Letters of Philip Dormer, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield

fyx%t\\ lttn;t»e»sitg pitoatg BOUGHT WITH THB INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 A-ll'i'^}'i ±. s Cornell University Library â .C525 1890 BJ1671 '^fft Letters of Philip Dormer, fourth eari of 3 1924 029 059 925 oiin DATE DUE .MS 'B 11- ÛiLla4fe>^>F '#^H « e^.fgo3 CAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S,> The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029059925 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS GODSON HENRY FROWDE Oxford University Press Warehouse Amen Corner, E.C. Collotype. Oxford University Press. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. Etigravedfrom an original Picture painted by Gainsborough^ in the possession of the Family. LETTERS OF PHILIP DORMER FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD TO HIS GODSON AND SUCCESSOR EDITED FROM THE ORIGINALS, WITH A MEMOIR OF LORD CHESTERFIELD, BY THE EARL OF CARNARVON (H)«g tpotitaite anb Jffurttaftona SECOND EDITION, WITH APPENDIX OF ADDITIONAL CORRESPONDENCE €>xfotb AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M.DCCC.XC [A/i rights reserved'\ iT) A. \ v^'^ss 0;i;foitS PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY My Dear Porchester, Knowing the great interest which you have taken in these Letters, I desire now to inscribe your name on the first page, and to connect you with their publication. Apart from my wish and my pleasure in thus associating our names, I feel that it is all the more appropriate that these Letters should now, after the lapse of more than a century, be dedicated to you, the great-grandson of Philip Stanhope—the godson of the great Lord Chesterfield. To you then, my successor and his, I affectionately dedicate this volume. Carnarvon. September, i88g. — NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. IN giving to the public a second edition of the Chesterfield Letters I have made some additions which I hope may add to the interest of the book. I have reprinted from Lord Stanhope's edition of Lord Chesterfield's works the "posthumous" letter addressed to the Godson, and said to have been left with Dr. Dodd to be given to young Stanhope on his return from Leipzig, where he was studying or amusing himself with a tutor in March, 1773, when Lord Chesterfield died. I have also placed in an appendix the correspondence with Mr. Arthur Charles Stanhope, of Mansfield, the father of Philip, to which I have often alluded in my Memoir of Lord Chesterfield. The book is, I believe, now scarce, and it is interesting as illustrating and fixing the dates of some of the Letters to the Godson. This correspondence, which is reprinted in its entirety, occasionally exhibits the grossness of thought and expression which was so marked a charac- teristic of the time, and which, notwithstanding the softening influences of age, the extreme anxiety for the boy's welfare, and a higher sense of religion and morality Lentor et meliorfit accedente seneda—affected Lord Chesterfield to the last days of his life. I have added from Edmondson's Peerage a sketch of the descents of Lord Chesterfield on the one hand, and of Mr. A. C. Stanhope and his son Philip on the other, from the common stock. C. GENERAL CONTENTS. PAGE Memoir of Lord Chesterfield .... xiii Chronological Table of the Principal Events in Lord Chesterfield's Life Ixxxi Genealogical Table . .... To face p. Ixxxii Contents of the Letters ...... Ixxxiii Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Godson (i 761-1770) 1-309 Appendix of Letters to A. C. Stanhope, Esq., &c., &c 311 Lord Chesterfield's Posthumous Letter to his Godson 388 His Epitaph on Queen Caroline .... 395 Index to the Memoir and Letters .... 399 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chester- field, from a Painting by Gainsborough . Frontispiece Facsimile of a Letter of Lord Chesterfield to his Godson, from the original MS. To face page xiii Richard, Earl of Scarborough, and Philip, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, from a Pencil Drawing by T. Worlidge . „ li Philip, Fifth Earl of Chesterfield, and his Son, from a Painting by T. Weaver . „ Ixxi Old Bretby Hall, from an Engraving by Kip . „ Ixxiv Philip, Fifth Earl of Chesterfield, from a Painting by Gainsborough „ page i Philip Stanhope, afterwards Fifth Earl of Chesterfield, from a Painting Russell by J. , 283 View of Chesterfield House, from an Engraving after E. J. 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THERE have been many lives and sketches of Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield, and I do not propose here to re-write them ; but in giving to the world the MSS., which by a fortunate accident have been preserved from destruction or oblivion, I think it may be well to recall some of the characteristics of a great Eighteenth Century statesman, and briefly to indicate the new light in which these letters, written within a few years of his death, seem to reveal him. During the whole reign of George II, Lord Chesterfield was so prominent a figure at Court, in Society, and in Politics ; he lived so much in the full sight of his contemporaries, as he still lives in every history or biography of the period ; that few of the leading men of his age better deserve a careful consideration. He was cer- tainly no ordinary reflection of his own time, but a marked individuality. Yet in the histories and biographies of his period he appears rather as a striking figure than as a man of human affections, passions, prejudices. His great contemporaries, Walpole, Bolingbroke, Pitt, fascinate us as much by their marked peculiarities of character as by their mental power ; but Lord Chesterfield has mainly attracted xiv MEMOIR OF LORD CHESTERFIELD. modern interest by the cold glitter of his intellect. " His delicate but fastidious taste, his low moral principle, his hard, keen, and worldly wisdom^," is the concise and, from the general point of view, the not unfair summary of his character; but these letters to his Godson and heir place him, I think, in a somewhat new light, and show that private sorrows and public disappointments, and the heavy hand of age, and still more the natural kindliness of temper, which had been concealed under the polish of society, had led him in the sunset of Hfe to a somewhat different estimate of right and wrong from that which he once professed. Lord Chesterfield's lot was cast in a critical and a very interesting period of English History. That period repre- sents the establishment of the new dynasty, the real creation of our Parliamentary system and the rise of a brilliant literature, which, with many modifications but with no essential break, has flowed down continuously to our own times ; and in each and all of these great incidents he played a conspicuous part. It was a long life. He began it with George I, he ended it under the great-grandson of George I. In early youth, and in the house of his grandmother. Lady Halifax, he had known Danby and Montagu, the statesmen of the Revolution ; on one occasion he saw Richard Cromwell, then an old man, give evidence in a court of law before Chief Justice Holt^. He lived through two quarrels with two Princes of Wales ; he acted either with or against all the great public men of that day— Bolingbroke, Walpole, Pulteney, Carteret, Pitt ; he was intimate with all the greatest men of letters, with Addison, Swift, Pope, ' Lecky's Hist, of England, i. 379. " Miscell. Works of Lord Chesterfield, and Memoir of his Life, by M. Maty, M.D., i. p. 9. ;; THE POLITICAL SITUATION. xv Gay, Arbuthnot, Johnson ; he knew Algarotti, Montesquieu, and Voltaire ; he hved long enough into the reign of George III to see him victorious 'in his struggle with the Whig aristocracy— long enough to witness the beginning of his fatal contest with the thirteen Colonies of America he foretold the French Revolution when the cloud was not bigger than a man's hand ; he foresaw that the kingdom of Poland was on the verge of extinction ; he anticipated the fall of Papal temporalities ; he was the centre of fashion in England, and was well acquainted with foreign society ; he was an acknowledged chief in the world of letters, whilst in politics he played his pa;rt as a successful diplomatist and an eminent administrator. He possessed all the honours that he cared for; when he retired from public life it was by his own choice ; when again for a short time he re- appeared on the public stage it was only to render a great service to the country ; and when he finally said farewell to all public life he knew how to withdraw with dignity to his books, his friends, and his stately mansion, retaining his mental faculties and his habitual courtesies up to death.

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