed he's nearest to the king, 
 Yet careless how to use him, 
 
 * Chesterfield says he had been accustomed to read and 
 translate the great masterpieces to improve and form his style. 
 His indebtedness to Milton in his Areopagitica in the above 
 passage is obvious.
 
 \ 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 17. 
 
 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 ECarl] 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
 
 18 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 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 ' 1 the champion of Roman Cath- 
 olic agitators ; but to hold the balance even between 
 both; to protect the Establishment, yet never wound 
 religious liberty; to repress the lawlessness, yet not
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 19 
 
 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 states- 
 man should strive for, and fit only for the ablest to 
 attain! 'I came determined,' writes Chesterfield 
 many years afterward, 'to proscribe no set of per- 
 sons 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 sc tied 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
 
 20 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 21 
 
 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.* 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 observ- 
 ant eye on the course of events. But he was thor- 
 oughly 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 mart magno, 
 &c. I enjoy my own security and tranquillity, together with 
 
 * See Letter CCXV., also CCXII.
 
 S3 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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." (Let- 
 ter 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 Chester- 
 field'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
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 23 
 
 Hcnriade. Chesterfield and Bolingbroke at once 
 took him up and introduced him into high places.* 
 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 Vol- 
 taire'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 moral- 
 ity, 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 
 
 * It is just possible, though I have nowhere seen it affirmed, 
 that Voltaire and Chesterfield may have met, still earlier, in 
 Holland. For in 1713 they were both there. Their attainments 
 there were all but parallel, Voltaire succumbing to a fatal pas- 
 sion in 1713, which did not, to our knowledge, overtake Ches- 
 terfield till his second visit in 1729.
 
 24 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 berore 
 
 "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 obliga-
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 25 
 
 tion 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 lord- 
 ship's most humble and most obedient servant, \ 
 
 "SAMUEL JOHNSON." I 
 
 Such a transaction is but little to the praise of Lord 
 Chesterfield, who would have posed as the Maecenas 
 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 melan- 
 choly 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
 
 26 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge 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, fol- 
 lowed 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
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 87 
 
 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 head- 
 aches.) "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,* and 
 Turin afterward, as there was to be found the next 
 
 * He must just have escaped traveling from Leipzig to Ber- 
 lin with Lessing. Both took the journey in February, 1749.
 
 28 "CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 debut. There must 
 have been a strange measuring up of qualities when 
 father and son met. At twenty-two Lord Chester- 
 field 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 1/63 he obtained a post at Ratisbon, whence he 
 was once summoned to vote in the English Parlia- 
 ment 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
 
 PEEFATOEY NOTE. 29 
 
 returned, and he died on the lyth 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 charac- 
 teristic 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 illegiti- 
 mate son only two years before he left them forever. 
 
 Here my biographical notice of the three genera- 
 tions 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 Chester- 
 field. 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 how-
 
 30 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ever 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 criti- 
 cisms 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 Ches- 
 terfield shares this distinction with other writers, 
 But his letters are noteworthy for more than this. 
 They combine with it a complete system of educa- 
 tion, a system which was thought out without oppo- 
 sition 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
 
 PKEFATORY NOTE. 81 
 
 these letters are not exceeded in style by anything 
 in the language.* 
 
 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 OMciis 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 Delia 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 Bruyere. 
 In England had just appeared Locke's Essay on 
 Education, and this he sends for his son 
 to read.t In 1759 Lessing and Wieland were writ- 
 ing on the same subject; and in 1762 Rousseau 
 published Emilc. 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 
 
 * For bis fine sense of the quality of words witness : "An 
 unharmqnious and rugged period at this time shocks my ears, 
 and I, like all the rest of the world, will willingly exchange 
 and give up some degree of rough sense for a good degree 
 of pleasing sound." 
 
 t Characteristically, no mention is made of Shaftesbury nor 
 of Hutcheson.
 
 32 CHESTEBFIELD'S LETTEKS. 
 
 good qualities of both nationalities the ideal states^ 
 man 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 Lon- 
 don; 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
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 33 
 
 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 descrip- 
 tions : 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 reflec- 
 tions." "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 DC 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
 
 34 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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." I) 
 "It is an active, cheerful, seducing good-breeding 
 which must gain you the good-will and first senti- 
 ments 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 imperti- 
 nent 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 kno\v all the facts of his 
 life, and we have here his opinions on nearly every 
 matter. His opinions are as concise as they are out- 
 spoken. "The best of us have had our bad sides, 
 and it is as imprudent as it is ill-bred to exhibit 
 them/'* 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 
 
 * Cf. Sir Walter Raleigh's "Every Man's Folly ought to be 
 his greatest secret." (Instructions to his Son.)
 
 PREFATORY NOTR 35 
 
 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 dis- 
 advantage 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 con- 
 fess, is all sense, and therefore I like him better than
 
 36 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 some- 
 thing of a quietism of his own. "Let them enjoy 
 quietly their errors," he says somewhere, "both in 
 taste and religion."* 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 
 
 * "A wise Atheist (if such a thing there is) would, for his 
 own interest and character in the world, pretend to some re- 
 Jigion." Letter CLXXX.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 37 
 
 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 crit- 
 icism 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 pulpit- 
 ically. It is ever as a wise counsellor : and his tend- 
 ency 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
 
 38 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 of the country, of the rustic home and the carpen- 
 ter's shop: in the other we are stifled by the per- 
 fumes 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 fr' an enthusiastic 
 dreamer, and the other is a cold, practical experi- 
 ment by a man of the world, and "an imperfect man 
 of action, whom politics had made a perfect moral- 
 ist," there is the same verdict of failure to be pro- 
 nounced 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 char- 
 nel-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
 
 PEEFATORY KOTE. 39 
 
 to have considered what an infliction he was casting 
 upon his son, and respected the feelings of others ra- 
 ther than his own ambition. He has reaped tbe har- 
 vest 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 disal- 
 lowed. 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 disap- 
 pointed his father. When his widow, with her two 
 children, walked up the hall of Chesterfield House, 
 where the Earl sat alone in solitary childless grand- 
 eur, 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
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 Chester- 
 field's life is characteristic of his time. 
 
 Chesterfield, if we may make one more compar- 
 ison, is like one of those great trees that we see upon 
 the banks of a river, which, while drawing its nur- 
 ture 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 natu- 
 ral 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.*- 
 
 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 Ches- 
 terfield wrote to his son, and which contain a whole 
 school of savoir vivre and worldly science, are inter- 
 esting 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, sud- 
 
 * In this Essay, by the late M. Sainte-Beuve, nothing has 
 been altered, although, in one or two places, even his critical 
 acuteness seems to have missed its point. 
 
 41
 
 1Z CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 denly 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 Chester- 
 field 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 Memoires of the 
 Chevalier de Grammont and Telemaque. 
 
 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; neverthe- 
 less, it was difficult for him not to laugh at genea- 
 logical pretensions when carried too far. To keep
 
 GKITICAL ESSAY. 43 
 
 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 Stan- 
 hope." Thus, while upholding the honor of race, 
 he put his veto upon chimerical va.T,ies arising 
 from it. 
 
 His father paid no attention whatever to his edu- 
 cation; he was placed under the care of his grand- 
 mother, 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 van- 
 ity 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 him- 
 self from it, and by that means compromised his 
 fortune for years. "Take warning; by my conduct/'
 
 44 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 Fon- 
 tenelle 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 per- 
 son 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 an
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY. 45 
 
 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, satir- 
 ical, 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 entree into good society, still cov- 
 ered 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, Ches- 
 terfield hailed the accession of the house of Han- 
 over, of which he became an avowed champion. He 
 had at first a seat in the House of Commons, and
 
 46 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 made his debut there with fair credit. But a circum- 
 stance, in appearance frivolous, kept him, it is said, 
 in check, and in some measure paralyzed his elo- 
 quence. One of the members of the House, who 
 was distinguished by no talent of a superior order, 
 had that of imitating and counterfeiting to perfec- 
 tion 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 grving occasion for the exer- 
 cise 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, per- 
 haps, a better setting for the grace, finish, and 
 urbanity of his eloquence. He found no comparison 
 between the two scenes with regard to the import- 
 ance 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."
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY, 47 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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 Caro- 
 line 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.
 
 48 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 Thrown with eclat 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 inher- 
 ited 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 Cab- 
 inet (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-sighted- 
 ness 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,
 
 CRITICAL ESSAY. 49 
 
 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 I73 2 > 
 by a French lady (Madame de Bouchet) whom he 
 net in Holland, a natural son to whom he was ten- 
 derly attached. He wrote to this son, in all sincer- 
 ity: "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 affec- 
 tionate 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
 
 50 CHESTEKFIELD'S" LETTEES. 
 
 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 Abbe 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 instruc- 
 tive to me than his observations and his critique." 
 It was Chesterfield who, speaking to Montesquieu 
 one day of the readiness of the French for revolu- 
 tions, and their impatience at slow reforms, spoke 
 this sentence, which is a resume of our whole his- 
 tory: "You French know how to make barricades, 
 but you never raise barriers." 
 
 Lord Chesterfield certainly appreciated Voltaire; 
 he remarked, a propos of the Siecle 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 tVic Straits, he felt the imprudences of Vol- 
 taire, and disapproved of them. When he was old,
 
 CRITICAL ESSAY. 51 
 
 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 care- 
 fully to suppress, for one ought not to disturb estab- 
 lished 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 corre- 
 spondent and a singular confidant in point of moral- 
 ity. 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 Chester- 
 field to Crebillon, "is his desire to propagate a doc- 
 trine 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
 
 52 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 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 incon- 
 sistency, 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 Ches- 
 terfield, 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
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY. 53 
 
 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 meanj 
 and meagce intellect in the world than inattention, j 
 All that is worth the trouble of doing at all deserves 
 to be done well, and nothing can be well done with- ; 
 out 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
 
 54 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 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 Cvue' 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 intel- 
 lects. 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 find- 
 ing 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 light- 
 ning, that makes the Achilles, the Alexanders, and
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY. 55 
 
 the Caesars to be the first in every undertaking, this 
 motto of noble hearts and of C linent 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 dra- 
 matic interest; we follow the efforts of a fine dis- 
 tinguished, 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 mas- 
 terpiece 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 excel- 
 lent master, as patient as he is full of vigor, lavish 
 in resources and skill, never discouraged, untiring
 
 56 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 suc- 
 ceeded 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 insig- 
 nificant 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,* we see that he had 
 
 * This is no longer a conjecture, but a certainty, after what 
 I read in the edition of Lord Chesterfield's Letters, published 
 in London by Lord Mahon in 1847 (4 vols.). See vol. iii., page
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY. 57 
 
 thought of sending him to France from his child- 
 hood. 
 
 "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 ringers' 
 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 unpol- 
 ished, 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 
 
 159. I was not acquainted with this edition when I wrote my 
 article. C. DE S. B.
 
 58 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 debut 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 atten- 
 tive oi fathers for his success and well-being upon 
 this novel scene. The young man is placed at the 
 Academy with M. de la Gueriniere ; 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 debut; they are his governantes : Madame de 
 Monconseil, Lady Hervey. and Madame de Bocage.
 
 CRITICAL ESSAY. 59 
 
 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 : 
 
 "II 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 Abbe de Guasco, a sort of toady to 
 Montesquieu, is a useful personage for introduc-
 
 60 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 tions. "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 Presi- 
 dent of Montesquieu, he is in all respects a precious 
 acquaintance : He has genius, with the most exten- 
 sive 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 Roche- 
 foucauld and La Bruyere. "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 
 Bruyere in the morning, and see in the evening if 
 V> portraits are correct." But these guides, excel- 
 lent 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."
 
 CRITICAL ESSAY. 61 
 
 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 
 preat attention, and I know a great many aged per- 
 sons who, after having had an extensive acquain- 
 tance, 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 V 
 some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not t 
 a dominant passion to which the others are subor- 
 dinate. 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 w r ish 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."
 
 62 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 "Women, in general, have only one object, which 
 is their beauty, upon which subject hardly any flat- 
 tery 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 dis- 
 dainful now and then, he makes reparation else- 
 where; 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 neu- 
 trality, even in the case of the knaves and fools 
 with which the world abounds. "After their friend- 
 ship there is nothing more dangerous than to have 
 them for enemies." It is not the morality of Cato
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY. 63 
 
 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 ically 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. 
 
 lx)rd Chesterfield thoroughly appreciated the seri-
 
 64 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ous 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 arid 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, accord- 
 ing 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 suffi- 
 ciently well in himself the advantages of the two 
 nations, with one characteristic which belongs
 
 CEITICAL ESSAY. .65 
 
 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 Ches- 
 terfield ; 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 moral- 
 ists in general. He resembles his friend Mon- 
 tesquieu 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 admir- 
 able 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 re- 
 course to notes. He did not make a second attempt
 
 66 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 at speaking in public. It appears that he succeeded 
 better in diplomacy, in those second-rate places 
 where solid merit is sufficient. He rilled 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 en- 
 tirely retired from the world, on account of his in- 
 firmities, the most painful of which was complete 
 deafness. Montesquieu, whose sight failed, said to 
 him once, "/ 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 re- 
 marked, "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 pleas- 
 ures and without troubles ; my age and deafness pre- 
 vented the first ; my philosophy, or rather my tern-
 
 CRITICAL ESSAY. 67 
 
 perament (for one often confounds them), guar- 
 anteed me against the last. I always get as much 
 as I can of the quiet pleasures of gardening, walk- 
 ing, and reading, and in the meantime / await death 
 without desiring or fearing it" 
 
 He never undertook long works, not feeling him- 
 self sufficiently strong, but he sometimes sent agree- 
 able essays to a periodical publication, The World. 
 These essays are quite worthy of his reputation for 
 skill and urbanity. Nevertheless, nothing ap- 
 proaches the work which was no work to him 1 
 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 bet- 
 ter, wrote to him on the 24th of October, 1771, 
 this pretty letter, signed " Le vieux malade dc 
 Fernev" : 
 
 "Enjoy an honorable and happy old age, after 
 having passed through the trials of life. Enjoy
 
 (68 'CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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
 
 CKITICAL ESSAY. 69 
 
 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,* 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 de- 
 lighted, more than was right, perhaps, in our amia- 
 ble 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 inex- 
 plicable something of imagination and color that 
 bears the impress of his race. 
 
 * This was written in June, 1850.
 
 IORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS, SENTENCES, 
 AND MAXIMS. 
 
 TRAVEL IN HOLLAND. On me dit, Monsieur! 
 que vous vous disposez a voyager, et que vous 
 debutez par la Hollande. De sorte j'ai cru de mon 
 devoir, de vous souhaiter un bon voyage, et des vents 
 favorables. Vous aurez la bonte, j'espere, de me 
 faire part de votre arrivee a la Haye; et si apres 
 cela, dans le cours de vos voyages, vous faites 
 quelques remarques curieuses, vous voudrez bien me 
 les communiquer. 
 
 La Hollande, ou vous allez, est de beaucoup la 
 plus belle, et la plus riche des Sept Provinces-Unies, 
 qui, toutes ensemble, forment la Republique. Les 
 autres sont celles de Gueldres, Zelande, Frise, 
 Utrecht, Groningue, et Over-Yssel. Les Sept Prov- 
 inces composent, ce qu'on appelle les Etats Generaux 
 des Provinces- Unies, et font une Republique tres- 
 puissante, et tres-considerable.* 
 
 * This first letter will form a key to Chesterfield's character. 
 It is partly badinage, and yet contains the elements of his 
 lordship's idea. He has already begun to teach "Mr. Stan- 
 hope," and addresses as Monsieur a child of the mature age 
 of five years. We have purposely omitted other letters, some 
 in Latin, Phillipo Stanhope, adhuc puerulo, which contain 
 merely historical and geographical information fit for a little 
 schoolboy. 
 
 71
 
 y% CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 Translation. I am informed, sir, that you are 
 about to travel, and that you will start with Hol- 
 land. 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, Gron- 
 ingen, and Overyssel; these seven provinces form 
 what is called the States-General of the United 
 Provinces, etc.* 
 
 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 ex- 
 tremely 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. Mait- 
 
 *Lord Chesterfield was, as will be afterwards seen, particu- 
 larly anxious that his son should imbibe political, geographical, 
 and historical knowledge, hence these details to a child of five.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 73 
 
 taire.* 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 bienseance; in 
 Latin, decorum; and in Greek, npinov. Cicero says 
 of it, Sic hoc decorum quod elucet in vita, movet 
 approbationem earum quibuscum vivatur, or dine et 
 constantia, et moderation? 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 appro- 
 bation, without which you will never have mine, I 
 dare say you will mind and give attention to what- 
 ever 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, J/Jp.] 
 
 THE ART OF SPEAKING. You cannot but be con- 
 vinced that a man who speaks and writes with ele- 
 gance 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; 
 * Young Mr, Stanhope's tutor.
 
 74 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 speaks his language ill ; or makes use of low and 
 gar expressions ; and who has neither grace nor ele- 
 gance 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.* 
 
 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 ob- 
 serve 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, 
 
 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, 
 
 * In a previous letter, which has been lost, Chesterfield has 
 been teaching rhetoric to a boy of about seven years old, for, 
 referring to it, he says: "En verite je crois que vous etes le 
 premier garcon a qui, arant I' age dc huit ans, en ait jamais 
 parle des figures de la rhetorique, comme j'ai fait dans ma 
 derniere."
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 75 
 
 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 with- 
 out 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, 
 
 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."
 
 76 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 Take care not to deserve the name of Colas,* 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 ac- 
 cepi, eleganter enim scripta erat, et polliceris te 
 summam operam daturum, ut veras laudes merito 
 adipisci possis. Sed ut plane dicam; valde suspicor 
 te, in ea scribenda, optimum et eruditissimum ad- 
 jutorem habuisse; quo duce et auspice, nee elegantia, 
 nee doctrina, nee quicquid prorsus est dignum 
 sapiente bonoque, unquam tibi deesse poterit. Ilium 
 ergo ut quam diligenter colas, te etiam atque etiam 
 rogo; et quo magis eum omni officio, amore, et ob- 
 sequio persequeris, eo magis te me studiosum, et 
 observantem existimabo.f 
 
 * We learn by a subsequent reference that the little fellow 
 wished not to be called Colas, but Polyglot, from knowing 
 already three or four languages. 
 
 t CAREFUL IMITATION. Philip Chesterfield to his dear little 
 boy Philip Stanhope, wishing health, etc. Your last letter 
 was very grateful to me ; not only was it nicely written, but in 
 it you promise to take great care and to win, deservedly, true 
 praise. But I must say plainly that I much suspect you of 
 having had the help of a good and able master in composing 
 it; and he being your guide and adviser, it will be your own 
 fault if you do not acquire elegancy of style, learning, and all 
 that can make you good and wise. I entreat you, therefore, 
 carefully to imitate so good a pattern ; the more you regard 
 him the more you will love me. LAbout July, 1741.]
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 57, 
 
 r 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 't is 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 teach- 
 ing a child the structure of verse. The citation, a 
 fine one, is from Dryden : 
 
 "When 1 consider life, 't is 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 lib- 
 erty; and it is certain, too, that the love and ap- 
 plause of mankind will always attend a man of emi- 
 nent and distinguished virtue; and, consequently, 
 they are more likely to give up their liberties to such
 
 78 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 com- 
 mendable 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. -79 
 
 in being known always to speak the truth, in show- 
 ing 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 repu- 
 tation 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 forgiv- 
 ing their enemies, and of bestowing marks of favor 
 and generosity upon those of whom they have gotten 
 the better. Adieu !* 
 
 *In the beginning of this letter, which contains a lesson 
 upon Julius Caesar, Chesterfield says : "You know so much 
 more and learn so much better than any boy of your age, that 
 you see I do not treat you like a boy, but write to you on sub- 
 jects fit for men to consider."
 
 BO CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 sub- 
 ject of a romance is sometimes a story entirely fic- 
 titious, 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 read- 
 ing 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 
 Abbe 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 81 
 
 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 jus- 
 tice and good order in society ; and, in general, con- 
 tributes to whatever tends to the real good of man- 
 kind. 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 ac- 
 cidents, 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 con- 
 science 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 es- 
 teemed and respected ; for even the most wicked peo- 
 ple themselves cannot help admiring and respecting 
 virtue in others. A poet says :
 
 82 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 "Ipsa quidem virtus, sibimet pulcherrima merces." * 
 
 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, vir- 
 tue, 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, affabil- 
 ity, and an obliging, agreeable address and manner ; 
 because they feel the good effects of them, as mak- 
 ing society easy and pleasing. 
 
 GOOD BREEDING AND GOOD SENSE. Good sense 
 must, in many cases, determine good breeding; be- 
 cause the same thing that would be civil at one time, 
 and to one person, may be quite otherwise at an- 
 other 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.-] 
 
 * So also Home, 
 
 "Amen! and virtue is its own reward." 
 
 Douglas, Act. iii. Sc. I. 
 And Claudian, quoted by Chesterfield, 
 
 "Ipsa quidem virtus pretium sibi, solaque late 
 Fortunes secura nitet," etc.
 
 SEXTEXCES AND MAXIMS. 83 
 
 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 con- 
 veniences you can to the people you are with. Be- 
 sides 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, 
 manvaise hontc, is the distinguishing character of 
 an English booby ; who is frightened out of his wits
 
 84 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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-mor- 
 row, 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 accomplish- 
 ments, to surpass those youths of your own age, 
 whom hitherto you have surpassed when boys.* 
 May the Almighty preserve you and bestow on you 
 his choicest blessings. 
 
 TRUE RESPECT. The strictest and most scrapu- 
 
 * Written in Latin. Philippus Chesterfield, Phillippo Stan- 
 hope adhuc puerulo, sed eras e pueritia egressuro. S. D. 
 Dated, Kalend, Maii, 1741.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 85 
 
 lous 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 sen- 
 sible people have in their behavior. [May, 
 
 MANNER ABSENCE -AWKWARDNESS ATTEN- 
 TION. However trifling a genteel manner may 
 sound, it is of very great consequence towards pleas- 
 ing in private life, especially the women; which 
 (sic), one time or other, you will think worth pleas- 
 ing; and I have known many a man, from his awk- 
 wardness, give people such a dislike of him at first, 
 that all his merit could not get the better of it after- 
 wards. Whereas a genteel manner prepossesses peo- 
 ple in your favor, bends them to wards you and makes 
 them wish to like you. Awkwardness can proceed 
 but from two causes: either from not having kept
 
 86 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 1 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. Atten- 
 tion 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 fel- 
 low 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 him- 
 self 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 re- 
 covering 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 par- 
 ticularly, as he has more to do; there he holds his 
 knife, fork, and spoon differently from other peo- 
 ple; 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 87 
 
 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 but- 
 tonhole, 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 per- 
 petual motion between his bosom and his breeches; 
 he does not wear his clothes, and, in short, does noth- 
 ing 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 hav-
 
 88 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ing 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 thought- 
 lessness 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.* [Dated Spa, July 
 25, N. S. 1741.} 
 * In the compilation called "Lord Chesterfield's Maxims,"
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 89 
 
 TRUE PRAISE. Laudari a viro laudato was al- 
 ways a commendable ambition; encourage that am- 
 bition 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 awk- 
 ward 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 ; 
 
 wherein part of this letter is given, all the characteristic points 
 are left put. Thus, where Chesterfield reminds his son that 
 manner is of consequence in pleasing, especially the women, 
 the purist has excised the words in italics.
 
 90 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 some people almost shut their mouths when they 
 speak, and mutter so, that they are not to be under- 
 stood ; 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 nec- 
 essary to speak well, that though he naturally stut- 
 tered, and had weak lungs, he resolved, by applica- 
 tion and care, to get the better of those disadvan- 
 tages. Accordingly, he cured his stammering by 
 putting small pebbles into his mouth; and strength- 
 ened 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 91 
 
 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, 1/41.] 
 
 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 Caesar, who had a noble thirst of glory, used 
 to say that he would rather be the first in a village
 
 92 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 than the second in Rome ; and he even cried when he 
 saw the statue of Alexander the Great, with the re- 
 flection 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,* 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 cere- 
 mony ; but in an easy, civil, and respectful behavior. 
 You will therefore take care to answer with com- 
 plaisance, when you are spoken to ; to place yourself 
 at the lower end of the table, unless bid to go higher ; 
 
 * His Lordship's badinage, or it may be sarcasm, which the 
 little boy quickly perceived.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 93 
 
 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 /<?.] 
 
 THE RESULTS OF CARELESSNESS. To this os- 
 citancy we owe so many mistakes, hiatus's (sic), 
 lacunae, 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 ob- 
 ject; for the faster they wrote the more they got; 
 in the latter case (observe this), as it was a task im-
 
 94 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 posed 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 num- 
 ber of these transcribing slaves, and got great sums 
 of money by their labors. [November, 1745.] 
 
 GREEK EPIGRAMS. I hope you will keep com- 
 pany 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 recom- 
 mend 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 fool-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 95 
 
 ish 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 dis- 
 paragement 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 be- 
 tween 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 com- 
 plied 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. ip, 1745.*] 
 
 THE PASSIONS. Whenever you would persuade 
 or prevail, address yourself to the passions; it is by 
 them that mankind is to be taken. Caesar 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 prevail- 
 ing passion) on your side, you need not fear what 
 their reason can do against you. [Same date.'] 
 * His lordship was then Viceroy of Ireland.
 
 96 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 MY DEAR BOY : 
 
 "Sunt quibus in Satira 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 acquain- 
 tance. 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 littk 
 time here to read. [Dublin, February, 1746.1 
 
 I INATTENTION. There is no surer sign in the 1 
 
 /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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 97 
 
 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 sagac- 
 ity, 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 fre- 
 quently 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 ac- 
 quired without great attention. [Feb. 26, 1746.] 
 
 WOMEN CLASSES OF MEN JUDGMENT. Be- 
 fore 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 wornen ; 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 your- 
 self 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,
 
 98 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 im- 
 pnident as unjust to attack any of them by the lump. 
 Individuals forgive sometimes; but bodies and so- 
 cieties 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, par- 
 sons are very like other men, and neither the better 
 nor the worse for wearing a black gown. All gen- 
 eral 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 com- 
 monplace. Judge of individuals from your own 
 knowledge of them, and not from their sex, profes- 
 sion, 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 re- 
 member, that seeing is the least material object of,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 99 
 
 travelling; hearing and knowing are the essential 
 points.* [September, 1746. From Bath.'} 
 
 FALSE DELICACY. As for the mauvaise honte, I 
 hope you are above it ; your figure is like other peo- 
 ple'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,, Septem- 
 ber.] 
 
 THE WELL-BRED MAN. Feels himself firm and 
 easy in all companies ; is modest without being bash- 
 ful, 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 thou- 
 sand 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 
 
 * Mr. Stanhope was then travelling with his tutor in Ger- 
 many.
 
 100 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 lit- 
 tle French book written by L'Abbe de Bellegarde, 
 entitled "L'Art de Plairc dans la Conversation"*', 
 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 fre- 
 quenting 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 
 
 * A good-natured but somewhat silly book in which M. 
 L'Abbe instructs certain young ladies and gentlemen by means 
 of sundry conversations and reflections.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 101 
 
 youth of those thorns and briers which scratched 
 and disfigured me in the course of mine. [Bath, 
 Oct. 4, 1/46.] 
 
 His SON'S UTTER DEPENDENCE. I do not, 
 therefore, so much as hint to you how absolutely de- 
 pendent 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 per- 
 son, 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 in- 
 fallibly 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 wast- 
 ing them frivolously in the tattle of women's com- 
 pany, must have exposed myself to the ridicule and
 
 102 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 contempt of those very women; or, lastly, I must 
 have hanged myself, as a man once did, for weari' 
 ness 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: "Hsec studia" (says he) 
 "adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas 
 res ornant, adversis perfugium, ac solatium prsebent, 
 delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant 
 nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur." [October, 
 
 1746-] 
 
 FOOLISH TALK. The conversation of the ignor- 
 ant is no conversation, and gives even them no pleas- 
 ure; 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 re- 
 ciprocally; 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 103 
 
 suggest many things to your observation, which 
 might otherwise escape you ; and your own observa- 
 tions 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 peo- 
 ple, 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 pas- 
 sion ; pry into the recesses of his heart, and observe 
 the different workings of the same passion in differ- 
 ent 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.]
 
 104 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 / 
 
 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 Caesar, "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 pru- 
 dentia," is unquestionably true, with regard to 
 everything except poetry. [November, 
 
 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 negli- 
 gent or too much studied. [Same date.] 
 
 ABSENT PEOPLE. What is commonly called an
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 105 
 
 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 yester- 
 day he appeared to live in intimacy. He takes no 
 part in the general conversation; but, on the con- 
 trary, 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 pre- 
 tended 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 com- 
 pany may be, still, while you are among them, do
 
 106 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 mani- 
 festing your contempt for them. There is nothing 
 that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, 
 than contempt; and an injury is much sooner for- 
 gotten 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,
 
 SENTENCES AXD MAXIMS. 107 
 
 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 use- 
 fully ; but what I cannot forgive in anybody is saun- 
 tering, and doing nothing at all with a thing so 
 precious as time, and so irrecoverable when lost. 
 [Dec. 9, 0. S., 1746*] 
 
 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 debauch- 
 ery 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 thou- 
 
 * His lordship had during this year been made one of his 
 Majesty's Secretaries of State.
 
 10S CHESTEBFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 sand 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 run- 
 ning 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 pleas- 
 ures 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 repent- 
 ance. 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 109 
 
 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 inclina- 
 tions, 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
 
 110 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 drunkard, an abandoned whoremaster, and a profli- 
 gate 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 pro- 
 ceeded 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 neces- 
 sary 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 shin- 
 ing character which I affected ; but this folly I soon 
 laid aside upon finding both the guilt and the inde- 
 cency of it. 
 
 Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting
 
 SEXTEXCES AXD MAXIMS. Ill 
 
 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 pleas- 
 ures 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 imag- 
 inary pleasure. I would enjoy the pleasures of the 
 table and of wine ; but stop short of the pains insep- 
 arably annexed to an excess in either. I would not, 
 at twenty years, be a preaching missionary of 
 abstemiousness and sobriety; and I shduld let other 
 people do as they would, without formally and sen- 
 tentiously 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
 
 112 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 blas- 
 pheming, for having lost at play more than he is 
 able to pay? Or a whpremaster 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 bor- 
 rows 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 113 
 
 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 
 o 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 show- 
 ish binding attracts the eyes, and engages the atten- 
 tion 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 indigna- 
 tion 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, 0. 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
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 exported afterwards to Rome, where it was counter- 
 feited 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 pow- 
 dered with these two kinds of salt the better you 
 will keep, and the more you will be relished. '[April, 
 I747-] 
 
 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 mathemati- 
 cian. 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^ that you 
 can form yourself upon, are Cicero, Cardinal d'Os- 
 sat, Madame Sevigne, and Comte Bussy Rabutin. 
 Cicero's epistles to Atticus and to his familiar 
 friends are the best examples that you can imitate, 
 
 * Chesterfield had inclosed in a letter from Mr. Stanhope's 
 mamma one from his own sister, thanking the boy for some 
 Arquebusade water. His lordship sent a rough copy of a polite 
 answer to this note.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 115 
 
 in the friendly and the familiar style. The simplic- 
 ity 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 
 Sevigne'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, 1747.1 
 
 PERSONAL CLEANLINESS. As you must attend 
 to your manners, so you must not neglect your per- 
 son ; but take care to be very clean, well dressed, and 
 genteel ; to have no disagreeable attitudes, nor awk- 
 ward 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
 
 116 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 sec- 
 ond-rate attention ; they give an additional lustre to 
 real merit. My "Lord Bacon says that a pleasing fig<\ 
 .ure is a perpetual letter of recommendation. It is* 
 certainly an agreeable forerunner of merit and 
 smooths the way for it. [July jo, 
 
 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 van- 
 ity; 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 117 
 
 is said afterward, to the disadvantage of that person, 
 however true, passes for calumny. If I lie, or equiv- 
 ocate, 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 low- 
 est and the meanest of mankind, and am sure to be 
 always treated as such. Fear, instead of avoiding, 
 invites danger; for concealed co\vards 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
 
 118 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 for- 
 tunes 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 
 un wounded. 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 mod- 
 erate share of penetration, with great attention, will 
 infallibly make these necessary discoveries. This is
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 119 
 
 the true knowledge of the world; and the world is 
 a country which nobody ever yet knew by descrip- 
 tion; 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 judi- 
 ciously endeavored to instruct Hannibal in it. 
 Courts and camps are the only places to learn the 
 world in. [Oct. 
 
 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 disposi- 
 tion, 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 them- 
 selves. 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.~\
 
 120 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 recip- 
 rocal 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 acci- 
 dentally thrown together, and pursuing the same 
 course of riot and debauchery. A fine friendship, 
 truly! and well cemented by drunkenness and lewd- 
 ness. 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 com- 
 pany. Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep com- 
 pany 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. p, 1747-} 
 
 GOOD COMPANY. There are ,two sorts of good 
 
 f t
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 121 
 
 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 hon- 
 ored 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; pro- 
 vided 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
 
 122 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 often told you, politeness and good breeding 1 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 com- 
 monly err; and, fond of something that has enter- 
 tained them in one company, and in certain circum- 
 stances, 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 123 
 
 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, coun- 
 terbalances it. If they are both bad, she comforts 
 herself that she has graces; a certain manner; a je 
 ne sgais qiwi, 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 them- 
 selves 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
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEKS. 
 
 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 125 
 
 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 
 jf 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
 
 126 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 your- 
 self what the Port Royal is. To conclude with a 
 quibble: I hope yon 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 every- 
 body'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, like- 
 wise, all over Europe, have some ingenious inscrip- 
 tion 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 irrecover- 
 able it is if lost. But all these admonitions are use- 
 less, 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 127 
 
 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. n, 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 neces- 
 sary 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; gJLcA- 1 * 
 this was so much time fairly gained. [Same date.] > 
 
 YOUNG STANHOPE. Hitherto I have discovered f? 
 
 i 
 
 nothing wrong in vour heart, or your head; on the
 
 128 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 contrary, T thinE I see sense in the one, and senti- 
 ments 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 peo- 
 ple 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, \vlien 
 you present yourself in company. Let them be 
 respectful without meanness, easy without too much
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 129 
 
 familiarity, genteel without affectation, and insinu- 
 ating 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 neces- 
 sary in the course of the world ; and which English- 
 men 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 impa- 
 tience 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
 
 130 CHESTEKFIELD'iS LETTEKS. 
 
 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 xoXiTiHoZ avrjp} 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 
 7to\iTiKo%, or the fie\.r](p6po2 avrjp, there are some 
 trifling circumstances, upon which you should pre- 
 viously 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 politi- 
 cian 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
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 131 
 
 hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable appli- 
 cations: 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 seem- 
 ing 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, 174$-]
 
 132 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 edu- 
 cation ; for which reason we have fewer proper sub- 
 jects 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 your- 
 self necessary: first as a foreign, and then as a 
 domestic minister for that department. [Feb. 9, 
 1748.] 
 
 MY LORD'S DISLIKE OF VALETS. I would neither 
 have your new man nor him whom you have already, 
 put out of livery, which makes them both imperti- 
 nent and useless. I am sure that as soon as you 
 shall have taken the other servant, your present man 
 will press extremely to be out of livery, and valet 
 de chambre, which is as much as to say, that he will 
 curl your hair and shave you, but not condescend to 
 do anything else. Therefore I advise you never to 
 have a servant out of livery; and though you may 
 not always think proper to carry the servant who
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 133 
 
 dresses you abroad in the rain and dirt behind a 
 coach or before a chair, you keep it in your power 
 to do so, if you please, by keeping him in livery. 1 
 [Feb. 13, 1748.} 
 
 LEARNED LEISURE. The first use that I made of 
 my liberty was to come hither [Bath], where I 
 arrived yesterday. My health, though not funda- 
 mentally bad, yet, for want of proper attention of 
 ]ate, wanted some repairs, which these waters never 
 fail giving it. I shall drink them a month, and 
 return to London, there to enjoy the comforts of 
 social life, instead of groaning under the load of 
 business. I have given the description of the life 
 that I propose to lead for the future in this motto, 
 which I have put up in the frize (sic) of my library 
 in my new house: 
 
 "Nunc veterum libris, nunc spmno, et inertibus horis 
 Ducere sollicitse jucunda oblivia vitae." 
 
 I must observe to you upon this occasion, that 
 the uninterrupted satisfaction which I expect to fmd^ 
 in that library will be chiefly owing to my having 
 employed some part of my life well at your age. I 
 wish I had employed it better, and my satisfaction 
 would now be complete. [Feb. 16, 1748.'] 
 
 WASTE OF TIME. I, who have been behind the 
 scenes, both of pleasure and business, and have seen
 
 134 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 all the springs and pulleys of those decorations 
 which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not 
 only without regret, but with contentment and satis- 
 faction. But what I do, and ever shall, regret, is 
 the time which, while young, I lost in mere idleness, 
 and in doing nothing. This is the common effect of 
 the inconsideracy of youth, against which I beg you 
 will be most carefully upon your guard. The value 
 of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well 
 employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecover- 
 able. Every moment may be put to some use, and 
 that with much more pleasure than if unemployed. 
 Do not imagine that by the employment of time I 
 mean an uninterrupted application to serious studies. 
 No; pleasures are, at proper times, both as neces- 
 sary and as useful; they fashion and form you for 
 the world; they teach you characters, and show 
 you the human heart in its unguarded min- 
 utes. But then remember to make that use of them. 
 I have known many people, from laziness of mind, 
 go through both pleasure and business with equal 
 inattention ; neither enjoying the one, nor doing the 
 other; thinking themselves men of pleasure because 
 they were mingled with those who were, and men 
 of business, because they had business to do, though 
 they did not do it. Whatever you do, do it to the 
 purpose ; do it thoroughly, not superficially. r Appro-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 135 
 
 fondisses; go to the bottom of things. Anything 
 half done, or half known, is, in my mind, neither 
 done nor known at all. Nay worse, for it often mis- 
 leads. There is hardly any place, or any company, 
 where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; 
 almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad 
 to talk upon that one thing. [Same date.] 
 
 PROPER INQUISITIVENESS. Seek, and you will 
 find, in this world as well as in the next. See every- 
 thing, inquire into everything; and you may excuse 
 your curiosity and the questions you ask, which oth- 
 erwise might be thought impertinent by your man- 
 ner of asking them ; for most things depend a great 
 deal upon the manner. As, for example, I am afraid 
 that I am very troublesome with my questions; but 
 nobody can inform me so well as you; or something 
 of that kind. [Same date.] 
 
 RELIGION TO BE RESPECTED. But when you fre- 
 quent places of public worship, as I would have you 
 go to all the different ones you meet with, remember 
 that, however erroneous, they are none of them 
 objects of laughter and ridicule. Honest error is 
 to be pitied, not ridiculed. The object of all the 
 public worships in the world is the same; it is that 
 great eternal Being who created everything. The 
 different manners of worship are by no means subr
 
 136 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 jects of ridicule. Each sect thinks its own the best ; 
 and I know no infallible judge, in this world, to 
 decide which is the best. [Same date.] 
 
 USE A NOTE-BOOK. Make the same inquiries, 
 wherever you are, concerning the revenues, the mili- 
 tary establishment, the trade, the commerce, and the 
 police of every country. And you would do well to 
 keep a blank paper book, which the Germans call 
 an album; and there, instead of desiring, as they do, 
 every fool they meet with to scribble something, 
 write down all these things, as soon as they come to 
 your knowledge from good authorities. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S CARE. I have now but 
 one anxiety left, which is concerning you. I would 
 have you be, what I know nobody is, perfect. As 
 that is impossible, I would have you as near perfec- 
 tion as possible. I know nobody in a fairer way 
 toward it than yourself, if you please. Never were 
 so much pains taken for anybody's education as for 
 yours; and never had anybody those opportunities 
 of knowledge and improvement which you have 
 had, and still have. I hope, I wish, I doubt, and I 
 fear alternately. This only I am sure of, that you 
 will prove either the greatest pain, or the greatest 
 pleasure of, yours always truly. [Same date.]
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 137 
 
 PEDANTS. Others, to show their learning, or 
 often from the prejudices of a school education, 
 where they hear of nothing else, are always talking 
 of the ancients, as something more than men, and of 
 the moderns as something less. They are never 
 without a classic or two in their pockets; they stick 
 to the old good sense ; they read none of the modern 
 trash; and will show you plainly that no improve- 
 ment has been made, in any one art or science, these 
 last seventeen hundred years. I would by no means 
 have you disown your acquaintance with the 
 ancients ; but still less would I have you brag of an 
 exclusive intimacy with them. Speak of the mod- 
 erns without contempt, and of the ancients without 
 idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by 
 their ages; and if you happen to have an Elzevir 
 classic in your pocket, neither show it nor mention 
 it. [Bath, Feb. 22, 1748.} 
 
 BLINDNESS TO HEROISM. Take into your con- 
 sideration, if you please, cases seemingly analogous ; 
 but take them as helps only, not as guides. We are 
 really so prejudiced by our educations that, as the 
 ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen ; 
 of which, with all due regard to antiquity, I take 
 Leonidas and Curtius to have been two distin- 
 guished ones. And yet a solid pedant would, in a
 
 138 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 speech in Parliament, relative to a tax of twopence 
 in the pound, upon some commodity or other, quote 
 those two heroes as examples of what we ought to 
 do and suffer for our country. [Same date.] 
 
 INJUDICIOUS LEARNING. I have known these 
 absurdities carried so far by people of injudicious 
 learning, that I should not be surprised if some of 
 them were to propose, while we were at war with 
 the Gauls, that a number of geese should be kept in 
 the Tower, upon account of the infinite advantage 
 which Rome received, in a parallel case, from a 
 certain number of geese in the Capitol. This way 
 of reasoning and this way of speaking will always 
 form a poor politician and a puerile declaimer. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 How "TO WEAR" LEARNING. Wear your learn- 
 ing like your watch, in a private pocket ; and do not 
 pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you 
 have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell 
 it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like 
 the watchman. [Same date.] 
 
 THE GRACES. A thousand little things, not sep- 
 arately to be defined, conspire to form these graces, 
 this je ne sais quoi that always pleases. A pretty 
 person, genteel motions, a proper degree of dress,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 139 
 
 an harmonious voice, something open and cheerful 
 in the countenance, but without laughing ; a distinct 
 and properly varied manner of speaking; all these 
 things, and many others, are necessary ingredients 
 in the composition of the pleasing je ne sais quoi, 
 which everybody feels, though nobody can describe. 
 
 i 
 
 \ Observe carefully, then, what displeases or pleases 
 you, in others, and be persuaded, that, in general, 
 the same things will please or displease others, in 
 you. Having mentioned laughing, I must particu- 
 larly warn you against it ; and I could heartily wish 
 that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard 
 to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laugh- 
 ter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners ; it 
 is the manner in which the mob express their silly 
 joy at silly things ; and they call it being merry. In 
 my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred 
 as audible laughter. [March p, 1748.'] 
 
 THE FOLLY OF LAUGHTER. True wit or sense 
 never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it;, 
 they please the mind and give a cheerfulness to the 
 countenance. But it is low buffoonery or silly acci- 
 dents that always excite laughter; and that. is what 
 people of sense and breeding should show them- 
 selves above. A man's going to sit down, in the 
 supposition that he has a chair behind him, and fall-
 
 140 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ing down upon his breech for want of one, sets a 
 whole company a-laughing, when all the wit in the 
 world would not do it ; a plain proof, in my mind, 
 how low and unbecoming a thing laughter is. Not 
 to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes, and 
 the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions. 
 Laughter is easily restrained by a very little reflec- 
 tion ; but as it is generally connected with the idea of 
 gaiety, people do not enough attend to its absurdity. 
 I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposi- 
 tion ; and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as 
 anybody; but I am sure that, since I have had the 
 full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me 
 laugh. [Same date.] 
 
 THE MIND. It requires, also, a great deal of 
 exercise, to bring it to a state of health and vigor. 
 Observe the difference there is between minds culti- 
 vated and minds uncultivated, and you will, I am 
 sure, think that you cannot take too much pains, nor 
 employ too much of your time in the culture of your 
 own. A drayman is probably born with as good 
 organs as Milton, Locke, or Newton; but, by cul- 
 ture, they are much more above him than he is above 
 his horse. Sometimes, indeed, extraordinary gen- 
 iuses have broken out by the force of nature, without 
 the assistance of education; but those instances are
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 141 
 
 too rare for anybody to trust to; and even they 
 would make a much greater figure if they had the 
 advantage of education into the bargain. [April I, 
 1748.} 
 
 SEE ALL THINGS. At least, see everything that 
 you can see, and know everything that you can know 
 of it, by asking questions. See likewise everything 
 at the fair, from operas and plays down to the 
 Savoyards' rareeshows. Everything is worth seeing 
 once ; and the more one sees, the less one either won- 
 ders or admires. [April 15, 1748.] 
 
 FALSEHOOD UNIVERSAL. Falsehood and dissim- 
 ulation are certainly to be found at courts ; but where 
 are they not to be found? Cottages have them as 
 well as courts ; only with worse manners. A couple 
 of neighboring farmers, in a village, will contrive 
 and practice as many tricks to overreach each other 
 at the next market, or to supplant each other in the 
 favor of the squire, as any two courtiers can do to 
 supplant each other in the favor of their prince. 
 Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural 
 innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, 
 this is most undoubtedly true that shepherds and 
 ministers are both men; their nature and passions 
 the same, the modes of them only different. [May 
 10, 1748.}
 
 142 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 VULGAR SCOFFERS. Religion is one of their 
 favorite topics ; it is all priestcraft ; and an invention 
 contrived and carried on by priests, of all religions, 
 for their own power and profit; from this absurd 
 and false principle flow the commonplace, insipid 
 jokes and insults upon the 'clergy. With these 
 people, every priest, of every religion, is either a 
 public or a concealed unbeliever, drunkard, and 
 whoremaster; whereas I conceive that priests are 
 extremely like other men, and neither the better nor 
 the worse for wearing a gown or a surplice ; but, if 
 they are different from other people, probably it is 
 rather on the side of religion and morality, or at 
 least decency, from their education and manner of 
 life. [Same date.] 
 
 WIT FALSE AND VULGAR. Another common 
 topic for false wit and cold raillery is matrimony. 
 Every man and his wife hate each other cordially, 
 whatever they may pretend, in public, to the con- 
 trary. The husband certainly wishes his wife at the 
 devil, and the wife certainly cuckolds her husband. 
 Whereas I presume that men and their wives neither 
 love nor hate each other the more upon account of 
 the form of matrimony which has been said over 
 them. The cohabitation, indeed, which is the conse- 
 quence of matrimony, makes them either love or
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 143 
 
 hate more, accordingly as they respectively deserve 
 it; but that would be exactly the same, between any 
 man and woman, who lived together without being 
 married. [Same date.} 
 
 SNUBBING A "Wrr." I always put these pert 
 jackanapeses out of countenance, by looking 
 extremely grave, when they expect that I should 
 laugh at their pleasantries ; and by saying Well, and 
 so; as if they had not done, and that the sting were 
 still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have 
 no resources in themselves, and have but one set 
 of jokes to live upon. [Same date.'] 
 
 METHOD AND MANNER. The manner of doing 
 things is often more important than the things 
 themselves ; and the very same thing may become 
 either pleasing or offensive, by the manner of saying 
 or doing it. Materiam supcrabat opus is often said 
 of works of sculpture, where though the materials 
 were valuable, as silver, gold, etc., the workmanship 
 was still more so. [Same date.} 
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S PROPOSED AIM. The end which 
 I propose by your education, and which (if you 
 please) I shall certainly attain, is to unite in you the 
 knowledge of a scholar with the manners of a 
 courtier; and to join, what is seldom joined in any
 
 144 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS- 
 
 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 mod- 
 ern 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 lan- 
 guages, they go into no foreign company, at least 
 none good ; but dine and sup with one another only, 
 at the tavern. Such examples, I am sure, you will 
 not imitate, but even carefully avoid. [Same date.] 
 
 GOOD COMPANY. You will always take care to 
 keep the best company in the place where you are, 
 which is tRe only use of travelling; and (by the 
 way) the pleasures of a gentleman are only to be 
 found in the best company ; for that riot which" low 
 company, most falsely and impudently, call pleasure, 
 is only the sensuality of a swine. [Same date.] 
 
 MANLY DEFERENCE TO RANK. People of a low, 
 obscure education cannot stand the rays of greatness; 
 they are frightened out of their wits when kings 
 and great men speak to them; they are awkward, 
 ashamed, and do not know what nor how to answer, 
 whereas: 'les honnetes gens are not dazzled by
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 145 
 
 superior rank; they know and pay all the respect 
 that is due to it; but they do it w.ithout being dis- 
 concerted; and can converse just as easily with a 
 king as with any one of his subjects. That is the 
 great advantage of being introduced young into 
 good company, and being used early to converse 
 with one's superiors. How many men have I seen 
 here, who, after having had the full benefit of an 
 English education, first at school and then at the 
 university, when they have been presented to the 
 king, did not know whether they stood upon their 
 heads or their heels. [May 17, 1748.'] 
 
 VULGARITY AND GOOD BREEDING AT COURT. If 
 the king spoke to them, they were annihilated ; they 
 trembled, endeavored to put their hands in their 
 pockets and missed them, let their hats fall, and were 
 ashamed to take them up; and, in short, put them- 
 selves in every attitude but the right, that is, the easy 
 and natural one. The characteristic of a well-bred 
 man is, to converse with his inferiors without inso- 
 lence, and with his superiors with respect and with 
 ease. He talks to kings without concern; he trifles 
 with women of the first condition, with familiarity, 
 gaiety, but respect; and converses with his equals, 
 whether he is acquainted with them or not, upon 
 general, common topics, that are not, however, quite
 
 146 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 frivolous, without the least concern of mind or awk- 
 wardness of body; neither of which can appear to 
 advantage, but when they are perfectly easy. [Same 
 date.} 
 
 FILIAL LOVE TO THE MOTHER. You owe her 
 not only duty, but likewise great obligations, for her 
 care and tenderness; and consequently cannot take 
 too many opportunities of showing your gratitude.* 
 [Same date.} 
 
 CONSIDER YOUR OWN SITUATION. You have not 
 the advantage of rank and fortune to bear you up ; 
 I shall, very probably, be out of the world before you 
 can properly be said to be in it. What then will 
 you have to rely on but your own merit? That 
 alone must raise you, and that alone will raise you, 
 if you have but enough of it. I have often heard 
 and read of oppressed and unrewarded merit, but I 
 have oftener (I might say always) seen great merit 
 make its way, and meet with its reward, to a cer- 
 tain degree at least, in spite of all difficulties. By 
 merit I mean the moral virtues, knowledge, and 
 manners; as to the moral virtues, I say nothing to 
 you ; they speak best for themselves ; nor can I sus- 
 pect that they want any recommendation with you ; 
 
 * Lord Chesterfield had been urging his son to send a Dres- 
 den tea-service to his mother, which he did.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 147 
 
 I will, therefore, only assure you that, without them 
 you will be most unhappy. [May 27, 1748.] 
 
 DIPLOMATIC EDUCATION. You must absolutely 
 speak all the modern languages, as purely and cor- 
 rectly as the natives of the respective countries ; for 
 whoever does not speak a language perfectly and 
 easily, will never appear to advantage in conver- 
 sation, nor treat with others in it upon equal terms. 
 As for French, you have it very well already; and 
 must necessarily, from the universal usage of that 
 language, know it better and better every day; so 
 that I am in no pain about that. German, I suppose, 
 you know pretty well by this time, and will be quite 
 master of it before you leave Leipsic ; at least I am 
 sure you may. Italian and Spanish will come in 
 their turns; and, indeed, they are both so easy, to 
 one who knows Latin and French, that neither of 
 them will cost you much time or trouble. [Same 
 date. ] 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF MANNERS. Manners, though 
 the last, and it may be the least ingredient of real 
 merit, are, however, very far from being useless in 
 its composition; they adorn, and give an additional 
 force and lustre to both virtue and knowledge. They 
 prepare and smooth the way for the progress of 
 both"; and are, I fear, with the bulk of mankind,
 
 148 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 more engaging: than either. Remember, then, the 
 infinite advantage of manners; cultivate and im- 
 prove your own to the utmost ; good sense will sug- 
 gest the great rules to you, good company will do 
 the rest. [Same date.] 
 
 FOREIGN MINISTERS. You are the only one Jt 
 'ever knew, of this country, whose education was, 
 from the beginning, calculated for the department 
 of foreign affairs; in consequence of which, if you 
 will invariably pursue, and diligently qualify your- 
 self for that object, you may make yourself abso- 
 lutely necessary to the government ; and, after hav- 
 ing received orders as a minister abroad, send or- 
 ders, in your turn, as Secretary of State at home. 
 Most of our ministers abroad have taken up that 
 department occasionally, without having ever 
 thought of foreign affairs before many of them, 
 without speaking any one foreign language ; and all 
 of them without the manners which are absolutely 
 necessary towards being well received and making 
 a figure at foreign courts. [.Saw? date.] 
 
 How TO BE CONSIDERABLE. Upon the whole, if 
 you have a mind to be considerable, and to shine 
 hereafter, you must labor hard now. No quickness 
 of parts, no vivacity, will do long, or go far, without 
 a solid fund of knowledge ; and that fund of knowl-
 
 SEKTE5TCES AXD MAXIMS, 
 
 edge will amply repay all die pants that you can take 
 in acquiring it. Reflect seriously, within youiseU^ 
 upon a11 this, ami ask yourself, whether I can have 
 any view, but your interest, m all that I recommend 
 to you. [Same date.] 
 
 THE POKE'S POWEX. Indulgences flood i 
 of armies, m the times of ignorance and bigotry; 
 but now that mankind is better informed, the spir- 
 itual authority of the Pope is not only less regard- 
 ed, but even despised, by die Catholic princes them- 
 selves ; and his holiness is actually tittle more than 
 Bishop of Rome. [J/fly J/, 1748.1 
 
 PAPAL VIKTUES. Alexander VL, together with 
 his natural son, Caesar Borgia, was famous for his 
 wickedness, in which he, and his son too, surpassed 
 all imagination. Their lives are wefl worth your 
 reading. They were poisoned themselves by the 
 poisoned wine which they had prepared for others ; 
 the father died of it, but Caesar recovered. 
 
 Sixtus V 7 , was die soft of a swineherd, and raised 
 himself to the popedom by his abilities; IK was a 
 great knave, but an able and a singular one. 
 
 Here is history enough for to-day. [Some dote.1 
 
 AWKWARD SPEECH. Good Godfif IJfli MI&I in - 
 ful and disagreeable manner of speaking had, dier
 
 150 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 by your negligence or mine, become habitual to you, 
 as in a couple of years more it would have been, 
 .what a figure would you have made in company, or 
 in a public assembly? Who would have liked you 
 in the one, or have attended to you in the other? 
 Read what Cicero and Quintilian say of enunciation, 
 and see what a stress they lay upon the gracefulness 
 of it; nay, Cicero goes further, and even maintains 
 that a good figure is necessary for an orator; and, 
 particularly, that he must not be vastus; that is, 
 overgrown and clumsy. He shows by it that he 
 knew mankind well, and knew the powers of an 
 agreeable figure and a graceful manner. [June 21, 
 
 r 
 
 ENUNCIATION ELOQUENCE. Your figure is a 
 good one ; you have no natural defect in the organs 
 of speech ; your address may be engaging, and your 
 manner of speaking graceful, if you will ; so that, if 
 they are not so, neither I nor the world can ascribe 
 it to any thing but your want of parts. What is the 
 constant and just observation as to all actors upon 
 the stage? Is it not, that those who have the best 
 sense always speak the best, though they may hap- 
 pen not to have the best voices? They will speak 
 plainly, distinctly, and with the proper emphasis, 
 be their voices ever so bad. Had Roscius spoken
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 151 
 
 quick, thick, and ungracefully, I will answer for it 
 that Cicero would not have thought him worth the 
 oration which he made in his favor. Words were 
 given us to communicate our ideas by; and there 
 must be something inconceivably absurd in uttering 
 them in such a manner as that either people cannot 
 understand them, or will not desire to understand 
 them. I tell you truly and sincerely that I shall 
 judge of your parts by your speaking gracefully or 
 ungracefully. If you have parts, you will never be 
 at rest till you have brought yourself to a habit of 
 speaking most gracefully; for I aver that it is in 
 your power. [Same date.] 
 
 ARTICULATION. You will take care to open your 
 teeth when you speak; to articulate every word dis- 
 tinctly; and to beg of Mr. Harte, Mr. Eliot, or 
 whomever you speak to, to remind and stop you, if 
 ever you fall into the rapid and unintelligible mut- 
 ter. You will even read aloud to yourself, and tune 
 your utterance to your own ear; and read at first 
 much slower than you need to do, in order to cor- 
 rect yourself of that shameful trick of speaking 
 faster than you ought. 
 
 PROPER CARRIAGE. Next to graceful speak- 
 ing, a genteel carriage and a graceful manner of 
 presenting yourself are extremely necessary, for
 
 152 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 they are extremely engaging; and carelessness in 
 these points is much more unpardonable in a young 
 fellow than affectation. It shows an offensive in- 
 difference about pleasing. I am told by one here, 
 who has seen you lately, that you are awkward in 
 your motions, and negligent of your person. I am 
 sorry for both ; and so will you, when it will be too 
 late, if you continue so some time longer. Awk- 
 wardness of carriage is very alienating, and a total 
 negligence of dress and air is an impertinent insult 
 upon custom and fashion. [Same date.~\ 
 
 DESERT AND REWARD. Deserve a great deal, and 
 you shall have a great deal; deserve little, and you 
 shall have but a little; and be good for nothing at 
 all, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all. 
 
 Solid knowledge, as I have often told you, is the 
 first and great foundation of your future fortune 
 and character; for I never mention to you the two 
 much greater points of religion and morality, be- 
 cause I cannot possibly suspect you as to either of 
 them. [July I, 1748.] 
 
 No ONE CONTEMPTIBLE. Be convinced that 
 there are no persons so insignificant and inconsid- 
 erable, but may some time or other, and in some- 
 thing or other, have it in their power to be of use to
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 153 
 
 you; which they certainly will not, if you have once 
 shown them contempt. [Same date.} 
 
 THE FOLLY OF CONTEMPT. Wrongs are often 
 given, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers 
 it forever. It implies a discovery of weaknesses, 
 which we are much more careful to conceal than 
 crimes. Many a man will confess his crimes to a 
 common friend, but I never knew a man who would 
 tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one. 
 As many a friend will tell us our faults without re- 
 serve, who will not so much as hint at our follies; 
 that discovery is too mortifying to our self-love, 
 either to tell another, or to be told of, one's self. 
 You must, therefore, never expect to hear of your 
 weaknesses, or your follies, from anybody but me; 
 those I will take pains to discover, and whenever I 
 do, I shall tell you of them. [Same date.] 
 
 GOOD NATURE. Your school-fellow, Lord Pul- 
 teney, set out last week for Holland, and will, I be- 
 lieve, be at Leipsic soon after this letter. You will 
 take care to be extremely civil to him, and to do him 
 any service that you can, while you stay there; let 
 him know that I wrote you to do so. As being older, 
 he should know more than you; in that case, take 
 pains to get up to him ; but if he does not, take care 
 not to let him feel his inferiority. He will find it out
 
 154 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 of himself, without your endeavors; and that can- 
 not be helped; but nothing is more insulting, more 
 mortifying, and less forgiven, than avowedly to 
 take pains to make a man feel a mortifying in- 
 feriority in knowledge, rank, fortune, etc. In the 
 two last articles it is unjust, they not being in his 
 power; and in the first it is both ill-bred and ill- 
 natured. Good breeding and good nature do incline 
 us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, 
 than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our 
 own private interest concurs in it, as it is making 
 ourselves so many friends, instead of so many ene- 
 mies. [July 6, 1748.] 
 
 LES ATTENTIONS. The constant practice of 
 what the French call Ics attentions is a most neces- 
 sary ingredient in the art of pleasing; they flatter 
 the self-love of those to whom they are shown; they 
 engage, they captivate, more than things of much 
 greater importance. The duties of social life every 
 man is obliged to discharge ; but these attentions are 
 voluntary acts, the free-will offerings of good breed- 
 ing and good nature ; they are received, remembered, 
 and returned as such. Women, particularly, have 
 a right to them ; and any omission in that respect is 
 downright ill breeding. [Same date.] 
 
 AN EDUCATIONAL TEST. Tell me what Greek
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 155 
 
 and Latin books you can now read with ease. Can 
 you open Demosthenes at a venture, and understand 
 him? Can you get through an oration of Cicero, 
 or a satire of Horace, without difficulty? What 
 German book do you read to make yourself master 
 of that language ? And what French books do you 
 read for your amusement ? Pray give me a particu- 
 lar and true account of all this ; for I am not indif- 
 ferent as to any one thing that relates to you. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 LAZY MINDS. There are two sorts of under- 
 standings; one of which hinders a man from ever 
 being considerable, and the other commonly makes 
 him ridiculous; I mean the lazy mind, and the 
 trifling, frivolous mind. Yours, I hope, is neither. 
 The lazy mind will not take the trouble of going to 
 the bottom of anything ; but, discouraged by the dif- 
 ficulties (and everything worth knowing or having 
 is attended with some), stops short, contents itself 
 with easy and, consequently, superficial knowledge, 
 and prefers a great degree of ignorance to a small 
 degree of trouble. These people either think or rep- 
 resent most things as impossible; whereas few 
 things are so to industry and activity. [July 26, 
 1748.} 
 
 RESOLUTION. But difficulties seem to them (lazy
 
 156 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 people) impossibilities, or at least they pretend to 
 think them so, by way of excuse for their laziness. 
 An hour's attention to the same object is too labori- 
 ous for them; they take everything in the light in 
 which it first presents itself, never considering it in 
 all its different views; and, in short, never think it 
 thorough. The consequence of this is, that when 
 they come to speak upon these subjects before peo- 
 ple who have considered them with attention, they 
 only discover their own ignorance and laziness, and 
 lay themselves open to answers that put them in con- 
 fusion. Do not then be discouraged by the first dif- 
 ficulties, but contra audentior ito; and resolve to go 
 to the bottom of all those things which every gentle- 
 man ought to know well. [Same date.] 
 
 CONVERSATION. When you are in company, 
 bring the conversation to some useful subject, but 
 a p or tee of that company. Points of history, mat- 
 ters of literature, the customs of particular coun- 
 tries, the several orders of knighthood, as Teutonic, 
 Maltese, etc., are surely better subjects of conver- 
 sation than the weather, dress, or fiddle-faddle sto- 
 ries, that carry no information along with them. 
 The characters of kings and great men are only to 
 be learned in conversation"; for they are never fairly 
 written during their lives. [Same
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 157 
 
 ALWAYS ASK.' Never be ashamed nor afraid of 
 asking questions; for if they lead to information, 
 and if you accompany them with some excuse, you 
 will never be reckoned an impertinent or rude ques- 
 tioner. All those things, in the common course of 
 life, depend entirely upon the manner; and -in that 
 respect the vulgar saying is true, "That one man 
 may better steal a horse, than another look over the 
 hedge." [Same datc.~\ 
 
 Two HEADS. I am very glad that Mr. Lyttel- 
 ton approves of my new house, and particularly of 
 my Canonical* pillars. My bust of Cicero is a very 
 fine one, and well preserved; it will have the best 
 place in my library, unless, at your return, you bring 
 me over as good a modern head of your own, which 
 I should like still better. I can tell you that I shall 
 examine it as attentively as ever antiquary did an 
 old one. [Same date.] 
 
 A PICTURE. Duval, the jeweler, is arrived, and 
 was with me three or four days ago. You will eas- 
 ily imagine that I asked him a few questions con- 
 cerning you ; and I will give you the satisfaction of 
 knowing that, upon the whole, I was very well 
 pleased with the account he gave me. But, though 
 he seemed to be much in your interest, yet he fairly 
 * A pun ; the pillars from Canons in Middlesex.
 
 158 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 owned to me that your utterance was rapid, thick, 
 and ungraceful. I can add nothing to what I have 
 already said upon this subject; but I /can and do re- 
 peat the absolute necessity of speaking distinctly 
 and gracefully.* [Aug. 3, 1748.] 
 
 DIET. He tells me that you are pretty fat for one 
 of your age; this you should attend to in a proper 
 way ; for if, while very young, you should grow fat, 
 it would be troublesome, unwholesome, and un- 
 graceful ; you should therefore, when you have time, 
 take very strong exercise, and in your diet avoid 
 fattening things. All malt liquors fatten, or at least 
 bloat; and I hope yo % u do not deal much in them. 
 [Same date.~\ 
 
 BE NATURAL. I have this moment received your 
 letter of the 4th, N. S., and have only time to tell 
 you, that I can by no means agree to your cutting 
 off your hair. I am very sure that your headaches 
 cannot proceed from thence. And as for the pim- 
 ples upon your head, they are only owing to the heat 
 of the season; and consequently will not last long. 
 But your own hair is, at your age, such an orna- 
 ment, and a wig, however well made, such a dis- 
 
 * It is well, in the present state of society, to reflect upon 
 the intimacy here shown between persons in trade and those 
 in high life.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 159 
 
 guise, that I will upon no account whatsoever have 
 you cut off your hair. Nature did not give it you 
 for nothing, still less to cause you the headache. 
 Mr. Eliot's hair grew so ill and bushy, that he was 
 in the right to cut it off ; but you have not the same 
 reason. [Same date.] 
 
 BUYING BOOKS. Mr. Harte wrote me word some 
 time ago, and Mr. Eliot confirms it now, that you 
 employ your pin-money in a very different manner 
 from that in which pin-money* is commonly lav- 
 ished. Not in gewgaws and baubles, but in buying 
 good and useful books. This is an excellent symp- 
 tom, and gives me very good hopes. Go on thus, 
 my dear boy, but for these two next years, and I 
 ask no more. You must then make such a figure, 
 and such a fortune in the world, as I wish you, and 
 as I have taken all these pains to enable you to do. 
 After that time, I allow you to be as idle as ever you 
 please; because I am sure that you will not then 
 please to be so at all. The ignorant and the weak 
 only are idle; but those, who have once acquired a 
 good stock of knowledge, always desire to increase 
 it. Knowledge is like power, in this respect, that 
 those who have the most, are most desirous of hav- 
 ing more. It does not clog, by possession, but in- 
 
 * A somewhat curious use of the phrase, but well explained 
 by Johnson.
 
 160 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 creases desires ; which is the case of very few pleas- 
 ures. [Aug. 23, 1748.} 
 
 GRATITUDE TO A TUTOR. Upon receiving this 
 congratulatory letter, and reading your own praises, 
 I am sure that it must naturally occur to you, how 
 great a shar^ of them you owe to Mr. Harte's care 
 and attention; and, consequently, that your regard 
 and affection for him must increase, if there be room 
 for it, in proportion as you reap, which you do daily, 
 the fruits of his labors. [Same dateJ\ 
 
 HISTORICAL FAITH. Take nothing for granted, 
 upon the bare authority of the author; but weigh 
 and consider, in your own mind, the probability of 
 the facts, and the justness of the reflections. Con- 
 sult different authors upon the same facts, and form 
 your opinion upon the greater or lesser degree of 
 probability arising from the whole, which, in my 
 mind, is the utmost stretch of historical faith, cer- 
 tainty (I fear) not being to be found. [Aug. 50, 
 1748.] 
 
 GOOD AND BAD MIXED. The best have something 
 bad, and something little ; the worst have something 
 good, and sometimes something great ; for I do not 
 believe what Valleius Paterculus (for the sake of 
 saying a pretty thing) says of Scipio, "Oui nihil
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 161 
 
 non laudandum aut fecit, aut dixit, aut sensit." 
 [Same date.] 
 
 THE RULING PASSION. Seek for their particular 
 merit, their predominant passion, or their prevailing 
 weakness, and you will then know what to bait your 
 hook with, to catch them. Man is a composition of 
 so many and such various ingredients, that it re- 
 quires both time and care to analyze him : for 
 though we have, all, the same ingredients in our 
 general composition, as reason, will, passions, and 
 appetites, yet the different proportions and combina- 
 tions of them, in each individual, produce that in- 
 finite variety of characters, which, in some par- 
 ticular or other, distinguishes every individual from 
 another. Reason ought to direct the whole, but sel- 
 dom does. [Sept. 5, 1748.] 
 
 BRUYERE AND ROCHEFOUCAULT. I will recom- 
 mend to your attentive perusal, now you are going 
 into the world, two books, which will let you as 
 much into the characters of men as books can do. 
 I mean "Les Reflexions Morales de Monsieur de la 
 Rochefoucault," and "Les Caracteres de la Bru- 
 yere" : but remember, at the same time, that I only 
 recommend them to you as the best general maps, 
 to assist you in your journey, and not as marking 
 out every particular turning and winding that you
 
 162 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 will meet with. There, your own sagacity and ob- 
 servation must come to their aid. La Rochefou- 
 cault is, I know, blamed, but I think without rea- 
 son, for deriving all our actions from the source of 
 self-love. For my own part, I see a great deal of 
 truth, and no harm at all, in that opinion. 
 
 The reflection which is the most censured in Mon- 
 sieur de la Rochefoucault's book, as a very ill- 
 natured one, is this: "On trouve dans le malheur 
 de son meilleur ami, quelque chose qui ne deplait 
 pas." And why not? Why may I not feel a very 
 tender and real concern for the misfortune of my 
 friend, and yet at the same time feel a pleasing con- 
 sciousness at having discharged my duty to him, by 
 comforting and assisting him to the utmost of my 
 power in that misfortune? Give me but virtuous 
 actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about 
 the motives. And I will give anybody their choice 
 of these two truths, which amount to the same 
 thing: He who loves himself best is the honestest 
 man; or, The honestest man loves himself best. 
 
 [Same date.] 
 
 i 
 
 WOMAN. As women are a considerable, or at 
 least a pretty numerous part of company, and as 
 their suffrages go a great way toward establish- 
 ing a man's character, in the fashionable part of the
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 163 
 
 world (which is of great importance to the fortune 
 and figure he proposes to make in it), it is neces- 
 sary to please them. I will, therefore, upon this sub- 
 ject, let you into certain arcana that will be very use- 
 ful for you to know, but which you must, with the 
 utmost care, conceal; and never seem to know. 
 Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; 
 they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit ; 
 but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my 
 life knew one that had it, or who reasoned or acted 
 consequentially for four and twenty hours together. 
 Some little passion or humor always breaks in upon 
 their best resolutions. Their beauty neglected or 
 controverted, their age increased, or their supposed 
 understandings depreciated, instantly kindles their 
 little passions, and overturns any system of conse- 
 quential conduct, that in their most reasonable mo- 
 ments they might have been capable of forming. 
 A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with 
 them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a 
 sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults 
 them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters; 
 though he often makes them believe that he does 
 both, which is the thing in the world that they are 
 proud of, for they love mightily to be dabbling in 
 business (which, by the way, they always spoil) ; 
 and being justly distrustful, that men in general
 
 164: CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 look upon them in a trifling light, they almost adore 
 that man who talks more seriously to them, and who 
 seems to consult and trust them I say, who seems 
 for weak men really do, but wise ones only seem 
 to do it. No flattery is either too high or too low 
 for them. They will greedily swallow the highest, 
 and gracefully accept of the lowest; and you may 
 safely flatter any woman, from her understanding 
 down to the exquisite taste of her fan.' .Women, 
 who are either indisputably beautiful or indisputably 
 ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their un- 
 derstandings ; but those who are in a state of medi- 
 ocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least 
 their graces, for every woman who is not absolutely 
 ugly thinks herself handsome, but not hearing often 
 that she is so, is the more grateful and the more 
 obliged to the few who tell her so ; whereas a decided 
 and conscious beauty looks upon every tribute paid 
 to her beauty only as her due, but wants to shine, 
 and to be considered on the side of her understand- 
 ing ; and a woman, who is ugly enough to know that 
 she is so, knows that she has nothing left for it but 
 her understanding, which is consequently (and prob- 
 ably in more senses than one) her weak side. But 
 these are secrets which you must keep inviolably, 
 if you would not, like Orpheus, be torn to pieces by 
 the whole sex. On the contrary, a man who thinks
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 165 
 
 of living in the great world must be gallant, polite, 
 and attentive to please the women. They have 
 from the weakness of men, more or less influence 
 in all courts; they absolutely stamp every man's 
 character in the beau monde, and make it either cur- 
 rent, or cry it down, and stop it in payments. It 
 is, therefore, absolutely necessary to manage, please, 
 and flatter them; and never to discover the least 
 marks of contempt, which is what they never for- 
 give; but in this they are not singular, for it is the 
 same with men; who will much sooner forgive an 
 injustice than an insult. [Same date.] 
 \ 
 
 CONTEMPT. Every man is not ambitious, or cov- 
 etous, or passionate; but every man has pride 
 enough in his composition to feel and resent the 
 least slight and contempt. Remember, therefore, 
 most carefully to conceal your contempt, however 
 just, wherever you would not make an implacable 
 enemy. Men are much more unwilling to have their 
 weaknesses and their imperfections known, than 
 their crimes; and, if you hint to a man that you 
 think him silly, ignorant or even ill bred or awk- 
 ward, he will hate you more and longer than if you 
 tell him, plainly, that you think him a rogue. Never 
 yield to that temptation, which, to most young men, 
 is very strong, of exposing other people's weak-
 
 166 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 nesses and infirmities, for the sake either of divert- 
 ing the company, or of showing your own superior- 
 ity. You may get the laugh on your side by it, 
 for the present ; but you will make enemies by it for 
 ever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, 
 upon reflection, fear, and consequently hate you; 
 besides that, it is ill-natured; and a good heart de- 
 sires rather to conceal, than expose, other people's 
 weaknesses or misfortunes. If you have wit, use it 
 to please, and not to hurt; you may shine, like the 
 sun in the temperate zones, without scorching. Here 
 it is wished for ; under the line it is dreaded. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 CALIGULA. Another very just observation of the 
 Cardinal's* is, that the things which happen in our 
 own times, and which we see ourselves, do not sur- 
 prise us near so much as the things which we read 
 of in times past, though not in the least more ex- 
 traordinary; and adds that he is persuaded that, 
 when Caligula made his horse a consul, the people 
 of Rome at that time were not greatly surprised at 
 it, having necessarily been in some degree prepared 
 for it, by an insensible gradation of extravagancies 
 from the same quarter. [Sept. 13, 1748.] 
 
 ANTIQUITY is STRANGE. We read every day, 
 
 * De Retz, from whose "Memoires" Lord Chesterfield quoted 
 a sentence in the commencement of the letter.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 167 
 
 with astonishment, things which we see every day 
 without surprise. We wonder at the intrepidity of 
 a Leonidas, a Codrus, and a Curtius; and are not 
 the least surprised to hear of a sea captain who has 
 blown up his ship, his crew, and himself, that they 
 might not fall into the hands of the enemies of his 
 country. I cannot help reading of Porsenna and 
 Regulus with surprise and reverence; and yet I re- 
 member that I saw, without either, the execution 
 of Shepherd, a boy of eighteen years old, who in- 
 tended to shoot the late king, and who would have 
 been pardoned if he would have expressed the least 
 sorrow for his intended crime; but, on the contrary, 
 he declared, that, if he was pardoned, he would at- 
 tempt it again; that he thought it a duty which he 
 owed his country; and that he died with pleasure 
 for having endeavored to perform it. Reason equals 
 Shepherd to Regulus; but prejudice, and the re- 
 cency of the fact, make Shepherd a common male- 
 factor, and Regulus a hero. [Same date.] 
 
 SECRETS. The last observation that I shall now 
 mention of the Cardinal's is, "That a secret is more 
 easily kept by a good many people than one com- 
 monly imagines." By this he means a secret of im- 
 portance among people interested in the keeping of 
 it. And it is certain that people of business know
 
 168 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 the importance of secrecy, and will observe it where 
 they are concerned in the event. To go and tell any t 
 friend, wife, or mistress, any secret with which they 
 have nothing to do, is discovering to them such an 
 unretentive weakness as must convince them that 
 you will tell it to twenty others, and consequently 
 that they may reveal it without the risk of being 
 discovered. But a secret properly communicated 
 only to those who are to be concerned in the thing in 
 question, will probably be kept by them, though 
 they should be a good many. Little secrets are com- 
 monly told again, but great ones generally kept. 
 Adieu. [Same date.] 
 
 TRIFLES. How trifling soever these things may 
 seem, or really be, in themselves, they are no longer 
 so, when above half the world thinks them other- 
 wise. And, as I would have you omnibus ornatum 
 excellere rebus, I think nothing above or below 
 my pointing out to you, or -your excelling in. You 
 have the means of doing it, and time before you to 
 make use of them. Take my word for it, I ask noth- 
 ing now but what you will, twenty years hence, most 
 heartily wish that you had done. [Sept. 20, 1748. ] 
 
 THE PEDANT AND THE SCHOLAR. A gentleman 
 has, probably, read no other Latin than that of the
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 169 
 
 Augustan age; and therefore can write no other; 
 whereas the pedant has read much more bad Latin 
 than good; and consequently writes so too. He 
 looks upon the best classical books as books for 
 schoolboys, and consequently below him, but pores 
 over fragments of obscure authors, treasures up the 
 obsolete words which he meets with there, and uses 
 them upon all occasions, to show his reading at the 
 expense of his judgment. Plautus is his favorite 
 author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica 
 of his comedies ; but upon account of the many obso- 
 lete words and the cant of low characters, which 
 are to be met with nowhere else. He will rather use 
 olli than illi, o plume than optime, and any bad word, 
 rather than any good one, provided he can but prove 
 that, strictly speaking, it is Latin; that is, that it 
 was written by a Roman. [Sept. 27, 1748.] 
 
 A DETESTABLE DOCTRINE. I must now say 
 something as to the matter of the lecture ; in which 
 I confess there is one doctrine laid down that sur- 
 prises me; it is this: "Quum vero hostis sit lenta 
 citave morte omnia dira nobis minitans quocunque 
 bellantibus negotium est, parum sane interfuerit quo 
 modo eum obruere et interfkere satagamus si fero- 
 ciam exuere cunctetur. Ergo venono quoque uti 
 fas est," etc., whereas I cannot conceive that the use
 
 170 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 of poison can, upon any account, come within the 
 lawful means of self-defence. Force may, without 
 doubt, be justly repelled by force; but not by treach- 
 ery and fraud; for I do not call the stratagems of 
 war, such as ambuscades, masked batteries, false at- 
 tacks, etc., frauds or treachery; they are mutually 
 to be expected and guarded against; but poisoned 
 arrows, poisoned waters, or poison administered to 
 your enemy (which can only be done by treachery), 
 I have always heard, read, and thought to be un- 
 lawful and infamous means of defence, be your dan- 
 ger ever so great ; but, si ferociam exuere cunctetur; 
 must I rather die than poison this enemy? Yes, 
 certainly, much rather die than do a base or crim- 
 inal action ; nor can I be sure, beforehand, that this 
 enemy may not in the last moment ferociam exuere. 
 But the public lawyers now seem to me rather to 
 warp the law, in order to authorize than to check 
 those unlawful proceedings of princes and states; 
 which, by being become common, appear less crim- 
 inal; though custom can never alter the nature of 
 good and ill. 
 
 Pray let no quibbles of lawyers, no refinements 
 of casuists break into the plain notions of right and 
 wrong which every man's right reason and plain 
 common sense suggest to him. To do as you would 
 be done by is the plain, sure, and undisputed rule of
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 171 
 
 morality and justice. Stick to that; and be con- 
 vinced that whatever breaks into it, in any degree, 
 however speciously it may be turned, and however 
 puzzling it may be to answer it, is, notwithstanding, 
 false in itself, unjust, and criminal. I do not know 
 a crime in the world which is not, by the casuists 
 among the Jesuits (especially the twenty-four col- 
 lected, I think, by Escobar) allowed in some, or 
 many cases, not to be criminal. The principles first 
 laid down by them are often specious, the reason- 
 ings plausible; but the conclusion always a lie; for 
 it is contrary to that evident and undeniable rule of 
 justice which I have mentioned above, of not doing 
 to any one what you would not have him do to you. 
 But, however, these refined pieces of casuistry and 
 sophistry being very convenient and welcome to 
 people's passions and appetites, they gladly accept 
 the indulgence without desiring to detect the fallacy 
 of the reasoning; and indeed many, I might say 
 most people, are not able to do it ; which makes the 
 publication of such quibblings and refinements the 
 more pernicious. I am no skilful casuist nor subtle 
 disputant ; and yet I would undertake to justify and 
 qualify the profession of a highwayman step by 
 step, and so plausibly as to make many ignorant 
 people embrace the profession as an innocent, if not 
 even a laudable one; and to puzzle people of some
 
 172 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 degree of knowledge to answer me point by point. 
 I have seen a book entitled "Quidlibet ex Quolibet," 
 or the art of making any thing out of any thing; 
 which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once 
 one quits certain plain truths, obvious in growth to 
 every understanding, in order to run after the in- 
 genious refinements of warm imaginations and 
 speculative reasonings. Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of 
 Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, 
 has written a book to prove that there is no such 
 thing as matter, and that nothing exists but in idea ; 
 that you and I only fancy ourselves eating, drink- 
 ing, and sleeping ; you at Leipsic, and I at London ; 
 that we think we have flesh and blood, legs, arms, 
 etc., but that we are only spirit. His arguments 
 are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am 
 so far from being convinced by them that I am de- 
 termined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and 
 ride, in order to keep that matter, which I so mis- 
 takenly imagine my body at present to consist of, 
 in as good plight as possible. Common sense 
 (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best 
 sense I know of ; abide by it ; it will counsel you best. 
 Read and hear for your amusement, ingenious sys- 
 tems, nice questions, subtlely agitated, with all the 
 refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but 
 consider them only as exercitations for the mind,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 173 
 
 and return always to settle with common sense. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 LETTERS. Your letters, except when upon a 
 given subject, are exceedingly laconic, and neither 
 answer my desires, nor the purpose of letters; 
 which should be familiar conversations, between ab- 
 sent friends. As I desire to live with you upon the 
 footing of an intimate friend, and not of a parent, 
 I could wish that your letters gave me more par- 
 ticular accounts of yourself, and of your lesser trans- 
 actions. When you write to me, suppose yourself 
 conversing freely with me, by the fireside. In that 
 case, you would naturally mention the incidents of 
 the day ; as where you had been, whom you had seen, 
 .what you thought of them, etc. Do this in your let- 
 ters; acquaint me sometimes with your studies, 
 sometimes with your diversions ; tell me of any new 
 persons and characters that you meet with in com- 
 pany, and add your own observations upon them; 
 in short, let me see more of you, in your letters. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 GOOD COMPANY. To keep good company, espe- 
 cially at your first setting out, is the way to receive 
 good impressions. If you ask me what I mean by 
 good company, I will confess to you that it is pretty
 
 174 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 difficult to define; but I will endeavor to make you 
 understand it as well as I can. 
 
 Good company is not what respective sets of com- 
 pany are pleased either to call or think themselves; 
 but it is that company which all the people of the 
 place call, and acknowledge to be good company, 
 notwithstanding some objections which they may 
 form to some of the individuals who compose it. It 
 consists chiefly (but by no means without excep- 
 tion) of people of considerable birth, rank, and char- 
 acter : for people of neither birth nor rank are fre- 
 quently and very justly admitted into it, if distin- 
 guished by any peculiar merit, or eminency in any 
 liberal art or science. Nay, so motley a thing is 
 good company, that many people without birth, rank, 
 or merit,' intrude into it by their own forwardness ; 
 and others slide into it by the protection of some 
 considerable person; and some even of indifferent 
 characters and morals make part of it. But, in the 
 main, the good part preponderates, and people of 
 infamous and blasted characters are never admitted. 
 In this fashionable good company the best manners 
 and the best language of the place are most unques- 
 tionably to be learnt; for they establish and give the 
 tone to both, which are therefore called the language . 
 and manners of good company ; there being no legal 
 tribunal to ascertain either.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 175 
 
 A company consisting wholly of people of the first 
 quality cannot, for that reason, be called good com- 
 pany, in the common acceptation of the phrase, 
 unless they are, into the bargain, the fashionable and 
 accredited company of the place; for people of the 
 very first quality can be as silly, as ill bred, and as 
 worthless, as people of the meanest degree. On the 
 other hand, a company consisting entirely of people 
 of very low condition, whatever their merits or parts 
 may be, can never be called good company ; and con- 
 sequently, should not be much frequented, though 
 by no means despised. 
 
 A company wholly composed of men of learning, 
 though greatly to be valued and respected, is not 
 meant by the words good company: they cannot 
 have the easy manners and tournure of the world, 
 as they do not live in it. If you can bear your part 
 well in such a company, it is extremely right to be in 
 it sometimes, and you will be but more esteemed, in 
 other companies, for having a place in that. But 
 then do not let it engross you; for if you do, you 
 will be only considered as one of the litter ati by pro- 
 fession ; which is not the way either to shine or rise 
 in the world. 
 
 The company of professed wits and poets is 
 extremely inviting to most young men ; who, if they 
 have wit themselves, are pleased with it, and if they
 
 176 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 have none, are sillily proud of being one of it : but 
 it should be frequented with moderation and judg- 
 ment, and you should by no means give yourself up 
 to it. A wit is a very unpopular denomination, as 
 it carries terror along with it ; and people in general 
 are as much afraid of a live wit, in company, as a 
 woman is of a gun, which she thinks may go off of 
 itself, and do her a mischief. Their acquaintance 
 is, however, worth seeking, and their company worth 
 frequenting; but not exclusively of others, nor to 
 such a degree as to be considered only as one of that 
 particular set. 
 
 But the company, which of all others you should 
 most carefully avoid, is that low company, which 
 in every sense of the word, is low indeed; low in 
 rank, low in parts, low in manners, and low in merit 
 
 [Oct. 12, 1748.} 
 
 ASSOCIATES. There is good sense in the Spanish 
 saying, "Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell 
 you who you are." Make it therefore your business, 
 wherever you are, to get into that company which 
 everybody of the place allows to be the best com- 
 pany, next to their own : which is the best definition 
 that I can give you of good company. But here, 
 too, one caution is very necessary ; for want of 
 which many young men have been ruined, even in
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 177 
 
 good company. Good company (as I have before 
 observed) is composed of a great variety of fash- 
 ionable people, whose characters and morals are 
 very different, though their manners are pretty much 
 the same. When a young man, now in the world, 
 first gets into that company, he very rightly deter- 
 mines to conform to and imitate it. But then he too 
 often, and fatally, mistakes the objects of his imita- 
 tion. He has often heard that absurd term of genteel 
 and fashionable vices. [Same date.] 
 
 BEHAVIOR. Imitate, then, with discernment and 
 judgment, the real perfections of the good company 
 into which you may get ; copy their politeness, their 
 carriage, their address, and the easy and well-bred 
 turn of their conversation; but remember that, let 
 them shine ever so bright, their vices, if they have 
 any, are so many spots which you would no more 
 imitate than you would make an artificial wart upon 
 your face, because some very handsome man had the 
 misfortune to have a natural one upon his; but, on 
 the contrary, think how much handsomer he would 
 have been without it. [Same date.] 
 
 TALKING. Talk often, but never long; in that 
 case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not 
 to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but
 
 178 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 do not treat the whole company; this bdng one of 
 the very few cases in which people do not care to be 
 treated, every one being fully convinced that he has 
 wherewithal to pay. 
 
 Tell stories seldom, and absolutely never but 
 where they are very apt and very short. Omit every 
 circumstance that is not material, and beware of 
 digressions. To have frequent recourse to narrative 
 betrays great want of imagination. 
 
 Never hold anybody by the button or the hand, 
 in order to be heard out; for if people are not willing 
 to hear you, you had much better hold your tongue 
 than them. 
 
 Most long talkers single out some one unfortu- 
 nate man in company (commonly him whom they 
 observe to be the most silent, or their next neighbor) 
 to whisper, or at least, in a half voice, to convey a 
 continuity of words to. This is excessively ill bred, 
 and, in some degree, a fraud; conversation stock 
 being a joint and common property. But, on the 
 other hand, if one of these unmerciful talkers lays 
 hold of you, hear him with patience (and at least 
 seeming attention) if he is worth obliging; for 
 nothing will oblige him more than a patient hearing, 
 as nothing would hurt him more than either to leave 
 him in the midst of his discourse or to discover your 
 impatience under your affliction.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMA. 
 
 Take rather than give the tone of the company 
 you are in. If you have parts you will show them 
 more or less upon every subject; and if you have 
 not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of 
 other people's than of your own choosing. 
 
 Avoid as much as you can in mixed companies. 
 argumentative, polemical conversations; which, 
 though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose, 
 for a time, the contending parties to wards each other; 
 and if the controversy grows warm and noisy, 
 endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity 
 or joke. I quieted such a conversation hubbub once 
 by presenting to them that, though I was persuaded 
 none there present would repeat out of company 
 what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the 
 discretion of the passengers in the street, who must 
 necessarily hear all that was said. 
 
 Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid 
 speaking of yourself if it be possible. Such is the 
 natural pride and vanity of our hearts that it per- 
 petually breaks out, even in people of the best parts, 
 in all the various modes and figures of the egotism. 
 [Oct. 19, 1748.-] 
 
 SILLY VANITY. This principle of vanity and 
 pride is so strong in human nature that it descends 
 even to the lowest objects ; and one often sees people
 
 180 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 angling for praise, where, admitting all they say to 
 be true (which, by the way, it seldom is), no just 
 praise is to be caught. One man affirms that he has 
 rode post a hundred miles in six hours ; probably it 
 is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? 
 Why, he is a very good postboy, that is all. Another 
 asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has 
 drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out 
 of charity I will believe him a liar ; for if I do not, I 
 must think him a beast. [Same date.} 
 
 YOURSELF. The only sure way of avoiding these 
 evils is never to speak of yourself at all. But when 
 historically you are obliged to mention yourself, take 
 care not to drop one single word that can directly or 
 indirectly be construed as fishing for applause. Be 
 your character what it will, it will be known; and 
 nobody will take it upon your own word. Never 
 imagine that anything you can say yourself will 
 varnish your defects or add lustre to your perfec- 
 tions ; but on the contrary, it may, and nine times in 
 ten will, make the former more glaring and the 
 latter obscure. If you are silent upon your own 
 subject, neither envy, indignation, nor ridicule will 
 obstruct or allay the applause which you may really 
 deserve ; but if you publish your own panegyric upon 
 any occasion or in any shape whatsoever, and how-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 181 
 
 ever artfully dressed or disguised, they will all con- 
 spire against you, and you will be disappointed of 
 the very end you aim at. [Same date.] 
 
 SCANDAL MIMICRY SWEARING LAUGHTER. 
 Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly; for 
 though the defamation of others may for the present 
 gratify the malignity of the pride of our hearts, 
 cool reflection will draw very disadvantageous con- 
 clusions from such a disposition ; and in the case of 
 scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always 
 thought as bad as the thief. 
 
 Mimicry, which is the common and favorite 
 amusement of little, low minds, is in the utmost 
 contempt with great ones. It is the lowest and most 
 illiberal of all buffoonery. Pray neither practise it 
 yourself, nor applaud it in others. Besides that, the 
 person mimicked is insulted; and as I have often 
 observed to you before, an insult is never forgiven. 
 
 I need not (I believe) advise you to adapt your 
 conversation to the people you are conversing with ; 
 for I suppose you would not, without this caution, 
 have talked upon the same subject and in the same 
 manner to a minister of state, a bishop, a philoso- 
 pher, a captain, and a woman. A man of the world 
 must, like the chameleon (sic), be able to take every 
 different hue; which is by no means a criminal or
 
 182 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 abject, but a necessary complaisance, for it relates 
 only to manners, and not to morals. 
 
 One word only as to swearing; and that I hope 
 and believe is more than is necessary. You may 
 sometimes hear some people in good company inter- 
 lard their discourse with oaths by way of embellish- 
 ment, as they think ; but you must observe, too, that 
 those who do so are never those who contribute in 
 any degree to give that company the denomination 
 of good company. They are always subalterns or 
 people of low education; for that practice, besides 
 that it has no one temptation to plead, is as silly and 
 as illiberal as it is wicked. 
 
 Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are 
 only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good 
 sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the 
 world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore only 
 seen to smile, but never heard to laugh. 
 
 But to conclude this long letter; all the above- 
 mentioned rules, however carefully you may observe 
 them, will lose half their effect if unaccompanied 
 by the Graces. Whatever you say, if you say it 
 with a supercilious, cynical face, or an embarrassed 
 countenance, or a silly, disconcerted grin, will be 
 ill received. If, into the bargain, you mutter it, or 
 utter it indistinctly and ungracefully, it will be still 
 worse received. If your air and address are vulgar,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 183 
 
 awkward, and gauche, you may be esteemed indeed, 
 if you have great intrinsic merit; but you will never 
 please, and, without pleasing, you will rise but 
 heavily. Venus, among the ancients, was synony- 
 mous with the Graces, who were always supposed to 
 accompany her ; and Horace tells us that even Youth 
 and Mercury, the god of arts and eloquence, would 
 not do without her. 
 
 " Parum comis sine te Juventas, 
 Mercuriusque." 
 
 They are not inexorable ladies, and may be had 
 if properly and diligently pursued. Adieu. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 THE DUTY OF A MENTOR. I have long since 
 done mentioning your great religious and moral 
 duties ; because I could not make your understanding 
 so bad a compliment, as to suppose that you wanted, 
 or could receive, any new instructions upon those 
 two important points. Mr. Harte, I am sure, has not 
 neglected them; besides, they are so obvious to 
 common sense and reason, that commentators may 
 (as they often do) perplex, but Cannot make them 
 clearer. My province, therefore, is to supply, by my 
 experience, your, hitherto, inevitable inexperience 
 in the ways of the world. People at your age are 
 in a state of natural ebriety ; and want rails, and
 
 184 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 gardefous, wherever they go, to hinder them from 
 breaking their necks. This drunkenness of youth is 
 not only tolerated, but even pleases, if kept within 
 certain bounds of discretion and decency. Those 
 bounds are the point which it is difficult for the 
 drunken man himself to find out ; and there it is that 
 the experience of a friend may not only serve but 
 save him. 
 
 Carry with you, and welcome, into company, all 
 the gaiety and spirits, but as little of the giddiness, 
 'of youth as you can. The former will charm; but 
 the latter will often, though innocently, implacably 
 offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situa- 
 tions of the company, before you give way to what 
 your imagination may prompt you to say. There 
 are, in all companies, more wrong heads than right 
 ones, and many more who deserve than who like 
 censure. [Oct. 29, 1748.'} 
 
 EGOTISM. Cautiously avoid talking of either 
 your own or other people's domestic affairs.* Yours 
 are nothing to them, but tedious ; theirs are nothing 
 to you. The subject is a tender one ; and it is odds 
 but you touch somebody or other's sore place; for, 
 in this case, there is no trusting to specious appear- 
 ances; which may be, and often are, so contrary to 
 
 *The author, as he says, often repeats himself; see ante, 
 p. 180.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 185 
 
 the real situation of things, between men and their 
 wives, parents and their children, seeming friends, 
 etc., that, with the best intentions in the world, one 
 often blunders disagreeably. 
 
 Remember, that the wit, humor, and jokes of 
 most mixed companies are local. They thrive in 
 that particular soil, but will not often bear trans- 
 planting. Every company is differently circum- 
 stanced, has its particular cant, and jargon; which 
 may give occasion to wit and mirth, within that 
 circle, but would seem flat and insipid in any other, 
 and therefore will not bear repeating. [Same date.'] 
 
 GOOD FELLOWS. You will find, in most good 
 company, some people who only keep their place 
 there by a contemptible title enough ; these are what 
 we call very good-natured fellows, and the French 
 bans diables. The truth is, they are people without 
 any parts or fancy, and who, having no will of their 
 own, readily assent to, concur in, and applaud, what- 
 ever is said or done in the company; and adopt, 
 with the same alacrity, the most virtuous or the most 
 criminal, the wisest or the silliest scheme, that hap- 
 pens to be entertained by the majority of the com- 
 pany. This foolish, and often criminal, complais- 
 ance flows from a foolish cause; the want of any 
 other merit. I hope you will hold your place in
 
 186 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 company by a nobler tenure, and that you will hold 
 it (you can bear a quibble, I believe, yet) in capite. 
 Have a will and an opinion of your own, and adhere 
 to them steadily; but then do it with good humor, 
 good breeding, and (if you have it) with urbanity; 
 for you have not yet beard enough either to preach 
 or censure. [Same date.] 
 
 THE FINE GENTLEMAN. What the French justly 
 call les manieres nobles, are only to be acquired in 
 the very best companies. They are the distinguish- 
 ing characteristics of men of fashion : people of low 
 education never wear them so close, but that some 
 part or other of the original vulgarism appears. Les 
 manieres nobles equally forbid insolent contempt, or 
 low envy and jealousy. Low people, in good cir- 
 cumstances, fine clothes, and equipage, will inso- 
 lently show contempt for all those who cannot afford 
 as fine clothes, as good an equipage, and who have 
 not (as they term it) as much money in their 
 pockets : on the other hand, they are gnawed with 
 envy, and cannot help discovering it, of those who 
 surpass them in any of these articles ; which are far 
 from being sure criterions of merit. They are, like- 
 wise, jealous of being slighted; and, consequently, 
 suspicious and captious: they are eager and hot 
 about trifles; because trifles were, at first, their
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 187 
 
 affairs of consequence. Les manieres nobles imply 
 exactly the reverse of all this. Study them early; 
 you cannot make them too habitual and familiar to 
 you. [Same date.] 
 
 I like the description of your pic-nic;* where, I 
 take it for granted, that your cards are only to break 
 the formality of a circle, and your symposium 
 intended more to promote conversation than drink- 
 ing. Such an amicable collision, as Lord Shaftes- 
 bury very prettily calls it, rubs off and smooths those 
 rough corners, which mere nature has given to the 
 smoothest of us. I hope some part, at least, of the 
 conversation is in German. [Same date.] 
 
 THE GRACES. I send you Mr. Locke's book upon 
 education, in which you will find the stress he lays 
 upon the graces, which he calls (and very truly) 
 good breeding. I have marked all the parts of that 
 book which are worth your attention; for as he 
 begins with the child, almost from its birth, the 
 parts relative to its infancy would be useless to you. 
 Germany is, still less than England, the seat of the 
 graces ; however you had as good not to say so while 
 you are there. [Nov. 18, 1748.} 
 
 THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. Of all the men 
 
 * Pic-nic. Johnson does not mention this word, nor do his 
 predecessors, Ashe and Bailey. Richardson does not give it 
 even in his supplement. Worcester cites Widegren, 1/88 ; this 
 then is the earliest use of the word by an author of weight.
 
 188 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 that ever I knew in my life (and I knew him 
 extremely well), the late Duke of Marlborough pos- 
 sessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say 
 engrossed them; and indeed he got the most by 
 them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of 
 profound historians, who always assign deep causes 
 for great events) to ascribe the better half of the 
 Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to 
 those graces. He was eminently illiterate; wrote 
 bad English, and spelled it still worse. He had no 
 share of what is commonly called parts; that is, he 
 had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. 
 He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain 
 understanding, with sound judgment. But these 
 alone would probably have raised him but something 
 higher than they found him; which was page to 
 King James the Second's Queen. There the graces 
 protected and promoted him; for, while he was an 
 ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, 
 then favorite mistress to King Charles the Second, 
 struck by those very graces, gave him five thousand 
 pounds, with which he immediately bought an 
 annuity for his life, of five hundred pounds a year, 
 of my grandfather, Halifax, which was the founda- 
 tion of his subsequent fortune. His figure was 
 beautiful, but his manner was irresistible, to either 
 man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 189 
 
 manner that he was enabled, during all his war, to 
 connect the various and jarring powers of the Grand 
 Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object 
 of the war, notwithstanding their private and sepa- 
 rate views, jealousies, and wrongheadedness. What- 
 ever court he went to (and he was often obliged to 
 go himself to some testy and refractory ones), he 
 as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his 
 measures. The Pensionary Heinsius, a venerable 
 old minister, grown gray in business, and who had 
 governed the Republic of the United Provinces for 
 more than forty years, was absolutely governed by 
 the Duke of Marlborough, as that republic feels to 
 this day. He was always cool; and nobody ever 
 observed the least variation in his countenance; he 
 could refuse more gracefully than other people could 
 grant ; and those who went away from him the most 
 dissatisfied, as to the substance of their business, 
 were yet personally charmed with him, and, in some 
 degree, comforted by his manner. With all his 
 gentleness and gracefulness, no man living was more 
 conscious of his situation, nor maintained his dig- 
 nity better. [Same date.] 
 
 A FATHER'S ANXIETY. This subject is inex- 
 haustible, as it extends to everything that is to be 
 said or done; but I will leave it for the present, as
 
 190 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 this letter is already pretty long. Such is my desire, 
 my anxiety for your perfection, that I never think I 
 have said enough, though you may possibly think I 
 have said too much; and though, in truth, if your 
 own good sense is not sufficient to direct you, in 
 many of these plain points, all that I or anybody 
 else can say will be insufficient. But, where you 
 are concerned, I am the insatiable man in Horace, 
 who covets still a little corner more, to complete the 
 figure of his field. I dread every little corner that 
 may deform mine, in which I would have (if pos- 
 sible) no one defect. [Same date.] 
 
 MOURNING. I am at present under very great 
 concern for the loss of a most affectionate brother, 
 with whom I had always lived in the closest friend- 
 ship. My brother John died last Friday night, of a 
 fit of the gout, which he had had for about a month 
 in his hands and feet, and which fell at last upon 
 his stomach and head. As he grew, towards the last, 
 lethargic, his end was not painful to himself. At 
 the distance which you are from hence, you need not 
 go into mourning upon this occasion, as the time of 
 your mourning would be near over before you could 
 put it on. [Dec. 6, 1748.] 
 
 FRIVOLITY. Little minds mistake little objects 
 for great ones, and lavish away upon the former
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 191 
 
 that time and attention which only the latter 
 . deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous 
 and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, 
 and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The 
 strong mind distinguishes, not only between the 
 useful and the useless, but likewise between the use- 
 ful and the curious. He applies himself intensely 
 to the former; he only amuses himself with the 
 latter. Of this little sort of knowledge, which I 
 have just hinted at, you will find, at least, as much 
 as you need wish to know, in a superficial but pretty 
 French book, entitled "Spectacle de la Nature," 
 which will amuse you while you read it, and give 
 you a sufficient notion of the various parts of 
 nature; I would advise you to read it at leisure 
 hours. [Same date.] 
 
 ASTRONOMY. But that part of nature which, 
 Mr. Harte tells me, you have begun to study, with 
 the Rector magnificus, is of much greater impor- 
 tance, and deserves much more attention; I mean 
 astronomy. The vast and immense planetary sys- 
 tem, the astonishing order and regularity of those 
 innumerable worlds, will open a scene to you which 
 not only deserves your attention as a matter of 
 curiosity, or rather astonishment ; but, still more, as 
 it will give you greater and consequently juster
 
 193 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. -, 
 
 ideas of that eternal and omnipotent Being, who 
 contrived, made, and still preserves that universe, 
 than all the contemplation of this, comparatively, 
 very little orb, which we at present inhabit, could 
 possibly give you. Upon this subject, Monsieur 
 Fontenelle's "Pluralite des Mondes," which you may 
 read in two hours' time, will both inform and please 
 you. God bless you! Yours. [Same date.] 
 
 The whole morning, if diligently and attentively 
 devoted to solid studies, will go a great way at the 
 year's end; and the evenings spent in the pleasures 
 of good company will go as far in teaching you a 
 knowledge not much less necessary than the 5>ther 
 I mean the knowledge of the world. Between these 
 two necessary studies, that of books in the morning, 
 and that of the world in the evening, you see that 
 you will not have one minute to squander or slattern 
 away. Nobody ever lent themselves more than I 
 did, when I was young, to the pleasures and dissipa- 
 tion of good company ; I even did it too much. But 
 then, I can assure you that I always found time for 
 serious studies; and when I could find it no other 
 \vay, I took it out of my sleep, for I resolved always 
 to rise early in the morning, however late I went to 
 bed at night; and this resolution I have kept so 
 sacred that, unless when I have been confined to my
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 193 
 
 bed by illness, I have not for more than forty years 
 ever been in bed at nine o'clock in the morning, but 
 commonly up before eight. [Dec. 13, 1748.] 
 
 WRITING. Why do you not form your Roman 
 characters better? for I maintain that it is in every 
 man's power to write what hand he pleases; and 
 consequently that he ought to write a good one. 
 You form, particularly, your ee and your 11 in 
 zigzag, instead of making them straight, as thus, 
 ee, II; a fault very easily mended. You will not, I 
 believe, be angry with this little criticism, when I 
 tell you that, by all the accounts I have had of late, 
 from Mr. Harte and others, this is the only criticism 
 that you give me occasion to make. [Dec. 20, 
 1748.] 
 
 A PORTRAIT. Consider what lustre and eclat it 
 will give you when you return here, to be allowed 
 to be the best scholar, of a gentleman, in England ; 
 not to mention the real pleasure and solid comfort 
 which such knowledge will give you throughout 
 your whole life. Mr. Harte tells me another thing 
 which, I own, I did not expect ; it is that, when you 
 read aloud, or repeat part of plays, you speak very 
 properly and distinctly. This relieves me from 
 great uneasiness, which I was under upon account 
 of your former bad enunciation. Go on, and attend
 
 194 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 most diligently to this important article. It is, of 
 all the graces (and they are all necessary), the most 
 necessary one. [Same date.} 
 
 THE DESIRE OF PRAISE. But here let me, as an 
 old stager upon the theatre of the world, suggest 
 one consideration to you, which is, to extend your 
 desire of praise a little beyond the strictly praise- 
 worthy ; or else you may be apt to discover too much 
 contempt for at least three parts in the five of the 
 world, who will never forgive it you. In the mass 
 of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of ' 
 fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, 
 must to a certain degree be respected, though they 
 are by no means respectable. And a man, who will 
 show every knave or fool that he thinks him such, 
 will engage in a most ruinous war, against numbers 
 much superior to those that he and his allies can 
 bring into the field. Abhor a knave, and pity a 
 fool in your heart, but let neither of them, unneces- 
 sarily, see that you do so. Some complaisance and 
 attention to fools is prudent, and not mean; as a 
 silent abhorrence of individual knaves is often neces- ! 
 sary, and not criminal. [Same date.} 
 
 A COMPLIMENT. Lady Chesterfield bids me tell 
 you that she decides entirely in your favor,* against 
 * On a German question.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 195 
 
 Mr. Grevenkop, and even against herself; for she 
 does not think that she could, at this time, write 
 either so good a character, or so good German. 
 Pray write her a German letter upon that subject; 
 in which you may tell her that, like the rest of the 
 world, you approve of her judgment, because it is in 
 your favor ; and that you true Germans cannot allow 
 Danes to be competent judges of your language, etc. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 AFFECTATION. Any affectation whatsoever in 
 dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understand- 
 ing. Most of our young fellows here display some 
 character or other by their dress: some affect the 
 tremendous, and wear a great and fiercely cocked 
 hat, an enormous sword, a short waistcoat, and a 
 black cravat; these I should be almost tempted to 
 swear the peace against, in my own defence, if I 
 were not convinced that they are but meek asses in 
 lions' skins. Others go in brown frocks, leather 
 breeches, great oaken cudgels in their hands, their 
 hats uncocked, and their hair unpowdered; and 
 imitate grooms, stage-coachmen, and country bump- 
 kins, so well in their outsides, that I do not make 
 the least doubt of their resembling them equally in 
 their insides. A man of sense carefully avoids 
 particular character in his, dress; he is accu-
 
 196 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 rately clean for his own sake ; but all the rest is for 
 other people's. He dresses as well, and in the same 
 manner, as the people of sense and fashion of the 
 place where he is. If he dresses better, as he thinks, 
 that is, more tfian they, he is a fop; if he dresses 
 worse, he is unpardonably negligent; but, of the 
 two, I would rather have a young fellow too much 
 than too little dressed; the excess on that side will 
 wear off, With a little age and reflection; but if he 
 is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, 
 and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine, 
 where others are fine; and plain, where others are 
 plain; but take care, always, that your clothes are 
 well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give 
 you a very awkward air. When you are once well 
 dressed for the day, think no more of it afterwards ; 
 and, without any stiffness for fear of discomposing 
 that dress, let all your motions be as easy and nat- 
 ural as if you had no clothes on at all. So much for 
 dress, which I maintain to be a thing of consequence 
 in the polite world. [Dec. jo, 1748.} 
 
 A HAPPY NEW YEAR. I send you, my dear child 
 (and you will not doubt), very sincerely, the wishes 
 of the season. May you deserve a great number of 
 happy new years ; and, if you deserve, may you have 
 them! Many new years, indeed, you may see, but
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 197 
 
 happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. 
 These, virtue, honor, and knowledge, alone can 
 merit, alone can procure. "Dii tibi dent annos de te 
 nam csetera sumes," was a pretty piece of poetical 
 flattery, where it was said; I hope that in time It 
 may be no flattery when said to you. But, I assure 
 you, that, whenever I cannot apply the latter part 
 of the line to you with truth, I shall neither say, 
 think, nor wish the former. Adieu. [Same date.'] 
 
 RATIONAL PLEASURES. Now that you are going 
 a little more into the world, I will take this occasion 
 to explain my intentions as to your future expenses, 
 that you may know what you have to expect from 
 me, and make your plan accordingly. I shall neither 
 deny nor grudge you any money that may be neces- 
 sary for either your improvement or your pleasures ; 
 I mean, the pleasures of a rational being. Under 
 the head of improvement, I mean the best books, 
 and the best masters, cost what they will; I also 
 mean all the expense of lodgings, coach, dress, 
 servants, etc., which, according to the several places 
 where you may be, shall be respectively necessary, to 
 enable you to keep the best company. Under the 
 head of rational pleasures, I comprehend, first, 
 proper charities, to real and compassionate objects 
 of it; secondly, proper presents, to those to whom
 
 198 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 you are obliged, or whom you desire to oblige; 
 thirdly, a conformity of expense to that of the com- 
 pany which you keep as in public spectacles, your 
 share of little entertainments, a few pistoles at 
 games of mere commerce, and other incidental calls 
 of good company. The only two articles which I 
 will never supply, are the profusion of low riot and 
 the idle lavishness of negligence and laziness. A 
 fool squanders away, without credit or advantage to 
 himself, more than a man of sense spends with both. 
 The latter employs his money as he does his time, 
 and neither spends a shilling of the one, nor a min- 
 ute of the other, but in something that is either 
 useful or rationally pleasing to himself or others. 
 The former buys whatever he does not want, and 
 does not pay for what he does want. He cannot 
 withstand the charms of a toy-shop; snuff-boxes, 
 watches, heads of canes, etc., are his destruction. His 
 servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indo- 
 lence, to cheat him; and, in a little time, he is aston- 
 ished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, 
 to find himself in want of all the real comforts and 
 necessaries of life. Without care and method the 
 largest fortune will not, and with them, almost the 
 smallest will, supply all necessary expenses. As far 
 as you can possibly, pay ready money for everything 
 you buy, and avoid bills. Pay that money too, your-
 
 SENTENCES AXD MAXIMS. 199 
 
 self, and not through the hands of any servant, who 
 always either stipulates poundage, or requires a 
 present for his good word, as they call it. Where 
 you must have bills (as for meat and drink, clothes, 
 etc.) pay them regularly every month, and with 
 your own hand. Never, from a mistaken economy, 
 buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap; 
 or, from a silly pride, because it is dear. Keep an 
 account, in a book, of all that you receive, and of 
 all that you pay; for no man, who knows what he 
 receives, and what he pays, ever runs out. I do not 
 mean that you should keep an account of the shil- 
 lings and half-crowns which you may spend in 
 chair-hire, operas, etc., they are unworthy of the 
 time, and of the ink, that they would consume; leave 
 such minntics to dull, pennywise fellows; but remem- 
 ber, in economy, as well as in. every other part of 
 life, to have the proper attention to proper objects, 
 and the proper contempt for little ones. A strong 
 mind sees things in their true proportions: a weak 
 one views them through a magnifying medium; 
 which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a 
 flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive 
 great ones. I have known many a man pass for a 
 miser, by saving a penny, and wrangling for two 
 pence, who was undoing himself, at the same time, 
 by living above his income, and not attending to
 
 200 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 essential articles, which were above his portce. The 
 sure characteristic of a sound and strong mind is, 
 to find, in everything, those certain bounds, quos 
 ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum. These boun- 
 daries are marked out by a very fine line, which 
 only good sense and attention can discover; it is 
 much too fine for vulgar eyes. In manners, this line 
 is good breeding; beyond it, is troublesome cere- 
 mony; short of it, is unbecoming negligence and 
 inattention. In morals, it divides ostentatious Puri- 
 tanism from criminal relaxation; in religion, 
 superstition from impiety; and, in short, every 
 virtue from its kindred vice or weakness. I think 
 you have sense enough to discover the line; keep it 
 always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest 
 upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you till you are 
 able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer 
 people who walk well upon that line, than upon the 
 slack rope; and therefore a good performer shines 
 so much the more. [Jan. 10, 1749.] 
 
 i 
 DANCING. Remember to take the best dancing 
 
 master at Berlin, more to teach you to sit, stand, and 
 walk gracefully, than to dance finely. The Graces, 
 the Graces; remember the Graces! Adieu. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 THE CLASSICS THEIR VALUE. My first preju-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 201 
 
 dice (for I do not mention the prejudices of boys 
 and women, such as hobgoblins, ghosts, dreams, 
 spilling salt, etc.) was my classical enthusiasm, 
 which I received from the books I read, and the 
 masters who explained them to me. I was con- 
 vinced there had been no common sense nor common 
 honesty in the world for these last fifteen hundred 
 years; but that they were totally extinguished with 
 the ancient Greek and Roman governments. Homer 
 and Virgil could have no faults, because they were 
 ancient; Milton and Tasso could have no merit, 
 because they were modern. And I could almost 
 have said, with regard to the ancients, what Cicero, 
 very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher, 
 says with regard to Plato, "Cum quo errare malim; 
 quam cum aliis recte sentire." Whereas now, with- 
 out any extraordinary effort of genius, I have dis- 
 covered that nature was the same three thousand 
 years ago as it is at present ; that men were but men 
 then as well as now; that modes and customs vary 
 often, but that human nature is always the same. 
 And I can no more suppose, that men were better, 
 braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand 
 years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or 
 vegetables were better then than they are now. I 
 dare assert too, in defiance of the favorers of the 
 ancients, that Homer's hero, Achilles, was both a
 
 203 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 brute and a scoundrel, and consequently an improper 
 character for the hero of an epic poem; he had so 
 little regard for his country, that he would not act 
 in defence of it, because he had quarrelled with 
 
 Agamemnon about a w e; and then afterward, 
 
 animated by private resentment only, he went about 
 killing people basely, I will call it, because he knew 
 himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he 
 was, he wore the strongest armor in the world; 
 which I humbly apprehend to be a blunder; for a 
 horseshoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have 
 been sufficient. On the other hand, with submission 
 to the favorers of the moderns, I assert with Mr. 
 Dryden, that the Devil is in truth the hero of Mil- 
 ton's poem : his plan, which he lays, pursues, and at 
 last executes, being the subject of the poem. From 
 all which considerations, I impartially conclude, that 
 the ancients had their excellencies and their defects, 
 their virtues and their vices, just like the moderns: 
 pedantry and affectation of learning decide clearly 
 in favor of the former; vanity and ignorance, as 
 peremptorily, in favor of the latter. Religious pre- 
 judices kept pace with my classical ones ; and there 
 was a time when I thought it impossible for the 
 honestest man in the world to be saved, out of the 
 pale of the Church of England : not considering that 
 matters of opinion do not depend upon the will ; and
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 203 
 
 that it is as natural, and as allowable, that another 
 man should differ in opinion from me, as that I 
 should differ from him; and that, if we are both 
 sincere, we are both blameless : and should conse- 
 quently have mutual indulgence for each other. 
 [Feb. 7, 
 
 REFLECTION ITS USE. Use and assert your 
 own reason; reflect, examine, and analyze every- 
 thing, in order to form a sound and mature judg- 
 ment ; let no ovr 05 s<pa impose upon your under- 
 standing, mislead your actions, or dictate your 
 conversation. Be early, what, if you are not, you 
 will, when too late, wish you had been. Consult 
 your reason betimes : I do not say that it will always 
 prove an unerring guide; for human reason is not 
 infallible: but it will prove the least erring guide 
 that you can follow. Books and conversation may 
 assist it; but adopt neither, blindly and implicitly; 
 try both by that best rule which God has given to 
 direct us, Reason. Of all the troubles do not decline, 
 as many people do, that of thinking. The herd of 
 mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions 
 are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe 
 it is better that it should be so; as such common 
 prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than 
 their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated
 
 204: CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 and unimproved as they are. We have many of 
 those useful prejudices in this country, which I 
 should be very sorry to see removed. The good 
 Protestant conviction, that the Pope is both Anti- 
 christ, and the Whore of Babylon, is a more effect- 
 ual preservative, in this country, against popery, 
 than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of 
 Chillingworth. 
 
 The idle story of the Pretender's having been 
 introduced in a warming-pan, into the queen's bed, 
 though as destitute of all probability as of all foun- 
 dation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause 
 of Jacobitism, than all that Mr. Locke and others 
 have written, to show the unreasonableness and 
 absurdity of the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary 
 right and unlimited passive obedience. And that 
 silly, sanguine notion, which is firmly entertained 
 here, that one Englishman can beat three French- 
 men, encourages, and has sometimes enabled one 
 Englishman, in reality, to beat two. [Same date.'] 
 
 LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. Can an author with 
 reason complain that he is cramped and shackled 
 if he is not at liberty to publish blasphemy, bawdry, 
 or sedition? all which are equally prohibited in 
 the freest governments, if they are wise and well 
 regulated ones. This is the present general com-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 205 
 
 plaint of the French authors ; but, indeed, chiefly of 
 the bad ones. No wonder, say they, that England 
 produces so many great geniuses ; people there may 
 think as they please, and publish what they think. 
 Very true, but who hinders them from thinking as 
 they please? If, indeed, they think in a manner 
 destructive of all religion, morality, or good man- 
 ners, or to the disturbance of the state; an absolute 
 government will certainly more effectually prohibit 
 them from, or punish them for publishing such 
 thoughts, than a free one could do. But how does 
 that cramp the genius of an epic, dramatic, or lyric 
 poet? Or how does it corrupt the eloquence of an 
 orator, in the pulpit or at the bar? [Same date."} 
 
 GRACEFUL BEHAVIOR. There is another object 
 that must keep pace with and accompany knowl- 
 edge; I mean, manners, politeness, and the graces; 
 in which Sir Charles Williams, though very much 
 your friend, owns you are very deficient. The man- 
 ners of Leipsic must be shook off; and in that 
 respect you must put on the new man. No scramb- 
 ling at your meals, as at a German ordinary; no 
 awkward overturns of glasses, plates, and salt-cel- 
 lars ;MIO horse-play. On the contrary, a gentleness 
 of manners, a graceful carnage, and an insinuating 
 address, must take their place. I repeat, and shall
 
 206 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 never cease repeating to you, the Graces, the Graces. 
 [April 12, 1749.1 
 
 A GENTLEMAN'S PLEASURES. DEAR BOY: This 
 letter will, I believe, still find you at Venice, in all 
 the dissipation of masquerades, ridottos, operas, 
 etc. : with all my heart ; they are decent evening 
 amusements, and very properly succeed that serious 
 application to which 1 am sure you devote your 
 mornings. There are liberal and illiberal pleasures, 
 as well as liberal and illiberal arts. There are some 
 pleasures, that degrade a gentleman, as much as 
 some trades could do. Sottish drinking, indiscrim- 
 inate gluttony, driving coaches, rustic sports, such 
 as fox-chases, horse-races, etc., are, in my opinion, 
 infinitely below the honest and industrious profes- 
 sions of a tailor, and a shoemaker, which are said 
 to deroger. {April 19, 1749.} 
 
 Music FIDDLING. I cannot help cautioning 
 you against giving into those (I will call them illib- 
 eral) pleasures (though music is commonly reck- 
 oned one of the liberal arts) to the degree that most 
 of your countrymen do when they travel in Italy. 
 If you love music, hear it; go to operas, concerts, 
 and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist upon 
 your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts 
 a gentleman in a. very frivolous, contemptible light;
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 207 
 
 brings him into a great deal of bad company; and 
 takes up a great deal of time, which might be much 
 better employed. Few things would mortify me 
 more than to see you bearing a part in a concert, 
 with a fiddle under your chin, or a pipe in your 
 mouth. [Same date.] 
 
 MANIERES. By manieres, I do not mean bare 
 common civility; everybody must have that, who 
 would not be kicked out of company; but I mean 
 engaging, insinuating, shining manners; a distin- 
 guished politeness, an almost irresistible address; a 
 superior gracefulness in all you say and do. It is 
 this alone that can give all your other talents their 
 full lustre and value; and consequently, it is this 
 which should now be the principal object of your 
 attention. Observe minutely, wherever you go, the 
 allowed and established 'morals of good breeding, 
 and form yourself upon them. Whatever pleases 
 you most, in others, will infallibly please others, in 
 you. I have often repeated this to you ; now is your 
 time of putting it in practice. [Same date.] 
 
 LITTLE PRINCES. In general, I believe that little 
 princes are more likely to be great men than those 
 whose more extensive dominions, and superior 
 strength, flatter them with security; which com- 
 monly produces negligence and indolence. A little
 
 208 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 prince, in the neighborhood of great ones, must be 
 alert, and look out sharp, if he would secure his own 
 dominions; much more still, if he would enlarge 
 them. He must watch for conjunctures, or endeavor 
 to make them. No princes have ever possessed this 
 art better than those of the House of Savoy, who 
 have enlarged their dominions prodigiously within 
 a century, by profiting of conjunctures. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 ATTENTIONS. A young man should never be 
 wanting in these attentions; they cost little and 
 bring in a great deal, by getting you people's good 
 word and affection. They gain the heart, to which 
 I have always advised you to apply yourself partic- 
 ularly; it guides ten thousand for one that reason 
 influences. 
 
 I cannot end this letter, or (I believe) any other, 
 without repeating my recommendation of the 
 Graces. They are to be met with at Turin; for 
 God's sake, sacrifice to them, and they will be pro- 
 pitious. People mistake grossly, to imagine that 
 the least awkwardness, in either matter or manner, 
 mind or body, is an indifferent thing, and not 
 worthy of attention. It may possibly be a weak- 
 ness in me (but in short we are all so made). I 
 confess to you fairly, that when you shall come
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 209 
 
 Home, and that I first see you, if I find you ungrace- 
 ful in your address, and awkward in your person 
 and dress, it will be impossible for me to love you 
 half so well as I should otherwise do, let your 
 intrinsic merit and knowledge be ever so great. 
 [Same date.~\ 
 
 ENGLISH ABROAD. I am informed there are now 
 many English at the Academy at Turin, and I fear 
 those are just so many dangers for you to encounter. 
 Who they are, I do not know ; but I well know the 
 general ill conduct, the indecent behavior, and the 
 illiberal views of my young countrymen abroad; 
 especially wherever they are in numbers together. 
 Ill example is of itself dangerous enough ; but those 
 who give it seldom stop there ; they add their infam- 
 ous exhortations and invitations; and, if these fail, 
 they have recourse to ridicule, which is harder for 
 one of your age and inexperience to withstand than 
 either of the former. Be upon your guard, there- 
 fore, against these batteries, which will all be played 
 upon you. You are not sent abroad to converse 
 with your own countrymen; among them, in gen- 
 eral, you will get little knowledge, no languages, 
 and, I am sure, no manners. I desire that you will 
 form no connections, nor (what they impudently 
 call) friendships, with these people; which are, in
 
 210 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 truth, only combinations and conspiracies against 
 good morals and good manners. [May 15, 
 
 VICES SHOULD BE ORIGINAL. If people had no! 
 
 r r 
 
 vices but their own, few would have so many as; 
 they have. For my own part, I would sooner wear 
 other people's clothes than their vices; and they 
 would sit upon me just as well. I hope you will 
 have none; but, if ever you have, I beg, at least, 
 they may be all your own. Vices of adoption are, 
 of all others, the most disgraceful and unpardon- 
 able. There are degrees in vices, as well as in 
 virtues ; and I must do my countrymen the justice to 
 say, they generally take their vices in the lowest 
 degree. Their gallantry is the infamous mean 
 debauchery of stews, justly attended and rewarded 
 by the loss of their health as well as their character. 
 Their pleasures of the table end in beastly drunken- 
 ness, low riot, broken windows, and very often (as 
 they well deserve) broken bones. They game for 
 the sake of the vice, not of the amusement; and 
 therefore carry it to excess; undo, or are undone 
 by, their companions. By such conduct, and in 
 such company abroad, they come home the unim- 
 proved, illiberal, and ungentlemanlike creatures that 
 one daily sees them ; that is, in the park, and in the 
 streets, for one ne,ver meets them in good company;
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 211 
 
 where they have neither manners to present them- 
 selves, nor merit to be received. But, with the 
 manners of footmen and grooms, they assume their 
 dress too ; for you must have observed them in the 
 streets here, in dirty blue frocks, with oaken sticks 
 in their hands, and their hair greasy and unpow- 
 dered, tucked up under their hats of an enormous 
 size. Thus finished and adorned by their travels, 
 they become the disturbers of playhouses ; they break 
 the windows, and commonly the landlords, of the 
 taverns where they drink; and are at once the sup- 
 port, the terror, and the victims of the bawdy-houses 
 they frequent. These poor mistaken people think 
 they shine, and so they do indeed; but it is as 
 putrefaction shines, in the dark. 
 
 I am not now preaching to you, like an old fellow, 
 upon either religious or moral texts ; I am persuaded 
 you do not want the best instructions of that kind; 
 but I am advising you as a man, as a friend of the 
 world, as one who would not have you old while you 
 are young, but would have you take all the pleasures 
 that reason points out, and that decency warrants. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 FOOLISH SAYINGS. There are some expressions, 
 both in French and English, and some characters, 
 both in those two and in other countries, which
 
 212 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 have, I dare say, misled many young men to their 
 ruin. Une honnete debauche, line jolie debauche: an 
 agreeable rake, a man of pleasure. Do not think 
 that this means debauchery and profligacy ; nothing 
 like it. It means, at most, the accidental and unfre- 
 quent irregularities of youth and vivacity, in opposi- 
 tion to dulness, formality, and want of spirit. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 How TO PLEASE. You must not neglect your 
 dress neither, but take care to be bien mis. Pray 
 send for the best operator for the teeth at Turin, 
 where I suppose there is some famous one, and let 
 him put yours in perfect order; and then take care 
 to keep them so afterwards yourself. You had very 
 good teeth, and I hope they are so still; but even 
 those who have bad ones should keep them clean; 
 for a dirty mouth is, to my mind, ill manners. In 
 short, neglect nothing that can possibly please. A 
 thousand nameless little things, which nobody can 
 describe but which everybody feels, conspire to form 
 that whole of pleasing; as the several pieces of a 
 mosaic work, though separately of little beauty or 
 value, when properly joined form those beautiful 
 figures which please everybody. A look, a gesture, 
 an attitude, a tone of voice, all bear their parts in 
 the great work of pleasing. The art of pleasing is
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 
 
 more particularly necessary in your intended profes- 
 sion than perhaps in any other; it is, in truth, the 
 first half of your business ; for if you do not please 
 the court you are sent to, you will be of very little 
 use to the court you are sent from. Please the eyes 
 and the ears, they will introduce you to the heart; 
 and, nine times in ten, the heart governs the under- 
 standing. 
 
 Make your court particularly, and show distin- 
 guished attentions, to such men and women as are 
 best at court, highest in the fashion and in the 
 opinion of the public ; speak advantageously of them 
 behind their backs, in companies who you have 
 reason to believe will tell them again. Express your 
 admiration of the many great men that the house 
 of Savoy has produced ; observe, that nature, instead 
 of being exhausted by those efforts, seems to have 
 redoubled them in the persons of the present king, 
 and the Duke of Savoy; wonder at this rate where 
 it will end, and conclude that it will end in the gov- 
 ernment of all Europe. Say this, likewise, where it 
 will probably be repeated; but say it unaffectedly, 
 and the last, especially, with a kind of enfouement. 
 These little arts are very allowable, and must be 
 made use of in the course of the world; they are 
 pleasing to one party, useful to the other, and injuri- 
 ous to nobody. [Same date.]
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 FLATTERY. I recommended to you, in my last, 
 an innocent piece of art; that of flattering people 
 behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make 
 their own court, much more than for your sake, will 
 not fail to repeat, and even amplify the praise to 
 the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most 
 pleasing, and consequently the most effectual. There 
 are other, and many other inoffensive arts of this 
 kind, which are necessary in the course of the 
 world, and which he who practises the earliest, will 
 please the most, and rise the soonest. [May 22, 
 1749-} 
 
 TEMPER. The principal of these things, is the 
 mastery of one's temper, and that coolness of mind, 
 and serenity of countenance, which hinders us from 
 discovering, by words, actions, or even looks, those 
 passions or sentiments, by which we are inwardly 
 moved or agitated; and the discovery of which, 
 gives cooler and abler people such infinite advantages 
 over us, not only in business, but in all the most 
 common occurrences of life. A man who does not ! 
 possess himself enough to hear disagreeable things, 
 without visible marks of anger and change of coun- 
 tenance, or agreeable ones without sudden bursts of 
 joy and expansion of countenance, is at the mercy, 
 of every artful knave, or pert coxcomb; the former
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 215 
 
 will provoke or please you by design, to catch 
 unguarded words or looks, by which he will easily 
 decipher the secrets of your heart, of which you 
 should keep the key yourself, and trust it with no 
 man living. [Same date.] 
 
 IMMOBILITY. Determine, too, to keep your coun- 
 tenance as unmoved and unembarrassed as possible ; 
 which steadiness you may get a habit of, by con- 
 stant attention. I should desire nothing better, in 
 any negotiation, than to have to do with one of these 
 men of warm, quick passions; which I would take 
 care to set in motion. By artful provocations, I 
 would extort rash and unguarded expressions ; and, 
 by hinting at all the several things that I could 
 suspect, infallibly discover the true one, by the alter- 
 ation it occasioned in the countenance of the person. 
 : Volto sciolto con pensieri stretti* is a most useful 
 Unaxim in business. [Same date.] 
 
 DISSIMULATION. It may be objected, that I am 
 now recommending dissimulation to you; I both 
 own and justify it. It has been long said : Qui nescit 
 dissimulare nescit regnare: I go still farther, 
 and say, that without some dissimulation, no busi- 
 ness can be carried on at all. It is simulation that is 
 false, mean and criminal ; that is the cunning which 
 *An open face with a close (or secret) mind '
 
 .CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 Lord Bacon calls crooked or left-handed wisdom, 
 and which is never made use of but by ttyefse who 
 have not true wisdom. And the same great man; 
 says, that dissimulation is only to hide our own! 
 cards ; whereas simulation is put on in order to look 
 into other people's. Lord Bolingbroke in his "Idea 
 of a Patriot King," which he has lately published, 
 and which I will send you by the first opportunity, 
 says, very justly, that simulation is a stiletto; not 
 only an unjust but an unlawful weapon, and the use 
 of it very rarely to be excused, never justified. 
 Whereas dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is 
 armor ; and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy 
 in business, without some degree of dissimulation, 
 than it is to succeed in business without secrecy. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 THE FACE. Make yourself absolute master, ! 
 therefore, of your temper, and your countenance, so 
 far, at least, as that no visible change do appear in 
 either, whatever you may feel inwardly. This may 
 be difficult, but it is by no means impossible; and, 
 as a man of sense never attempts impossibilities on 
 one hand, on the other he is never discouraged by 
 difficulties. [Same date.] 
 
 THE EASY MOMENT. Some people are to be \ 
 reasoned, some flattered, some intimidated, and some
 
 SMfTENCES AN ) MAXIMS. 217 
 
 teased into a thing; but, in general, all are to be 
 brought into it at last, if skilfully applied to, prop- 
 erly managed, and indefatigably attacked in their 
 several weak places. The time should likewise be 
 judiciously chosen : every man has his mollia tem- 
 pora, but that is far from being all day long; and 
 you would choose your time very ill, if you applied 
 to a man about one business, when his head was 
 full of another, or when his heart was full of grief, 
 anger, or any other disagreeable sentiments. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 JUDGE OF OTHERS BY YOURSELF. In order to 
 judge of the inside of others, study your own; for 
 men in general are very much alike ; and though one 
 has one prevailing passion, and another has another, - 
 yet their operations are much the same; and what- 
 ever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in 
 others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, 
 please, or offend others, in you. [Same date.] 
 
 SMART SAYINGS. The temptation of saying a 
 smart and witty thing, or bon mot, and the malicious 
 applause with which it is commonly received, have 
 made people who can say them, and, still oftener, 
 people who think they can, but cannot and yet try, 
 more enemies, and implacable ones too, than any 
 one other thing that I know of. When such things.
 
 218 
 
 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 then, shall happen to be said at your expense (as 
 sometimes they certainly will) reflect seriously upon 
 the sentiments of uneasiness, anger, and resentment, 
 which they excite in you; and consider whether it 
 can be prudent, by the same means, to excite the 
 same sentiments in others against you. It is a 
 decided folly to lose a friend for a jest; but, in my 
 mind, it is not a much less degree of folly, to make 
 an enemy of an indifferent and neutral person for 
 the sake of a bon mot. When things of this kind 
 happen to be said of you the most prudent way is 
 to seem not to suppose that they are meant at you, 
 but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of 
 anger you may feel inwardly ; and should they be so 
 plain that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their 
 meaning, to join in the laugh of the company 
 against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair 
 one, and the jest a good one, and play off the whole 
 thing in seeming good humor; but by no means 
 reply in the same way; which only shows that you 
 are hurt, and publishes the victory which you might 
 have concealed. Should the thing said, indeed, 
 injure your honor, or moral character, there is but 
 one proper reply ; which I hope you will never have 
 occasion to make. [Same date.'} 
 
 WOMEN OF FASHION. They are a numerous and
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 219 
 
 loquacious body ; their hatred would be more preju- 
 dicial than their friendship can be advantageous to 
 you. A general complaisance and attention to that 
 sex is, therefore, established by custom, and cer- 
 tainly necessary. But where you would particularly 
 please any one, whose situation, interest, or connec- 
 tions can be of use to you, you must show particular 
 preference. The least attentions please, the greatest 
 charm them. The innocent but pleasing flattery of 
 their persons, however gross, is greedily swallowed, 
 and kindly digested, but a seeming regard for their 
 understandings, a seeming desire of, and deference 
 for, their advice, together with a seeming confidence 
 in their moral virtues, turns their head entirely in 
 your favor. Nothing shocks them so much as the 
 least appearance of that contempt, which they are 
 apt to suspect men of entertaining of their capac- 
 ities; and you may be very sure of gaining their 
 friendship, if you seem to think it worth gaining. 
 Here dissimulation is very often necessary, and even 
 simulation sometimes allowable; which, as it pleases 
 them, may be useful to you and is injurious to 
 nobody. [Same date.~\ 
 
 VENETIAN ART. The time you will probably 
 pass at Venice will allow you to make yourself mas- 
 ter of that intricate and singular form of govern-
 
 220 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ment, which few of our travellers know anything of. 
 Read, ask, and see everything that is relative to it. 
 There are, likewise, many valuable remains of the 
 remotest antiquity, and many fine pieces of the antico 
 moderno, all which deserve a different sort of atten- 
 tion from that which your countrymen commonly 
 give them. They go to see them as they go to see 
 the lions, and kings on horseback, at the Tower here, 
 only to say that they have seen them. You will, I 
 am sure, view them in another light; you will 
 consider them as you would a poem, to which 
 indeed they are akin. You will observe whether the 
 sculptor has animated his stone, or the painter his 
 canvas, into the just expression of those sentiments 
 and passions which should characterize and mark 
 their several figures. [June 22, 1749.] 
 
 SCULPTURE AND PAINTING. You will examine, 
 likewise, whether, in their groups there be a unity 
 of action or proper relation; a truth of dress and 
 manners. Sculpture and painting are very justly' 
 called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, 
 together with a just observation being absolutely 
 necessary to excel in either, which, in my opinion, is 
 by no means the case of music, though called a lib- 
 eral art, and now in Italy placed even above the 
 other two a proof of the decline of that country.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 221 
 
 A taste of sculpture and painting is, in my mind, as 
 becoming as a taste of fiddling and piping is unbe- 
 coming a man of fashion. The former is connected 
 with history and poetry; the latter, with nothing 
 that I know of, but bad company. [Same date.] 
 
 AMIABILITY. There is a certain concurrence of 
 various little circumstances, which compose what 
 the French call I' amiable; and which, now you are 
 entering into the world, you ought to make it your 
 particular study to acquire. Without them, your 
 learning will be pedantry, your conversation often 
 improper, always unpleasant, and your figure, how- 
 ever good in itself, awkward and unengaging. 
 diamond while rough has indeed its intrinsic value 
 but till polished is of no use, and would neither bej 
 sought for nor worn. Its great lustre, it is true, 
 proceeds from its solidity and strong cohesion of 
 parts; but without the last polish, it would remain 
 forever a dirty, rough mineral in the cabinets of 
 some few curious collectors.. You have, I hope, that 
 solidity and cohesion of parts; take now as much 
 pains to get the lustre. Good company, if you make 
 the right use of it, will cut you into shape, and give 
 you the true brilliant polish. Apropos of. diamonds, 
 I have sent you, by Sir James Gray, the king's min- 
 ister, who will be at Venice about the middle of
 
 222 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 September, my own diamond buckles, which are 
 fitter for your young feet than for my old ones; 
 they will properly adorn you; they would only 
 expose me. [Same date.} 
 
 TRIFLES. Great merit or great failings will make 
 you respected or despised ; but trifles, little attentions, 
 mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make 
 you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the 
 world. Examine yourself, why you like such and 
 such people, and dislike such and such others; and 
 you will find that those different sentiments proceed 
 from very slight causes. Moral virtues are the 
 foundation of society in general, and of friendship 
 in particular; but attentions, manners, and graces 
 both adorn and strengthen them. [July 20, 1749.] 
 
 YOUTH ARMED BY EXPERIENCE. Your youth 
 and talents, armed with my experience, may go a 
 great way; and that armor is very much at your 
 service, if you please to wear it. I premise that it 
 is not my imagination, but my memory, that gives 
 you these rules; I am not writing pretty, useful 
 reflections. A man of sense soon discovers, because 
 he carefully observes where and how long he is 
 welcome; and takes care to leave the company, at 
 least, as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 223 
 
 perceive whether they are ill timed or ill placed. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 IDLENESS. But indeed I do not suspect you of 
 one single moment's idleness in the whole day. 
 Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the 
 holiday of fools. I do not call good company and 
 liberal pleasures idleness; far from it; I recommend 
 to you a good share of both. [Same date.] 
 
 BATHING. I am very glad that my letter, with 
 Dr. Shaw's opinion, has lessened your bathing ; for, 
 since I was born, I never heard of bathing four 
 hours a day, which would surely be too much, even 
 in Medea's kettle, if you wanted (as you do not 
 yet) new boiling. [July jo, i/^p.] 
 
 ARCHITECTURE A SIMILE. To carry on the 
 metaphor of building, I would wish you to be a 
 Corinthian edifice, upon a Tuscan foundation; the 
 latter having the utmost strength and solidity to 
 support, and the former all possible ornaments to 
 decorate. The Tuscan column is coarse, clumsy, 
 and unpleasant ; nobody looks at it twice : the Cor- 
 inthian fluted column is beautiful and attractive; 
 but without a solid foundation, can hardly be seen 
 twice, because it must soon tumble down. Yours 
 affectionately. [Same date.] 
 
 EARN YOUR PLEASURES. No man tastes pleas-
 
 224 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ures truly who does not earn them by previous busi- 
 ness; and few people do business well who do 
 nothing else. Remember, that when I speak of 
 pleasures I always mean the elegant pleasures of a 
 rational being, and not the brutal ones of a swine. 
 I mean la bonne chere, short of gluttony; wine, 
 infinitely short of drunkenness; play, without the 
 least gaming; and gallantry, without debauchery. 
 There is a line in all these things which men of 
 sense, for greater security, take care to keep a good 
 deal on the right side of; for sickness, pain, con- 
 tempt, and infamy lie immediately on the other side 
 of it. Men of sense and merit in all other respects 
 may have had some of these failings ; but then those 
 few examples, instead of inviting us to imitation, 
 should only put us the more upon our guard against 
 such weaknesses. Whoever thinks them fashionable 
 will not be so himself. I have often known a fash- 
 ionable man to have some one vice, but I never, in 
 my life, knew a vicious man a fashionable man. Vice 
 is as degrading as it is criminal. God bless you, my 
 dear child! [Aug. 7, 
 
 DIGNITY OF MANNERS. There is a certain dig- 
 nity of manners absolutely necessary, to make even 
 the most valuable character either respected or re- 
 spectable. Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 225 
 
 of laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate famil- 
 iarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a 
 degree of contempt. They compose at most a 
 merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a 
 respectable man. Indiscriminate familiarity either 
 offends your superiors, or else dubs you their depend- 
 ent, and led captain. It gives your inferiors just 
 but troublesome and improper claims of equality. A 
 joker is near akin to a buffoon ; and neither of them 
 is the least related to wit. Whoever is admitted or 
 sought for in company upon any account than that 
 of his merit and manners, is never respected there, 
 but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for 
 he sings prettily ; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, 
 for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at 
 supper, for he is always joking and laughing; we 
 will ask another, because he plays deep at all games, 
 or because he can drink a great deal. These are 
 vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and 
 exclude all ideas of esteem and regard. Whoever 
 is had (as it- is called) in company, for the sake of 
 any one thing singly, is singly that thing, and will 
 never be considered in any other light, consequently 
 never respected, let his merits be what they will. 
 [Aug. 10, 1 7 -49.] 
 
 FOOLS AND THEIR FLATTERY. Abject flattery
 
 226 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as 
 indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate dis- 
 gust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, 
 and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, 
 preserve dignity. 
 
 Vulgar, low expressions, awkward motions and 
 address, vilify, as they imply either a very low turn 
 of mind, or low education, and low company. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 A TRIFLER. Cardinal de Retz, very sagaciously 
 marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from 
 the moment that he told him he had wrote (sic) 
 three years with the same pen, and that it was an 
 excellent good one still. 
 
 A certain degree of exterior seriousness, in looks 
 and motions, gives dignity, without excluding wit 
 and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious 
 themselves. A constant smirk upon the face, and a 
 whiffling activity of the body, are strong indications 
 of futility. Whoever is in a hurry shows that the 
 thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and 
 hurry are very different things. [Same date.] 
 
 THE PRETENDER POLITICAL CAUTION. You 
 will, in many parts of Italy, meet with numbers of 
 the Pretender's people (English, Scotch, and Irish 
 fugitives) especially at Rome; and probably the
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 227 
 
 Pretender himself. It is none of your business to 
 declare war on these people; as little as it is your 
 interest, or, I hope, your inclination to connect 
 yourself with them: and therefore I recommend to 
 you a perfect neutrality. Avoid them as much as 
 you can with decency and good manners ; but, when 
 you cannot avoid any political conversation or 
 debates with them, tell them that you do not concern 
 yourself with political matters; that you are neither 
 a maker nor a deposer of kings ; that, when you left 
 England, you left a king in it, and have not since 
 heard either of his death, or of any revolution that 
 has happened, and that you take kings and kingdoms 
 as you find them ; but enter no farther into matters 
 with them, which can be of no use, and might bring 
 on heat and quarrels. When you speak of the old 
 Pretender you will call him only, the Chevalier de 
 St. George; but mention him as seldom as possible. 
 Should he chance to speak to you at any assembly 
 (as, I am told, he sometimes does to the English) 
 be sure that you seem not to know him ; and answer 
 him civilly, but always either in French or in Italian ; 
 and give him, in the former, the appellation of Mon- 
 sieur, and in the latter of Signore. Should you meet 
 with the Cardinal of York, you will be under no 
 difficulty, for he has, as Cardinal, an undoubted 
 right to EminenzQ, Upon the whole? see any of
 
 228 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 those people as little as possible; when you do see 
 them be civil to them, upon the footing of strangers ; 
 but never be drawn into any altercations with them 
 about the imaginary right of their king, as they 
 call him. 
 
 It is to no sort of purpose to talk to those people 
 of the natural rights of mankind and particular 
 constitution of this country. Blinded by prejudices, 
 soured by misfortunes, and tempted by their neces- 
 sities, they are as incapable of reasoning rightly, as 
 they have hitherto been of acting wisely. The late 
 Lord Pembroke never would know anything that he 
 had not a mind to know ; and, in this case, I advise 
 you to follow his example. Never know either the 
 father or the two sons, any otherwise than as for- 
 eigners; and so not knowing their pretensions you 
 have no occasion to dispute them. [Sept. 5, 
 
 A FATHER'S ANXIETY. It seems extraordinary, 
 but it is very true, that my anxiety for you increases 
 in proportion to the good accounts which I receive 
 of you from all hands. I promise myself so much 
 from you, that I dread the least disappointment. 
 You are now so near the port, which I have so long 
 wished and labored to bring you safe into, that my 
 concern would be doubled, should you be ship- 
 wrecked within sight of it. The object, therefore,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 229 
 
 of this letter is (laying aside all the authority of the 
 parent), to conjure you as a friend, by the affection 
 you have for me (and surely you have reason to 
 have some), and by the regard you have for your- 
 self, to go on with assiduity and attention, to com- 
 plete that work, which, of late, you have carried on 
 so well, and which is now so near being finished. 
 My wishes, and my plan, were to make you shine, 
 and distinguish yourself equally in the learned and 
 the polite world. Few have been able to do it. 
 [Sept. 1 
 
 THE STUDENT OF LIFE AND THE TRIFLER: 'A 
 DIALOGUE. I will suppose you at Rome, studying 
 six hours uninterruptedly with Mr. Harte, every 
 morning, and passing your evenings with the best 
 company of Rome, observing their manners and 
 forming your own ; and I will suppose a number of 
 idle, sauntering, illiterate English, as there com- 
 monly is there, living entirely with one another, 
 supping, drinking, and sitting up late at each other's 
 lodgings; commonly in riots and scrapes when 
 drunk, and never in good company when sober. I 
 will take one of these pretty fellows, and give you 
 the dialogue between him and yourself; such as I 
 dare say it will be on his side, and such as I hope 
 it will be on yours
 
 230 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 'Englishman. Will you come and breakfast with 
 me to-morrow; there will be four or five of our 
 countrymen; we have provided chaises, and we will 
 drive somewhere out of town after breakfast ? 
 
 Stanhope. I am very sorry I cannot; but I am 
 obliged to be at home all the morning. 
 
 Englishman. Why then we will come and break- 
 fast with you. 
 
 Stanhope. I can't do that neither, I am engaged. 
 
 Englishman. Well, then, let it be the next day. 
 
 Stanhope. To tell you the truth, it can be no day 
 in the morning; for I neither go out, nor see any- 
 body at home before twelve. 
 
 Englishman. And what the devil do you do with 
 yourself till twelve o'clock? 
 
 Stanhope. I am not by myself, I am with Mr. 
 Harte. 
 
 Englishman. Then what the devil do you do 
 with him? 
 
 Stanhope. We study different things; we read, 
 we converse. 
 
 Englishman. Very pretty amusement indeed! 
 Are you to take orders then ? 
 
 Stanhope. Yes, my father's orders, I believe, I 
 must take. 
 
 Englishman. Why, hast thou no more spirit than 
 to mind an old fellow a thousand miles off?
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 231 
 
 'Stanhope. If I don't mind his orders he won't \ 
 mind my draughts. 
 
 Englishman. What, does the old prig threaten, 
 then? Threatened folks live long; never mind 
 threats. 
 
 Stanhope. No, I can't say that he has ever threat- 
 ened me in his life; but I believe I had best not pro- 
 voke him. 
 
 Englishman. Pooh! you would have one angry 
 letter from the old fellow, and there would be an 
 end of it. 
 
 Stanhope. You mistake him mightily ; he always 
 does more than he says. He has never been angry 
 with me yet, that I remember, in his life; but if I 
 were to provoke him, I am sure he would never for- 
 give me ; he would be coolly immovable, and I might 
 beg and pray, and write my heart out to no purpose. 
 
 Englishman. Why then, he is an old dog, that 's 
 all I can say : and pray, are you to obey your dry- 
 nurse too, this same what's his name Mr. Harte? 
 
 Stanhope. Yes. 
 
 Englishman. So he stuffs you all morning with 
 Greek, and Latin, and logic, and all that. Egad, I 
 have a dry-nurse too, but I never looked into a book 
 with him in my life; I have not so much as seen 
 the face of him this week, and don't care a louse if 
 I never see it again.
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEKS. 
 
 Stanhope. My dry-nurse never desires anything 
 of me that is not reasonable, and for my own good ; 
 *nd therefore I like to be with him. 
 
 Englishman. Very sententious and edifying, 
 upon my word! at this rate you will be reckoned a 
 very good young man. 
 
 Stanhope. ,Why, that will do me no harm. 
 
 Englishman. Will you be with us to-morrow in 
 the evening, then? We shall be ten with you; and 
 I have got some excellent good wine; and we'll be 
 very merry. 
 
 Stanhope. I am very much obliged to you but I 
 am engaged for all the evening, to-morrow; first at 
 Cardinal Albani's; and then to sup at the Venetian 
 Embassadress's. 
 
 Englishman. How the devil can you like being 
 always with these foreigners? I never go amongst 
 them, with all their formalities and ceremonies. I 
 am never easy in company with them, and I don't 
 know why, but I am ashamed. 
 
 Stanhope. I am neither ashamed nor afraid; i 
 am very easy with them; they are very easy with 
 me; I get the language, and I see their characters, 
 by conversing with them; and that is what we are 
 sent abroad for. Is it not? 
 
 Englishman. I hate your modest women's* com-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 233 
 
 pany; your women of fashion, as they call 'em. I 
 don't know what to say to them, for my part. 
 
 Stanhope. Have you ever conversed with them? 
 
 Englishman. No, I never conversed with them;' 
 but I have been sometimes in their company, though 
 much against my will. 
 
 Stanhope. But at least they have done you no 
 hurt; which is, probably, more than you can say of 
 the women you do converse with. 
 
 Englishman. That's true, I own; but for all 
 that, I would rather keep company with my surgeon 
 half the year, than with your women of fashion the 
 year round. 
 
 Stanhope. Tastes are different, you know, and 
 every man follows his own. 
 
 Englishman. That's true; but thine's a devilish 
 odd one, Stanhope. All morning with thy dry- 
 nurse; all the evening in formal fine company; and 
 all day long afraid of old Daddy in England. Thou 
 art a queer fellow, and I am afraid there's nothing 
 to be made of thee. 
 
 'Stanhope. I am afraid so, too. 
 
 Englishman. Well, then, good-night to you ; you 
 have no objection, I hope, to my being drunk 
 to-night, which I certainly will be? 
 
 Stanhope. Not in the least; nor to your being
 
 234: CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 sick to-morrow, which you as certainly will be; and 
 so good-night too. 
 
 You will observe, that I have not put into 
 mouth those good arguments, which upon such an 
 occasion would, I am sure, occur to you; as piety 
 and affection towards me ; regard and friendship for 
 Mr. Harte; respect for your own moral character, 
 and for all the relative duties of man, son, pupil and 
 citizen. Such solid arguments would be -thrown 
 away upon such shallow puppies. Leave them to 
 their ignorance, and to their dirty, disgraceful vices. 
 They will severely feel the effects of them, when it 
 will be too late. Without the comfortable refuge 
 of learning, and with all the sickness and pains of a 
 ruined stomach, and a rotten carcass, if they happen 
 to arrive at old age, it is an uneasy and ignominious 
 one. The ridicule which such fellows endeavor to 
 throw upon those who are not like them is, in the 
 opinion of all men of sense, the most authentic 
 panegyric. Go on, then, my dear child, in the way 
 you are in, only for a year and a half more ; that is 
 all I ask of you. After that, I promise that you 
 shall be your own master, and that I will pretend 
 to no other title than that of your best and truest 
 friend. You shall receive advice, but no orders, 
 from me; and in truth you will want no other 
 advice, but such as vouth and inexperience must
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 235 
 
 necessarily require. You shall certainly want noth- 
 ing that is requisite, not only for your conveniency, 
 but also for your pleasures, which I always desire 
 should be gratified. You wi./J suppose that I mean 
 the pleasures d'nn Jwnncte hoinme. [Same date.] 
 
 A PANEGYRIST. If I had faith in philters and 
 love potions, I should suspect that you had given Sir 
 Charles Williams some, by the manner in which he 
 speaks of you, not only to me, but to everybody else. 
 1 will not repeat to you what he says of the extent 
 and correctness of your knowledge, as it might 
 either make you vain, or persuade you that you had 
 already enough of what nobody can have too much. 
 You will easily imagine how many questions I asked, 
 and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject; 
 he answered me, and I dare say with truth, just as 
 I could have wished. [Sept. 22, 1749.] 
 
 NECESSITY OF ATTENTION. Sir Charles Wil- 
 liams told me then, that in company you were fre- 
 quently most provokingly inattentive, absent, and 
 distrait. That you came into a room and presented 
 yourself very awkwardly; that at table you con- 
 stantly threw down knives, forks, napkins, bread, 
 etc., and that you neglected your person and dress to 
 a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more 
 so at yours.
 
 236 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 DISTRACTION AND INATTENTION. I know no one 
 thing more offensive to a company than that inatten- 
 iion and distraction. It is showing them the utmost 
 contempt; and people never forgive contempt. No 
 man is distrait with the man he fears or the woman 
 he loves; which is a proof that every man can get 
 the better of that distraction, when he thinks it 
 worth his while to do so ; and, take my word for it, 
 it is always worth his while. For my own part, I 
 would rather be in company with a dead man than 
 with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no 
 pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt ; whereas 
 the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, 
 tells me that he does not think me worth his atten- 
 tion. Besides, can an absent man make any observa- 
 tions upon the characters, customs, and manners of 
 the company? No. He may be in the best com- 
 panies all his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, 
 if I were they, I would not), and never be one jot 
 the wiser. I never will converse with an absent 
 man; one may as well talk to a deaf one. It is, in' 
 truth, a practical blunder to address ourselves to a 
 man who, we see plainly, neither hears, minds, nor 
 understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man is, 
 in any degree, fit for either business or conversation 
 who cannot and does not direct and command his 
 attention to the present object, be that what it will.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 237 
 
 You know, by experience, that I grudge no expense 
 in your education, but I will positively not keep you 
 a flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift, the descrip- 
 tion of these flappers, and the use they were of to 
 +heir friends. 
 
 DANCING. Learn to dance, not so much for the 
 sake of dancing, as for coming into a room, 
 and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully. 
 ; Women, whom you ought to endeavor to please, 
 cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and ges- 
 ture ; il leur faut dn brillant. The generality of men 
 are pretty like them, and are equally taken by the 
 same exterior graces. [Same date.] 
 
 FINERY UNFIT FOR THE OLD. I am very glad 
 that you have received the diamond buckles safe: 
 all I desire in return for them is, that they may be 
 buckled upon your feet, and that your stockings may 
 not hide them. I should be sorry you were an 
 egregious fop; but I protest that, of the two, I 
 would rather have you a fop than a sloven. I think 
 negligence in my own dress, even at my age, when 
 certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, 
 would be indecent with regard to others. I have 
 done with fine clothes; but I will have my plain 
 clothes fit me, and made like other people's. In the
 
 238 CHESTEKFIELD'S LETTEKS. 
 
 evenings I recommend to you the company of 
 women of fashion, who have a right to attention, 
 and will be paid it. Their company will smooth 
 your manners, and give you a habit of attention and 
 respect ; of which you will find the advantage among 
 men. 
 
 My plan for you, from the beginning, has been 
 to make you shine equally in the learned and in the 
 polite world ; the former part is almost completed to 
 my wishes, and will, I am persuaded, in a little time 
 more be quite so. The latter part is still in your 
 power to complete; and I flatter myself that you will 
 do it, or else the former part will avail you very 
 little; especially in your department, where the 
 exterior address and graces do half the business; 
 they must be the harbingers of your merit, or your 
 merit will be very coldly received : all can and do 
 judge of the former, few of the latter. 
 
 Mr. Harte tells me that you have grown very 
 much since your illness; if you get up to five feet 
 ten, or even nine inches, your figure will, probably, 
 be a good one. [Same date.] 
 
 MIS-SENT LETTERS. Our letters go, at best, so 
 irregularly, and so often miscarry totally, that, for 
 greater security, I repeat the same things. So, 
 though I acknowledge by last post Mr. Harte's
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 239 
 
 letter of the 8th September, N. S., I acknowledge it 
 again by this to you.* [Same date.~\ 
 
 BEND TO CEREMONY. \Apropos of the Pope, 
 remember to be presented to him before you leave 
 Rome, and go through the necessary ceremonies foi 
 it, whether of kissing his slipper or his breech] for 
 I would never deprive myself of anything that I 
 wanted to do or see by refusing to comply with an 
 established custom. When I was in Catholic coun- 
 tries, I never declined kneeling in their churches at 
 the elevation, nor elsewhere, when the host went by. 
 It is a complaisance due to the custom of the place, 
 and by no means, as some silly people have imag- 
 ined, an implied approbation of their doctrine. Bod- 
 ily attitudes and situations are things so very indif- 
 ferent in themselves, that I would quarrel with 
 nobody about them. It may, indeed, be improper 
 for Mr. Harte to pay that tribute of complaisance, 
 upon account of his character. [Same date.] 
 
 THE VULGAR MAN TRIFLES VULGARISM. A 
 vulgar man is captious and jealous ; eager and impet- 
 uous about trifles. He suspects himself to be 
 slighted, thinks everything that is said meant at 
 him; if the company happens to laugh, he is per- 
 
 * This little note is inserted to show that Lord Chesterfield's 
 repetitions were not unknown to himself. The most flagrant 
 we have omitted,, 
 
 I
 
 240 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 suaded they laugh at him ; he grows angry and testy, 
 says something very impertinent, and draws himself 
 into a scrape, by showing what he calls a proper 
 spirit, and asserting himself. A man of fashion 
 does not suppose himself to be either the sole or 
 principal object of the thoughts, looks, or words of 
 the company; and never suspects that he is either 
 slighted or laughed at, unless he is conscious that 
 he deserves it. And if (which very seldom happens) 
 the company is absurd or ill-bred enough to do 
 either, he does not care twopence, unless the insult 
 be so gross and plain as to require satisfaction of 
 another kind. As he is above trifles, he is never 
 vehement and eager about them ; and, wherever they 
 \are concerned, rather acquiesces than wrangles. A 
 vulgar man's conversation always savors strongly 
 of the lowness of his education and company. It 
 turns chiefly upon his domestic affairs, his servants, 
 the excellent order he keeps in his own family, and 
 the little anecdotes of the neighborhood; all which 
 he relates with emphasis, as interesting matters. He 
 is a man gossip. 
 
 Vulgarism in language is the next and distin- 
 guishing characteristic of bad company and a bad 
 education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with 
 more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and 
 trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of a
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 241 
 
 vulgar man. Would he say, that men differ in their 
 tastes, he both supports and adorns that opinion, by 
 the good old saying, as he respectfully calls it, that 
 what is one man's meat is another man's poison. If 
 anybody attempts being smart, as he calls it, upon 
 him, he gives them tit for tat, ay, that he does. He 
 has always some favorite word for the time being, 
 which, for the sake of using often, he commonly 
 abuses. Such as vastly angry, vastly kind, vastly 
 handsome, and vastly ugly. Even his pronuncia- 
 tion of proper words carries the mark of the beast 
 along with it. He calls the earth yearth; he is 
 obleiged* not obliged to you. He goes to wards, 
 and not towards such a place. He sometimes affects 
 hard words, by way of ornament, which he always 
 mangles like a learned woman. A man of fashion 
 never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphor- 
 isms: uses neither favorite words nor hard words, 
 but takes great care to speak very correctly and 
 grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, 
 according to the usage of the best companies. [Sept. 
 27, 1749-1 
 
 LEFT-HANDEDNESS. An awkward address, 
 ungraceful attitudes and actions, and a certain left- 
 
 * As indeed did George III. teste the anecdote of Kemble : 
 "Mr. Kemble, obleige me with a pinch of snuff." "It would 
 become your Majesty's royal mouth better to say oblige."
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 landedness (if I may use that word) loudly proclaim 
 iw education and low company; for it is impos- 
 to suppose that a man can have frequented 
 good company without having catched something, at 
 least, of their air and motions. A new-raised man 
 is distinguished in a regiment by hi_ awkwardness; 
 but he must be impenetrably dull if, in a month or 
 two's time, he cannot perform at least the common 
 manual exercise, and look like a soldier. The very 
 accoutrements of a man of fashion are grievous 
 incumbrances to ,a vulgar man. He is at a loss what 
 to do with his hat, when it is not upon his head; 
 his cane (if unfortunately he wears one) is at per- 
 petual war with every cup of tea or coffee he drinks ; 
 destroys them first, and then accompanies them in 
 their fall. 
 
 A NOBLE EASE AND GRACE. Do not imagine 
 that these accomplishments are only useful with 
 women; they are much more so with men. In a 
 public assembly, what an advantage has a graceful 
 speaker, with genteel motions, a handsome figure, 
 and a liberal air, over one, who shall speak full as 
 much sense, but destitute of these ornaments! In 
 business, how prevalent are the graces, how detri- 
 mental is the want of them! By the help of these 
 I have known some men refuse favors less offen-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 243 
 
 sively than others granted them. The utility of them 
 in courts and negotiations is inconceivable. You 
 gain the hearts, and consequently the secrets, of nine 
 in ten that you have to do with, in spite even of 
 their prudence ; which will, nine times in ten, be the 
 dupe of their hearts and of their senses. Consider 
 the importance of these things as they deserve, and 
 you will not lose one moment in the pursuit of them. 
 [Same date.} 
 
 THE FRIBBLE AND THE VIRTUOSO. No piping 
 nor fiddling, I beseech you; no days lost in poring 
 upon almost imperceptible intaglios and cameos: and 
 do not become a virtuoso of small wares. Form a 
 taste of painting, sculpture, and architecture, if you 
 please, by a careful examination of the works of the 
 best ancient and modern artists; those are liberal 
 arts, and a real taste and knowledge of them become 
 a man of fashion very well. But, beyond certain 
 bounds, the man of taste ends, and the frivolous 
 virtuoso begins. 
 
 Your friend Mendes, the good Samaritan, dined 
 with me yesterday. He has more good nature and 
 generosity, than parts. However, I will show him 
 all the civilities that his kindness to you so justly 
 deserves; he tells me that you are taller than I am, 
 which I am very glad of. I desire you may excel
 
 244 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 me in everything else too ; and, far from repining, 1 
 shall rejoice at your superiority. [Same date.] 
 
 FREQUENT LETTERS. Indeed the irregularity 
 and negligence of the post provoke me, as they break 
 the thread of the accounts I want to receive from 
 you, and of the instructions and orders which I 
 send you almost every post. Of these last twenty 
 posts, I am sure that I have wrote eighteen, either 
 to you or to Mr. Harte, and it does not appear, by 
 your letter, that all, or even any of my letters have 
 been received. I desire, for the future, that both 
 you and Mr. Harte will constantly, in your letters, 
 mention the dates of mine. [Oct. 2, 1749.] 
 
 PROPER EXPENSES TO BE PAID. As to the 
 expense which you mention, I do not regard it in 
 the least; from your infancy to this day, I never 
 grudged any expense in your education, and stil! 
 less do it now, that it is become more important and 
 decisive. I attend to the objects of your expenses, 
 but not to the sums. I will certainly not pay one 
 shilling for your losing your nose, your money, or 
 your reason ; that is, I will not contribute to women, 
 gaming, and drinking. But I will most cheerfully 
 supply, not only every necessary, but every decent 
 expense you can make. I do not care what the best 
 masters cost. I would have you as well dressed,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 245 
 
 lodged, and attended, as any reasonable man of 
 fashion in his travels. I would have you have that 
 pocket-money that should enable you to make the 
 proper expense, d'un honnete honime. In short, I 
 bar no expense, that has neither vice nor folly for 
 its object; and under those two reasonable restric- 
 tions, draw and welcome. [Same date.] 
 
 A PORTRAIT. So many of my letters have mis- 
 carried, and I know so little which, that I am forced 
 to repeat the same thing over and over again event- 
 ually. This is one. I have wrote twice to Mr. 
 Harte, to have your picture drawn in miniature, 
 while you were at Venice, and to send it me in a 
 letter: it is all one to me, whether in enamel or in 
 water-colors, provided it is but very like you. I 
 would have you drawn exactly as you are, and in 
 no whimsical dress. I lay more stress upon the 
 likeness of the picture, than upon the taste and skill 
 of the painter. If this be not already done, I desire 
 that you will have it done forthwith, before you 
 leave Venice ; and enclose it in a letter to me ; which 
 letter, for greater security, I would have you desire 
 Sir James Gray to enclose in his packet to the office ; 
 as I, for the same reason, send this under his cover. 
 If the picture be done upon vellum, it will be the 
 most portable. Send me, at the same time, a thread
 
 246 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 or silk of your own length, exactly. I am solicitous 
 about your figure; convinced, by a thousand 
 instances, that a good one is a real advantage. 
 Mens sana in cor pore sano, is the first and greatest 
 blessing. I would add, et pulchro, to complete it. 
 May you have that, and every other! Adieu. 
 [Same date.~\ 
 
 A CENTURY Aco.-f-The papal power, founded 
 originally upon the ignorance and superstition of 
 mankind, extended by the weakness of some princes, 
 and the ambition of others; is declining of late, in 
 proportion as knowledge has increased; and owing 
 its present precarious security not to the religion. 
 the affection, or the fear, of the temporal powers, 
 but to their jealousy of each other. The Pope's 
 excommunications are no longer dreaded ; his indul- 
 gences little solicited, and sell very cheap ;}and his 
 territories, formidable to no power, are c^eted by 
 many, and will, most undoubtedly, within a century, 
 be scantled out among the great powers, who have 
 now a footing in Italy; whenever they can agree 
 upon the division of the bear's skin. {Oct. 9, 
 
 THE JESUITS. They have, by turns, been ban- 
 ished, and with infamy, almost every country in 
 Europe; and have always found means to be 
 restored, even with triumph. In short, I know no
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 247 
 
 government in the world that is carried on upon 
 such deep principles of policy, I will not add moral- 
 ity. Converse with them, frequent them, court 
 them; but know them, 
 
 Inform yourself too of that infernal court, the 
 inquisition; which, though not so considerable at 
 Rome as in Spain and Portugal, will, however, be 
 a good sample to you of what the villainy of some 
 men can contrive, the folly of others receive, and 
 both together establish ; in spite of the first natural 
 principles of reason, justice, and equity. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 MILITARY STUDY. Go with some engineer or old 
 officer, and view, with care, the real fortifications of 
 some strong place ; and you will get a clearer idea of 
 bastions, half-moons, horn- works, ravelins, glacis, 
 etc., than all the masters in the world could give 
 you upon paper. And thus much I would, by all 
 means, have you know of both civil and military 
 
 architecture. [Oct. 17, 1749-] 
 
 i 
 
 A FATHER'S OBJECT. DEAR BOY: From the 
 time that you have had life, it has been the principal 
 and favorite object of mine, to make you as perfect 
 as the imperfections of human nature will allow; 
 in this view I have grudged no pains nor expense
 
 248 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 in your education; convinced that education, more [I 
 than nature, is the cause of that great difference i 
 which we see in the characters of men. While youl 
 were a child, I endeavored to form your heart habit- 
 ually to virtue and honor, before your understanding 
 was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. 
 Those principles, which you then got like your 
 grammar rules, only by rote, are now, I am per- 
 suaded, fixed and confirmed by reason. And indeed 
 they are so plain and clear, that they require but a 
 very moderate degree of understanding, either to 
 comprehend or practice them. Lord Shaftesbury 
 says, very prettily, that he would be virtuous for his 
 own sake, though nobody were to know it; as he 
 would be clean for his own sake, though nobody 
 were to see him. I have therefore, since you have 
 had the use of your reason, never written to you 
 upon those subjects ; they speak best for themselves ; 
 and I should, now, just as soon think of warning 
 you gravely not to fall into the dirt or the fire, as 
 into dishonor or vice. [Nov. 3, 1749.] 
 
 GOOD-BREEDING. A friend of yours and mine 
 has very justly defined good-breeding to be the 
 result of much good-sense, some good-nature, and a 
 little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a 
 view to obtain the same indulgence from them.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 249 
 
 Taking this for granted (as I think it cannot be 
 disputed), it is astonishing to me, that anybody, 
 who has good-sense and good-nature (and I believe 
 you have both), can essentially fail in good-breeding. 
 As to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according 
 to persons, places, and circumstances; and are only 
 to be acquired by observation and experience; but 
 the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the 
 same. Good-manners are, to particular societies, 
 what good-morals are to society in general their 
 cement and their security. And as laws are enacted 
 to enforce good-morals, or at least to prevent the 
 ill-effects of bad ones, so there are certain rules of 
 civility, universally implied and received, to enforce 
 good-manners, and punish bad ones. And indeed 
 there seems to be less difference, both between the 
 crimes and punishments, than at first one would 
 imagine. The immoral man, who invades another's 
 property, is justly hanged for it; and the ill-bred 
 man, who, by his ill-manners, invades and disturbs 
 the quiet comforts of private life, is by common 
 consent as justly banished from society. Mutual 
 complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little con- 
 veniences, are as natural an implied compact between 
 civilized people, as protection and obedience are 
 between kings and subjects ; whoever, in either case, 
 violates that compact, justly forfeits all advantages
 
 250 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 arising from it. For my own part, I really think 
 that, next to the consciousness of doing a goodf 
 action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasingl 
 and the epithet which I should covet the most, next 
 to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 MIXED COMPANY LEARNING PEDANTS. In 
 mixed companies, whoever is admitted to make part 
 of them is, for the time at least, supposed to be upon 
 a footing of equality with the rest ; and, conse- 
 quently, as there is no one principal object of awe 
 and respect, people are apt to take a greater latitude 
 in their behavior, and to be less upon their guard; 
 and so they may, provided it be within certain 
 bounds, which are upon no occasion to be trans- 
 gressed. But, upon these occasions, though 'no one 
 is entitled to distinguished marks of respect, every 
 one claims, and very justly, every mark of civility 
 and good-breeding. Ease is allowed, but careless- 
 ness and negligence are strictly forbidden. If a 
 man accosts you, and talks to you ever so dully or 
 frivolously, it is worse than rudeness, it is brutality, 
 to show him, by a manifest inattention to what he 
 says, that you think him a fool or a blockhead, and 
 not worth hearing. It is much more so with regard 
 to women; who, of whatever rank they are, are
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 251 
 
 * 
 
 entitled, in consideration of their sex, not only to 
 an attentive, but an officious good-breeding from 
 men. 
 
 NOT TOO MUCH FAMILIARITY. The most famil- 
 iar and intimate habitudes, connections, and friend- 
 ships require a degree of good-breeding both to pre- 
 serve and cement them. If ever a man and his wife, 
 or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well 
 as days together, absolutely lay aside all good-breed- 
 ing, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse 
 familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or dis- 
 gust. The best of us have our bad sides; and it is 
 as imprudent, as it is ill-bred, to exhibit them. I 
 shall certainly not use ceremony with you ; it would 
 be misplaced between us: but I shall certainly 
 observe that degree of good-breeding with you, 
 which is, in the first place, decent, and which, I am 
 sure, is absolutely necessary to make us like one 
 another's company long. 
 
 The deepest learning, without good-breeding, is 
 unwelcome and tiresome pedantry, and of use 
 nowhere but in a man's own closet ; and consequently 
 of little or no use at all. 
 
 A man, who is not perfectly well-bred, is unfit 
 for good company, and unwelcome in it ; will conse- 
 quently dislike it soon, afterward renounce i ; and be
 
 252 . CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 reduced to solitude, or, what is worse, low and bad 
 company. 
 
 A man, who is not well-bred, is full as unfit for 
 business as for company. 
 
 Make then, my dear child, I conjure you, good- 
 breeding the great object of your thoughts and 
 actions at least half the day. Observe carefully the 
 behavior and manners of those who are distin- 
 guished by their good-breeding; imitate, nay, 
 endeavor to excel, that you may at least reach them ; 
 and be convinced that good-breeding is, to all 
 worldly qualifications, what charity is to all Chris- 
 tian virtues. Observe how it adorns merit, and how 
 often it covers the want of it. May you wear it to 
 adorn, and not to cover you ! Adieu. [Same date.] 
 
 PERSONAL GRACES, These personal graces are 
 of very great consequence. They anticipate the sen- 
 timents, before merit can engage the understanding; 
 they captivate the heart, and gave rise, I believe, to 
 the extravagant notions of charms and philters./ 
 Their efforts were so surprising, that they were 
 reckoned supernatural. The most graceful and best- 
 bred men, and the handsomest and genteelest 
 women, give the most philters; and, as I verily 
 believe, without the least assistance of the Devil. 
 Pray be not only well dressed, but shining in your
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 253 
 
 dress; let it have du brillant: I do not mean by a 
 clumsy load of gold and silver, but by the taste and 
 fashion of it. Women like and require it; they 
 think it an attention due to them. [Nov. 14, 1749.] 
 
 DANCING YOUTH. You danced pretty well here, 
 and ought to dance very well before you come home ; 
 for what one is obliged to do sometimes, one ought 
 to be able to do well. Besides, la belle danse donne 
 du brillant a tin jeune homme. And you should 
 endeavor to shine. A calm serenity, negative merit 
 and graces, do not become your age. You should 
 be alerte, adroit, vif; be wanted, talked of, impa- 
 tiently expected, and unwillingly parted with in com- 
 pany. I should be glad to hear half a dozen women 
 of fashion say : "Oil est done le petit Stanhope? Qne 
 nc vient-il? II faut avouer qu'il est aimable." All 
 this I do not mean singly with regard to women as 
 the principal object; but with regard to men, and 
 with a view of your making yourself considerable. 
 For, with very small variations, the same things 
 that please women please men. [Same date.'] 
 
 ILL-BREEDING. My last was upon the subject of 
 good-breeding ; but, I think, it rather set before you 
 the unfitness and disadvantages of ill-breeding, than 
 the utility and necessity of good ; it was rather neg- 
 ative than positive. This, therefore, shall go fur-
 
 254 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ther, and explain to you the necessity, which you, 
 of all people living, lie under, not only of being 
 positively and actively well-bred, but of shining 
 and distinguishing yourself by your good-breeding. 
 Consider your own situation in every particular, and 
 judge whether it is not essentially your interest, by 
 your own good-breeding to others, to secure theirs 
 to you ; and that, let me assure you, is the only way 
 of doing it; for people will repay, and with interest! 
 too, inattention with inattention, neglect with 
 neglect, and ill-manners with worse; which may 
 engage you in very disagreeable affairs. In the next 
 place your profession requires, more than any other, 
 the nicest and most distinguished good-breeding. 
 You will negotiate with very little success, if you 
 do not, previously, by your manners, conciliate and 
 engage the affections of those with whom you are 
 to negotiate. Can you ever get into the confidence 
 and the secrets of the courts where you may happen 
 to reside, if you have not those pleasing, insinuating 
 manners, which alone can procure them ? Upon my 
 word, I do not say too much, when I say that supe- 
 rior good-breeding, insinuating manners, and gen- 
 teel address are half your business. Your knowledge 
 will have but very little influence upon the mind, if ( 
 your manners prejudice the heart against you ; but, 
 on the other hand, how easily will you dupe the
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 255 
 
 understanding, where you have first engaged the 
 heart ? and hearts are, by no means, to be gained 
 by that mere common civility which everybody prac- 
 tises. Bowing again to those who bow to you, 
 answering dryly those who speak to you, and saying 
 nothing offensive to anybody, is such negative good- 
 breeding that it is only not being a brute ; as it would 
 be but a very poor commendation of any man's 
 cleanliness to say that he did not stink. It is an 
 active, cheerful, officious, seducing good-breeding 
 that must gain you the good-will and first senti- 
 ments of the men, and the affections of the women. 
 You must carefully watch and attend to their pas- 
 sions, their tastes, their little humors and weak- 
 nesses, and aller an devant. You must do it, at the 
 same time, with alacrity and emprcssement, and not 
 as if you graciously condescended to humor -their 
 weaknesses. 
 
 For instance; suppose you invited anybody to 
 dine or sup with you, you ought to recollect if you 
 had observed that they had any favorite dish, and 
 take care to provide it for them : and, when it came, 
 you should say: "You seemed to me, at such and 
 such a place, to give this dish a preference, and there- 
 fore I ordered it. This is the wine tliat I observed 
 you liked, and therefore I procured some" The 
 more trifling these things are, the more they prove
 
 256 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 your attention for the person, and are consequently 
 the more engaging. Consult your own breast, and 
 recollect how these little attentions, when shown 
 you by others, flatter that degree of self-love and 
 vanity, from which no man living, is free. Reflect 
 how they incline and attract you to that person, and 
 how you are propitiated afterward to all which that 
 person says or does. The same causes will have 
 the same effects in your favor. 
 
 ATTENTIONS TO LADIES. Women, in a great 
 degree, establish or destroy every man's reputation 
 of good-breeding ; you must, therefore, in a manner, 
 overwhelm them with the attentions of which I 
 have spoken; they are used to them, they expect 
 them; and, to do them justice, they commonly 
 requite them. You must be sedulous, and rather 
 over officious than under, in procuring them their 
 coaches, their chairs, their conveniences in public 
 places ; not see what you should not see ; and rather 
 assist, where you cannot help seeing. Opportunities 
 of showing these attentions present themselves per- 
 petually; but if they do not, make them. As Ovid 
 advises his lover, when he sits in the circus near his 
 mistress, to wipe the dust off her neck, even if there 
 be none. Sz nullus, tamen excute nullum. Your 
 conversation with women should always be respect-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 257 
 
 'ful; but, at the same time, enjoue, and always 
 addressed to their vanity. Everything you say or 
 do should convince them of the regard you have 
 (whether you have it or not) for their beauty, their 
 wit, or their merit. Men have possibly as much 
 vanity as women, though of another kind; and both 
 art and good-breeding require that, instead of mor- 
 tifying, you should please and flatter it, by words 
 and looks of approbation. Suppose (which is by no 
 means improbable) that, at your return to England, 
 I should place you near the person of some one of 
 the royal family; in that situation, good-breeding, 
 engaging address, adorned with all the graces that 
 dwell at courts, would very probably make you a 
 favorite, and from a favorite, a minister; but all 
 the knowledge and learning in the world, without 
 them, never would. The penetration of princes 
 seldom goes deeper than the surface. It is the 
 exterior that always engages their hearts; and I 
 would never advise you to give yourself much 
 trouble about their understandings. Princes in gen- 
 eral (I mean those Porphyrogenets who are born 
 and bred in purple) are about the pitch of women; 
 bred up like them, and are to be addressed and 
 gained in the same manner. They always see, they 
 seldom weigh. Your lustre, not your solidity, must 
 take them; your inside will afterward support and
 
 258 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 secure what your outside has acquired. With wealc 
 people (and they undoubtedly are three parts in 
 four of mankind) good-breeding, address, and man- 
 ners are everything; they can go no deeper; but let 
 me assure you that they are a great deal, even with 
 people of the best understandings. Where the eyes 
 are not pleased, the heart is not flattered, the mind 
 will be apt to stand out. Be this right or wrong, I 
 confess I am so made myself. Awkwardness and 
 ill-breeding shock me, to that degree, that where 
 I meet with them, I cannot find in my heart to 
 inquire into the intrinsic merit of that person; I 
 hastily decide in myself that he can have none; and 
 am not sure I should not even be sorry to know that 
 he had any. I often paint you in my imagination, in 
 your present lotanansa; and, while I view you in 
 the light of ancient and modern learning, useful 
 and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the 
 prospect ; but when I view you in another light, and 
 represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with 
 vulgar air and manners, shambling towards me with 
 inattention and distractions, I shall not pretend to 
 describe to you what I feel ; but will do as a skilful 
 painter did formerly, draw a veil before the coun- 
 tenance of the father. 
 
 I dare say you know already enough of archi- 
 tecture, to know that the Tuscan is the strongest
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 259 
 
 and most solid of all the orders; but, at the same 
 time, it is the coarsest and clumsiest of them. Its 
 solidity does extremely well for the foundation and 
 base floor of a great edifice; but, if the whole build- 
 ing be Tuscan, it will attract no eyes, it will stop no 
 passengers, it will invite no interior examination; 
 people will take it for granted that the finishing 
 and furnishing cannot be worth seeing, where the 
 front is so unadorned and clumsy. But if, upon the 
 solid Tuscan foundation, the Doric, the Ionic, and 
 the Corinthian orders, rise gradually with all their 
 beauty, proportions, and ornaments, the fabric seizes 
 the most incurious eye, and stops the most careless 
 passenger; who solicits admission as a favor, nay, 
 often purchases it. Just so will it fare with your 
 little fabric, which, at present, I fear, has more of 
 the Tuscan than the Corinthian order. You must 
 absolutely change the whole front, or nobody will 
 knock at the door. The several parts, which must 
 compose this new front, are elegant, easy, natural, 
 superior good-breeding; an engaging address; gen- 
 teel motions; an insinuating softness in your looks, 
 words, and actions ; a spruce, lively air, and fashion- 
 able dress; and all the glitter that a young fellow 
 should have. [No date.] 
 
 LEARNING AND POLITENESS. I have often as- 
 serted, that the profoundest learning, and the polit-
 
 2GO CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEBS. 
 
 I 
 
 est manners, were by no means incompatible, though 
 
 so seldom found united in the same person; and I 
 have engaged myself to exhibit you, as a proof of 
 the truth of this assertion. Should you, instead of 
 that, happen to disprove me, the concern indeed will 
 be mine, but the loss will be yours. Lord Bol ing- 
 broke is a strong instance on my side of the question ; 
 he joins, to the deepest erudition, the most elegant 
 politeness and good-breeding that ever any courtier 
 and man of the world was adorned with. And Pope 
 very justly called him All Accomplished St. John, 
 with regard to his knowledge and his manners. He 
 had, it is true, his faults; which proceeded from 
 unbounded ambition and impetuous passions; but 
 they have now subsided by age and experience ; and 
 I can wish you nothing better than to be, what he 
 is now, without being what he has been formerly. 
 His address pre-engages, his eloquence persuades, 
 and his knowledge informs all who approach him. 
 Upon the whole, I do desire, and insist, that, from 
 after dinner till you go to bed, you make good- 
 breeding, address, and manners your serious object 
 and your only care. Without them, you will be 
 nobody; with them, you may be anything, [No date.~] 
 
 PROPER DISTINCTION. Every rational being (I 
 take it for granted) proposes to himself some object 
 more important than mere respiration and obscure
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 2G1 
 
 animal existence. He desires to distinguish himself 
 among his fellow-creatures; and alicui negotio in- 
 tcntus, prceclari facinoris, aut artis bonoz, famam 
 qiurrit. Caesar, when embarking, in a storm, said, 
 that it was not necessary he should live; but that 
 it was absolutely necessary he should get to the 
 place to which he was going. And Pliny leaves 
 mankind this only alternative ; either of doing what 
 deserves to be written, or of writing what deserves 
 to be read. As for those who do neither, eorum 
 vitam mortemque juxta astumo; quoniam de utraquc 
 siletur. You have, I am convinced, one or both of 
 these objects in view ; but you must know, and ,use 
 the necessary means, or your pursuit will be vain 
 and frivolous. In either case, capere est principium 
 el fons; but it is by no means all. That knowledge 
 must be adorned, it must have lustre as well as 
 weight, or it will be oftener taken for lead than for 
 gold. Knowledge you have, and will have; I am 
 easy upon that article. But my business, as your 
 friend, is not to compliment you upon what you 
 have, but to tell you with freedom what you want ; 
 and I must tell you plainly, that I fear you want 
 everything but knowledge. [Nov. 24, 1749, ] 
 
 STYLE. It is not every understanding that can 
 judge of matter; but every ear can and does judge,
 
 262 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 more or less, of style ; and were I either to speak or 
 write to the public, I should prefer moderate matter, 
 adorned with all the beauties and elegancies of style, 
 to the strongest matter in the world, ill worded and 
 ill delivered. Your business is, negotiation abroad, 
 and oratory in the House of Commons at home. 
 .What figure can you make in either case, if your 
 style be inelegant, I do not say bad ? Imagine your- 
 self writing an office-letter to a secretary of state, 
 which letter is to be read by the whole cabinet coun- 
 cil, and very possibly afterward, laid before parlia- 
 ment ; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in 
 it would, in a very few days, circulate through the 
 whole kingdom, to your disgrace and ridicule. For 
 instance ; I will suppose you had written the follow- 
 ing letter from The Hague to the secretary of state 
 at London, and leave you to suppose the conse- 
 quences of it : 
 
 "Mv LORD, I had, last night, the honor of your 
 lordship's letter, of the 24th; and will set about 
 doing the orders contained therein; and if so be 
 that I can get that affair done by the next post, I 
 will not fail for to give your lordship an account 
 of it by next post. I have told the French minister 
 as how, that if that affair be not soon concluded, 
 your lordship would think it all long of him; and 
 that he must have neglected for to have wrote to
 
 SENTENCES AXD MAXIMS. 263 
 
 his court about it. I must beg leave to put your 
 lordship in mind, as hozv, that I am now full three 
 quarters in arrear; and if so be that I do not very 
 soon receive at least one half year, I shall cut a very 
 bad figure; for this here place is very dear. I shall 
 be vastly beholden to your lordship for that there 
 mark of your favor; and so I rest, or remain, 
 Yours," etc. 
 
 You will tell me, possibly, that this is a cari- 
 catura of an illiberal and inelegant style; I will 
 admit it; but assure you, at the same time, that a 
 dispatch with less than half these faults would blow 
 you up forever. It is by no means sufficient to be 
 free from faults in speaking and writing; you must 
 do both correctly and elegantly. [Same date.] 
 
 MISPRONUNCIATION AND MISUSE OF WORDS. A 
 person of the House of Commons, speaking two 
 years ago upon naval affairs, asserted, that we had 
 then the finest navy upon the face of the yearth. 
 This happy mixture of blunder and vulgarism, you 
 may easily imagine, was matter of immediate ridi- 
 cule ; but I can assure you that it continues so still, 
 and will be remembered as long as he lives and 
 speaks. Another, speaking in defence of a gentle- 
 man, upon whom a censure was moved, happily said 
 that he thought that gentleman was more liable to
 
 264 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 be thanked and rewarded, than censured. You 
 know, I presume, that liable can never be used in a 
 good sense. [Same date.] 
 
 BOOKS FOR ORATORY. You have read Quintilian 
 the best book in the world to form an orator ; pray 
 read Cicero, de Oratore the best book in the world 
 to finish one. Translate and retranslate, from and 
 to Latin, Greek, and English; make yourself a pure 
 and elegant English style: it requires nothing but 
 application. I do not find that God has made you a 
 poet ; and I am very glad that he has not ; therefore, 
 for God's sake, make yourself an orator, which you 
 may do. Though I still call you a boy, I consider 
 you no longer as such ; and when I reflect upon the 
 prodigious quantity^ of manure that has been laid 
 upon you, I expect you should produce more at 
 eighteen, than uncultivated soils do at eight and 
 twenty. [Same date.} 
 
 CHESTERFIELD A CENSOR-CRITIC. While the 
 Roman republic flourished, while glory was pursued 
 and virtue practised, and while even little irregu-' 
 larities and indecencies, not cognizable by law, were, 
 however, not thought below the public care, censors 
 were established, discretionally to supply, in par- 
 ticular cases, the inevitable. defects of the law, which 
 must, and can only be general. This employment
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 2G5 
 
 V 
 
 I assume to myself, with regard to your little repub- 
 lic, leaving the legislative power entirely to Mr. 
 Harte; I hope, and believe, that he will seldom, or 
 rather never, have occasion to exert his supreme 
 authority ; and I do by no means suspect you of any 
 faults that may require that interposition. But, to 
 tell you the plain truth, I am of opinion, that my 
 censorial power will not be useless to you, nor a 
 sinecure to me. The sooner you make it both, the 
 better for us both. I can now exercise this employ- 
 ment only upon hearsay, or, at most, written evi- 
 dence; and therefore shall exercise it with great 
 lenity, and some diffidence; but when we meet, and 
 that I can form my judgment upon ocular and 
 auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least 
 impropriety, indecorum, or irregularity pass uncen- 
 sured, than my predecessor Cato did. I shall read 
 you with the attention of a critic, not with the par- 
 tiality of an author : different in this respect, indeed, 
 from most critics, that I shall seek for faults only 
 to correct, and not to expose them. [Nov. 26, 
 1749-} 
 
 NICKNAMES. The little defects in manners, elo- 
 cution, address, and air (and even of figure, though 
 very unjustly), are the objects of ridicule, and the 
 causes of nicknames. You cannot imagine the grief 
 it would give me, and the prejudice it would do you,
 
 266 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 if, by way of distinguishing- you from others of your 
 name, you should happen to be called Muttering 
 Stanhope, Absent Stanhope, Ill-bred Stanhope, or 
 Awkward, Left-legged Stanhope; therefore, take 
 great care to put it out of the power of ridicule 
 itself to give you any of these ridiculous epithets; 
 for, if you get one, it will stick to you like the 
 envenomed shirt. The very first day that I see you, 
 I shall be able to tell you, and certainly shall tell 
 you, what degree of danger you are in; and I hope 
 that my admonitions, as censor, may prevent the 
 censures of the public. [Same date.] 
 
 YOUNG STANHOPE'S PORTRAIT. I send you here 
 a portrait, drawn by a lady at Venice, by my orders : 
 "In compliance to your orders, I have examined 
 young Stanhope carefully, and think I have pene- 
 trated into his character. This is his portrait, which 
 I take to be a faithful one. His face is pleasing, his 
 countenance sensible, and his look clever. His fig- 
 ure is at present rather too square ; but if he shoots 
 up, which he has matter and years for, he will then 
 be of a good size. He has, undoubtedly, a great 
 fund of acquired knowledge; I am assured that he 
 is master of the learned languages. As for French, 
 I know he speaks it perfectly, and I am told Ger- 
 man, as well. The questions he asks are judicious, 
 and denote a thirst after knowledge. I cannot say
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 267 
 
 that he appears equally desirous of pleasing, for he 
 seems to neglect attentions and the graces. He does 
 not come into a room well, nor has he that easy, 
 noble carriage, which would be proper for him. It 
 is true, he is as yet young and inexperienced; one 
 may therefore reasonably hope that his exercises, 
 which he has not yet gone through, and good com- 
 pany, in which he is still a novice, will polish, and 
 give all that is wanting to complete him. What 
 seems necessary for that purpose, would be an 
 attachment to some woman of fashion, and who 
 knows the world. Some Madame de L'Ursay would 
 be the proper person. In short, I can assure you 
 that he has everything which Lord Chesterfield can 
 wish him, excepting that carriage, those graces, and 
 the style used in the best company; which he will 
 certainly acquire in time, and by frequenting the 
 polite world. If he should not, it would be great 
 pity, since he so well deserves to possess them. You 
 know their importance. My lord, his father, knows 
 it too, he being master of them all. To conclude, if 
 little Stanhope acquires the graces, I promise you 
 he will make his way; if not, he will be stopped in 
 a course, the goal of which he might attain with 
 honor."* 
 
 * We retain this as a picture of the morals of the time, and 
 to satisfy the reader's curiosity as to the subject of so much 
 care on the part of his father.
 
 268 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 MAN UNRATIONAL, YET ALL MEN THE SAME IN 
 FEELING. Those who suppose that men in general 
 act rationally, because they are called rational crea- 
 tures, know very little of the world; and if they act 
 themselves upon that supposition, will, nine times 
 in ten, find themselves grossly mistaken. That man 
 is, animal bipes, implume, risibile, I entirely agree; 
 but for the rationale, I can only allow it him in 
 actu primo (to talk logic), and seldom in actu 
 secundo. Thus, the speculative, cloistered pedant, in 
 his solitary cell, forms systems of things, as they 
 should be, not as they are; and writes as decisively 
 and absurdly upon war, politics, manners, and char- 
 acters, as that pedant talked, who was so kind as 
 to instruct Hannibal in the art of war. Such closet 
 politicians never fail to assign the deepest motives 
 for the most trifling actions ; instead of often ascrib- 
 ing the greatest actions to the most trifling causes, 
 in which they would be much seldomer mistaken. 
 They read and write of kings, heroes, and states- 
 men, as never do anything but upon the deepest 
 principles of sound policy. But those who see and 
 observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that 
 they have headaches, indigestions, humors, and pas- 
 sions, just like other people ; every one of which, in 
 their turns, determine their wills, in defiance of their 
 reason. [Dec. 5,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 2C9 
 
 CHARM OF MANNER. The late Lord Townshend 
 always spoke materially, with argument and knowl- 
 edge, but never pleased. Why? His diction was 
 not only inelegant, - but frequently ungrammatical, 
 always vulgar; his cadences false, liis voice unhar- 
 monious, and his action ungraceful. Nobody heard 
 him with patience; and the young fellows used to 
 joke upon him, and repeat his inaccuracies. The late 
 Duke of Argyle, though the weakest reasoner, was 
 the most pleasing speaker I ever knew in my life. 
 He charmed, he warmed, he forcibly ravished the 
 audience; not by his matter certainly, but by his 
 manner of delivering it. A most genteel figure, a 
 graceful, noble air, an harmonious voice, an ele- 
 gancy of style, and a strength of emphasis, con- 
 spired to make him the most affecting, persuasive, 
 and applauded speaker I ever saw. I was captivated 
 like others; but when I came home, and coolly con- 
 sidered what he had said, stripped of all those orna- 
 ments in which he had dressed it, I often found the 
 matter flimsy, the arguments weak, and I was con- 
 vinced of the power of those adventitious concurring 
 circumstances, which ignorance of mankind only, 
 calls trifling ones. [Same date.] 
 
 TICKLING FOLLIES. If you will please people, 
 you must please them in their own way; and, as
 
 270 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTEKS. 
 
 you cannot make them what they should be, you 
 must take them as they are. I repeat it again, they 
 are only to be taken by agrcmens, and by what flat- 
 ters their senses and their hearts. Rabelais first 
 wrote a most excellent book, which nobody liked; 
 then, determined to conform to the public taste, he 
 wrote "Gargantua and Pantagruel," which every- 
 body liked, extravagant as it was. Adieu. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 TRUE ELOCUTION. What then does all this 
 mighty heart and mystery of speaking in Parlia- 
 ment amount to? Why, no more than this, that 
 the man who speaks in the House of Commons, 
 speaks in that house, and to four hundred people, 
 that opinion, upon a given subject, which he would 
 make no difficulty of speaking in any house in Eng- 
 land, round the fire, or at table, to any fourteen 
 people whatsoever; better judges, perhaps, and 
 severer critics of what he says, than any fourteen 
 gentlemen of the House of Commons. 
 
 I have spoken frequently in Parliament, and not al- 
 ways without some applause ; and therefore I can as- 
 sure you, from my experience, that there is very little 
 in it. The elegancy of the style, and the turn of the 
 periods, make the chief impression upon the hearers. 
 Give them but one or two round and harmonious
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. Ml 
 
 periods in a speech, which they will retain and 
 repeat, and they will go home as well satisfied, as 
 people do from an opera, humming all the way one 
 or two favorite tunes that have struck their ears 
 and were easily caught. Most people have ears, but 
 few have judgment; tickle those ears, and, depend 
 upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as 
 they are. [Dec. 9, 1749^ 
 
 HAMPDEN A LESSON. Lord Clarendon, in his 
 history, says of Mr. John Hampden, that he had a 
 head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand 
 to execute, any mischief. I shall not now enter into 
 the justness of this character of Mr. Hampden, to 
 whose brave stand against the illegal demand of 
 ship-money, we owe our present liberties; but I 
 mention it to you as the character, which, with the 
 alteration of one single word, good, instead of mis- 
 chief, I would have you aspire to, and use your 
 utmost endeavors to deserve. The head to contrive, 
 God must to a certain degree have given you; but 
 it is in your own power greatly to improve it, by 
 study, observation, and reflection. As for the tongue 
 to persuade, it wholly depends upon yourself; and 
 without it the best head will contrive to very little 
 purpose. The hand to execute depends, likewise, in 
 my opinion, in a great measure upon yourself. Seri- 
 ous reflection will always give courage in a good
 
 272 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 cause; and the courage arising from reflection is of 
 a much superior nature to the animal and constitu- 
 tional courage of a foot-soldier. The former is steady 
 and unshaken, where the nodus is dignus vindice; 
 the latter is oftener improperly than properly ex- 
 erted, but always brutally. [Dec. 12, 1749.] 
 
 THINGS OF CONSEQUENCE BOLINGBROKE. He 
 thought all these things of consequence, and he 
 thought right; pray do you think so too? It is of 
 the utmost consequence to you to be of that opinion. 
 If you have the least defect in your elocution, take 
 the utmost care and pains to correct it. Do not neg- 
 lect your style, whatever language you speak in, 
 or whomever you speak to, were it your footman. 
 Seek always for the best words and the happiest 
 expressions you can find. Do not content yourself 
 with being barely understood; but adorn your 
 thoughts, and dress them as you would your person ; 
 which, however well proportioned it might be, it 
 would be very improper and indecent to exhibit 
 naked, or even worse dressed than people of your 
 sort are. 
 
 I have sent you, in a packet which your Leipsic 
 acquaintance, Duval, sends to his correspondent at 
 Rome, Lord Bolingbroke's book,* which he pub- 
 
 * "Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, on the Idea of a Pa- 
 triot King."
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 273 
 
 lished about a year ago. I desire that you will read 
 it over and over again, with particular attention to 
 the style, and to all those beauties of oratory with 
 which it is adorned. Till I read that book, I con- 
 fess I did not know all the extent and powers of 
 the English language. Lord Bolingbroke has both 
 a tongue and a pen to persuade. [Same date.] 
 
 COMPLICATED MACHINES. I have often told you 
 (and it is most true) that, with regard to mankind, 
 we must not draw general conclusions from certain 
 particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. 
 We must not suppose that, because a man is a 
 rational animal, he will, therefore, always act ration- 
 ally ; or, because he has such or such a predominant 
 passion, that he will act invariably and consequen- 
 tially in the pursuit of it. No, we are complicated 
 machines ; and though we have one main spring that 
 gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of 
 little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precip- 
 itate, and sometimes stop that motion. [Dec. ip, 
 
 1749-} 
 
 AMBITION AND AVARICE. There are two incon- 
 sistent passions, which, however, frequently accom- 
 pany each other, like man and wife; and which, like 
 man and wife too, are commonly clogs upon each 
 other. I mean ambition and avarice: the latter is
 
 274 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 often the true cause of the former; and then is the 
 predominant passion. ,It seems to have been so in 
 Cardinal Mazarin; who did anything, submitted to 
 anything, and forgave anything, for the sake of 
 plunder. He loved and courted power like a usurer ; 
 because it carried profit along with it. Whoever 
 should have formed his opinion, or taken his meas- 
 ures, singly, from the ambitious part of Cardinal 
 Mazarin's character, would have found himself often 
 mistaken. Some, who had found this out, made 
 their fortunes by letting him cheat them at play. 
 On the contrary, Cardinal Richelieu's prevailing 
 passion seems to have been ambition, and his im- 
 mense riches, only the natural consequences of that 
 ambition gratified; and yet, I make no doubt but 
 that ambition had now and then its turn with the 
 former, and avarice with the latter. Richelieu (by 
 the way) is so strong a proof of the inconsistency of 
 human nature, that I cannot help observing to you 
 that, while he absolutely governed both his king and 
 his country, and was, in a great degree, the arbiter 
 of the fate of all Europe, he was more jealous of the 
 great reputation of Corneille, than of the power of 
 Spain ; and more flattered with being thought (what 
 he was not) the best poet, than with being thought 
 (what he certainly was) the greatest statesman in 
 Europe ; and affairs stood still, while he was concert-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 275 
 
 ing the criticism upon the Cid. Could one think this 
 possible, if one did not know it to be true? [Same 
 
 date.] 
 
 WOMEN, VANITY, AND LOVE. Women are much 
 more like each other than men ; they have, in truth, 
 but two passions, vanity and love: these are their 
 universal characteristics. An Agrippina may sacri- 
 fice them to ambition, or a Messalina to lust; but 
 such instances are rare ; and, in general, all they say, 
 and all they do, tends to the gratification of their 
 vanity, or their love. He who flatters them most 
 pleases them best; and they are most in love with 
 him who they think is the most in love with them. 
 No adulation is too strong for them; no assiduity 
 too great; no simulation of passion too gross; as, 
 on the other hand, the least word or action, that can 
 possibly be construed into a slight or contempt, is 
 unpardonable, and never forgotten. Men are, in 
 this respect, tender, too, and will sooner forgive 
 an injury than an insult. Some men are more cap- 
 tious than others; some are always wrongheaded; 
 but every man living has such a share of vanity, as 
 to be hurt by marks of slight and contempt. Every 
 man does not pretend to be a poet, a mathematician, 
 or a statesman, and considered as such; but every 
 man pretends to common-sense, and to fill his place
 
 276 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 in the world with common decency; and,, conse- 
 quently, does not easily forgive those negligencies, 
 inattentions, and slights, which seem to call in ques- 
 tion, or utterly deny him, both these pretensions. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 i 
 
 Too READY FRIENDS. Be upon your guard 
 against those who, upon very slight acquaintance, 
 obtrude their unasked and unmerited friendship and 
 confidence upon you; for they probably cram you 
 with them only for their own eating; but, at the 
 same time, do not roughly reject them upon that 
 general supposition. Examine further, and see 
 whether those unexpected offers flow from a warm 
 heart and a silly head, or a designing head and a 
 cold heart; for knavery and folly have often the 
 same symptoms. In the first case, there is no danger 
 in accepting them, valeant quantum valere possunt. 
 In the latter case, it may be useful to seem to accept 
 them, and artfully to turn the battery upon him who 
 raised it 
 
 There is an incontinency of friendship among 
 young fellows, who are associated by their mutual 
 pleasures only; which has, very frequently, bad 
 consequences. A parcel of warm hearts, and unex- 
 perienced heads, heated by convivial mirth, and pos- 
 sibly a little too much wine, vow, and really mean-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 277 
 
 at the time, eternal friendships to each other, and 
 indiscreetly pour out their whole souls in common, 
 and without the least reserve. These confidences 
 are as indiscreetly repealed, as they were made; for 
 new pleasures, and new places, soon dissolve this 
 ill cemented connection; and then very ill uses are 
 made of these rash confidences. Bear your part, 
 however, in young companies; nay, excel, if you 
 can, in all the social and convivial joy and festivity 
 that become youth. Trust them with your love- 
 tales, if you please; but keep your serious views 
 secret. [Same date.] 
 
 THE GENTLER VIRTUES. Caesar had all the great 
 vices, and Cato all the great virtues, that men could 
 have. But Caesar had the leniores virtutes, which 
 Cato wanted; and which made him beloved, even 
 by his enemies, and gained him the hearts of man- 
 kind, in spite of their reason; while Cato was not 
 even beloved by his friends, notwithstanding the 
 esteem and respect which they could not refuse to 
 his virtues ; and I am apt to think that if Caesar had 
 wanted, and Cato possessed, those leniores virtutes, 
 the former would not have attempted (at least with 
 success), and the latter could have protected, the 
 liberties of Rome. Mr. Addison, in his Cato, says 
 of Caesar (and I believe with truth) : 
 
 "Curse on his virtues, they've undone his country."
 
 278 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 PRIDE AND PEDANTRY. The costive liberality of 
 a purse-proud man insults the distresses it sometimes 
 relieves; he takes care to make you feel your own 
 misfortunes, and the difference between your situa- 
 tion and his; both which he insinuates to be justly 
 merited : yours, by your folly ; his, by his wisdom. 
 The arrogant pedant does not communicate, but 
 promulgates his knowledge. He does not give it to 
 you, but he inflicts it upon you; and is (if possible) 
 more desirous to show you your own ignorance, 
 than his own learning. Such manners as these, not 
 only in the particular instances which I have men- 
 tioned, but likewise in all others, shock and revolt 
 that little pride and vanity, which every man has 
 in his heart; and obliterate in us the obligation for 
 the favor conferred, by reminding us of the motive 
 which produced and the manner which accompanied 
 it. [No date.] 
 
 GREETINGS AND GOOD WISHES. The New Year 
 is the season in which custom seems more particu- 
 larly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the 
 name of compliments. People reciprocally profess 
 wishes, which they seldom form ; and concern, which 
 they seldom feel. That is not the case between you 
 and me, where truth leaves no room for compli- 
 ments. 
 

 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 379 
 
 Dii tibi dent annos, de te nam ccetera sutnes, was 
 said formerly to one, by a man who certainly did 
 not think it. With the variation of one word only, 
 I will with great truth say it to you. I will make the 
 first part conditional, by changing, in the second, the 
 nam into si. May you live, as long as you are fit 
 to live, but no longer ! or, may you rather die, before 
 you cease to be fit to live, than after! My true 
 tenderness for you makes me think more of the 
 manner than of the length of your life, and forbids 
 me to wish it prolonged, by a single day, that should 
 bring guilt, reproach, and shame upon you. I have 
 not malice enough in my nature to wish that to my 
 greatest enemy. You are the principal object of 
 all my cares, the only object of all my hopes : I have 
 now reason 'to believe, that you will reward the 
 former, and answer the latter; in that case, may 
 you live long, for you must live happy; de te nam 
 ccctera sumes. Conscious virtue is the only solid 
 foundation of all happiness ; for riches, power, rank, 
 or whatever, in the common acceptation of the word, 
 is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, 
 much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt. To that 
 main wish I will add those of the good old nurse 
 of Horace, in his Epistle to Tibullus : Sapere, you 
 have it in a good degree already. Et fari ut possit 
 qua sentiat. Have you that ? More, much more, is
 
 280 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 meant by it, than common speech, or mere articula- 
 tion. I fear that still remains to be wished for, and I * 
 earnestly wish it you. Gratia andfama will inevi- 
 tably accompany the above-mentioned qualifications. 
 The valetudo is the only one that is not in your own 
 power, Heaven alone can grant it you, and may it do 
 so abundantly ! As for the mundus victus, non defi- 
 ciente crumena, do you deserve, and I will provide 
 them. [Dec. 26, 1749.] 
 
 POETS AND ORATORS. A man who is not born 
 with a poetical genius can never be a poet, or, at 
 best, an extreme bad one: but every man, who can 
 speak at all, can speak elegantly and correctly, if 
 he pleases, by attending to the best authors and 
 orators; and, indeed, I would advise those who do 
 not speak elegantly, not to speak at all; for, I am 
 sure, they will get more by their silence than by their 
 speech. As for politeness ; whoever keeps good com- 
 pany, and is not polite, must have formed a resolu- 
 tion, and taken some pains not to be so; otherwise 
 he would naturally and insensibly acquire the air, 
 the address, and the tone of those he converses with. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 METHOD OF STUDY THE WOR!D AND BOOKS. 
 Your first morning hours, I would have you devote 
 to your graver studies with Mr. Harte; the middle
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 281 
 
 part of the day, I would have employed in' seeing 
 things ; and the evenings, in seeing people. You are 
 not, I hope, of a lazy, inactive turn, in either body 
 or mind; and, in that case, the day is full long 
 enough for everything; especially at Rome, where 
 it is not the fashion, as it is here and at Paris, to 
 embezzle at least half of it at table. But if, by 
 accident, two or three hours are sometimes wanting 
 for some useful purpose, borrow them from your 
 sleep. Six, or at most seven hours' sleep is, for a 
 constancy, as much as you or anybody can want: 
 more is only laziness and dozing; and is, I am per- 
 suaded, both unwholesome and stupefying. If, by 
 chance, your business, or your pleasures, should keep 
 you up till four or five o'clock in the morning, I 
 would advise you, however, to rise exactly at your 
 usual time, that you may not lose the precious morn- 
 ing hours ; and that the want of sleep may force you 
 to go to bed earlier the next night. This is what 
 I was advised to do when very young, by a very wise 
 man; and what, I assure you, I always did in the 
 most dissipated part of my life. I have very often 
 gone to bed at six in the morning, and rose, notwith- 
 standing, at eight; by which means I got many 
 hours, in the morning, that my companions lost ; and 
 the want of sleep obliged me to keep good hours the 
 next, or at least the third night. To this method I
 
 282 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 
 
 owe the greatest part of my reading; for, from 
 twenty to forty, I should certainly have read very 
 little, if I had not been up while my acquaintances 
 were in bed. Know the true value of time; snatch, 
 seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, 
 no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till 
 to-morrow what you can do to-day. That was the 
 rule of the famous and unfortunate pensionary De 
 Witt; who, by strictly following it, found time, not 
 only to do the whole business of the republic, but to 
 pass his evenings at assemblies and suppers, as if 
 he had nothing else to do or think of. [Same date.] 
 
 RELIGION, WHY SILENT ON. I have seldom or 
 never written to you upon the subject of religion and 
 morality: your own reason, I am persuaded, has 
 given you true notions of both ; they speak best for 
 themselves ; but, if they wanted assistance, you have 
 Mr. Harte at hand, both for precept and example : to 
 your own reason, therefore, and to Mr. Harte, shall 
 I refer you, for the reality of both; and confine 
 myself, in this letter, to the decency, the utility, and 
 the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appear- 
 ances of both. When I say the appearances of relig- 
 ion, I do not mean that you should act or talk like 
 a missionary, or an enthusiast, nor that you should 
 take up a controversial cudgel against whoever
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 283 
 
 attacks the sect you are of; this would be both use- 
 less and unbecoming your age ; but I mean that you 
 should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or 
 applaud those libertine notions, which strike at 
 religions equally, and which are the poor, thread- 
 bare topics of half wits and minute philosophers. 
 Even those who are silly enough to laugh at their 
 jokes are still wise enough to distrust and detest 
 their characters; for, putting moral virtues at the 
 highest, and religion at the lowest, religion must 
 still be allowed to be a collateral security, at least, 
 to vjrtue; and every prudent man will sooner trust 
 to two securities than to one. Whenever, therefore, 
 you happen to be in company with those pretended 
 csprits forts, or with thoughtless libertines, who 
 laugh at all religion, to show their wit, or disclaim 
 it, to complete their riot, let no word or look of 
 yours indicate the least approbation; on the con- 
 trary, let a silent gravity express your dislike: but 
 enter not into the subject, and decline such unprofit- 
 able and indecent controversies. Depend upon this 
 truth, that every man is the worse looked upon, and 
 the less trusted, for being thought to have no re- 
 ligion; in spite of all the pompous and specious 
 epithets he may assume of esprit fort free-thinker, 
 or moral philosopher; and a wise atheist (if such a 
 thing there is) would, for his own interest and char-
 
 284 CHESTEEFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 acter in this world, pretend to some religion. [Jan. 
 8, 17.50.] 
 
 MORAL CHARACTER. Your moral character 
 must be not only pure, but, like Caesar's wife, unsus- 
 pected. The least speck or blemish upon it is fatal. 
 Nothing degrades and vilifies more, for it excites 
 and unites detestation and contempt. There are, 
 however, wretches in the world profligate enough to 
 explode all notions of moral good and evil ; to main- 
 tain that they are merely local, and depend entirely 
 upon the customs and fashions of different coun- 
 tries: nay, there are still, if possible, more unac- 
 countable wretches ; I mean, those who affect to 
 preach and propagate such absurd and infamous 
 notions, without believing them themselves. These 
 are the Devil's hypocrites. Avoid, as much as pos- 
 sible, the company of such people ; who reflect a 
 degree of discredit and infamy upon all who con- 
 verse with them. But as you may, sometimes, by 
 accident, fall into such company, take great care 
 that no complaisance, no good-humor, no warmth 
 of festal mirth, ever make you seem even to acqui- 
 esce, much less to approve or applaud, such infamous 
 doctrines. On the other hand, do not debate, nor 
 enter into serious argument, upon a subject so much 
 below it: but content yourself with telling these
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 285 
 
 apostles, that you know they are not serious, that 
 you have a much better opinion of them than they 
 would have you have, and that you are very sure 
 they would not practise the doctrine they preach. 
 But put your private mark upon them, and shun 
 them for ever afterwards. [Same date.} 
 
 VALUE OF CHARACTER. Show yourself, upon all 
 occasions, the advocate, the friend, but not the bully, 
 of virtue. Colonel Chartres,* whom you have cer- 
 tainly heard of (who was, I believe, the most notori- 
 ous blasted rascal in the world, and who had, by all 
 sorts of crimes, amassed immense wealth), was so 
 sensible of the disadvantage of a bad character that 
 I heard him once say, in his impudent, profligate 
 manner, that though he would not give one farthing 
 for virtue, he would give ten thousand pounds for 
 
 * A notorious, wretched debauchee, who has been pilloried 
 into a miserable and degraded immortality by Arbuthnot, Pope 
 and Hogarth ; the painter has given us his portrait in "The 
 Harlot's Progress," plate i. Pope has set him up as an in- 
 stance of that hardest trial to good men, the success of the 
 wicked : 
 
 "Should some lone temple, nodding to its fall, 
 For Chartres' head reserve the nodding wall." 
 
 And ^AjbtttboQt wrote the most tremendously severe epitaph 
 in tfieSvhole range of literature on him while yet alive : "Here 
 continueth to rot the body of Colonel Francis Chartres," etc. 
 Finally, Chesterfield points him out to his son as the most 
 notorious blasted rascal in the world blasted, indeed, as by 
 lightning. It is needless to say that this word is not used as 
 a vulgar oath, but to point out a man whose name is, as the 
 Bible of 1551 has it: "Marred forever by blastynge"
 
 286 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 a character, because he should get a hundred thou- 
 sand pounds by it ; whereas he was so blasted that he 
 had no longer an opportunity of cheating people. Is 
 is possible, then, that an honest man can neglect 
 what a wise rogue would purchase so dear ? [Same 
 date.] 
 
 A NICE DISTINCTION EXAGGERATION. Lord 
 Bacon, very justly, makes a distinction between 
 simulation and dissimulation, and allows the latter 
 rather than the former; but still observes that they 
 are the weaker sort of politicians who have recourse 
 to either. A man who has strength of mind and 
 strength of parts wants neither of them. "Cer- 
 tainly," says he, "the ablest men that ever were have 
 all had an openness and frankness of dealing, and a 
 name of certainty and veracity; but then they were 
 like horses well managed, for they could tell, passing 
 well, when to stop or turn ; and at such times, when 
 they thought the case indeed required some dissim- 
 ulation, if then they used it, it came to pass that the 
 former opinion spread abroad, of their good faith 
 and clearness of dealing, made them almost invisi- 
 ble." There are people who indulge themselves in 
 a sort of lying, which they reckon innocent, and 
 which in one sense is so; for it hurts nobody but 
 themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious off-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 287 
 
 spring of vanity, begotten upon folly. These people 
 deal in the marvellous; they have seen some things 
 that never existed : they have seen other things 
 which they never really saw, though they did exist, 
 only because they were thought worth seeing. Has 
 anything remarkable been said or done in any place, 
 cr in any company? they immediately present and 
 declare themselves eye or ear witnesses of it. They 
 have done feats themselves, unattempted, or at least 
 unperformed by others. They are always the heroes 
 of their own fables, and think that they gain consid- 
 eration, or at least present attention, by it. Whereas, 
 in truth, all they get is ridicule and contempt, not 
 without a good degree of distrust : for one must nat- 
 urally conclude that he who will tell any lie from 
 idle vanity will not scruple telling a greater for 
 interest. [Same date.] 
 
 THE NOVICE IN SOCIETY. I remember that 
 when, with all the awkwardness and rust of Cam- 
 bridge about me, I was first introduced into good 
 company, I was frightened out of my wits. I was 
 determined to be what I thought civil; I made fine 
 low bows, and placed myself below everybody; but 
 when I was spoken to, or attempted to speak myself, 
 obstupui, stetenmtque comce et vox faucibus hcrsit. 
 If I saw people whisper, I was sure it was at me;
 
 288 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 and I thought myself the sole object of either the 
 ridicule or the censure of the whole company, who, 
 God knows, did not trouble their heads about me. 
 In this way I suffered, for some time, like a crim- 
 inal at the bar ; and should certainly have renounced 
 all polite company forever, if I had not been so con- 
 vinced of the absolute necessity of forming my 
 manners upon those of the best companies, that I 
 determined to persevere, and suffer anything, or 
 everything, rather than not compass that point. 
 Insensibly it grew easier to me; and I began not 
 to bow so ridiculously low, and to answer questions 
 without great hesitation or stammering; if, now 
 and then, some charitable people, seeing my embar- 
 rassment, and being desccuvre themselves, came and 
 spoke to me, I considered them as angels sent to 
 comfort me; and that gave me a little courage. I 
 got more soon afterward, and was intrepid enough 
 to go up to a fine woman, and tell her that I thought 
 it a warm day; she answered me, very civilly, that 
 she thought so too; upon which the conversation 
 ceased, on my part, for some time, till she, good- 
 naturedly resuming it, spoke to me thus : "I see your 
 embarrassment, and I am sure that the few words 
 you said to me cost you a great deal ; but do not be 
 discouraged for that reason, and avoid good com- 
 pany. We see that you desire to please, and that is
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 289 
 
 the main point ; you want only the manner, and you 
 think that you want it still more than you do. You 
 must go through your noviciate before you can 
 profess good-breeding; and, if you will be my novice, 
 I will present you to my acquaintance as such." 
 [fan. 11, 1750.} 
 
 THE CHAPERONE. There is a sort of veteran 
 women (sic) of condition, who, having lived always 
 in the grand monde, and having possibly had some 
 gallantries, together with the experience of five and 
 twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better 
 than all the rules that can be given him. These 
 women, being past their bloom, are extremely flat- 
 tered by the least attention from a young fellow; 
 and they will point out to him those manners and 
 attentions that pleased and engaged them, when they 
 were in the pride of their youth and beauty. Wher- 
 ever you go, make some of those women your 
 friends, which a very little matter will do. Ask 
 their advice, tell them your doubts or difficulties as 
 to your behavior; but take great care not to drop 
 one word of their experience ; for experience implies 
 age, and the suspicion of age, no woman, let her be 
 ever so old, ever forgives. [Same date.] 
 
 NECESSARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS. I here subjoin 
 a list of all those necessary, ornamental accomplish-
 
 290 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS, 
 
 ments (without which no man living can either 
 please or rise in the world), which hitherto I fear 
 you want, and which only require your care and at- 
 tention to possess. 
 
 To speak elegantly whatever language you speak 
 in ; without which nobody will hear you with pleas- 
 ure, and, consequently, you will speak to very little 
 purpose. 
 
 An agreeable and distinct elocution; without 
 which nobody will hear you with patience; this 
 everybody may acquire who is not born with some 
 imperfection in the organs of speech. You are not ; 
 and therefore it is wholly in your power. You need 
 take much less pains for it than Demosthenes did. 
 
 A distinguished politeness of manners and ad- 
 dress ; which common-sense, observation, good com- 
 pany, and imitation will infallibly give you, if you 
 will accept of it. 
 
 A genteel carriage, and graceful motions, with the 
 air of a man of fashion. A good dancing master, 
 with some care on your part, and some imitation of 
 those who excel, will soon bring this about. 
 
 To be extremely clean in your person, and per- 
 fectly well dressed, according to the fashion, be 
 that what it will. Your negligence of dress, while 
 you were a schoolboy, was pardonable, but would 
 not be so now.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 291 
 
 Upon the whole, take it for granted, that, without 
 these accomplishments, all you know, and all you 
 can do, will avail you very little. Adieu. [Jan. 
 18, 1750.] 
 
 TIME ITS VALUE. Very few people are good 
 economists of their fortune, and still fewer of their 
 time; and yet, of the two, the latter is the most 
 precious. I heartily wish you to be a good econo- 
 mist of both; and you are now of an age to begin to 
 think seriously of these two important articles. 
 Young people are apt to think they have so much 
 time before them, that they may squander what they 
 please of it, and yet have enough left ; as very great 
 fortunes have frequently seduced people to a ruinous 
 profusion. Fatal mistakes, always repented of, but 
 always too late! Old Mr. Lowndes, the famous 
 Secretary of the Treasury, in the reigns of King 
 William, Queen Anne, and King George the First, 
 used to say, "Take care of the pence, and the pounds 
 will take care of themselves." To this maxim, 
 which he not only preached, but practised, his two 
 grandsons, at this time, owe the very considerable 
 fortunes that he left them. [Feb. 5, 1750.] 
 
 LAZY PEOPLE DISPATCH How TO READ. 
 Many people lose a great deal of their time by 
 laziness; they loll and yawn in a great chair, tell
 
 292 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 themselves that they have not time to begin anything 
 then, and that it will do as well another time. This 
 is a most unfortunate disposition, and the greatest 
 obstruction to both knowledge and business. At 
 your age, you have no right nor claim to laziness; 
 7. have, if I please, being emeritus. You are but just 
 listed in the world, and must be active, diligent, 
 indefatigable. If ever you propose commanding 
 with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence. 
 Never put off till to-morrow what you can do 
 to-day. 
 
 Dispatch is the soul of business ; and nothing con- 
 tributes more to dispatch than method. Lay down 
 a method for everything, and stick to it inviolably, 
 as far as unexpected incidents may allow. Fix one 
 certain hour and day in the week for your accompts, 
 and keep them together in their proper order; by 
 which means they will require very little time, and 
 you can never be much cheated. Whatever letters 
 and papers you keep, docket and tie them up in their 
 respective classes, so that you may instantly have 
 recourse to any one. Lay down a method also for 
 your reading, for which you allot a certain share of 
 your mornings ; let it be in a consistent and consecu- 
 tive course, and not in that desultory and immethod- 
 ical manner, in which many people read scraps of 
 different authors, upon different subjects. Keep a
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 293 
 
 useful and short commonplace book of what you 
 read, to help your memory only, and not for pedan- 
 tic quotations. Never read history without having 
 maps, and a chronological book, or tables, lying by 
 you, and constantly recurred to; without which 
 history is only a confused heap of facts. One 
 method more I recommend to you, by which I have 
 found great benefit, even in the most dissipated part 
 of my life; that is, to rise early, and at the same 
 hour every morning, how late soever you may have 
 sat up the night before. This secures you an hour 
 or two, at least, of reading and reflection, before 
 the common interruptions of the morning begin; 
 and it will save your constitution, by forcing you to 
 go to bed early, at least one night in three. [Feb. 
 
 DIGNITY IN PLEASURE. There is a certain dig- 
 nity to be kept up in pleasures, as well as in business. 
 In love, a man may lose his heart with dignity ; but 
 if he loses his nose, he loses his character into the 
 bargain. At table, a man may with decency have a 
 distinguishing palate; but indiscriminate voracious- 
 ness degrades him to a glutton. , A man may play 
 with decency ; but if he games, he is disgraced. Vi- 
 vacity and wit make a man shine in company; but 
 trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buf-
 
 294 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 foon. Every virtue, they say, has its kindred vice; 
 every pleasure, I am sure, has its neighboring dis- 
 grace. Mark carefully, therefore, the line that sep- 
 arates them, and carefully stop a yard short, than 
 step an inch beyond it. 
 
 I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in 
 following my advice, as I have in giving it you; 
 and you may the easier have it, as I give you none 
 that is inconsistent with your pleasure. [Same date.] 
 
 FALSE WIT. To do justice to the best English 
 and French authors ; they have not given in to that 
 false taste; they allow no thoughts to be good, that 
 are not just, and founded upon truth. The age of 
 Louis XIV. was very like the Augustan; Boileau, 
 Moliere, La Fontaine, Racine, etc., established the 
 true, and exposed the false taste. The reign of King 
 Charles II. (meritorious in no other respect) ban- 
 ished false tastes out of England, and proscribed 
 puns, quibbles, acrostics, etc. Since that, false wit 
 has renewed its attacks, and endeavored to recover 
 its lost empire, both in England and France, but 
 without success ; though, I must say, with more suc- 
 cess in France than in England : Addison, Pope and 
 Swift, having vigorously defended the rights of 
 good-sense, which is more than can be said of their 
 contemporary French authors, who have of late had
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 295 
 
 a great tendency to le faux brillant, le ranfiement, et 
 rcntortillement. And Lord Roscommon would be 
 more ir: the right new, than he was then, in saying, 
 
 that 
 
 "The English bullion of one sterling line, 
 
 Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine." 
 
 [Same date.] 
 
 No STOIC. I confess, the pleasures of high life 
 are not always strictly philosophical; and I believe 
 a stoic would blame my indulgence; but I am yet 
 no stoic, though turned of five-and-fif ty ; and I am 
 apt to think that you are rather less so, at eighteen. 
 The pleasures of the table, among people of the 
 first fashion, may, indeed, sometimes, by accident, 
 run into excesses; but they will never sink into a 
 continued course of gluttony and drunkenness. The 
 gallantry of high life, though not strictly justifiable, 
 carries, at least, no external marks of infamy about 
 it. [March 8, 1750.] 
 
 ETIQUETTE. I did not think that the present 
 Pope* was a sort of man to build seven modern 
 little chapels at the expense of so respectable a piece 
 of antiquity as the Coliseum. However, let his 
 holiness' taste of vertu be ever so bad, pray get 
 
 * Benedict XIV. the amiable Lambertini, who was thought 
 by Chesterfield too much of a savant and a man of the world 
 to be foolishly devout.
 
 296 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 somebody to present you to him, before you leave 
 Rome; and without hesitation kiss his slipper, or 
 whatever else the etiquette of that court requires. 
 I would have you see all those ceremonies; and I 
 presume that you are, by this time, ready enough at 
 Italian to understand and answer il Santo Padre in 
 that language. [March ip, 1/50.] 
 
 BIBLIOMANIA. When you return here, I am apt 
 to think that you will find something better to do 
 than to run to Mr. Osborne's at Gray's-Inn, to pick 
 up scarce books. Buy good books, and read them; 
 the best books are the commonest, and the last edi- 
 tions are always the best, if the editors are not block- 
 heads ; for they may profit of the former. But take 
 care not to understand editions and title-pages too 
 well. It always smells of pedantry, and not always 
 of learning.' What curious books I have, they are 
 indeed but few, shall be at your service. I have 
 some of the Old Collana, and the Macchiavel of 
 
 1550. Beware of the Bibliomanie.J [Same date.] 
 
 t 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. England is now 
 
 the only monarchy in the world that can properly be 
 said to have a constitution; for the people's rights 
 and liberties are secured by laws. I cannot reckon 
 Sweden and Poland to be monarchies. [March 29, 
 I750-}
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 297 
 
 AIM HIGH. Aim at perfection in everything, 
 though in most things it is unattainable; however, 
 they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much 
 nearer it than those whose laziness and despondency 
 make them give it up as unattainable. Magnis 
 tamen excidit ausis is a degree of praise which will 
 always attend a noble and shining temerity, and a 
 much better sign in a young fellow, than serpere 
 humi, tutus nimiuin timidusqlie procellce, for men, 
 as well as women. [May 24, 1750.] 
 
 A DUE RETURN. I heard with great satisfaction 
 the other day, from one who has been lately at 
 Rome, that nobody was better received in the best 
 companies than yourself. The same thing, I dare 
 say, will happen to you at Paris, where they are 
 particularly kind to all strangers who will be civil 
 to them and show a desire of pleasing. But they 
 must be flattered a little, not only by words, but by 
 a seeming preference given to their country, their 
 manners, and their customs; which is but a small 
 price to pay for a very good reception. Were I in 
 Africa, I would pay it to a negro for his good-will. 
 Adieu. [June 5, 1750.] 
 
 USE OF ORATORY. Your trade is to speak well, 
 both in public and in private. The manner of your 
 speaking is full as important as the matter, as more
 
 298 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 people have ears to be tickled than understandings 
 to judge. Be your productions ever so good, they 
 will be of no use if you stifle and strangle them in 
 their birth. The best compositions of Corelli, if 
 ill executed, and played out of tune, instead of 
 touching, as they do when well performed, would 
 only excite the indignation of the hearers, when 
 murdered by an unskilful performer. But to mur- 
 der your own productions, and that cor am populo, 
 is a Medean cruelty, which Horace absolutely for- 
 bids. Remember of what importance Demosthenes, 
 and one of the Gracchi, thought enunciation; read 
 what stress Cicero and Quintilian lay upon it ; even 
 the herb-women at Athens were correct judges of 
 it. Oratory with all its graces, that of enunciation 
 in particular, is full as necessary in our government, 
 as it ever was in Greece or Rome. No man can 
 make a fortune or a figure in this country, without 
 speaking, and speaking well in public. [July 9, 
 
 SPEAK WELL. Recite pieces of eloquence, de- 
 claim scenes of tragedies to Mr. Harte, as if he were 
 a numerous audience. If there is any particular 
 consonant which you have a difficulty in articulating, 
 as I think you had with the R, utter it millions and 
 millions of times, till you have uttered it right.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 299 
 
 Never speak quick, till you have first learned to 
 speak well. In short, lay aside every book and every 
 thought, that does not directly tend to this great 
 object, absolutely decisive of your future fortune 
 and figure. [Same date.] 
 
 A TRUTH. Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal ; no 
 one feels who does not at the same time give it. To 
 be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in 
 others, will in general please them in you. [Same 
 date.] 
 
 LEARNED IGNORANCE. A man of the best parts, 
 and the greatest learning, if he does not know the 
 world by his own experience and observation, will 
 be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome 
 in company. He may say very good things; but 
 they will probably be so ill-timed, misplaced, or 
 improperly addressed, that he had much better hold 
 his tongue. Full of his own matter, and uninformed 
 of, or inattentive to, the particular circumstances 
 and situations of the company, he vents it indis- 
 criminately; he puts some people out of counte- 
 nance; he shocks others; and frightens all, who 
 dread what may come out next. The most general 
 rule that I can give you for the world, and which 
 your experience will convince you of the truth of, 
 is : Never to give the tone to the company, but to
 
 300 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 take it from them ; and to labor more to put them 
 in conceit with themselves, than to make them 
 admire you. Those whom you can make like them- 
 selves better, will, I promise you, like you very 
 well. [Aug. 6, 1750.} 
 
 A PORTRAIT. It is Lady Hervey,* whom I 
 directed you to call upon at Dijon; but who, to my 
 great joy, because to your great advantage, passes 
 all this winter at Paris. She has been bred all her 
 life at courts ; of which she has acquired all the easy 
 good-breeding and politeness, without the frivolous- 
 ness. She has all the reading that a woman should 
 have : and more than any woman need have ; for she 
 understands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely 
 conceals it. As she will look upon you as her son, 
 I desire that you will look upon her as my delegate : 
 trust, consult, and apply to her without reserve. No 
 woman ever had, more than she has, le ton de la par- 
 faitement bonne compagnie, les manieres engage- 
 antes et le je ne sais quoi qui plait. Desire her to 
 reprove and correct any, and every, the least error 
 and inaccuracy in your manners, air, addresses, etc. 
 No woman in Europe can do it so well ; none will 
 do it more willingly, or in a more proper and oblig- 
 ing manner, [Oct. 22, 1750.] 
 
 * The lady was turned fifty, and Chesterfield recommends 
 her as a chaperone.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 301 
 
 HISTORY. While you are in France, I could wish 
 that the hours you allot for historical amusement 
 should be entirely devoted to the history of France. 
 One always reads history to most advantage in that 
 country to which it is relative, not only books but 
 persons being ever at hand to solve the doubts and 
 clear up difficulties. I do by no means advise you to\ 
 throw away your time in ransacking, like a dull \ 
 antiquarian, the minute and important parts of 
 remote and fabulous times. Let blockheads read / 
 what blockheads wrote. A general notion of the 
 history of France, from the conquest of that coun- 
 try by the Franks, to the reign of Lewis the Elev- 
 enth, is sufficient for use, consequently sufficient for 
 you. There are, however, in those remote times,"\ 
 some remarkable eras, that deserve more particular j 
 attention ; I mean those in which some notable alter- / 
 ations happened in the constitution and form of gov-' 
 ernment. [Nov. I, 1750.] 
 
 SMALL TALK. I am far from meaning by this, 
 that you should always be talking wisely, in com- 
 pany, of books, history, and matters of knowledge. 
 There are many companies which you will and 
 ought to keep, where such conversations would be 
 misplaced and ill-timed; your own good-sense must 
 'distinguish the company, and the time. You must
 
 302 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 trifle with triflers, and be serious only with the seri- 
 ous, but dance to those who pipe. Cur in theatrum 
 Cato severe venisti? was justly said to an old man ; 
 how much more so would it be to one of your age ? 
 From the moment that you are dressed, and go out, 
 pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and 
 never pull it out in company unless desired : the pro- 
 ducing of the one unasked implies that you are 
 weary of the company; and the producing of the 
 other unrequired will make the company weary of 
 you. Company is a republic too jealous of its lib- 
 erties to suffer a dictator even for a quarter of an 
 hour; and yet in that, as in all republics, there are 
 some who really govern, but then it is by seeming to 
 disclaim, instead of attempting to usurp, the power ; 
 that is the occasion in which manners, dexterity, 
 address, and the undefinable je ne sais qiioi triumph ; 
 if properly exerted, their conquest is sure, and the 
 more lasting for not being perceived. Remember, 
 that this is not only your first and greatest, but 
 ought to be almost your only object, while you are 
 in France. [Same date.] 
 
 A RAKE. Having mentioned the word rake, I 
 must say a word or two more upon that subject, 
 because young people too frequently, and always 
 fatally, are apt to mistake that character for that
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 303 
 
 of a man of pleasure; whereas, there are not in the 
 world two characters more different. A rake is a 
 composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrad- 
 ing, and shameful vices ; they all conspire to disgrace 
 his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine 
 and disease contend which shall soonest and most 
 effectually destroy his constitution. A dissolute, 
 flagitious footman, or porter, makes full as good 
 a rake as a man of the first quality. By the by, let 
 me tell you, that in the wildest part of my youth I 
 never was a rake, but, on the contrary, always de- 
 tested and despised the character.* [Nov. 8, 1/50.] 
 
 KEEP THE PEACE. Keep carefully out of all 
 scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character ex- 
 tremely; and are particularly dangerous in France; 
 where a man is dishonored by not resenting an af- 
 front, and utterly ruined by resenting it. The young 
 Frenchmen are hasty, giddy, and petulant; ex- 
 tremely national, and avantageux. Forbear from 
 any national jokes or reflections, which are always 
 improper, and commonly unjust. The colder north- 
 ern nations generally look upon France as a whist- 
 ling, singing, dancing, frivolous nation ; this notion 
 is very far from being a true one, though many 
 
 * Strong as this reprobation is, it is as much needed to-day 
 as when written ; the whole English race (if we credit West- 
 minister Review, March, 1869), especially the upper class, is 
 suffering from the awful effects of vice.
 
 304 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 petits maitres by their behavior seem to justify it; 
 but those very petits maitres, when mellowed by 
 age and experience, very often turn out very able 
 men. The number of great generals and statesmen, 
 as well as excellent authors, that France has pro- 
 duced, is an undeniable proof, that it is not that 
 frivolous, unthinking, empty nation that the north- 
 ern prejudices suppose it. [No date.] 
 
 A NEW CONSTITUTION. This epigram in Mar- 
 tial: 
 
 "Non amo te, Sabidi, nee possum dicere quare, 
 Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te" * 
 
 has puzzled a great many people; who cannot con- 
 ceive how it is possible not to love anybody, and 
 yet not to know the reason why. I think I conceive 
 Martial's meaning very clearly, though the nature 
 of epigram, which is to be short, would not allow 
 him to explain it more fully; and I take it to be 
 this : "O Sabidis, you are a very worthy, deserving 
 man ; you have a thousand good qualities, you have 
 a great deal of learning ; I esteem, I respect, but for 
 the soul of me, I cannot love you, though I cannot 
 particularly say why. You are not amiable; you 
 
 * Thus Englished by the famous Tom Brown : 
 
 "I do not love thee. Dr. Fell, the reason why I cannot tell, 
 But this I know and know full well, I do not love thee, Dr. 
 Fell."
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 305 
 
 have not those engaging manners, those pleasing 
 attentions, those graces, and that address, which are 
 absolutely necessary to please, though impossible to 
 define. I cannot say it is this or that particular 
 thing which hinders me from loving you, it is the 
 whole together; and upon the whole you are not 
 agreeable." How often have I, in the course of 
 my life, found myself in this situation, with regard 
 to many of my acquaintance, whom I have honored 
 and respected, without being able to love? I did 
 not know why, because, when one is young, one does 
 not take the trouble, nor allow one's self the time, 
 to analyze one's sentiments, and to trace them up 
 to their source. [Feb. 28, 
 
 CARRIAGE OF THE BODY. It sounds ridiculously 
 to bid you study with your dancing-master ; and yet 
 I do. The bodily carriage and graces are of infinite 
 consequence to everybody, and more particularly to 
 you. Adieu for this time, my dear child. Yours 
 tenderly. [No date.] 
 
 How TO PLEASE. An air, a tone of voice, a 
 composure of countenance to mildness and softness, 
 which are all easily acquired, do the business; and 
 without further examination, and possibly with the 
 contrary qualities, that man is reckoned the gentlest, 
 the modestest, and the best-natured man alive.
 
 306 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 Happy the man who, with a certain fund of parts 
 and knowledge, gets acquainted with the world early 
 enough to make it his bubble, at an age when most 
 people are the bubbles of the world ! for that is the 
 common case of youth. They grow wiser when 
 it is too late; and, ashamed and vexed at having 
 been bubbles so long, too often turn knaves at last. 
 Do not, therefore, trust to appearances and outside 
 yourself, but pay other people with them, because 
 you may be sure that nine in ten of mankind do, and 
 ever will, trust to them. This is by no means a 
 criminal or blamable simulation, if not used with an 
 ill intention. I am by no means blamable in desiring 
 to have other people's good word, good-will, and 
 affection, if I do not mean to abuse them. Your 
 heart, I know, is good, your sense is sound, and 
 your knowledge extensive. [May 6, 
 
 PICTURES. I received yesterday, at the same 
 time, your letters of the 4th and the i ith, N. S., and 
 being much more careful of my commissions than 
 you are of yours, I do not delay one moment sending 
 you my final instructions concerning the pictures. 
 The man, you allow to be a Titian, and in good 
 preservation; the woman is an indifferent and a 
 damaged picture; but, as I want them for furniture 
 for a particular room, companions are necessary;
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 307 
 
 and therefore I am willing to take the woman, for 
 better for worse, upon account of the man; and if 
 she is not too much damaged, I can have her toler- 
 ably repaired, as many a fine woman is, by a skilful 
 hand here; but then I expect the lady should be, in 
 a manner, thrown into the bargain with the man; 
 and^ in thi state of affairs, the woman being worth 
 little or nothing, I will not go above fourscore louis 
 for the two together. As for the Rembrandt you\ 
 mention, though it is very cheap, if good, I do not I 
 care for it. I love la belle nature; Rembrandt paints / 
 caricatures. Now for your own commissions, which/ 
 you seem to have forgotten. [May 10, 1751-] J 
 
 DANCING AND DEPORTMENT. Lady Hervey, 
 who is your puff and panegyrist, writes me word, 
 that she saw you lately dance at a ball, and that you 
 dance very genteelly. I am extremely glad to hear 
 it ; for (by the maxim that omne ma jus continet in 
 se minus) if you dance genteelly, I presume you 
 walk, sit, and stand genteelly too ; things which are 
 much more easy, though much more necessary, than 
 dancing well. I have known many very genteel 
 people, who could not dance well ; but I never knew 
 anybody dance very well, who was not genteel in 
 other things. You will probably often have occa- 
 sion to stand in circles, at the levees of princes and
 
 308 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ministers, when it is very necessary, de payer de sa 
 personne, et d'etre bien plante, with your feet not 
 too near nor too distant from each other. More 
 people stand and walk, than sit genteelly. Awk- 
 ward, ill-bred people, being ashamed, commonly sit 
 up bolt upright and stiff; others, too negligent and 
 easy, se vautrent dans leur fauteuil, which is un- 
 graceful and ill-bred, unless where the familiarity 
 is extreme. [June 10, 
 
 LITTLE NOTHINGS. I know a man, and so do 
 you, who, without a grain of merit, knowledge, or 
 talents, has raised himself millions of degrees above 
 his level, simply by a good air and engaging man- 
 ners ; insomuch that the very prince, who raised him 
 so high, calls him, mon aimable vaurien* : but of 
 this do not open your lips, pour cause. I give you 
 this secret, as the strongest proof imaginable, of the 
 efficacy of air, address, tournure, et tons ces petits 
 fiens. [Same date.] 
 
 EASE OF MANNER. Les bienscances^ are a most 
 necessary part of the knowledge of the world. They 
 consist in the relations of persons, things, time, and 
 place; good-sense points them out, good company 
 
 * The Marechal de Richelieu. 
 
 f This single word implies decortim, good-breeding, and 
 propriety.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 309 
 
 perfects them (supposing always an attention and a 
 desire to please), and good policy recommends them. 
 Were you to converse with a king, you ought to 
 be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own 
 valet-de-chambre ; but yet every look, word, and 
 action should imply the utmost respect. What 
 would be proper and well bred with others much 
 your superiors, would be absurd and ill-bred with 
 one so very much so. You must wait till you are 
 spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject 
 of conversation, and you must even take care that 
 the given subject of such conversation do not lead 
 you into any impropriety. [June 13, 
 
 SOCIAL RESPECT. In mixed companies with 
 your equals (for in mixed companies all people are 
 to a certain degree equal) greater ease and liberty 
 are allowed; but "they too have their bounds within 
 bienseance. There is a social respect necessary ; you 
 may start your own subject of conversation with 
 modesty, taking great care, however, de ne jamais 
 parler de cordes dans la maison d'un pendu. Your 
 words, gestures, and attitudes have a greater degree 
 of latitude, though by no means an unbounded one. 
 You may _have your hands in your pockets, take 
 snuff, sit, stand, or occasionally walk, as you like; 
 but I believe you would not think it very bienseant
 
 310 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 to whistle, put on your hat, loosen your garters or 
 your buckles, lie down upon a couch, or go to bed, 
 and welter in an easy chair. These are negligences 
 and freedoms which one can only take when quite 
 alone ; they are injurious to superiors, shocking and 
 offensive to equals, brutal and insulting to inferiors. 
 That easiness of carriage and behavior, which is 
 exceedingly engaging, widely differs from negli- 
 gence and inattention, and by no means implies that 
 one may do whatever one pleases. [Same date.] 
 
 RESPECT DUE TO WOMAN. To women you 
 should always address yourself with great outward 
 respect and attention, whatever you feel inwardly; 
 their sex is by long prescription entitled to it; and 
 it is among the duties of bienseancc; at the same 
 time that respect is very properly, and very agree- 
 ably, mixed with a degree of enjouement, if you 
 have it ; but then, that badinage must either directly 
 or indirectly tend to their praise, and even not be 
 liable to a malicious construction to their disad- 
 vantage. But here, too, great attention must be had 
 to the difference of age, rank, and situation. A 
 marechale of fifty must not be played with like a 
 young coquette of fifteen; respect and serious en- 
 jouement, if I may couple those two words, must 
 be used with the former, and mere badinage, zeste
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 311 
 
 meme d'un pen de polissonerie, is pardonable with 
 he latter. [Same date.] 
 
 HORSE-LAUGHTER. Loud laughter is extremely 
 inconsistent with les bienseances, as it is only the 
 illiberal and noisy testimony of the joy of the mob, 
 at some very silly thing. A gentleman is often seen, 
 but very seldom heard, to laugh. Nothing is more 
 contrary to les bienseances than horse-play, or jeux 
 de main of any kind whatever, and has often very 
 serious, sometimes very fatal consequences. Romp- 
 ing, struggling, throwing things at one another's 
 head, are the becoming pleasantries of the mob, but 
 degrade a gentleman; giuoco di memo, giuoco di 
 villa-no , is a very true saying, among the few true 
 sayings of the Italians. 
 
 There is a bienseance also with regard to people 
 of the lowest degree; a gentleman observes it with 
 his footman, even with the beggar in the street. He 
 considers them as objects of compassion, not of 
 insult; he speaks to neither d'un ton brusque, but 
 corrects the one coolly, and refuses the other with 
 humanity. There is no one occasion in the world 
 in which le ton brusque is becoming a gentleman. 
 In short, les bienseances are another word for man- 
 ners. [Same date.} 
 
 THE Two AGES. Now that all tumultuous pas-
 
 312 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 sions and quick sensations have subsided with me, 
 and that I have no tormenting cares nor boisterous 
 pleasures to agitate me, my greatest joy is to con- 
 sider the fair prospect you have before you, and to 
 hope and believe you will enjoy it. You are already 
 in the world, at an age when others have hardly 
 heard of it. Your character is hitherto not only 
 unblemished in its moral part, but even unsullied 
 by any low, dirty, and ungentlemanlike vice; and 
 will, I hope, continue so. Your knowledge is sound, 
 extensive, and avowed, especially in everything rela- 
 tive to your destination. With such materials to 
 begin, what then is wanting? Not fortune, as you 
 have found by experience. You have had, and shall 
 have, fortune sufficient to assist your merit and 
 your industry; and, if I can help it, you never shall 
 have enough to make you negligent of either. You 
 have, too, mens sana in corpore sano, the greatest 
 blessing of all. All, therefore, that you want is as 
 much in your power to acquire, as to eat your 
 breakfast when set before you ; it is only that knowl- 
 edge of the world, that elegancy of manners, that 
 universal politeness, and those graces, which keep- 
 ing good company, and seeing variety of places and 
 characters, must inevitably, with the least attention 
 on your part, give you. Your foreign destination 
 leads to the greatest things, and your parliamentary
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 313 
 
 situation will facilitate your progress ; consider then 
 this pleasing prospect as attentively for yourself, 
 as I consider it for you. Labor on your part to 
 realize it, as I will on mine to assist and enable you 
 to do it. Nulluin numen abest, si sit prudentia. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 A REFERENCE AT COURT. I would wish you to 
 be able to talk upon all these things, better and with 
 more knowledge than other people; insomuch that, 
 upon those occasions, you should be applied to, and 
 that people should say, / dare say Mr. Stanhope can 
 telltis. Second-rate knowledge, and middling talents, 
 carry a man farther at courts, and in the busy part 
 of the world, than superior knowledge and shining 
 parts. Tacitus very justly accounts for a man's 
 having always kept in favor, and enjoyed the best 
 employments, under the tyrannical reigns of three 
 or four of the very worst emperors, by saying that it 
 was not propter aliquam eximiam artem, sed quia 
 par negotiis neque supra erat. Discretion is the 
 great article; all those things are to be learned and 
 only learned by keeping a great deal of the best com- 
 pany. Frequent those good houses where you have 
 already a footing, and wriggle yourself somehow or 
 other into every other. Haunt the courts particu- 
 larly, in order to get that routine. [June 20,
 
 314 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH HUNTING. Our abbe 
 writes me word that you were gone to Compiegne ; 
 I am very glad of it; other courts must form you 
 for your own. He tells me, too, that you have left 
 off riding at the manege; I have no objection to that, 
 it takes up a great deal of the morning; and if you 
 have got a genteel and firm seat on horseback, it is 
 enough for you, now that tilts and tournaments are 
 laid aside. I suppose you have hunted at Com- 
 piegne. The king's hunting there, I am told, is a 
 fine sight. The French manner of hunting is gentle- 
 manlike; ours is only for bumpkins and boobies. 
 The poor beasts here are pursued and run down by 
 much greater beasts than themselves; and the true 
 British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species 
 appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no 
 other part of the globe produces. [June jo, 
 
 POLITE AFFECTION. Remember to bring your 
 mother some little presents; they need not be of 
 value, but only marks of your affection and duty for 
 one who has always been tenderly fond of you. You 
 may bring Lady Chesterfield a little Martin snuff- 
 box, of about five louis ; and you need bring over no 
 other presents ; you and I not wanting les petits pre- 
 sens pour cntrctcnir I'amitic. [July 8, 
 
 \ INATTENTION. Laziness of mind, or inattention,
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 315 
 
 are as great enemies to knowledge, as incapacity; 
 for, in truth, what difference is there between a man 
 who will not, and a man who cannot, be informed? 
 This difference only, that the former is justly to be 
 blamed, and the latter to be pitied. And yet how 
 many are there, very capable of receiving knowl- 
 edge, who, from laziness, inattention, and incurious- 
 ness, will not so much as ask for it, much less take 
 the least pains to acquire it. 
 
 Our young English travellers generally distin- 
 guish themselves by a voluntary privation of all that 
 useful knowledge for which they are sent abroad; 
 and yet, at that age, the most useful knowledge is 
 the most easy to be acquired ; conversation being the 
 book, and the best book, in which it is contained. 
 [Jan. 2, 1752.} 
 
 THE DRAMA. I could wish there were a treaty 
 made between the French and the English theatres, 
 in which both parties should make considerable con- 
 cessions. The English ought to give up their notori- 
 ous violations of all the unities; and all their mas- 
 sacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, 
 which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. 
 The French should engage to have more action, and 
 less declamation ; and not to cram and crowd things 
 together to almost a degree of impossibility, from a
 
 316 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 too scrupulous adherence to the unities. The Eng- 
 lish should restrain the licentiousness of their poets, 
 and the French enlarge the liberty of theirs: their 
 poets are the greatest slaves in their country, and 
 that is a bold word; ours are the most tumultuous 
 subjects in England, and that is saying a good deal. 
 Under such regulations, one might hope to see a 
 play, in which one should not be lulled to sleep by the 
 length of a monotonical declamation, nor frightened 
 and shocked by the barbarity of the action. The 
 unity of time extended occasionally to three or four 
 days, and the unity of place broke into, as far as 
 the same street, or sometimes the same town; both 
 which, I will affirm, are as probable, as four-and- 
 twenty hours, and the same room. 
 
 More indulgence, too, in my mind, should be 
 shown, than the French are willing to allow, to 
 bright thoughts, and to shining images ; for though 
 I confess, it is not very natural for a hero or a 
 princess to say fine things, in all the violence of grief, 
 love, rage, etc., yet I can as well suppose that, as I 
 can that they should talk to themselves for half an 
 hour ; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy 
 could be carried on, unless they had recourse to a 
 much greater absurdity, the choruses of the ancients. 
 Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a 
 degree of self-deception; we must lend ourselves, a
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 317 
 
 little, to the delusion ; and I am very willing to carry 
 that complaisance a little further than the French do. 
 
 Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or 
 it would not affect us. In nature the most violent 
 passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak, and 
 speak with dignity, too. Hence the necessity of 
 their being written in verse, and, unfortunately for 
 the French, from the weakness of their language, in 
 rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato, the Stoic, 
 expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine,* 
 at Paris ; and fetches his last breath at London, in 
 most harmonious and correct blank verse. 
 
 It is quite otherwise with comedy, which should 
 be mere common life, and not one jot bigger. Every 
 character should speak upon the stage, not only 
 what it would utter in the situation there repre- 
 sented, but in the same manner in which it would 
 express it. For which reason, I cannot allow rhymes 
 in comedy, unless they were put into the mouth and 
 came out of the mouth of a mad poet. But it is 
 impossible to deceive one's self enough (nor is it 
 the least necessary in comedy) to suppose a dull 
 rogue of a usurer cheating, or gros Jean blundering, 
 in the finest rhymes in the world. 
 
 As for operas, they are essentially too absurd and 
 
 * As to terminations, so careful were the best French poets 
 of their rhymes.
 
 318 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 extravagant to mention: I look upon them as a 
 magic scene, contrived to please the eyes and the 
 ears, at the expense of the understanding; and I 
 consider singing, rhyming, and chiming heroes, and 
 princesses, and philosophers, as I do the hills, the 
 trees, the birds, and the beasts, who amicably joined 
 in one common country dance, to the irresistible 
 tune of Orpheus's lyre. Whenever I go to an opera, 
 I leave my sense and reason at the door with my 
 half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and 
 my ears. [Jan. 23, 1752.] 
 
 RIDICULE. It is commonly said, and more par- 
 ticularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the 
 best test of truth ; for that it will not stick where it 
 is not just. I deny it.* A truth learned in a cer- 
 tain light, and attacked in certain words by men of 
 wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridic- 
 
 * Chesterfield had at once perceived the emptiness of the say- 
 ing, which is certainly not in ipsissimis vcrbis of Lord Shaftes- 
 bury. "We have," says Carlyle, in his "Essay on Voltaire," 
 "oftener than once endeavored to attach some meaning to that 
 aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury which, however, 
 we can find nowhere in his works, that ridicule is the test of 
 truth." In the "Characteristics of Enthusiasm," sec. 2, there 
 is this sentence, which conies very near it : "How is it, etc., 
 that we (Christians) appear such cowards in reasoning, and 
 are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule" ; but further on (p. 
 II, ed. 1733, vol. i.) he asks : "For what ridicule can lie against 
 reason? or how can any one of the least justice of thought 
 admire a ridicule wrong placed? Nothing is more ridiculous 
 than this itself." Shaftesbury often returns to this subject; 
 see "Errors in Wit," etc.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 319 
 
 ulous, at least so far, that the truth is only remem- 
 bered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule. The 
 overturn of Alary of Medicis into a river, where 
 she was half drowned, would never have been re- 
 membered, if Madame de Vernueil, who saw it, had 
 not said la Reine boit. Pleasure Or malignity often 
 gives ridicule a weight, which it does not deserve. 
 [Same date.] 
 
 COMEDIES. I chiefly mind dialogue and char- 
 acter in comedies. Let dull critics feed the carcasses 
 of plays; give me the taste and the dressing. [Feb. 
 
 THE WEIGHT OF Low PEOPLE. In courts a uni- 
 versal gentleness and douceur dans les manieres is 
 most absolutely necessary: an offended fool, 'or a 
 slighted valet de chambre, may,' very possibly, do 
 more hurt at court, than ten men of merit can do 
 you good. Fools, and low people, are always jeal- 
 ous of their dignity; and never forget nor forgive 
 what they reckon a slight. [Same date.] 
 
 AT COURT. There is a court garment, as well 
 as a wedding garment, without which you will not 
 be received. That garment is the volto sciolto : an 
 imposing air, an elegant politeness, easy and engag- 
 ing manners, universal attention, an insinuating
 
 320 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 gentleness, and all those je ne sais quoi that com- 
 pose the graces. [Same date.] 
 
 PERFECTION. In all systems whatsoever, 
 whether of religion, government, morals, etc., per- 
 fection is the object always proposed, though pos- 
 sibly unattainable; hitherto, at least, certainly unat- 
 tained. However, those who aim carefully at the 
 mark itself, will unquestionably come nearer to it 
 than those who, from despair, negligence, or indo- 
 lence, leave to chance the work of skill. This maxim 
 holds equally true in common life; those who aim 
 at perfection will come infinitely nearer it than those 
 desponding or indolent spirits, who foolishly say to 
 themselves, nobody is perfect; perfection is unat- 
 tainable; to attempt it is chimerical; I shall do as 
 well as others; why then should I give myself 
 trouble to be what I never can, and what, according 
 to the common course of things, I need not be, per- 
 feet? [Feb. 20, 1752.} 
 
 OMNIS HOMO. I would have him have lustre 
 as well as weight. Did you ever know anybody that 
 reunited all these talents ? Yes, I did ; Lord Boling- 
 broke joined all the politeness, the manners, and the 
 graces of a courtier, to the solidity of a statesman, 
 and to the learning of a pedant. He was omnis 
 homo; and pray what should hinder my boy of
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 
 
 doing so too, if he hath, as I think he hath, all the 
 other qualifications that you allow him ? \Sjme 
 date.'] 
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE. A gentleman 
 should know those which I call classical works, in 
 every language : such as Boileau, Corneille, Racine, 
 Moliere, etc., in French; Milton, Dryden, Pope, 
 Swift, etc., in English; and the three authors above 
 mentioned* in Italian: whether you have any such 
 in German I am not quite sure, nor, indeed, am I 
 inquisitive. These sort of books adorn the mind, 
 improve the fancy, are frequently alluded to by, and 
 are often the subjects of conversations of, the best 
 companies. As you have languages to read, and 
 memory to retain them, the knowledge of them is 
 very well worth the little pains it will cost you, and 
 will enable you to shine in company. It is not pe- 
 dantic to quote and allude to them, which it would 
 be with regard to the ancients. [March 2, 1752.] 
 
 NOTHING BY HALVES. Whatever business you 
 have, do it the first moment you can; never by 
 halves, but finish it without interruption, if possible. 
 Business must not be sauntered and trifled with ; and 
 you must not say to it, as Felix did to Paul, "at a 
 
 * Ariosto, Tasso, and Boccaccio : the Orlando, Gierusa- 
 lemme, and Decamerone.
 
 322 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 more convenient season I will speak to thee." The 
 most convenient season for business is the first; but 
 study and business, in some measure, point out their 
 own times to a man of sense; time is much oftener 
 squandered away in the wrong choice and improper 
 methods of amusement and pleasures. [March 5, 
 
 '75*3 
 
 FORMATION OF MANNERS. Nothing forms a 
 young man so much as being used to keep respect- 
 able and superior company, where a constant regard 
 and attention is necessary. It is true, this is at first 
 a disagreeable state of restraint; but it soon grows 
 habitual, and consequently easy ; and you are amply 
 paid for it, by the improvement you make, and the 
 credit it gives you. [Same date.] 
 
 THE BEST SCHOOL. Company, various com- 
 pany, is the only school for this knowledge. You 
 ought to be, by this time, at least in the third form 
 of that school, from whence the rise to the upper- 
 most is easy and quick; but then you must have 
 application and vivacity, you must not only bear 
 with, but even seek, restraint in some companies, 
 instead of stagnating in one or two only, where 
 indolence and love of ease may be indulged. [March 
 16, 1752.}
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 323 
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S PROPHECY. I do not know what 
 the Lord's anointed, His vicegerent upon earth, 
 divinely appointed by Him, and accountable to none 
 but Him for his actions, will either think or do, 
 upon these symptoms of reason and good-sense, 
 which seem to be breaking out all over France; but 
 this I foresee, that before the end of this century, 
 the trade of both king and priest will not be half so 
 good a one as it has been. Du Clos, in his reflec- 
 tions, hath observed, and very truly, qu'il y a un 
 germe de raison qui commence a se developper en 
 France. A developpement that must prove fatal to v 
 regal and papal pretensions. Prudence may, in \ 
 many cases, recommend an occasional submission 
 to either; but when that ignorance, upon which an 
 implicit faith in both could only be founded, is once 
 removed, God's vicegerent, and Christ's vicar, will 
 only be obeyed and believed, as far as what the one 
 orders, and the other says, is conformable to reason 
 and to truth. [April 13, 1752.] 
 
 SMALL CHANGE. In common life, one much 
 oftener wants small money, and silver, than gold. 
 Give me a man who has ready cash about him for 
 present expenses, shillings, half-crowns, and crowns, 
 which circulate easily; but a man who has only an 
 ingot of gold about him is much above common pur-
 
 324 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 poses, and his riches are not handy nor convenient. 
 Have as much gold as you please in one pocket, but 
 take care always to keep change in the other; for 
 you will much oftener have occasion for a shilling 
 than for a guinea. [Sept. 19, 1752.1 
 
 MAXIMS. My dear friend, I never think my 
 time so well employed, as when I think it employed 
 to your advantage. In that view, I have thrown to- 
 gether, for your use, the enclosed maxims* ; or, to 
 speak more properly, observations of men and 
 things; for I have no merit as to the invention; I 
 am no system-monger; and, instead of giving way 
 to my imagination, I have only consulted my mem- 
 ory; and my conclusions are all drawn from facts, 
 not from fancy. Most maxim-mongers have pre- 
 ferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, 
 and the turn to the truth ; but I have refused myself 
 to everything that my own experience did not justify 
 and confirm. [Jan. 75, 
 
 A WET SUMMER. There never was so wet a 
 summer as this has been, in the memory of man; 
 we have not had one single day, since March, with- 
 out some rain; but most days a great deal. I hope 
 that does not affect your health, as great cold does ; 
 
 * See "Maxims," p. 328.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 325 
 
 for, with all these inundations, it has not been cold. 
 God bless you! [Aug. i, 1766.] 
 
 THE LAST GREETING. Poor Harte is in a miser- 
 able condition, is paralyzed in his left side, and can 
 hardly speak intelligibly. I was with him yesterday. 
 He inquired after you with great affection, and was 
 in the utmost concern when I showed him your 
 letter. 
 
 My own health is, as it has been ever since I was 
 here last year. I am neither well nor ill, but unwell. 
 I have, in a manner, lost the use of my legs; for 
 though I can make a shift to crawl upon even ground 
 for a quarter of an hour, I cannot go up or down 
 stairs, unless supported by a servant. 
 
 God bless and grant you a speedy recovery! 
 [Oct. 17, 1768.'] 
 
 Here end the letters to Mr. Stanhope, as he died the i6th of 
 November following. 
 
 To Mrs. Stanhope, then at Paris. 
 
 MADAM : A troublesome and painful inflamma- 
 tion in my eyes obliges me to use another hand than 
 my own to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 from Avignon, of the 27th past. 
 
 I am extremely surprised that Mrs. du Bouchet 
 should have any objection tc the manner in which
 
 326 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 your late husband desired to be buried, and which 
 you, very properly, complied with. All I desire for 
 my own burial is not to be buried alive; but how 
 or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to 
 every rational creature. 
 
 I have no commission to trouble you with during 
 your stay at Paris, from whence I wish you and the 
 boys a good journey home, where I shall be very 
 glad to see you all, and assure you of my being, with 
 great truth, your faithful, humble servant, CHESTER- 
 FIELD. [March 16, 1769.] 
 
 To the same, at London. 
 
 MADAM : The last time I had the pleasure of 
 seeing you I was so taken up in playing with the 
 boys that I forgot their more important affairs. 
 How soon would you have them placed at school? 
 When I know your pleasure as to that, I will send 
 to Monsieur Perny to prepare everything Tor their 
 reception. In the meantime, I beg that you will 
 equip them thoroughly with clothes, linen, etc., all 
 good, but plain, and give me the account, which I 
 will pay, for I do not intend that from this time 
 forward, the two boys should cost you one shilling. 
 I am, with great truth, madam, your faithful, 
 humble servant, CHESTERFIELD. [Wednesday.]
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 327 
 
 STANHOPE'S CHILDREN. Charles will be a 
 scholar, if you please, but our little Philip, without 
 being one, will be something or other as good, 
 though I do not yet guess what. I am not of the 
 opinion generally entertained in this country, that 
 man lives- by Greek and Latin alone ; that is, by 
 knowing a great many words of two dead languages, 
 which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are 
 fcf no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful 
 knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern lan- 
 guages, history, and geography; some Latin may 
 be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with cus- 
 tom, and for closet amusement. 
 
 You are by this time certainly tired with this 
 long letter, which I could prove to you from Hor- 
 ace's own words (for I am a scholar) to be a bad 
 one; he says that water drinkers can write nothing 
 good, so I am, with real truth and esteem, your most 
 faithful, humble servant, CHESTERFIELD. [Nov. 
 4, 1770.} 
 
 To Charles and Philip Stanhope, 
 
 THE LAST LETTER. I received, a few days ago, 
 two, the best-written letters that I ever saw in my 
 life: the one signed Charles Stanhope, the other 
 Philip Stanhope. As for you, Charles, I do not
 
 328 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 wonder at it ; for you will take pains, and are a lover 
 of letters: but you idle rogue, you Phil, how came 
 you to write so well, that one can almost say of you 
 two, et cantare pares et respondere paratif Charles 
 will explain this Latin to you. 
 
 I am told, Phil, that you have got a nickname at 
 school, from your intimacy with Master Strange- 
 ways ; and that they call you Master Stranger-ways; 
 for, to be sure, you are a strange boy. Is this true? 
 
 Tell me what you would have me bring you both 
 from hence, and I will bring it to you when I come 
 to town. In the meantime, God bless you both! 
 CHESTERFIELD. \Bath, Oct. 27, 
 
 MAXIMS.* 
 
 A PROPER secrecy is the only mystery of able men ; 
 mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning 
 ones. 
 
 A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will 
 equally have nothing told him. 
 
 If a fool knows a secret, he tells it because he is 
 a fool ; if a knave knows one, he tells it wherever it 
 is his interest to tell it. But women and young men 
 * These maxims are referred to on page 324.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 329 
 
 are very apt to tell what secrets they know, from the 
 vanity of having been trusted. Trust none of these, 
 whenever you can help it. 
 
 Inattention to the present business, be it what it 
 will ; the doing one thing, and thinking at the same 
 time of another, or the attempting to do two things 
 at once, are the never-failing signs of a little, friv- 
 olous mind. 
 
 A man who cannot command his temper, his at- 
 tention, and his countenance, should not think of 
 being a man of business. The weakest man in the 
 world can avail himself of the passion of the wisest. 
 The inattentive man cannot know the business, and 
 consequently cannot do it. And he who cannot 
 command his countenance, may e'en as well tell 
 his thoughts as show them. 
 
 Distrust all those who love you extremely upon 
 a very slight acquaintance, and without any visible 
 reason. Be upon your guard, too, against those, 
 who confess, as their weaknesses, all the cardinal 
 virtues. 
 
 In your friendships, and in your enmities, let 
 your confidence and your hostilities have certain 
 bounds : make not the former dangerous, nor the 
 latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes 
 in business ! 
 
 Smooth your way to the head, through the heart
 
 330 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEKS. 
 
 The way of reason is a good one ; but it is com- 
 monly something longer, and perhaps not so sure. 
 
 Spirit is now a very fashionable word: to act 
 with spirit, to speak with spirit, means only, to act 
 rashly, and to talk indiscreetly. An able man shows 
 his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions : he 
 is neither hot nor timid. 
 
 When a man of sense happens to be in that dis- 
 agreeable situation, in which he is obliged to ask 
 himself more than once, What shall I do? he will 
 answer himself, Nothing. When his reason points 
 out to him no good way, or at least no one way less 
 bad than another, he will stop short, and wait for 
 light. A little busy mind runs on at all events, must 
 be doing; and, like a blind horse, fears no dangers 
 because he sees none. // faut savoir s'ennuyer. 
 
 Patience is a most necessary qualification for 
 business; many a man would rather you heard his 
 story than granted his request. One must seem to 
 hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, un- 
 moved, and the tedious details of the dull, untired. 
 That is the least price a man must pay for a high 
 station. 
 
 It is always right to detect a fraud, and to per- 
 ceive a folly; but it is often very wrong to expose 
 either. A man of business should always have his 
 eyes open ; but must often seem to have them shut.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 331 
 
 In courts, nobody should be below your manage- 
 ment and attention : the links that form the court- 
 chain are innumerable and inconceivable. You 
 must hear with patience the dull grievances of a 
 gentleman usher, or a page of the back-stairs ; who, 
 very probably, lies with some near relation of the 
 favorite maid, of the favorite mistress, of the favor- 
 ite minister, or perhaps of the king himself; and 
 who, consequently, may do you more dark or indi- 
 rect good, or harm, than the first man of quality. 
 
 One good patron at court may be sufficient, pro- 
 vided you have no personal enemies ; and, in order to 
 have none, you must sacrifice (as the Indians do to 
 the Devil) most of your passions, and much of your 
 time, to the numberless evil beings that infest it; 
 in order to prevent and avert the mischiefs they 
 can do you. 
 
 A young man, be his merit what it will, can never 
 raise himself ; but must, like the ivy round the oak, 
 twine himself round some man of great power and 
 interest. You must belong to a minister some time, 
 before anybody will belong to you. And an invio- 
 lable fidelity to that minister, even in his disgrace, 
 will be meritorious, and recommend you to the 
 next. Ministers love a personal, much more than a 
 party attachment. 
 
 As kings are begotten and born like other men,
 
 333 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 it is to be presumed that they are of the human 
 species; and perhaps, had they the same education, 
 they might prove like other men. But, flattered 
 from their cradles, their hearts are corrupted, and 
 their heads are turned, so that they seem to be a 
 species by themselves. No king ever said to him- 
 self : Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto. 
 
 Flattery cannot be too strong for them; drunk 
 with it from their infancy, like old drinkers, they 
 require drams. 
 
 They prefer a personal attachment to a public 
 service, and reward it better. They are vain and 
 weak enough to look upon it as a free-will offering 
 to their merit, and not as a burnt sacrifice to their 
 power. 
 
 If you would be a favorite of your king, ad- 
 dress yourself to his weaknesses. An application to 
 his reason will seldom prove very successful. 
 
 In courts, bashfulness and timidity are as preju- 
 dicial on one hand, as impudence and rashness are 
 on the other. A steady assurance, and a cool intre- 
 pidity, with an exterior modesty, are the true and 
 necessary medium. 
 
 Never apply for what you see very little proba- 
 bility of obtaining ; for you will, by asking improper 
 and unattainable things, accustom the ministers to 
 refuse you so often, that they will find it easy to
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 333 
 
 refuse you the properest and most reasonable ones. 
 It is a common but a most mistaken rule at court, 
 to ask for everything, in order to get something : you 
 do get something by it, it is true ; but that something 
 is refusals and ridicule. 
 
 There is a court jargon, a chit-chat, a small talk, 
 which turns singly upon trifles; and which, in a 
 great many words, says little or nothing. It stands 
 fools instead of what they cannot say, and men of 
 sense instead of what they should not say. It is 
 the proper language of levees, drawing-rooms, and 
 ante-chambers ; it is necessary to know it. 
 
 Whatever a man is at court, he must be genteel 
 and well-bred; that cloak covers as many follies, as 
 that of charity does sins. I knew a man of great 
 quality, and in a great station at court, considered 
 and respected, whose highest character was, that he 
 was humbly proud, and genteelly dull. 
 
 It is hard to say which is the greatest fool; he 
 who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at 
 all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. 
 No man can deceive often in either. 
 
 n 
 
 At court, people embrace without acquaintance, 
 serve one another without friendship, and injure one 
 another without hatred. Interest, not sentiment, is 
 the growth of that soil. 
 
 A difference of opinion, though in the merest
 
 334 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 trifles, alienates little minds, especially of high rank. 
 It is full as easy to commend as to blame a great 
 man's cook, or his tailor ; it is shorter, too ; and the 
 objects are no more worth disputing about, than the 
 people are worth disputing with. It is impossible to 
 inform, but very easy to displease them. 
 
 A cheerful, easy countenance and behavior are 
 very useful at court ; they make fools think you are 
 a good-natured man ; and they make designing men 
 think you are an undesigning one. 
 
 There are some occasions in which a man must 
 tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest ; but 
 there is seldom one in which a man should tell it 
 all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, 
 and where to stop. 
 
 Ceremony is necessary in courts, as the outwork 
 and defence of manners. 
 
 Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary 
 pocket-money at court; where, by custom and con- 
 sent, it has obtained such a currency, that it is no 
 longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment. 
 
 If a minister refuses you a reasonable request, and 
 either slights or injtfres you, if you have not the 
 power to gratify your resentment, have the wisdom 
 to conceal and dissemble it. Seeming good-humor 
 on your part may prevent rancor on his, and perhaps 
 bring things aright again : but if you have the power
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 335 
 
 to hurt, hint modestly that, if provoked, you may 
 possibly have the will too. Fear, when real, and 
 well founded, is perhaps a more prevailing motive 
 at courts than love. 
 
 At court, many more people can hurt, than can 
 help you ; please the former, but engage the latter. 
 
 Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it 
 is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridi- 
 cule, it always lessens dignity. 
 
 A man's own good-breeding is his best security 
 /against other people's ill-manners. 
 
 Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity, 
 that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding 
 invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most 
 timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke 
 of Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one 
 (though many a flattering one) to Sir Robert Wai- 
 pole. 
 
 When the old clipped money was called in for a 
 new coinage in King William's time, to prevent the 
 like for the future, they stamped on the edges of 
 the crown pieces these words, et decus et tutamen. 
 That is exactly the case of good-breeding. 
 
 Knowledge may give weight, but accomplish- 
 ments only give lustre; and many more people see 
 than weigh. 
 
 Most arts require long study and application ; but
 
 336 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTEES. 
 
 ! the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires 
 only the desire. 
 
 It is to be presumed that a man of common-sense, 
 who does not desire to please, desires nothing at 
 all, since he must know that he cannot obtain any- 
 thing without it. 
 
 A skilful negotiator will most carefully distin- 
 guish between the little and the great objects of his 
 business, and will be as frank and open in the former 
 as he will be secret and pertinacious in the latter. 
 
 He will, by his manners and address, endeavor, 
 at least, to make his public adversaries his personal 
 friends. He will flatter and engage the man, while 
 he counterworks the minister; and he will never 
 alienate people's minds from him, by wrangling for 
 points, either absolutely unattainable, or not worth 
 attaining. He will make even a merit of giving up 
 what he could not or would not carry, and sell a 
 trifle for a thousand times its value. 
 
 A foreign minister, who is concerned in great 
 affairs, must necessarily have spies in his pay; but 
 he must not too easily credit their informations, 
 which are never exactly true, often very false. His 
 best spies will always be those whom he does not 
 pay, but whom he has engaged in his service by his 
 dexterity and address, and who think themselves 
 nothing less than spies.
 
 SENTENCES AXD MAXIMS. 337 
 
 There is a certain jargon which in French I 
 should call un persiflage d'affaires, that a foreign 
 minister ought to be perfectly master of, and may 
 use very advantageously at great entertainments in 
 mixed companies, and in all occasions where he 
 must speak and should say nothing. Well turned 
 and well spoken, it seems to mean something, though 
 in truth it means nothing. It is a kind of political 
 badinage, which prevents or removes a thousand dif- 
 ficulties to which a foreign minister is exposed in 
 mixed conversations. 
 
 If ever the volto sciolto and the pensieri stretti 
 are necessary, they are so in these affairs. A grave, 
 dark, reserved, and mysterious air has focnum in 
 cornu. An even, easy, unembarrassed one invites 
 confidence, and leaves no room for guesses and con- 
 jectures. 
 
 Both stimulation and dissimulation are absolutely 
 necessary for a foreign minister ; and yet they must 
 stop short of falsehood and perfidy: that middle 
 point is the difficult one : there ability consists. He 
 must often seem pleased, when he is vexed; and 
 grave, when he is pleased; but he must never say 
 either: that would be falsehood an indelible stain 
 to character. 
 
 A foreign minister should be a most exact econ- 
 omist. An expense proportioned to his appoint-
 
 338 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 ments and fortune is necessary; but, on the other 
 hand, debt is inevitable ruin to him. It sinks him 
 into disgrace at the court where he resides, and into 
 the most 'servile and abject dependence on the court 
 that sent him. As he cannot resent ill usage, he is 
 sure to have enough of it. 
 
 The Due de Sully observes very justly, in his 
 Memoirs, that nothing contributed more to his rise, 
 than that prudent economy which he had observed 
 from his youth, and by which he had always a sum 
 of money beforehand, in case of emergencies. 
 
 It is very difficult to fix the particular point of 
 economy; the best error of the two is on the par- 
 simonious side. That may be corrected; the other 
 cannot. 
 
 The reputation of generosity is to be purchased 
 pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a 
 man's general expense, as it does upon his giving 
 handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A 
 man, for instance, who should give a servant four 
 shillings would pass for covetous, while he who gave 
 him a crown would be reckoned generous; so that 
 the difference of those two opposite characters turns 
 upon one shilling. A man's character, in that partic- 
 ular, depends a great deal upon the report of his 
 own servants; a mere trifle above common wages 
 makes their report favorable.v
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 339 
 
 Take care always to form your establishment so 
 much within your income as to leave a sufficient 
 fund for unexpected contingencies and a prudent 
 liberality. There is hardly a year, in any man's life, 
 in which a small sum of ready money may not be 
 employed to great advantage. 
 
 POLITICAL MAXIMS FROM CARDINAL DE 
 RETZ.* 
 
 IT is often madness to engage in a conspiracy; 
 but nothing is so effectual to bring people afterward 
 to their senses, at least for a time. As in such un- 
 dertakings, the danger subsists, even after the busi- 
 ness is over; this obliges to be prudent and circum- 
 spect in the succeeding moments. 
 
 2. A middling understanding, being susceptible 
 of unjust suspicions, is consequently, of all charac- 
 ters, the least fit to head a faction ; as the most indis- 
 pensable qualification in such a chief is to suppress, 
 in many occasions, and to conceal in all, even the 
 best grounded suspicions. 
 
 * Upon the back of the original is written, in Mr. Stanhope's 
 hand, "Excellent Maxims, but more calculated for the merid- 
 ian of France or Spain than of England."
 
 \ 
 340 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 3. Nothing animates and gives strength to a com' 
 motion so much as the ridicule of him against whom 
 it is raised. 
 
 4. Among people used to affairs of moment, 
 secrecy is much less uncommon than is generally 
 believed. 
 
 5. Descending to the little is the surest way of 
 attaining to an equality with the great. 
 
 6. Fashion, though powerful in all things, is not 
 more so in any, than in being well or ill at court. 
 There are times when disgrace is a kind of fire, that 
 purifies all bad qualities, and illuminates every good 
 one. There are others, in which the being out of 
 favor is unbecoming a man of character. 
 
 7. Sufferings, in people of the first rank, supply 
 the want of virtue. 
 
 8. There is a confused kind of jumble, which 
 practice sometimes teaches; but it is never to be 
 understood by speculation. 
 
 9. The greatest powers cannot injure a man's 
 character, whose reputation is unblemished among 
 his party. 
 
 10. We are as often duped by diffidence, as by 
 confidence. 
 
 11. The greatest evils are not arrived at their 
 utmost period until those who are in power have 
 lost all sense of shame. At such a time those who
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 341 
 
 should obey shake off all respect and subordination. 
 Then is lethargic indolence roused; but roused by 
 convulsions. 
 
 12. A veil ought always to be drawn over what- 
 ever may be said or thought concerning the rights of 
 the people, or of kings ; which agree best when least 
 mentioned.* 
 
 13. There are, at times, situations so very unfor- 
 tunate, that whatever is undertaken must be wrong. 
 Chance, alone, never throws people into such dilem- 
 mas ; and they happen only to those who bring them 
 upon themselves. 
 
 14. It is more unbecoming a minister to say, than 
 to do, silly things. 
 
 15. The advice given to a minister, by an obnox- 
 ious person, is always thought bad. 
 
 1 6. It is as dangerous, and almost as criminal, 
 with princes, to have the power of doing good, as 
 the will of doing evil. 
 
 17. Timorous minds are much more inclined to 
 deliberate than to resolve. 
 
 1 8. It appears ridiculous to assert, but it is not 
 the less true, that at Paris, during the popular com- 
 motions, the most violent will not quit their homes 
 past a stated hour. 
 
 * This Maxim, as well as several others, evidently prove 
 they were written by a man subject to despotic government.
 
 342 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 19. Flexibility is the most requisite qualification 
 for the management of great affairs. 
 
 20. It is more difficult for the member of a fac- 
 tion to live with those of his own party, than to act 
 against those who oppose it. 
 
 21. The greatest dangers have their allurements, 
 if the want of success is likely to be attended with a 
 degree of glory. Middling dangers are horrid, when 
 the loss of reputation is the inevitable consequence 
 of ill success. 
 
 22. Violent measures are always dangerous, but 
 when necessary, may then be looked upon as wise. 
 They have, however, the advantage of never being 
 matter of indifferency; and, when well concerted, 
 must be decisive. 
 
 23. There may be circumstances, in which even 
 prudence directs us to trust entirely to chance. 
 
 24. Everything in this world has its critical mo- 
 ment, and the height of good conduct consists in 
 knowing and seizing it. 
 
 25. Profligacy, joined to ridicule, forms the most 
 abominable and most dangerous of all characters. 
 
 / 26. Weak minds never yield when they ought. 
 
 27. Variety of sights have the greatest effect upon 
 the mob, and also upon numerous assemblies, who, 
 in many respects, resemble mobs. 
 : 28. Examples taken from past times have infi-
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 343 
 
 nitely more power over the minds of men, than any 
 of the age in which they live. Whatever we see, 
 grows familiar; and perhaps the consulship of 
 Caligula's horse might not have astonished us so 
 much as we are apt to imagine. 
 
 29. Weak minds are commonly overpowered by 
 clamor. 
 
 30. We ought never to contend for what we are 
 Snot likely to obtain. 
 
 31. The instant in which we receive the most 
 favorable accounts, is just that wherein we ought 
 to redouble our vigilance, even in regard to the 
 most trifling circumstances. 
 
 32. It is dangerous to have a known influence 
 over people; as thereby we become responsible even 
 for what is done against cur will. 
 
 33. One of the greatest difficulties in civil war 
 is, that more art is required to know what should be 
 concealed from our friends, than what ought to 
 be done against our enemies. 
 
 34. Nothing lowers a great man so much, as not 
 seizing the decisive moment of raising his reputa- 
 tion. This is seldom neglected, but with a view to 
 fortune ; by which mistake, it is not unusual to miss 
 both. 
 
 35. The possibility of remedying imprudent ac- 
 tions is commonly an inducement to commit them.
 
 344: CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 36. Every numerous assembly is a mob; conse- 
 quently everything there depends upon instantane- 
 ous turns. 
 
 37. Whatever measure seems hazardous, and is 
 in reality not so, is generally a wise one. 
 
 38. Irresolute minds always adopt with facility 
 whatever measure can admit of different issues, and 
 consequently do not require an absolute decision. 
 
 39. In momentous affairs, no step is indifferent. 
 
 40. There are times in which certain people are 
 always in the right. 
 
 41. Nothing convinces persons of a weak under- 
 standing so effectually as what they do not compre- 
 hend. 
 
 42. When factions are only upon the defensive, 
 they ought never to do that which may be delayed. 
 Upon such occasions, nothing is so troublesome as 
 the restlessness of subalterns; who think a state of 
 inaction total destruction. 
 
 43. Those who head factions have no way of 
 maintaining their authority, but by preventing or 
 quieting discontent. 
 
 44. A certain degree of fear produces the same 
 effects as rashness. 
 
 45. In affairs of importance, the choice of words 
 is of as much consequence, as it would be superfluous 
 in those of little moment.
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 345 
 
 46. During those calms .which immediately suc- 
 ceed violent storms, nothing is more difficult for 
 ministers than to act properly; because, while flat- 
 tery increases, suspicions are not yet subsided. 
 
 47. The faults of our friends ought never to 
 anger us so far as to give an advantage to our 
 enemies. 
 
 48. The talent of insinuation is more useful than 
 that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinu- 
 ation, but scarce any to persuasion. 
 
 49. In matters of a delicate nature, all unneces- 
 sary alterations are dangerous, because odious. 
 
 50. The best way to compel weak-minded people 
 to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all 
 others, by magnifying their danger. 
 
 51. We must run all hazards, where we think our- 
 selves in a situation to reap some advantage, even 
 from the want of success. 
 
 52. Irresolute men are diffident in resolving upon 
 the means, even when they are determined upon the 
 end. 
 
 53. It is almost a sure game, with crafty men, to 
 make them believe we intend to deceive those whom 
 we mean to serve. 
 
 54. One of the greatest difficulties with princes 
 is in the being often obliged, in order to serve them,
 
 346 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 
 
 to give advice, the true reasons of which we dare 
 not mention. 
 
 55. The saying things which we foresee \vill not 
 be pleasing, can only be softened by the greatest 
 appearance of sincerity. 
 
 56. We ought never to trifle with favor. If real, 
 we should hastily seize the advantage ; if pretended, 
 avoid the allurement. 
 
 57. It is very inconsequent to enter into engage- 
 ments upon suppositions we think impossible, and 
 yet it is very usual. 
 
 58. The generality of mankind pay less attention 
 to arguments urged against their opinion, than to 
 such as may engage the disputant to adopt their 
 own. 
 
 59. In times of faction and intrigue, whatever 
 appears inert is reckoned mysterious by those who 
 are not accustomed to affairs of moment. 
 
 60. It is never allowable in an inferior to equal 
 himself in words to a superior, although he may 
 rival him in actions. 
 
 6 1. Every man whom chance alone has, by some 
 accident, made a public character, hardly ever fails 
 of becoming, in a short time, a ridiculous private 
 one. 
 
 62. The greatest imperfection of men is the com- 
 placency with which they are willing to think others
 
 SENTENCES AND MAXIMS. 347 
 
 not free from faults, of which they are themselves 
 conscious. 
 
 63. Experience only can teach men not to prefer 
 what strikes them for the present moment, to what 
 will have much greater weight with them hereafter. 
 
 64. In the management of important business, all 
 turn to raillery must be more carefully avoided than 
 in any other. 
 
 65. In momentous transactions, words cannot be 
 sufficiently weighed. 
 
 66. The permanency of most friendships depends 
 upon the continuity of good fortune. 
 
 67. Whoever assembles the multitude will raise 
 commotions. 
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S REMARKS UPON 
 THE FOREGOING MAXIMS. 
 
 I HAVE taken the trouble of extracting and col- 
 ^lecting, for your use, the foregoing Political 
 Maxims of the Cardinal de Retz, in his Memoirs. 
 They are not aphorisms of his invention, but the 
 true and just observations of his own experience, in 
 the course of great business. My own experience 
 attests the truth of them all. Read them over with 
 attention as here above, and then read with the
 
 348 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS, 
 
 same attention, and tout de suite, the Memoirs, 
 where you will find the facts and characters from 
 whence those observations are drawn, or to which 
 they are applied; and they will reciprocally help to 
 fix each other in your mind. I hardly know any 
 book so necessary for a young man to read and 
 remember. You will there find how great business 
 is really carried on; very differently from what 
 people, who have never been concerned in it, imag- 
 ine. You will there see what courts and courtiers 
 really are, and observe that they are neither so good 
 as they should be, nor so bad as they are thought 
 by most people. The court poet, and the sullen, 
 cloistered pedant, are equally mistaken in their 
 notions, or at least in the accounts they give us of 
 "them. You will observe the coolness in general, the 
 perfidy in some cases, and the truth in a very few, of 
 court friendships. This will teach you the prudence 
 of a general distrust, and the imprudence of making 
 no exception to that rule, upon good and tried 
 grounds. You will see the utility of good-breeding 
 toward one's greatest enemies, and the high impru- 
 dence and folly of either insulting or injurious ex- 
 p^essions.
 
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