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THE BEST LETTERS

OF

LORD CHESTERFIELD

Letters to his Son

AND

Letters to Ms Godson
By PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE

EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

EBtteU fajitlj an EntroDuction
By EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY

1899

Copyright

By a. C. McClurg and Co.

A. D. 1890

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

Pmb
-9

Cj^esterfielti's ^Letters to l^i'g Son.

Letter

I. Good Breeding Relative and General 27

II. A Genteel Manner Important 30

III. True Praise. — Elementary Politeness .... 33

IV. Dancing. —All Things should be Done Well . . 36
V. Elocution : Method of Demosthenes 37

VI. Inattention. — Knowledge of Mankind .... j8

VII. Never Attack a Corps Collectively 41

VIII. On Travelling Intelligently 42

IX. True Pleasure Inconsistent with Vice 45

X. The " Absent Man." — Thoughtfulness .... 48

XI. A Showy Binding 50

XII. Epistolary Models 52

XIII. Tolerance and Truth Recommended 53

XIV. Caution in Forming Friendships 55

XV. The Art of Pleasing 59

XVI. On Combining Study with Pleasure 65

XVII. A Wise Guide the Best Friend 66

XVIII. The Value of Time 68

XIX. Time Well and Time 111 Spent 70

XX. Right Use of Learning 74

XXI. The Graces. — Absurdity of Laughter 77

XXII. Dissimulation found not only in Courts .... 81

XXIII. An Awkward Man at Court 83

XXIV. The Lazy Mind and the Frivolous Mind .... 85
XXV. How History should be read 89

XXVI. General Character of Women 90

XXVII. Our Tendency to exalt the Past ... , • • 94

XXVIII. Against Refinements of Casuistry 96

VI

CONTENTS.

Letter Page

XXIX. True Good Company Defined 98

XXX. Conduct in Good Company 102

XXXI. Rules for Conduct in Good Company .... 109

XXXII. Importance of the Graces, etc 115

XXXIII. The Importance of Dress 120

XXXIV. On Prejudices. — Liberty of the Press .... 123
XXXV. Dignity of Manners Recommended 129

XXXVI. Court Manners and Methods 131

XXXVII. On Awkwardness and Absence of Mind . . . . 133

XXXVIII. Vulgarisms. — An Awkward Man, etc 139

XXXIX. Three Sorts of Good Breeding 1^3

XL. The same Subject continued 150

XLI. Good Breeding Important in Diplomacy . . . 154

XLII. Great Events from Trivial Causes 161

XLIII. " The Tongue to Persuade " 166

XLIV. Man's Inconsistency 168

XLV. On the Leiiiores Virtutes 1 74

XL VI. The Writer's Novitiate 176

XLVII. To acquire the Graces, etc 180

XLVIII. Importance of the Moral Virtues 1S4

XLIX. How to Read History, etc 187

L. Good Manners the Source of Esteem 191

LI. Suaviter in Modo, Fortiter in re 193

LII. Les Blens'cances 199

LIII. The Graces 204

LIV. English and French Plays Compared .... 208

LV. Utility of aiming at Perfection 211

LVI. The Study of the World 215

LVII. How History should be Written 219

LVIII. Avoir du Monde Explained 221

LIX. On Military Men. — Small Change 224

LX. Adaptation of Manners, etc 226

LXI. Voltaire, Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Tasso . . 230

LXII. A Worthy, Tiresome Man 234

Cf)esterfieH)'0 3Letta:0 to \\% ^otison.

I. Diversion Ordered, Study Requested, etc. . . . 243

II. Duty to God, and Duty to Man 244

III. Rough Manners 246

IV. The Well Bred Gentleman 247

CONTENTS.

Vll

Letter Page

V. Some Rules for Behavior 248

VI. The Art of Pleasing 250

VII. Flat Contradiction a Proof of 111 Breeding . . . 251

VIII. Do unto Others as You Would they Should do unto

You 253

IX. On Self-Command 255

X, True Wit and its Judicious Use 258

XI. Raillery, Mimicry, Wags, and Witlings .... 261

XII. The Coxcomb. — The Timid Man 263

XIII. The Man of Spirit 266

XIV. Vanity. — Feigned Self-Condemnation .... 268
XV. Attention. — The Sense of Propriety 270

XVI. Affectations. — Polite Conversation 274

XVII. Epitaph on a Wife 277

XVIII. Every Man the Architect of his own Fortune . . 278

XIX. Inattention. — Hoc Age 279

XX. The Pride of Rank and Birth 281

XXI. Shining Thoughts of Authors 283

XXII . Avarice and Ambition 284

XXIII. The Endeavor to Attain Perfection 286

XXIV. The Treatment of Inferiors 287

XXV. The False Pride of Rank 289

XXVI. The Veracity of a Gentleman 291

XXVII. On the Je ne Sais Quoi 293

XXVIII. The Indecent Ostentation of Vices 295

XXIX. The Art of Letter- Writing 296

XXX. Treatment of Servants 298

XXXI. Pride of Rank and Birth 299

XXXII. The Snares of Youth 301

In applying himself to the formation of his son as a polite
man in society, Lord Chesterfield has not given us a treatise
on duty as Cicero has; but he has left letters which, by their
mixture of justness and lightness, by certain lightsome airs
which insensibly mingle with the serious graces, preserve the
medium between the Mimoires du Chevalier de Gramtnont
and THemaque.

Sainte-Bkuve.

Viewed as compositions, they appear almost unrivalled for a
serious epistolary style.

Lord Mahon.

INTRODUCTION.

In summarizing the character of Philip Dormer
Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Lecky the historian
describes him as a man of " delicate but fastidious
taste," " low moral principle," and " hard, keen, and
worldly wisdom ; " and this estimate, with an undue
stress upon " low moral principle," fairly expresses
the conventional idea of the brilliant eighteenth cen-
tury statesman and wit. It may be said of Lord
Chesterfield — and it is a rather uncommon thing to
say of one of his countrymen — that his reputation
has sufi"ered more from his preaching than from his
practice. Weighed fairly in the balance with his
contemporaries and co-equals, he loses in great
measure the invidious distinction usually bestowed
upon him ; and those conversant with his philosophy
will readily conjecture that had he intended his
preaching for the morally-sensitive ear of the British
public, he would have more carefully observed his
own organic maxim, — " Le Grand Art, et le plus
necessaire de tous, c'est Z ^Art de Plaire.'"

Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son were written
in the closest confidence, with no thought to their

lO INTRODUCTION.

future publication. After the death of both writer
and recipient, they were pubhshed by Mrs. Eugenia
Stanhope, the son's widow, as a speculative venture,
— a profitable one, as it proved, the public being as
ready to purchase as to condemn ; and the annals
of literature record few more curious turns of fortune
than that which has ranked this arch-diplomat and
consummate master of the art of self- repression in
the category of men who have frankly confessed
themselves to the world. Parental affection im-
pelled him to discover to his son the springs of ac-
tion that had governed his conduct and promoted
his success in life ; and the chance that led to his
enduring literary fame has also installed him (with
some injustice) as high priest and exemplar of fash-
ionable vice and insincerity. To the same chance
we owe our possession of a volume remarkable alike
for its diction, wit, variety of argument and illustra-
tion, and keen insight into the worldly motives of
worldly people. There are serious defects in Lord
Chesterfield's theory of life and savoir vivre ; but
these eliminated, his system has an important advan-
tage over many loftier ones in that it is the fruit of
experience, and humanly practicable. Despite the
overstrained censure of prejudice and cant, the letters
have maintained their high rank in literature ; and
we may justly assume that their imperfections are
greatly outweighed by their merits. It will be re-
membered that Dr. Johnson — in a lucid interval of
fair-mindedness — once said of them, "Take out

introduction: i i

the immorality, and they should be put in the hands
of every young gentleman ; " and it is in accordance
with this view of the " Great Cham of Literature "
that the selections for the present volume have been
made. The better to illustrate the writer's admirable
epistolary style, the letters chosen are given for the
most part entire ; although at the risk of a leaning
toward purism, we have ventured here and there to ex-
punge expressions offensive to the delicacy of mod-
ern taste. In addition to the letters to his son, a few
of the but lately published letters to his godson —
written with a like purpose and from a like stand-
point— are given. A hasty glance at the period
in which the letters were written may serve in a
measure to justify and explain their general trend
and temper.

Freed from the pleasant glamor of its Uterary
associations, English society in Lord Chesterfield's
time — which we may consider as embracing the
reign of Anne and those of the first two Georges —
presents a repellent aspect. To the lover of the
Augustan Age it is hard to realize that when Steele
and Addison were chatting so charmingly in the
"Tatler" and "Spectator," when Goldsmith was
writing " like an angel " and the amiable Sir Joshua
was behaving like one, when Pope, Swift, Fielding,
Richardson, and their compeers, were on the stage,
England was a sink of corruption in high places, of
brutality in low. The political condition of the
country for the first half-century after the revolution

12 INTRODUCTION.

of 1688 was singularly provocative of venality among
public men. A disputed succession, a Pretender to
the throne whose title was supported by a corrupt
party at home and by a profusely liberal monarch
abroad, an opposing faction eager to outbid their
opponents, gave rise to a complication of intrigue,
a hardihood of political double and triple dealing,
that caused Montesquieu to say in 1729 : " English-
men are no longer worthy of their liberty. They
sell it to the King ; and if the King should sell
it back to them, they would sell it to him again."
History has recorded, and satire and invective have
rendered more odious, the faults of the leaders of
the day. Marlborough, whose consummate genius
broke the French prestige with an army composed
of half-hearted allies and a Bardolphian home-con-
tingent recruited largely by the parish constables, is
stigmatized as " one of the basest rogues in history,
supported by his mistresses, a niggard user of the pay
he received from them, systematically plundering his
soldiers, trafficking on political secrets, a traitor to
James II., to William, to England." Vieing in base-
ness with the conqueror of Blenheim are Boling-
broke, the cold-blooded cynic who served and sold
in turn both Queen and Pretender; the Duke of
Newcastle, member of the cabinet and premier, a
" living, moving, talking caricature " " whose name
was perfidy ; " the Earl of Mar, the Scotch Secretary
of State whose exceptional rapidity of political
change won for him the sobriquet of "Bobbing

INTRODUCTION. 1 3

John ; " the profligate Wharton ; Lord Hervey, the
** Sporus " of Pope's mahgnant hnes : —

" Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
Or as the prompter breathes the puppet squeaks ;
Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad.
In puns or politics, or tales or lies."

The shameful Ust swells at once beyond the
possibility of individual mention by the addition of
Walpole's packed House of Commons, where " every
man had his price," and in which, Montesquieu
said, " There are Scotch members who have only
two hundred pounds for their vote, and who sell it
for this price." England would not be England had
there not been exceptions to the general rule of
double-dealing and venality ; and one of these ex-
ceptions it is important for us to note here. It is
honorably recorded of Lord Chesterfield that he
"hated a job." Of this rather untimely trait his
Lordship gave signal proof during his viceroyalty in
Ireland ; and his biographer, Dr. Maty, relates a
pleasing instance of it that occurred early in his
public life. Having succeeded Lord Townshend as
Captain of the Yeomen of the Guards in 1723, Lord
Chesterfield was advised by his predecessor to make
the post more profitable than he himself had done
by disposing of the places. " I rather for this
time," was the reply, " wish to follow your lord-
ship's example than your advice."

Of the private manners of the period, the pre-

14 INTRODUCTION.

cise pencil of Hogarth and the proUfic pens of a
throng of satirists in prose and verse have left us
the amplest memorials. If venality was the charac-
teristic of the leaders, brutality seems to have been
that of the populace ; and in the turbulent and
fickle mob the factious partisan found an instrument
of mischief ready to his hand. When the puppet
Sacheverell sounded the " drum ecclesiastic " from
the pulpit of St. Paul's, the London rabble, chim-
ney-sweepers, watermen, costermongers, thieves, flew
to the rescue of the Established Church. Inflamed
with gin and religious zeal, they swept through the
precincts where seven years before —

" Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,"

mobbed Defoe's fellow sectaries, and burned their
meeting-houses, — at the beck of a faction who
meant to enslave them. Vice wore in England so
odious an aspect that one scarcely wonders when
Lord Chesterfield bids his son shun the bestialities
of his countrymen and adopt rather the genteel
" gallantries " of the continent. Turn to Hogarth's
" Gin Lane ; " England's besetting sin is set forth
there with all its shocking details. Gin was intro-
duced in 1684; and half a century later, according
to Lord Lonsdale's report, " England consumed
seven millions of gallons." So cheap was the bev-
erage that one could get comfortably tipsy for a
penny, and dead drunk — "o'er all the ills of life
victorious " — for twopence. But the ugliness, the

introduction: 15

unvarnished brutality of vice was not confined to
the pleasures of the rabble. The amusements of
the costermonger, so far as his money went, were the
amusements of the lord. In the public resorts filth
jostled finery; the blind nobleman in Hogarth's
" Cockpit " bets his money freely with the ruffians
about him, while the deft thief at his elbow slips a
bank-note from his lordship's stake ; at the bear-
garden — as the " Spectator " tells us — peer and
blackguard alike applauded when "Timothy Buck
of Clare Market " so slashed with his broadsword
his opponent " Sergeant Miller, late come from
Portugal," that the latter fell disabled, and "his
wound was exposed to the view of all who could
dehght in it, and sewed up on the stage." In the
genteel revels of Hogarth's " Midnight Conversa-
tion " one sees the debauchery of " Gin Lane "
minus the insignia of poverty ; the company is bet-
ter, the liquor is better, and the rags and tatters are
replaced by bands and cassocks, lace and ruffles,
cocked hats and full-bottomed wigs ; but the essen-
tials are the same, and the gentlemen — from the
divine who presides at the punch-bowl to the officer
who sprawls on the floor — exhibit every stage of the
national vice. England in the eighteenth century
was not, as Lord Chesterfield said, " the home of
The Graces."

That polite society at this period was lax in its
morals, that " a mistress was as well recognized as a
concubine in the days of King David," is scarcely

1 6 INTRODUCTION.

to be wondered at when we consider the precedent
of royalty. The domestic annals of the royal con-
temners of "boetry and bainting," George Land
George II., read very much like those of Macheath
and his gang. There was no concealment in these
delicate matters at that time ; the facts were as
plain as noonday, and it was thought no scandal
that an officer should owe his rank, or a prelate his
lawn, to the good offices of the Duchess of Kendal
or of Madam Walmoden. Certainly there is little
to be said in extenuation of the immorality of a
class that can enjoy, laugh at, and applaud a bitterly
truthful satire on its own vices. In his " Beggar's
Opera " Gay exhibited to polite society the reflec-
tion of its own detestable manners mirrored in the
annals of a band of thieves and prostitutes ; and
polite society, instead of slitting the ears of the
author, made much of him, and rapturously ad-
mitted the fidelity of the portrait.

Such, broadly speaking, were the social externals
in England when Lord Chesterfield lived ; and it is
by the temper of his time and country that he is to
be judged. Few men will bear comparison with the
standards of an age more advanced than their own.
The defects of Chesterfield — as Lord Mahon says
— were " neither slight nor few." He was addicted
to gaming; he carried flattery and dissimulation
beyond justifiable bounds ; and neither his life nor
his precept was free from the taint of the prevail-
ing immorality. Much of the common estimate of

INTRO D UC TION: I J

Lord Chesterfield has been founded on Dr. John-
son's opinion, — and Dr. Johnson's opinion where
his prejudices were engaged was usually worthless.
The story of his quarrel with the Earl is well known,
and the facts lie in a nutshell. On the one hand
was Lord Chesterfield, a leader in society, literature,
and politics, a man whose name was a synonym for
good breeding, and in whose eyes the graces and
amenities of life were of paramount importance ;
on the other was Dr. Johnson, a phenomenon of
learning and intellectual force, but also, unhappily,
a phenomenon of slovenliness, ill breeding, and
personal repulsiveness. Assuming human nature to
have been, in the main, what it is to-day, we can
scarcely blame Lord Chesterfield for declining the
intimacy of one who must have been peculiarly re-
pugnant to him. Much solemn nonsense in the way
of moral dissertation has grown out of the story that
he once kept Johnson waiting in an antechamber
— Lord Lyttleton places the time at ten minutes —
while he chatted with so frivolous a person as Colley
Gibber. There is little doubt that the Earl found
Gibber's lively prattle more entertaining than the
ponderous " Sirs ! " of the Doctor; and we may be-
lieve that so fastidious a nobleman objected to being
knocked down with the butt of Johnson's conversa-
tional pistol, — which was Goldsmith's figurative way
of saying that when the Doctor was fairly worsted
in an argument he silenced his opponent with a
roar of abuse or a staggering sophistry. Is it not

2

1 8 INTROD UCTION.

curious that posterity has been so unwilling to con-
done Lord Chesterfield's shadowy discourtesy to-
ward one whose habitual bearishness toward all was
proverbial ?

It is not my intention here to go into the details
of Lord Chesterfield's career. It may be well, how-
ever, to recapitulate the leading facts before turning
to a brief consideration of his letters. He was bom
in London on Sept. 22, 1694, and in 1712 he
entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After two years
of close application at Cambridge, he visited the
Hague, where he served his novitiate in polite
society, frequenting the best companies and adding
to his solid attainments those Hghter arts in which
he afterwards excelled, and by means of which he
declared that he sought to make " every woman
love and every man admire" him. In 1715, upon
the accession of George I., he became Gentleman
of the Bed Chamber to the Prince of Wales, and
shortly after entered the House of Commons. In
1726 he was called to the House of Peers by the
death of his father. Oratory had been his chief
study, and here he found himself in a theatre suited
to the refined and studied eloquence in which he
easily surpassed his compeers. The grace of man-
ner, refined wit, and facility in classical allusion,
which failed to touch the more popular assembly,
were here relished and applauded. Horace Wal-
pole, who had heard the first orators of his day, de-
ciajred that the finest speech he had ever listened to

IN TROD UCTION. 1 9

was one from Chesterfield. In 1727 he was sent as
ambassador to Holland ; and it was during his stay
at the Hague that he met the lady, Madam de Bou-
chet, who became, in 1732, the mother of his son,
to whom the most of the letters in this volume
are addressed. In 1733 he married Melusina de
Schulemberg, niece of the Duchess of Kendal, — or
as some said, her daughter by George I. In 1744
he was again sent as envoy to the Hague, and in
the following year he entered on his memorable
Lord Lieutenancy in Ireland. Although Lord Ches-
terfield's public engagements were uniformly fulfilled
with credit to himself and with satisfaction to his
countrymen, his term in Ireland was undoubtedly
the most brilliant and useful part of his career. It
is not too much to say that at no time in the history
of that hapless country has English rule been so
well administered. To please or even to content
the Irish people is for the English representative a
task that dwarfs the labors of Hercules ; yet we
learn that at the close of Lord Chesterfield's admin-
istration " persons of all ranks and religions followed
him to the water's edge, praising and blessing him,
and entreating him to return." It will be remem-
bered that when Lord Chesterfield went to Dublin
in 1 745 he was confronted with unusual difficulties.
Politically, the period was one of transition ; time
had not yet ratified the title of a dynasty toward
which the Irish were generally disaffected, and the
adherents of a claimant whom they generally favored

20 introduction:

were up in arms in the neighboring island. Though
eminently satisfactory to both factions, Lord Ches-
terfield's policy in Ireland was one of most unwaver-
ing firmness, and was not without severity when
called for. It is related that he said to a supposed
agent of the Pretender : " Sir, I do not wish to in-
quire whether you have any particular employment
in this kingdom, but I know you have great influ-
ence among those of your persuasion. I have sent
for you to exhort them to be peaceable and quiet.
If they behave like faithful subjects they shall be
treated as such, but if they act in a different man-
ner, I will be worse to them than Cromwell." In
1746 Lord Chesterfield became Secretary of State,
resigning in 1748. He had long been troubled
with deafness, and in 1755, his infirmity becoming
so serious as to incapacitate him from taking part in
public affairs, he determined to go into retirement.
His death occurred on March 24, 1773, five years
after that of the son upon whom he had bestowed
such a wealth of care and affection.

Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son have been
strongly reprehended on three distinct grounds :
first, because their teachings are sometimes immoral ;
secondly, because of the seemingly undue stress
placed upon good breeding and the graces ; and
thirdly, because the maxims, even when good in
themselves, seldom rest on higher grounds than
expediency or personal advantage.

Lord Chesterfield's most determined panegyrist

INTROD UCTION. 2 1

will scarcely deny that some of his precepts are, in
themselves, inexcusably bad. But where is the source,
the well-spring, of these precepts? Not, I think, in
the heart of the writer. " Let us first " — as John-
son once said to Boswell — "clear our minds of
cant," and then consider that it was not his son's
prospects in the next world but his welfare in this
that the anxious father deemed himself qualified to
advance ; and of his intimate and curious knowledge
of the ways of this world there is no doubt. Lord
Chesterfield would scarcely have presented the
*' Letters " to the world as embodying a system of
absolute ethics. Long years of acute watching and
deliberate weighing of the preferences and foibles of
his fellows convinced him that to appear well in
their eyes, — or, as he expressed it, " to make
people in general wish him well, and inclined to
serve him in anything not inconsistent with their
own interests," — he must act in such and such a
way ; and in that he unshrinkingly put certain pitiful
results of his experience of men and women into
the form of advice to his son, Hes the essence of his
fault. We are not, however, to hold the observer
responsible for the phenomena from which he drew
his conclusions.

As to the second objection to the letters, the
answer must be obvious to all who consider for a
moment their nature and the purpose with which
they were composed. They were written, not for
the public, but for the instruction of an individual ;

22 INTRODUCTION.

and naturally stress is laid upon those qualities and
acquirements in which that individual was deficient.
Mr. Stanhope was naturally studious, hence we find
comparatively little insistence upon the more solid
attainments ; Mr. Stanhope was inclined to be moral,
hence his father did not insult him by constantly
referring to the Decalogue ; but Mr. Stanhope was
naturally somewhat distrait and awkward, hence
Lord Chesterfield wrote, "For God's sake, there-
fore, think of nothing but shining and even dis-
tinguishing yourself in the most polite courts by
your air, your address, your manners, your politeness,
your douceur, your graces."

There are very few of us, I think, who will venture
to quarrel with Lord Chesterfield on the grounds
stated in the third objection, if we steadily bear in
mind Dr. Johnson's excellent advice on the subject
of cant.

Before closing this hasty sketch a word should be
added regarding the series of letters which form the
concluding portion of the present volume, and of
the person to whom they were addressed. With a
few exceptions, it is only within the current year
that Lord Chesterfield's letters to his godson have
been given to the pubUc ; and we have gladly availed
ourselves of the opportunity of adding to our col-
lection an element of such freshness and interest.
The literary value of these later letters will be taken
for granted. The qualities that secured for Lord
Chesterfield's letters to his son their high rank in

INTRODUCTION. 2%

epistolary literature are not of course wanting in
those to his godson, written with a like general pur-
pose. There is however a perceptible difference
between the two sets, owing in part to the advanced
years of the writer, in part to the extreme youth
of the recipient. To many readers the flagging
of the old intellectual fire and acuteness noticeable
in the letters to the godson will be compensated by
their kindlier, more liberal, and less worldly tone.
In both series will be found the same frequent in-
sistence upon the importance of manners and the
graces, and this is largely due to the fact that son
and godson were strikingly alike in general character
and disposition ; both were studiously inclined and
of good habits, and both were shy of those divini-
ties to whose altar their Mentor so constantly urged
them. Philip Stanhope, the godson, was the son of
Arthur Charles Stanhope of Mansfield, a somewhat
distant relative of Lord Chesterfield, and was adopted
by him, upon his son's death, as heir to his rank,
fortune, and affections. Like the son, the godson
failed to fulfil the brilliant hopes formed of him ;
and instead of the shining diplomat, statesman,
and courtier, he seems to have turned out the hum-
drum, quite commonplace country gentleman, — a
respectable man but by no means a votary of the
Graces. Madame d'Arblay wrote of him : " How
would that quintessence of high ton, the late Lord
Chesterfield, blush to behold his successor, who
with much share of humor and of good humor also,

24 INTRODUCTION.

has as little good breeding as any man I ever met
with."

As before intimated, it is the aim of the projectors
of this volume to show Lord Chesterfield at his best ;
to select from the mass of his letters those that are
in themselves the most valuable, — a process which
has obliged us occasionally to reject letters and ex-
punge passages which the writer's detractors would
perhaps deem specially characteristic of him. We
have, however, we believe, prepared a volume that
will prove not only useful and readable, but morally
unobjectionable ; and if our general aim has been
attained, there are few readers who will not feel re-
paid for the perusal of the following pages.

E. G. J.

LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
TO HIS SON.

LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
TO HIS SON.

I.

GOOD BREEDING RELATIVE AND GENERAL.—
MAUVAISE HONTE.

Wednesday?-

Dear Boy, — You behaved yourself so well at Mr.
Boden's last Sunday that you justly deserve com-
mendation ; besides, you encourage me to give you
some rules of politeness and good breeding, being
persuaded that you will observe them. Know then
that as learning, honor, and virtue are absolutely
necessary to gain you the esteem and admiration of
mankind, politeness and good breeding are equally
necessary to make you welcome and agreeable in
conversation and common life. Great talents, such
as honor, virtue, learning, and parts, are above the
generality of the world, who neither possess them
themselves nor judge of them rightly in others ; but

1 At the time this was written, Master Stanhope was
in his ninth year. The letter following was written a few
months later.

28 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

all people are judges of the lesser talents, such as
civility, affability, and an obliging, agreeable address
and manner, because they feel the good eifects of
them as making society easy and pleasing. Good
sense must in many cases determine good breeding ;
because the same thing that would be civil at one
time, and to one person, may be quite otherwise at
another time, and to another person ; but there are
some general rules of good breeding that hold al-
ways true, and in all cases. As, for example, it is
always extremely rude to answer only Yes, or No,
to anybody, without adding Sir, My Lord, or Madam,
according to the quality of the person you speak
to, — as in French you must always say, Monsieur,
Milord, Madame, and Mademoiselle. I suppose you
know that every married woman is in French Ma-
dame, and every unmarried one is Mademoiselle.
It is likewise extremely rude not to give the proper
attention and a civil answer when people speak to
you, or to go away, or be doing something else,
when they are speaking to you ; for that convinces
them that you despise them, and do not think it
worth your while to hear or answer what they say.
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 considered nobody but your-
self. On the contrary, you should always endeavor
to procure all the conveniences you can to the peo-
ple you are with. Besides being civil, which is abso-
lutely necessary, the perfection of good breeding is
to be civil with ease, and in a gentleman-like manner.

TO HIS SON. 29

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. But, pray, do you re-
member 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 obliging thing as easily and as naturally as
you would ask what o'clock it is? This kind of
bashfulness, which is justly called by the French
mauvaise honte, is the distinguishing character of an
English booby, who is frightened out of his wits
when people of fashion speak to him ; and when
he is to answer them, blushes, stammers, and can
hardly get out what he would say, and becomes
really ridiculous from a groundless fear of being
laughed at ; whereas a real 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.
Remember, then, that to be civil, and to be civil
with ease (which is properly called good breeding) ,
is the only way to be beloved and well received in
company ; that to be ill bred and rude is intoler-
able, and the way to be kicked out of company;
and that to be bashful is to be ridiculous. As I
am sure you will mind and practise all this, I expect
that when you are novennis, you will not only be
the best scholar but the best- bred boy in England
of your age. Adieu.

30 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

II.

A GENTEEL MANNER IMPORTANT. — AN AWKWARD
FELLOW. — ATTENTION.

Spa, July 25, n. s. 1741.
Dear Boy, — I have often told you in my former
letters — and it is most certainly true — that the
strictest and most scrupulous honor and virtue can
alone make you esteemed and valued by mankind ;
that parts and learning can alone make you admired
and celebrated by them ; but that the possession of
lesser talents was most absolutely necessary towards
making you liked, beloved, and sought after in
private Ufe. Of these lesser talents, good breeding
is the principal and most necessary one, not only as
it is very important in itself, but as it adds great
lustre to the more solid advantages both of the heart
and the mind. I have often touched upon good
breeding to you before, so that this letter shall be
upon the next necessary qualification to it, which is
a genteel and easy manner and carriage, wholly free
from those odd tricks, ill habits, and awkwardnesses,
which even many very worthy and sensible people
have in their behavior. However trifling a genteel
manner may sound, it is of very great consequence
towards pleasing in private life, especially the women,
which 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

TO HIS SON. 31

people in your favor, bends them towards you, and
makes them wish to be Uke you. Awkwardness can
proceed but from two causes, — either from not hav-
ing kept good company, or from not having attended
to it. As for your k^ping good company, I will take
care of that ; do you take care to observe their ways
and manners, and to form your own upon them.
Attention is absolutely necessary for this, as indeed
it is for everything else ; and a man without atten-
tion is not fit to live in the world. When an awk-
ward fellow first comes into a room, it is highly pro-
bable that his sword gets between his legs and
throws him down, or makes him stumble at least ;
when he has recovered this accident, he goes and
places himself in the very place of the whole room
where he should not ; there he soon lets his hat fall
down, and in taking it up again throws down his
cane ; in recovering his cane, his hat falls a second
time, so that he is a quarter of an hour before he is
in order again. If he drinks tea or coffee, he cer-
tainFy scalds his mouth, and lets either the cup or
the saucer fall, and spills either the tea or coffee in
his breeches. At dinner, his awkwardness distin-
guishes itself particularly, as he has more to do ;
there he holds his knife, fork, and spoon differently
from other people, eats with his knife, to the great
danger of his mouth, picks his teeth with his fork,
and puts his spoon into the dishes again. If he is
to carve he can never hit the joint, but in his vain
efforts to cut through the bone scatters the sauce in
everybody's face. He generally daubs himself with
soup and grease, though his napkin is commonly

32 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

Stuck through a button-hole and tickles his chin.
When he drinks, he infalUbly coughs in his glass
and besprinkles the company. . . . His hands are
troublesome to him when he has not something in
them, and he does not know where to put them ;
but they are in perpetual motion between his bosom
and his breeches ; he does not wear his clothes, and
in short does nothing, like other people. All this, I
own, is not in any degree criminal ; but it is highly
disagreeable and ridiculous in company, and ought
most carefully to be avoided by whoever desires to
please.

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

There is, likewise, an awkwardness of expression
and words most carefully to be avoided, — such as
false English, bad pronunciation, old sayings, and
common proverbs, which are so many proofs of
having kept bad and low company. For example :
if, instead of saying that tastes are different and
that every man has his own peculiar one, you should
let off a proverb, and say, That 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 foot-
men and housemaids.

Attention will do all this ; and without attention
nothing is to be done : want of attention, which is

TO HIS SON. 33

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 thoughtlessness and want of attention about what
is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a
madman, that for my part I see no real difference
A fool never has thought ; a madman has lost it ;
and an absent man is, for the time, without it.

III.

TRUE PRAISE. — ELEMENTARY POLITENESS.

Spa, Aug. 6, 1741.
Dear Boy, — I am very well pleased with the
several performances you sent me, and still more
so with Mr. Maittaire's letter that accompanied
them, in which he gives me a much better ac-
count of you than he did in his former. Lau-
dari a laudato viro was always a commendable
ambition ; encourage that ambition, and continue
to deserve the praises of the praiseworthy. While
you do so, you shall have whatever you will from
me ; and when you cease to do so, you shall have
nothing.

3

34 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

I am glad you have begun to compose a little ;
it will give you a habit of thinking upon subjects,
which is at least as necessary as reading them ;
therefore pray send me your thoughts upon this
subject, —

" Non sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo."

It is a part of Cato's character in Lucan, who
says that Cato did not think himself bom for him-
self only, but for all mankind. Let me know,
then, whether you think that a man is bom only
for his own pleasure and advantage, or whether
he is not obliged to contribute to the good of
the society in which he lives and of all mankind in
general. This is certain, — that every man re-
ceives advantages from society which he could
not have if he were the only man in the world :
therefore is he not in some measure in debt to
society; and is he not obliged to do for others
what they do for him ? You may do this in Eng-
lish or Latin, which you please ; for it is the think-
ing part, and not the language, that I mind in this
case.

I warned you in my last against those disagree-
able tricks and awkwardnesses which many people
contract when they are young by the negligence
of their parents, and cannot get quit of them when
they are old, — such as odd motions, strange pos-
tures, and ungenteel carriage. But there is like-
wise an awkwardness of the mind that ought to
be and with care may be avoided ; as, for instance,
to mistake names. To speak of Mr. What-d'ye-call-

TO HIS SON. 35

him or Mrs. Thingum or How-d'ye-call-her is ex-
cessively awkward and ordinary. To call people
by improper titles and appellations is so too ; as
my Lord for Sir, and Sir for my Lord. To be-
gin 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 enter-
taining or informing others, one only tires and
puzzles them. The voice and manner of speaking,
too, are not to be neglected. Some people almost
shut their mouths when they speak and mutter so
that they are not to be understood ; others speak
so fast and sputter that they are not to be under-
stood 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 ne-
cessary it is to mind all these little things ; for I
have seen many people with great talents ill re-
ceived for want of having these talents too, and
others well received only from their little talents,
and who had no great ones. Adieu.

36 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

IV.

DANCING. -ALL THINGS, EVEN TRIFLES, SHOULD BE

done well.

Dublin Castle, Nov. 19, 1745.^
Dear Boy, — ... Now that the Christmas break-
ing-up draws near, I have ordered Mr. Desnoyers to
go to you during that time, to teach you to dance.
I desire you will particularly attend to the grace-
ful motion of your arms, which with the manner
of putting on your hat and giving your hand is all
that a gentleman need attend to. Dancing is in it-
self a very trifling, silly thing ; but it is one of those
established follies to which people of sense are
sometimes obliged to conform, and then they should
be able to do it well. And though I would not have
you a dancer, yet when you do dance I would have
you dance well, as I would have you do everything
you do well. There is no one thing so trifling but
which, if it is to be done at all, ought to be done
well ; and I have often told you that I wished you
even played at pitch and cricket better than any
boy at Westminster. For instance, dress is a very
foolish thing, and yet it is a very foolish thing for a
man not to be well dressed, according to his rank
and way of life ; and it is so far from being a 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

* Written during Lord Chesterfield's viceroyalty in Ireland.

TO HIS SON. 37

values himself upon his dress, and the man of sense
laughs at it, at the same time that he knows he
must not neglect it. There are a thousand foolish
customs of this kind, which, not being criminal,
must be complied with, and even cheerfully, by
men of sense. Diogenes the cynic was a wise man
for despising them, but a fool for showing it. Be
wiser than other people, if you can ; but do not tell
them so.

V.

ELOCUTION: METHOD OF DEMOSTHENES.

Dublin Castle, Feb. 8, 174&

You propose, I find, Demosthenes for your
model, and you have chosen very well; but re-
member the pains he took to be what he was. He
spoke near the sea in storms, both to use himself to
speak aloud, and not to be disturbed by the noise
and tumult of public assemblies ; he put stones in
his mouth to help his elocution, which naturally was
not advantageous; from which facts I conclude,
that whenever he spoke he opened both his hps
and his teeth, and that he articulated every word
and every syllable distinctly, and full loud enough
to be heard the whole length of my library.

As he took so much pains for the graces of ora-
tory only, I conclude he took still more for the
more solid parts of it. I am apt to think he applied
himself extremely to the propriety, the purity, and

38 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

the elegance of his language ; to the distribution of
the parts of his oration; to the force of his argu-
ments ; to the strength of his proofs ; and to the
passions as well as the judgments of his audience.
I fancy he began with an exordium, to gain the
good opinion and the affections of his audience ;
that afterwards he stated the point in question
briefly but clearly ; that he then brought his proofs,
afterwards his arguments; and that he concluded
with a peroratio, in which he recapitulated the whole
succinctly, enforced the strong parts, and artfully
slipped over the weak ones ; and at last made his
strong push at the passions of his hearers. Wher-
ever 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 pas-
sions ; and if you do, you too will prevail. If you
can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambi-
tion, — or whichever is their prevailing passion, —
on your side, you need not fear what their reason
can do against you.

VI.

INATTENTION. - KNOWLEDGE OF MANKIND.

Dublin Castle, March lo, 1746.
Sir, — I most thankfully acknowledge the honor
of two or three letters from you, since 1 troubled

TO HIS son: 39

you with my last ; and am very proud of the re-
peated instances you give me of your favor and
protection, which I shall endeavor to deserve.*

I am very glad that you went to hear a trial in
the Court of King's Bench ; and still more so, that
you made the proper animadversions upon the in-
attention of many of the people in the Court. As
you observed very well the indecency of that inat-
tention, I am sure you will never be guilty of any-
thing like it yourself. There is no surer sign in the
world of a little, weak mind than inattention.
AV'hatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well ;
and nothing can be well done without attention.
It is the sure answer of a fool, when you ask him
about anything that was said or done where he was
present, that " truly he did not mind it." And why
did not the fool mind it? What had he else to do
there but to mind what was doing? A man of
sense sees, hears, and retains everything that passes
where he is. I desire I may never hear you talk of
not minding, nor complain, as most fools do, of a
treacherous memory. Mind not only what people
say but how they say it; and if you have any
sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes
than by your ears. People can say what they will,
but they cannot look just as they will; and their
looks frequently discover what their words are cal-
culated to conceal. Observe, therefore, people's
looks carefully when they speak, not only to you,
but to each other. I have often guessed by people's

1 A little badinage at the expense of the boy, who at that
date was about fourteen.

40 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

faces what they were saying, though I could not
hear one word they said. The most material knowl-
edge of ail — I mean the knowledge of the world —
is never to be acquired without great attention ; and
I know many old people, who though they have
lived long in the world, are but children still as to
the knowledge of it, from their levity and inatten-
tion. Certain forms which all people comply with,
and certain arts which all people aim at, hide in
some degree the truth and give a general exterior
resemblance to almost everybody. Attention and
sagacity must see through that veil and discover
the natural character. You are of an age now to
reflect, to observe and compare characters, and to
arm yourself against the common arts, — at least of
the world. If a man with whom you are but barely
acquainted, and to whom you have made no offers
nor given any marks of friendship, makes you on a
sudden strong professions of his, receive them with
civility, but do not repay them with confidence ; he
certainly means to deceive you, for one man does
not fall in love with another at sight. If a man
uses strong protestations or oaths to make you be-
lieve a thing which is of itself so likely and prob-
able that the bare saying of it would be sufficient,
depend upon it he lies, and is highly interested in
making you believe it ; or else he would not take so
much pains.

In about five weeks I propose having the honor
of laying myself at your feet, — which I hope to find
grown longer than they were when I left them.
Adieu.

TO HIS SON. 41

VII.

NEVER ATTACK A CORPS COLLECTIVELY.

April 5, 1746.
Dear Boy, — Before it is very long, I am of
opinion that you will both think and speak more
favorably of women than you do now. You seem
to think that from Eve downwards they have
done a great deal of mischief. As for that lady,
I give her up to you ; but since her time, history
will inform you that men have done much more
mischief in the world than women; and to say
the truth, I would not advise you to trust either
more than is absolutely necessary. But this I
will advise you to, which is, never to attack whole
bodies of any kind; for besides that all general
rules have their exceptions, you unnecessarily make
yourself a great number of enemies by attacking
a corps collectively. Among women, as among
men, there are good as well as bad; and it
may be full as many or more good than among
men. This rule holds as to lawyers, soldiers, par-
sons, courtiers, citizens, etc. They are all men,
subject to the same passions and sentiments, dif-
fering only in the manner, according to their sev-
eral educations ; and it would be as imprudent as
unjust to attack any of them by the lump. In-
dividuals forgive sometimes ; but bodies and so-
cieties never do. Many young people think it
very genteel and witty to abuse the clergy; in

42

LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

which they are extremely mistaken, since in my
opinion parsons are very Uke men, and neither
the better nor the worse for wearing a black gown.
All general reflections upon nations and societies
are the trite, threadbare jokes of those who set
up for wit without having any, and so have re-
course to commonplace. Judge of individuals from
your own knowledge of them, and not from their
sex, profession, or denomination.

VIII.

ON TRAVELLING INTELLIGENTLY. - THE WELL-BRED
TRAVELLER.

•Bath, Sept. 29, o. s. 1746.^
Dear Boy, — I received by the last mail your
letter of the 23d n. s. from Heidelberg, and am
very well pleased to find that you inform your-
self of the particulars of the several places you
go through. You do mighty right to see the curi-
osities in those several places, such as the Golden
Bull at Frankfort, the Tun at Heidelberg, etc.
Other travellers see and talk of them ; it is very
proper to see them, too, but remember that see-
ing is the least material object of travelling, —
hearing and knowing are the essential points.
Therefore pray let your inquiries be chiefly di-
rected to the knowledge of the constitution and

^ At this date Mr. Stanhope was making his continental
tour ill quest of " The Graces."

TO HIS SON. 43

particular customs of the places where you either
reside at or pass through, whom they belong to,
by what right and tenure, and since when; in
whom the supreme authority is lodged ; and by
what magistrates, and in what manner, the civil
and criminal justice is administered. It is like-
wise necessary to get as much acquaintance as
you can, in order to observe the characters and
manners of the people ; for though human nature
is in truth the same through the whole human
species, yet it is so differently modified and var-
ied by education, habit, and different customs,
that one should, upon a slight and superficial ob-
servation, almost think it different.

As I have never been in Switzerland myself, I
must desire you to inform me, now and then, of
the constitution of that country. As, for instance,
do the Thirteen Cantons jointly and collectively
form one government where the supreme author-
ity is lodged, or is each canton sovereign in it-
self, and under no tie or constitutional obligation
of acting in common concert with the other can-
tons? Can any one canton make war or form an
alliance with a foreign power without the consent
of the other twelve or at least a majority of them?
Can one canton declare war against another?
If every canton is sovereign and independent in
itself, in whom is the supreme power of that can-
ton lodged? Is it in one man, or in a certain
number of men? If in one man, what is he
called ? If in a number, what are they called, —
Senate, Council, or what? I do not suppose that

44 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

you can yet know these things yourself; but a
very little inquiry of those who do will enable
you to answer me these few questions in your
next. You see, I am sure, the necessity of know-
ing these things thoroughly, and consequently the
necessity of conversing much with the people of
the country, who alone can inform you rightly;
whereas, most of the English who travel converse
only with each other, and consequently know no
more when they return to England than they did
when they left it. This proceeds from a mauvaise
honte which makes them ashamed of going into
company; and frequently, too, from the want of
the necessary language (French) to enable them
to bear their part in it. As for the mauvaise
honte, I hope you are above it. Your figure is
like other people's; I suppose you will care that
your dress shall be so, too, and to avoid any sin-
gularity. What, then, should you be ashamed of,
and why not go into a mixed company with as
much ease and as little concern as you would go
into your owa^^QQuoi^ Vice and ignorance are
/the oniythings I know which one ought to be
V^shamedofj keep but clear of them and you
may go anywhere without fear or concern. I
have known some people who, from feeling the
pain and inconveniences of this mauvaise honte,
have rushed into the other extreme and turned
impudent, as cowards sometimes grow desperate
from the excess of danger ; but this, too, is care-
fully to be avoided, there being nothing more gen-
erally shocking than impudence. The medium

TO HIS SON. 45

between these two extremes marks out the well-
bred man ; he feels himself firm and easy in all
companies ; is modest without being bashful, and
steady without being impudent; if he is a stran-
ger, he observes with care the manners and ways
of the people 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 EngHsh ones are a
thousand times better, — as my countrymen are
very apt to do, — he commends their table, their
dress, their houses, and their manners a little
more, it may be, than he really thinks they de-
serve. But this degree of complaisance is neither
criminal nor abject, and is but a small price to
pay for the good- will and affection of the people
you converse with. As the generality of people
are weak enough to be pleased with these little
things, those who refuse to please them so cheaply
are, in my mind, weaker than they.

rx.

THE "ABSENT MAN." — THOUGHTFULNESS.

Bath, Oct. 9, o. s. 1746.
Dear Boy, —

What is commonly called an absent man is com-
monly either a very weak or a very affected man ;
but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very

46 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the
common offices of civility ; he seems not to know
those people to-day whom yesterday he appeared
to live in intimacy with ; he takes no part in the
general conversation, but on the contrary breaks
into it from time to time with some start of his own,
as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said be-
fore) is a sure indication either of a mind so weak
that it is not able to bear above one object at a
time, or so affected that it would be supposed to
be wholly engrossed by and directed to some very
great and important objects. Sir Isaac Newton,
Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or six more, since
the creation of the world, may have had a right to
absence, from that intense thought which the things
they were investigating required. But if a young
man, and a man of the world, who has no such
avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that
right of absence in company, his pretended right
should in my mind be turned into an involuntary
absence by his perpetual exclusion out of company.
However frivolous a company may be, still while
you are among them, do not show them by your
inattention that you think them so; but rather
take their tone, and conform in some degree to their
weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for
them. There is nothing that people bear more im-
patiently or forgive less than contempt ; and an
injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. If
therefore you would rather please than offend,
rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved
than hated, remember to have that constant atten-

TO HIS SON. 47

tion about you which flatters every man's little
vanity, and the want of which, by mortifying his
pride, never fails to excite his resentment or at
least his ill will. For instance, most people (I
might say all people) have their weaknesses ; they
have their aversions and their likings to such or
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 negli-
gence 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 pro-
cure for him what he likes and to remove from him
what he hates, shows him that he is at least an ob-
ject of your attention ; flatters his vanity, and makes
him possibly more your friend than a more impor-
tant 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.

(^- My long and frequent letters, which I send you
in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of
certain papers, which you have very lately, and I
formerly, sent up to kites along the string, which we
called messengers ; some of them the wind used to
blow away, others were torn by the string, and but
few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I
will content myself now, as I did then, if some of
my present messengers do but stick to you. Adieu 1

48 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

X.

TRUE PLEASURE INCONSISTENT WITH VICE.

London, March 27, o. s. 1747.

Dear Boy, — Pleasure is the rock which most
young people split upon. They launch out with
crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compass
to direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer
the vessel ; for want of which, pain and shame,
instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.
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 to you,
like an Epicurean, I wish you a great deal, and my
only view is to hinder you from mistaking it.

The character which most young men first aim at
is that of a man of pleasure ; but they generally
take it upon trust, and instead of consulting their
own taste and inclinations, they blindly adopt what-
ever those with whom they chiefly converse are
pleased to call by the name of pleasure ; and a tnan
of pleasure, in the vulgar acceptation of that phrase,
means only a beastly drunkard, an abandoned rake,
and a profligate swearer and curser. As it may be
of use to you, I am not unwilling, though at the
same time ashamed, to own that the vices of my
youth proceeded much more from my silly resolu-
tion 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

TO HIS SON. 49

disgust at the time, attended by great sickness the
next day, only because I then considered drinking
as a necessary quaHfication for a fine gentleman
and a Man of Pleasure.

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 accord-
ingly I plunged into it without desire at first, sac-
rificed a thousand real pleasures to it, and made
myself solidly uneasy by it for thirty the best years
of my life.

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

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

Take warning then by them ; choose your 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.

Were I to begin the world again with the experi-
ence which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real
not of imaginary pleasure. I would enjoy the pleas-
ures of the table and of wine, but stop short of the
pains inseparably annexed to an excess in either. I
4

50 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

would not, at twenty years, be a preaching mission-
ary of abstemiousness and sobriety, and I should let
other people do as they would without formally and
sententiously rebuking them for it ; but I would be
most firmly resolved not to destroy my own facul-
ties and constitution in compliance to those who
have no regard to their own. I would play to give
me pleasure, but not to give me pain ; that is, I
would play for trifles, in mixed companies, to amuse
myself and conform to custom ; but I would take
care not to venture for sums which, if I won, I
should not be the better for, but if I lost, should
be under a difficulty to pay, and when paid would
oblige me to retrench in several other articles, — not
to mention the quarrels which deep play commonly
occasions.

I would pass some of my time in reading and
the rest in the company of people of sense and
learning, and chiefly those above me ; and I would
frequent the mixed companies of men and women
of fashion, which, though often frivolous, yet they
unbend and refresh the mind, not uselessly because
they certainly polish and soften the manners.

XI.

A SHOWY BINDING. — TRUE ATTIC SALT.

London, April i, o. s. 1747.
Dear Boy, — If I am rightly informed, I am now
writing to a fine gentleman in a scarlet coat laced

TO HIS SON. 51

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 tha:.
Mr. Harte has thought this last edition of mine worth
so fine a binding ; and as he has bound it in red
and gilt it upon the back, I hope he will take care
that it shall be lettered too. /^showish binding at\
tracts the eyes, and engages the attention of every-
body, — but with this difference, that women, and
men who are like women, mind the binding more
than the book ; whereas men of sense and learning
immediately examine the inside, and if they find
that it does not answer the finery on the outside
they throw it by with the greater indignation and
contempt. / I hope that when this edition of my
works shall be opened and read, the best judges will
find connection, consistency, solidity, and spirit in
it. Mr. Harte may recensere and emendare as much
as he pleases ; but it will be to little purpose, if you
do not co-operate with him. The work will be
imperfect. . . .

I like your account of the salt-works, which shows
that you gave some attention while you were seeing
them. But notwithstanding that by your account
the Swiss salt is (I dare say) very good, yet I am
apt to suspect that it falls a little short of the true
Attic salt, in which there was a peculiar quickness
and delicacy. That same Attic salt seasoned almost
all Greece except Boeotia ; and a great deal of it was
exported afterwards to Rome, where it was coun-
terfeited by a composition called Urbanity, which
in some time was brought to very near the perfection

le, /
ady

52 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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.

XII.

EPISTOLARY MODELS.

London, July 20, o. s. 1747.
. . . Apropos of letter-writing, the best models
that you can form yourself upon are Cicero, Car-
dinal d'Ossat, Madame Sevign^, and Comte Bussy
Rabutin. Cicero's Epistles to Atticus, and to his
familiar friends, are the best examples that you can
imitate in the friendly and the familiar style. The
simplicity and the clearness of Cardinal d'Ossat's
letters show how letters of business ought to be writ-
ten ; no affected turns, no attempts 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 enj'ouement and badi-
nage, there are none that equal Comte Bussy's and
Madame Sevign^'s. They are so natural that they
seem to be the extempore conversations of two
people of wit, rather than letters, — which are com-
monly studied, though they ought not to be so. I
would advise you to let that book be one in your
itinerant library; it will both amuse and inform
you.

TO HIS SOAT. 5 3

XIII.

TOLERANCE AND TRUTH RECOMMENDED.

London, Sept. 21, o. s. 1747.
Dear Boy, — I received by the last post your
letter of the 8th, n. s., and I do not wonder that
you are surprised at the credulity and superstition
of the Papists at Einsiedlen, and at their absurd
stories of their chapel.<VBut rememBeTat the same
time that errors and mistakes, however gross, in
matters of opinion, if they are sincere, are to hg J
pitied, but not punished nor laughed at.VThe blind-
ness of the understanding is as much to be pitied
as the bUndness of the eye ; and there is neither
jest nor guilt in a man's losing his way in either
case. Charity bids us set him right if we can, by \
arguments and persuasions ; but charity at the ,
same time forbids either to punish or ridicule his
misfortune. Every man's reason is, and must be,
his guide ; and I may as well expect that every
man should be of my size and complexion as that
he should reason just as I do. 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. It is the man who tells or who
acts a lie that is guilty, and not he who honestly
and sincerely believes the lie. I really know nothing
more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than

54 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

/lying. It is the production either of malice, cow-
/ ardice, or vanity, and generally misses of its aim in
/ every one of these views ; for lies are always de-
tected 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 in-
famous attempt, and whatever is said afterwards
to the disadvantage of that person, however true,
passes for calumny. If I lie or equivocate, for it is
the same thing, in order to excuse myself for some-
thing that I have said or done, and to avoid the
danger and the shame that I apprehend from it, I
discover at once my fear as well as my falsehood,
and only increase instead of avoiding the danger
and the shame ; I show myself to be the lowest and
the meanest of mankind, and am sure to be always
treated as such. Fear, instead of avoiding, invites
danger, for concealed cowards will insult known
ones. If one has had the misfortune to be in the
wrong, there is something noble in frankly owning
it ; it is the only way of atoning for it, and the
only way of being forgiven. Equivocating, evading,
shuffling, in order to remove a present danger or
inconveniency, is something so mean and betrays so
much fear, that whoever practises them always de-
serves to be and often will be kicked. There is
another sort of lies, inoffensive enough in them-

\ selves, but wonderfully ridiculous ; I mean those
. lies which a mistaken vanity suggests, that defeat

V

TO HIS SON. 55

the very end for which they are calculated, and ter-
minate in the humiliation and confusion of their
author, who is sure to be detected. These are
chiefly narrative and historical lies, all intended to
do infinite honor to their author. He is always the
hero of his own romances ; he has been in dangers
from which nobody but himself ever escaped; he
has seen with his own eyes whatever other people
have heard or read of; and has ridden more miles
post in one day than ever courier went in two. He
is soon discovered, and as soon becomes the object
of universal contempt and ridicule. Remember
then, as long as you live, that nothing but strict
truth can carry you through the world with either
your conscience or your honor unwounded. It is
not only your duty, but your interest, — as a proof
of which you may always observe that the greatest
fools are the greatest liars. For my own part,
I judge of every man's truth by his degree 9!
understanding. /

XIV.

CAUTION IN FORMING FRIENDSHIPS. —GOOD
COMPANY.

London, Oct. 9, o. s. 1747.
Dear Boy, — People of your age have, com-
monly, an unguarded frankness about them, which
makes them the easy prey and bubbles ^ of the artful
1 Dupes.

56 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

and the experienced ; they look upon every knave
or fool who tells them that he is their friend to be
really so ; and pay that profession of simulated
friendship with an indiscreet and unbounded confi-
dence, always to their loss, often to their ruin.
Beware therefore, now that you are coming into
the world, of these proffered friendships. Receive
them with great civility but with great incredulity
too, and pay them with compliments but not with
confidence. 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 friend-
ship is hastily produced by their being accidently
thrown together and pursuing the same course of
riot and debauchery. A fine friendship truly, and
well cemented by drunkenness and lewdness ! It
should rather be called a conspiracy against morals
and good manners, and be punished as such by the
civil magistrate. However, they have the impudence
and folly to call this confederacy a friendship. They
lend one another money for bad purposes ; they
engage in quarrels, offensive and defensive, for their
accomplices ; they tell one another all they know,
and often more too, when of a sudden some acci-
dent disperses them and they think no more of each
other, unless it be to betray and laugh at their im-

TO HIS SON. 57

prudent confidence. Remember to make a great
difference between companions and friends ; for a
very complaisant and agreeable companion may,
and often does, prove a very improper and a very
dangerous friend. People will in a great degree,
and not without reason, form their opinion of you
upon that which they have of your friends ; and
there is a Spanish proverb which says very justly,
" Tell me whom you live with and I will tell you who
you are." One may fairly suppose that the man who
makes a knave or a fool his friend has something
very bad to do or to conceal. But at the same time
that you carefully decline the friendship of knaves and
fools, if it can be called friendship, there is no occa-
sion to make either of them your enemies wantonly
and unprovoked, for they are numerous bodies ; and
I would rather choose a secure neutrality than alli-
ance or war with either of them. You may be a
declared enemy to their vices and follies without
being marked out by them as a personal one. Their
enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friend-
ship. Have a real reserve with almost everybody,
and have a seeming reserve with almost nobody;
for it is very disagreeable to seem reserved, and
very dangerous not to be so. Few people find the
true medium ; many are ridiculously mysterious
and reserved upon trifles, and many imprudently
communicative of all they know.

The next thing to the choice of your friends is
the choice of your company. Endeavor as much as
you can to keep company with people above you ;
there you rise as much as you sink with people be-

58 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

low you, for (as I have 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.
There are two sorts of good company, — one which
is called the beau monde, and consists of the 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 partic-
ular and valuable art or science. For my own part,
I used to think myself in company as much above
me, when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope,^
as if I had been with all the princes in Europe.
What I mean by low company — which should by
all means be avoided — is the company of those
who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in
themselves, think they are honored by being in your
company, and who flatter every vice and every folly
you have in order to engage you to converse with
them. The pride of being the first of the company
is but too common ; but it is very silly and very
prejudicial. Nothing in the world lets down a char-
acter quicker than that wrong turn.

1 This allusion to Pope recalls Lord Chesterfield's epi-
gram upon a full-length portrait of Beau Nash, placed in
the Pump Room at Bath between the busts of Newton and
Pope, —

" This picture, placed the busts between,
Gives satire all its strength ;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length."

TO HIS SON. 59

You may possibly ask me whether a man has it
always in his power to get the best company, and
how ? I say, Yes, he has, by deserving it ; provided
he is but in circumstances which enable him to
appear upon the footing of a gentleman. Merit
and good breeding will make their way everywhere,
I'-Knowiedge will introduce him and good breedingj
will endear him to the best companies ; /for as I
have often told you, politeness and good breeding
are absolutely necessary to adorn any or all other
good qualities or talents. Without them no knowl-
edge, no perfection whatever, 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.

I long to hear from my several correspondents at
Leipzig of your arrival there, and what impression
you make on them at first ; for I have Arguses with
a hundred eyes each who will watch you narrowly
and relate to me faithfully. My accounts will cer-
tainly be true ; it depends upon you entirely of what
kind they shall be. Adieu.

XV.

THE ART OF PLEASING. — INDULGENCE FOR THE
WEAKNESSES OF OTHERS.

London, Oct. i6, o. s. 1747.
Dear Boy, — The art of pleasing is a very neces^
sary one to possess, but a very difficult one to ac^
quire. It can hardly be reduced \.k\ rules ; and your

60 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

own good sense and observation will teach you more
of it than I can. " Do as you would be done by "
is the surest method that I know of pleasing. Ob-
serve carefully what pleases you in others, and prob-
ably the same thing in you will please others. If
you are pleased with the complaisance and attention
of others to your humors, your tastes, or your weak-
nesses, depend upon it the same complaisance and
attention on your part to theirs will equally please
them. Take the tone of the company that you are
in, and do not pretend to give it ; be serious, gay,
or even trifling, as you find the present humor of
the company, — this is an attention due from every
individual to the majority. Do not tell stories in
company; there is nothing more tedious and dis-
agreeable. If by chance you know a very short
story and exceedingly applicable to the present sub-
ject of conversation, tell it in as few words as pos-
sible ; and even then throw out that you do not love
to tell stories, but that the shortness of it tempted
you. Of all things banish the egotism out of your
conversation, and never think of entertaining people
with your own personal concerns or private affairs.
Though they are interesting to you, they are tedious
and impertinent to everybody else ; besides that,
one cannot keep one's own private affairs too secret.
Whatever you think your own excellencies may be,
do not affectedly display them in company, nor la-
bor, as many people do, to give that turn to the
conversation which may supply you with an oppor-
tunity of exhibiting them. If they are real they
will infallibly be discovered without your pointing

TO HIS SON. 6 1

them out yourself, and with much more advantage.
Never maintain an argument with heat and clamor,
though you think or know yourself to be in the
right, but give your opinion modestly and coolly,
which is the only way to convince ; and if that does
not do, try to change the conversation by saying,
with good humor, " We shall hardly convince one
another, nor is it necessary that we should ; so let
us talk of something else."

Remember that there is a local propriety to be
observed in all companies, and that what is ex-
tremely proper in one company may be, and often
is, highly improper in another.

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 par-
ticular characters, the habits, the cant of one com-
pany may give merit to a word or a gesture which
would have none at all if divested of those acci-
dental circumstances. Here people very commonly
err; and fond of something that has entertained
them in one company and in certain circumstances,
repeat it with emphasis in another where it is either
insipid, or, it may be, offensive by being ill-timed or
misplaced. Nay, they often do it with this silly
preamble, " I will tell you an excellent thing," or
**I will tell you the best thing in the world." This
raises expectations, which when absolutely disap-
pointed, make the relator of this excellent thing
look, very deservedly, like a fool.

If you would particularly gain the affection and
friendship of particular people, whether men or

62 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

women, endeavor to find out their predominant ex-
cellency, if they have one, and their prevailing weak-
ness, which everybody has, and do justice to the
one and something more than justice to the other.
Men have various objects in which they may excel,
or at least would be thought to excel ; and though
they love to hear justice done to them where they
know that they excel, yet they are most and best
flattered upon those points where they wish to ex-
cel and yet are doubtful whether they do or not.
As, for example, Cardinal Richelieu, who was un-
doubtedly the ablest statesman of his time, or per-
haps of any other, had the idle vanity of being
thought the best poet, too ; he envied the great
Corneille his reputation, and ordered a criticism to
be written upon the Cid. Those therefore who
flattered skilfully said little to him of his abilities in
state affairs, or at least but en passant, and as it
might naturally occur. But the incense which they
gave him the smoke of which they knew would
turn his head in their favor, was as a bel esprit and a
poet. Why? Because he was sure of one excel-
lency:,^ ap.d distrustful as to the othetJ You will
(easily discover every man's prevaiUng vanity by ob-
serving his favorite topic of conversation ; for every
man talks most of what he has most a mind to be
thought to excel in. Touch him but there, and you
touch him to the quick. The late Sir Robert Wal-
pole (who was certainly an able man) was little
open to flattery upon that head, for he was in no
doubt himself about it ; but his prevailing weakness
was to be thought to have a polite and happy turn

TO HIS SON. 63

to gallantry, of which he had undoubtedly less than
any man living. It was his favorite and frequent
subject of conversation, which proved to those who
had any penetration that it was his prevailing weak-
ness ; and they applied to it with success.

Women have in general but one object, which is
their beauty, upon which scarce any flattery is too
gross for them to swallow. Nature has hardly
formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to
flattery upon her person ; if her face is so shocking
that she must in some degree be conscious of it, her
figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends
for it ; if her figure is deformed, her face, she
thinks, counterbalances it ; if they are both bad,
she comforts herself that she has graces, a certain
manner, a j'e ne sais qiioi ^ 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 that 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.

Do not mistake me and think that I mean to
recommend to you abject and criminal flattery.
No, flatter nobody's vices or crimes ; on the con-
trary, abhor and discourage them. But there is no

1 For an admirable analysis of this expression the reader
is referred to the letter to his godson dated Aug. 9, 1768,
and given in this volume at page 293.

64 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFLELD

living in the world without a complaisant indulgence
for people's weaknesses and innocent though ridic-
ulous vanities. If a man has a mind to be thought
wiser and a woman handsomer than they really are,
their error is a comfortable one to themselves and
an innocent one with regard to other people ; and I
would rather make them my friends by indulging
them in it than my enemies by endeavoring — and
that to no purpose — to undeceive them.

There are little attentions likewise which are in-
finitely engaging, and which sensibly affect that de-
gree of pride and self-love which is inseparable from
human nature, as they are unquestionable proofs of
the regard and consideration which we have for the
person to whom we pay them. As, for example, to
observe the little habits, the likings, the antipa-
thies, and the tastes of those whom we would
gain, and then take care to provide them with the
one and to secure them from the other, — giving
them genteelly to understand that you had observed
that they liked such a dish or such a room, for
which reason you had prepared it ; or, on the
contrary, that having observed they had an aversion
to such a dish, a dislike to such a person, etc., you
had taken care to avoid presenting them. Such
attention to such trifles flatters self-love much
more than greater things, as it makes people think
themselves almost the only objects of your thoughts
and care.

These are some of the arcana necessary for your
initiation in the great society of the world. I wish
I had known them better at your age ; I have paid

TO HIS SON. 65

the price of three and fifty years for them, and shall
not grudge it if you reap the advantage. Adieu.

XVI.

ON COMBINING STUDY WITH PLEASURE.

London, Oct. 30, o. s. 1747.

In short, be curious, attentive, inquisitive as to
everything ; listlessness and indolence are always
blamable, but at your age they are unpardonable.
Consider how precious and how important for all the
rest of your life are your moments for these next
three or four years, and do not lose one of them.
Do not think I mean that you should study all day
long ; I am far from advising or desiring it ; but I
desire that you would be doing something or other
all day long, and not neglect half hours and quarters
of hours, which at the year's end amount to a great
sum. For instance, there are many short intervals
during the day between studies and pleasures ; in-
stead of sitting idle and yawning in those intervals,
take up any book, though ever so trifling a one, even
down to a jest-book, it is still better than doing
nothing.

Nor do I call pleasures idleness or time lost, pro-
vided they are the pleasures of a rational being ; on
the contrary, a certain portion of your time em-
ployed in those pleasures is very usefully employed.
Such are public spectacles, assemblies of good com-
pany, cheerful suppers, and even balls ; but then
S

66 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

these require attention, or else your time is quite
lost.

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 in it, and without
observing the characters of the persons or the sub-
jects 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 ab-
sence 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.

XVII.

A WISE GUIDE THE BEST FRIEND.

London, Nov. 24, 1747.

Whatever your pleasures may be, I neither can nor
shall envy you them, as old people are sometimes
suspected by young people to do ; and I shall only
lament, if they should prove such as are unbecoming
a man of honor or below a man of sense. But you

TO HIS son: 6j

will be the real sufferer if they are such. As there-
fore it is plain that I can have no other motive than
that of affection in whatever I say to you, you ought
to look upon me as your best, and for some years to
come, your only friend.

True friendship requires certain proportions of age
and manners, and can never subsist where they are
extremely different, except in the relations of parent
and child, where affection on one side and regard
on the other make up the difference. The friend-
ship which you may contract with people of your own
age may be sincere, may be warm, but must be for
some time reciprocally unprofitable, as there can be
no experience on either side. 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 run me into. My father was neither
desirous nor able to advise me ; ^ which is what, I

1 Lord Chesterfield's father seems to have contracted a
dislike to him ; and his early training fell to the care of his
grandmother, Lady Halifax.

68 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

hope, you cannot say of yours. You see that I make
use only of the word " advice," because I would much
rather have the assent of your reason to my advice
than the submission of your will to my authority.
This, I persuade myself, will happen from that de-
gree of sense which I think you have ; and therefore
I will go on advising, and with hopes of success.

XVIII.

THE VALUE OF TIME.

London, Dec. ii, o. s. 1747.
Dear Boy, — There is nothing which I more wish
that you should know, and which fewer people do
know, than the true use and value of Time. It is
in everybody's mouth, but in few people's practice.
Every fool who slatterns away his whole time in
nothings, utters, however, some trite common-
place sentence, of which there are millions, to
prove at once the value and the fleetness of time.
The sun-dials, likewise, all over Europe have
some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that
nobody squanders away their time without hearing
and seeing daily how necessary it is to employ it
well, and how irrecoverable it is if lost. But all these
admonitions are useless where there is not a fund of
good sense and reason to suggest them rather than
receive them. By the manner in which you now
tell me that you employ your time, I flatter myself

TO HIS SON. '69

that you have that fund ; that is the fund which will
make you rich indeed. I do not therefore mean
to give you a critical essay upon the use and abuse
of time, but I will only give you some hints with
regard 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 the master of while you breathe. 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 lio shade when we grow
old. I neither require nor expect from you great
application to books after you are once thrown out
into the great world. I know it is impossible, and it
may even in some cases be improper; this there-
fore is your time, and your only time, for unwearied
and uninterrupted application. If you should some-
times think it a little laborious, consider that labor
is the unavoidable fatigue of a necessary journey.
The more hours a day you travel, the sooner you
will be at your journey's end. The sooner you are
qualified for your liberty, the sooner you shall have
it ; and your manumission will entirely depend upon
the manner in which you employ the intermediate
time. I think I offer you a very good bargain
when I promise you upon my word that if you will
do everything that I would have you do till you
are eighteen, I will do everything that you would
have me do ever afterwards.

70 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

XIX.

TIME WELL AND TIME ILL SPENT. — OBSERVATION
RECOMiMENDED.

Bath, Feb. i6, o. s. 1748,
Dear Boy, — The first use that I made of my Hb-
erty ^ was to come hither, where I arrived yesterday.
My health, though not fundamentally bad, yet for
want of proper attention of late wanted some repairs,
which these waters never fail giving it. I shall drink
them a month, and return to London, there to en-
joy 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
frieze of my library in my new house,^ —

Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et, inertibus horis
Ducere sollicitae jucunda oblivia vitae.

I must observe to you upon this occasion that the
uninterrupted satisfaction which I expect to find in
that library will be chiefly owing to my having em-
ployed some part of my life well at your age. I
wish I had employed it better, and my satisfaction
would now be complete ; but, however, I planted
while young that degree of knowledge which is now
my refuge and my shelter. Make your plantations
still more extensive ; they will more than pay you for
your trouble. I do not regret the time that I passed

^ He had just resigned the office of Secretary of State.
* Chesterfield House in London.

TO HIS son: 'J I

in pleasures ; they were seasonable ; they were the
pleasures of youth, and I enjoyed them while young.
If I had not, I should probably have overvalued
them now, as we are very apt to do what we do not
know ; but knowing them as I do, I know their real
value, and how much they are generally overrated.
Nor do I regret the time that I have passed in business
for the same reason ; those who see only the out-
side of it imagine it has hidden charms, which they
pant after, and nothing but acquaintance can unde-
ceive them, I, who have been behind the scenes
both of pleasure and business, and have seen all the
springs and pulleys of those decorations which as-
tonish 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 em-
ployed ; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
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 nec-
essary and as useful ; they fashion and form you for
the world ; they teach you characters, and show you
the human heart in its unguarded minutes. But
then remember to make that use of them. I have
known many people from laziness of mind go

72 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

through both pleasure and business with equal inat-
tention, 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. Ap-
profondissez : 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 misleads.
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. 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
otherwise might be thought impertinent, by your
manner 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 ques-
tions, but nobody can inform me so well as you," or
something of that kind.

Now that you are in a Lutheran country, go to
their churches and observe the manner of their
public worship ; attend to their ceremonies and
inquire the meaning and intention of every one of
them. And as you will soon understand German
well enough, attend to their sermons and observe
their manner of preaching. Inform yourself of their
church government, whether it resides in the sove-
reign or in consistories and synods ; whence arises

TO HIS SON. 73

the maintenance of their clergy, whether from tithes
as in England, or from voluntary contributions or
from pensions from the State. Do the same thing
when you are in Roman-Catholic countries ; go to
their churches, see all their ceremonies, ask the
meaning of them, get the terms explained to you, —
as, for instance, Prime, Tierce, Sexte, Nones, Matins,
Angelus, High Mass, Vespers, Complies, etc. In-
form yourself of their several religious orders, their
founders, their rules, their vows, their habits, their
revenues, etc. But when you frequent places of
public worship, as I would have you go to all the
different ones you meet with, remember that how-
ever erroneous, they are none of them_obiects of
laughter and ridicule. Sonest error is to be pitie^
not ridiculed. The object of all the public worsKi^
in the world is the same, — it is that great eternal
Being who created everything. The different man-
ners of worship are by no means subjects of ridicule.
Each sect thinks its own is the best, and I know
no infallible judge in this world to decide which is
the best. Make the same inquiries, wherever you
are, concerning the revenues, the military establish-
ment, 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.

74 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
XX.

RIGHT USE OF LEARNING: ABSURDITIES OF
PEDANTRY.

Bath, Feb. 22, o. s, 1748.
f Dear Boy, — Every excellency, and every virtue,
I has its kindred vice or weakness, and if carried be-
\[yond certain bounds sinks into one or the other.
/Generosity often runs into profusion, economy into
( avarice, courage into rashness, caution into timidity,
Xand so on, insomuch that I believe there is more
judgment required for the proper conduct of our
virtues than for avoiding their opposite vices. Vice
in its true light is so deformed that it shocks us at
first sight, and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did
not at first wear the mask of some virtue. But
virtue is in itself so beautiful, that it charms us at
first sight ; engages us more and more upon further
acquaintance \ and as with other beauties, we think
excess impossible. It is here that judgment is neces-
sary to moderate and direct the effects of an excel-
lent cause. I shall apply this reasoning at present
not to any particular virtue, but to an excellency,
which for want of judgment is often the cause of
ridiculous and blamable effects; I mean great
learning, — which if not accompanied with sound
judgment, frequently carries us into error, pride, and
pedantry. As I hope you will possess that excel-
lency in its utmost extent and yet without its too
common failings, the hints which my experience
can suggest may probably not be useless to you.

TO HIS son: 75

Some learned men, proud of their knowledge,
only speak to decide, and give judgment without
appeal ; the consequence of which is that mankind,
provoked by the insult and injured by the oppres-
sion, revolt, and in order to shake off the tyranny,
even call the lawful authority in question. Thej
more you know the modester you should be ;/anQ
(by the by) that modesty is the surest way of grati-
fying your vanity. Even where you are sure, seem
rather doubtful; represent but do not pronounce;
and if you would convince others, seem opentoj
conviction yourself.

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 Modems 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 modem trash ; and
will show you plainly that no improvement has been
made in any one art or science these last seventeen
hundred years. I would by no means have you dis-
own your acquaintance with the ancients, but still
less would I have you brag of an exclusive intimacy
with them. Speak of the moderns 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.

Some great scholars most absurdly draw all their
maxims, both for public and private life, from what
they call parallel cases in the ancient authors, with-

']6 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

out considering that in the first place there nevei
were, since the creation of the world, two cases
exactly parallel ; and in the next place that there
never was a case stated or even known by any
historian with every one of its circumstances, which
however ought to be known in order to be reasoned
from. Reason upon the case itself and the several
circumstances that attend it, and act accordingly,
but not from the authority of ancient poets or
historians. Take into your consideration, if you
please, cases seemingly analogous ; but take them
as helps only, not as guides. We are really so pre-
judiced by our education, that, as the ancients dei-
fied their heroes, we deify their madmen, — of which,
with all due regard for antiquity, I take Leonidas
and Curtius to have been two distinguished ones.
And yet a solid pedant would, in a speech in Parlia-
ment relative to a tax of two-pence 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. I have known these absurdi-
ties carried so far by people of injudicious learning
that I should not be surprised if some of them were
to propose, while we are 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.

There is another species of learned men, who
though less dogmatical and supercilious, are not less

TO HIS SON. 77

impertinent. These are the communicative and
shining pedants who adorn their conversation, even
with women, by happy quotations of Greek and
Latin, and who have contracted such a familiarity
with the Greek and Roman authors that they call
them by certain names or epithets denoting inti-
macy, — as old Homer ; that sly rogue Horace ;
Maro, instead of Virgil ; and Naso, instead of Ovid.
These are often imitated by coxcombs who have no
learning at all, but who have got some names and
some scraps of ancient . authors by heart, which they
improperly and impertinently retail in all companies,
in hopes of passing for scholars. If therefore you
would avoid the accusation of pedantry on one hand,
or the suspicion of ignorance on the other, abstain
from learned ostentation. Speak the language of
the company that you are in ; speak it purely, and
unlarded with any other. Never seem wiser nor
more learned than the people you are with. Wear
your learning, 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.

XXI.

THE GRACES. — THE ABSURDITY OF LAUGHTER.

Bath, March 9, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — I must from time to time remind
you of what I have often recommended to you, and

78 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

of what you cannot attend to too much, — Sacrifice to
the Graces. The different effects of the same things
said or done when accompanied or abandoned by
them, is almost inconceivable. They prepare the
way to the heart ; and the heart has such an influ-
ence over the understanding, that it is worth while
to engage it in our interest. It is the whole of
women, who are guided by nothing else ; and it has
so much to say even with men, and the ablest men
too, that it commonly triumphs in every struggle with
the understanding. Monsieur de Rochefoucault,
in his Maxims, says that "I'esprit est souvent la
dupe du coeur." If he had said, instead of souvent,
pre s que totijours, I fear he would have been nearer
the truth. This being the case, aim at the heart.
Intrinsic merit alone will not do. It will gain you
the general esteem of all, but not the particular af-
fection, that is, the heart, of any. To engage the
affection of any particular person, you must, over
and above your general merit, have some particulai!
merit to that person by services done or offered, by
expressions of regard and esteem, by complaisance,
attentions, etc., for him ; and the graceful manner of
doing all these things opens the way to the heart,
and facilitates or rather insures their effects. From
your own observation, reflect what a disagreeable
impression an awkward address, a slovenly figure,
an ungraceful manner of speaking, — whether stut-
tering, muttering, monotony, or drawling, — an un-
attentive behavior, etc., make upon you, at first
sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice you
against him, though for aught you know he may

TO HIS SON. 79

have great intrinsic sense and merit. And reflect
on the other hand how much the opposites of all
these things prepossess you at first sight in favor of
those who enjoy them. You wish to find all good
qualities in them, and are in some degree disap-
pointed if you do not. A thousand little things, not
separately 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, 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 in-
gredients in the composition of the pleasing yV ne
sais quoi, which everybody feels though nobody can
describe. Observe carefully, then, what displeases
or pleases you in others, and be persuaded that in
general the same things will please or displease
them in you. Having mentioned laughing, I must '
particularly warn you against it ; and I could heart-
ily wish that you may often be seen to smile but
never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and
loud laughter 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. True wit or
sense never yet made anybody laugh ; they are
above it ; they please the mind, and give a cheer-
fulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoon-
ery or silly accidents that always excite laughter;
and that is what people of sense and breeding

80 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERF/ELD

should show themselves above. A man's going to
sit down in the supposition that he has a chair be-
hind him, and falling down 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 gayety, people do not enough attend to its absurd-
ity. I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical
disposition, 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. Many people, at first from awk-
wardness and mauvaise honte, have got a very dis-
agreeable and silly trick of laughing whenever they
speak ; and I know a man of very good parts, Mr.
Waller, who cannot say the commonest thing with-
out laughing, which makes those who do not know
him take him at first for a natural fool. This and
many other very disagreeable habits are owing to
mauvaise hojite at their first setting out in the world.
They are ashamed in company, and so disconcerted
that they do not know what they do, and try a thou-
sand tricks to keep themselves in countenance,
which tricks afterwards grow habitual to them.
Some scratch their heads, others twirl their hats ; in
short, every awkward, ill-bred body has his trick.
But the frequency does not justify the thing, and all
these vulgar habits and awkwardnesses, though not

TO HIS SON.

criminal, indeed, are most carefully to be guarded
against, as they are great bars in the way of the art
of pleasing. Remember that to please is almost to
prevail, or at least a necessary previous step to it.

XXII.

DISSIMULATION FOUND NOT ONLY IN COURTS.—
TRITE OBSERVATIONS.

London, May lo, 1748.

It is a trite and commonplace observation that
Courts are the seat of falsehood and dissimulation.
That, like many, I might say most, commonplace
observations, is false. Falsehood and dissimulation
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
practise 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.

Having mentioned commonplace observations, I
will particularly caution you against either using, be-
6

82 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

lieving, or approving them. They are the common
topics of witUngs and coxcombs ; those who really
have wit have the utmost contempt for them, and
scorn even to laugh at the pert things that those
would-be wits say upon such subjects.

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 rake ; 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 relig-
ion and morality, or at least decency, from their
education and manner of life.

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 contrary. The husband certainly
wishes his wife at the devil, and the wife certainly
deceives 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.

These, and many other commonplace reflections
upon nations, or professions in general, — which are
at least as often false as true, — are the poor refuge

TO HIS SON. 83

of people who have neither wit nor invention of
their own, but endeavor to shine in company by
second-hand finery. I always put these pert jacka-
napeses 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.

XXIII.

AN AWKWARD MAN AT COURT. —WELL-BRED EASE.

London, May i-j, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — I received yesterday your letter of
the 1 6th, N. s., and have in consequence of it writ-
ten this day to Sir Charles Williams to thank him
for all the civilities he has shown you. Your first
setting out at court has, I find, been very favor-
able, and his Polish Majesty has distinguished you.
I hope you received that mark of distinction with
respect and with steadiness, which is the proper be-
havior of a man of fashion. People of a low,
obscure education cannot stand the rays of great-
ness ; they are frightened out of their wits when
kings and great men speak to them ; they are awk-
ward, ashamed, and do not know what or how to
answer; whereas, les honnites gens are not dazzled

/

84 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

by superior rank; they know and pay all the re-
spect that is due to it ; but they do it without being
disconcerted, 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 ! 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 themselves 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 insolence, and
with his superiors with respect andeasg^ He talks
to kings without concern ; he trifles with women of
the first condition with familiarity, gayety, but re-
spect ; and converses with his equals whether he is
acquainted with them or not, upon general common
topics that are not however quite frivolous, without
the least concern of mind or awkwardness of body,
neither of which can appear to advantage but when
they are perfectly easy.

TO HIS SON. 85

XXIV.

THE LAZY MIND AND THE FRIVOLOUS MIND.

London, July 26, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — There are two sorts of understand-
ings, 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
first difficulties (and everything worth knowing or
having is attained with some), stops short, contents
itself with easy and consequently superficial knowl-
edge, and prefers a great degree of ignorance to a
small degree of trouble. These people either think
or represent most things as impossible, whereas
few things are so to industry and activity. But
difficulties seem to them impossibilities, or at least
they pretend to think them so by way of excuse for
their laziness. An hour's attention to the same
subject is too laborious for them ; they take every-
thing in the light in which it first presents itself,
never consider 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 people who have considered
them with attention, they only discover their own
ignorance and laziness, and lay themselves open to
answers that put them in confusion. Do not then

86 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

be discouraged by the first difficulties, but contra
audentior ito ; and resolve to go to the bottom of
all those things which every gentleman ought to
know well. Those arts or sciences which are
peculiar to certain professions need not be deeply
known by those who are not intended for those
professions; as, for instance, fortification and
navigation ; of both which, a superficial and general
knowledge such as the common course of conversa-
tion with a very little inquiry on your part will
give you, is sufficient. Though, by the way, a little
more knowledge of fortification may be of some use
to you, as the events of war in sieges make many
of the terms of that science occur frequently in
common conversation; and one would be sorry to
say, like the Marquis de Mascarille in Moli^re's
" Pr^cieuses Ridicules," when he hears of une demie
iune, " Ma foi ! c'etoit bien une lune toute enti^re."
But those things which every gentleman, indepen-
dently of profession, should know, he ought to
know well, and dive into all the depth of them.
Such are languages, history, and geography, ancient
and modern, philosophy, rational logic, rhetoric ;
and for you particularly, the constitutions, and the
civil and military state of every country in Europe.
This, I confess, is a pretty large circle of knowledge,
attended with some difficulties, and requiring some
trouble ; which, however, an active and industrious
mind will overcome, and be amply repaid. The
trifling and frivolous mind is always busied, but to
little purpose ; it takes little objects for great ones,
and throws away upon trifles that time and atten-

TO HIS SON. Zj

tion which only important things deserve. Knick-
knacks, butterflies, shells, insects, etc., are the
subjects of their most serious researches. They
contemplate the dress, not the characters, of the
company they keep. They attend more to the
decorations of a play than to the sense of it, and to
the ceremonies of a court more than to its politics.
Such an employment of time is an absolute loss of
it. You have now, at most, three years to employ,
either well or ill ; for as I have often told you, you
will be all your life what you shall be three years
hence. For God's sake then reflect. Will you
throw this time away either in laziness or in trifles ;
or will you not rather employ every moment of it
in a manner that must so soon reward you with so
much pleasure, figure, and character? I cannot, I
will not, doubt of your choice. Read only useful
books ; and never quit a subject till you are thor-
oughly master of it, but read and inquire on till
then. When you are in company, bring the con-
versation to some useful subject, but a port^e of that
company. Points of history, matters of literature,
the customs of particular countries, the several
orders of knighthood, as Teutonic, Maltese, etc., are
surely better subjects of conversation than the
weather, dress, or fiddle-faddle stories 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. This therefore is an entertain-
ing and instructive subject of conversation, and
will likewise give you an opportunity of observing

88 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

how very differently characters are given from the
different passions and views of those who give them.
Never be ashamed nor afraid of asking questions ;
for if they lead to information, and if you accom-
pany them with some excuse, you will never be
reckoned an impertinent or rude questioner. 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 can better
steal a horse than another look over the hedge."
There are few things that may not be said in
some manner or other ; either in a seeming confi-
dence, or a genteel irony, or introduced with wit ;
and one great part of the knowledge of the world
consists in knowing when and where to make use of
these different manners. The graces of the person,
the countenance, and the way of speaking con-
tribute so much to this, that I am convinced the
very same thing said by a genteel person in an
engaging way, and gracefully and distinctly spoken,
would please, which would shock, if muttered out
by an awkward figure with a sullen, serious counte-
nance. The poets always represent Venus as at-
tended by the three Graces, to intimate that even
beauty will not do without. I think they should
have given Minerva three also, for without them I
am sure learning is very unattractive. Invoke them
then, distinctly, to accompany all your words and
motions. Adieu.

TO HIS SON. 89

XXV.

HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.

London, Aug. 30, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — Your reflections upon the conduct
of France from the treaty of Miinster to this time
are very just ] and I am very glad to find by them,
that you not only read, but that you think and re-
flect upon what you read. Many great readers load
their memories without exercising their judgments,
and make lumber-rooms of their heads instead of
furnishing them usefully ; facts are heaped upon
facts without order or distinction, and may justly be
said to compose that

" Rudis indigestaque moles

Quam dixere chaos."
Go on, then, in the way of reading that you are in ;
take nothing for granted upon the bare authority of
the author, but weigh and consider in your own
mmd the probability of the facts and the justness
of the reflections. Consult 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, certainty (I fear) not being to
be found. When a historian pretends to give you
the causes and motives of events, compare those
causes and motives with the characters and interests
of the parties concerned, and judge for yourself
whether they correspond or not. Consider whether
you cannot assign others more probable \ and in

90 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

that examination dp not despise some very mean
and trifling causes of the actions of great men ; for
so various and inconsistent is human nature, so
strong and so changeable are our passions, so iiuc-
tuating are our wills, and so much are our minds
influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every
man is more the man of the day than a regular con-
sequential character. The best have something bad,
and something little^ the worst have something
/^od, and sometimes something great, — for I do not
f believe what Velleius Paterculus (for the sake of
saying a pretty thing) says of Scipio, " Qui nihil non
laudandum aut fecit, aut dixit, aut sensit." As for
the reflections of historians with which they think
it necessary to interlard their histories or at least to
conclude their chapters, — and which in the French
histories are always introduced with a tant il est
vrai, and in the English, so true it is, — do not
adopt them implicitly upon the credit of the author,
but analyze them yourself, and judge whether they
are true or not.

XXVI.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF WOMEN. — RIGHT USE
OF WIT.

London, Sept. 5, o. s. 1748.

As women are a considerable or at least a pretty
numerous part of company, and as their suffrages go

TO HIS SON. 91

a great way towards establishing a man's character
in the fashionable part of the world, — which is of
great importance to the fortune and figure he pro-
poses to make in it, — it is necessary to please them.
I will therefore upon this subject let you into cer-
tain arcana, that will be very useful 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 knew in my life one
that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequen-
tially for four-and-twenty hours together. Some
little passion or humor always breaks in upon their
best resolutions. Their beauty neglected or con-
troverted, 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, fonvard 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 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 ;

92 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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
gratefully 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 under-
standings ; but those who are in a state of medioc-
rity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least
their graces, for every woman who is not abso-
lutely 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 understanding ; 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 conse-
quently — and probably 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 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 vionde and make it
either current, or cry it down and stop it in
payments. It is therefore absolutely necessary to
manage, please, and flatter them, and never to dis-

TO HIS SON. 93

cover the least marks of contempt, which is what
they never forgive ; but in this they are not singular,
for it is the same with men, who will much sooner
forgive an injustice than an insult. Every man is
not ambitious, or courteous, or passionate ; but
every man has pride enough in his composition to
feel and resent the least slight and contempt. Re-
member 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 imper-
fections known than their crimes ; and if you hint
to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even
ill bred or awkward, 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 weaknesses and infirmities for the sake
either of diverting the company or showing your
own superiority. You may get the laugh on your
side by it for the present, but you will make enemies
by it forever ; 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 desires 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.

These are some of the hints which my long ex-
perience in the great world enables me to give you.

94 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFLELD

and which if you attend to them may prove useful
to you in your journey through it. I wish it may
be a prosperous one ; at least I am sure that it must
be your own fault if it is not.

XXVII.

OUR TENDENCY TO EXALT THE PAST. — ON SECRETS.
London, Sept. 13, o. s. 1748.

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 surprise us near so
much as the things which we read of in times past,
though not in the least more extraordinary ; 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 extravagances from the same quarter.
This is so true, that we read every day with astonish-
ment 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 remember that I saw without

1 The Cardinal De Retz.

TO HIS SON. 95

either the execution of Shepherd,^ a boy of eighteen
years old, who intended to shoot the late king, and
who would have been pardoned if he would have ex-
pressed the least sorrow for his intended crime ; but
on the contrary he declared that if he was pardoned
he would attempt it again ; that he thought it a duty
which he owed to his country ; and that he died with
pleasure for having endeavored to perform it. Reason
equals Shepherd to Regulus ; but prejudice and the
recency of the fact make Shepherd a common male-
factor and Regulus a hero.

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 commonly im-
agines." By this he means a secret of importance
among people interested in the keeping of it ; and
it is certain that people of business know the impor-
tance of secrecy, and will observe it where they are
concerned in the event. To go and tell any friend,
wife, or mistress any secret with which they have
nothing to do, is discovering to them such an unre-
tentive 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 dis-
covered. 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

1 James Shepherd, a coach-painter's apprentice, was exe-
cuted at Tyburn for high treason, March 17, 1718, in the
reign of George the First.

96 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

should be a good many. Little secrets are com-
monly told again, but great ones are generally kept.
Adieu !

XXVIII.

AGAINST THE REFINEMENTS OF CASUISTRY.

London, Sept. 27, o. s. 1748.

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 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 reasonings
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 sophis-
try being very convenient and welcome to people's
passions and appetites, they gladly accept the indul-

TO HIS SON. 97

gence without desiring to detect the fallacy of the
reasoning : and indeed many, I might say most peo-
ple, are not able to do it, — which makes the publica-
tion of such quibblings and refinements the more
pernicious. I am no skilful casuist nor subtle dis-
putant ; 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 em-
brace the profession as an innocent if not even a laud-
able one, and to puzzle people of some degree of
knowledge to answer me point by point. I have
seen a book, entitled " Quidlibet ex Quolibet," or the
art of making anything out of anything; which is
not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits
certain plain truths, obvious in gross to every un-
derstanding, in order to run after the ingenious
refinements of warm imaginations and speculative a ff
reasonings. Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, zStK^''^^—
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, drinking, 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 con-
vinced by them that I am determined to go on to
eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep
that matter, which I so mistakenly imagine my body
at present to consist of, in as good plight as possi-
ble. Common-sense (which in truth is very un-
common) is the best sense I know of. Abide by it ;
7

98 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

it will counsel you best. Read and hear for year
amusement ingenious systems, nice questions sub-
tilely agitated, with all the refinements that warm
imaginations suggest ; but consider them only as ex-
ercitations for the mind, and return always to settle
with common-sense.

XXIX.

TRUE GOOD COMPANY DEFINED.

October 12, O- s. 1748.

/^To keep good company, especially at your first
\getting 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 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
company are pleased either to call or think them-
selves, but it is that company which all the people
of the place call, and acknowledge to be, good com-
pany, notwithstanding some objections which they
may form to some of the individuals who compose
it. It consists chiefly (but by no means without ex-
ception) of people of considerable birth, rank, and
character ; for people of neither birth nor rank are
frequently and very justly admitted into it, if dis-
tinguished by any peculiar merit, or eminency in
any liberal art or science. Nay, so motley a thing

TO HIS SON. 99

is good company that many people without birth,
rank, or merit intrude into it by their own forward-
ness, and others slide into it by the protection of
some considerable person ; and some even of indif-
ferent characters and morals make part of it. But
in the main, the good part preponderates, and people
of infamous and blasted characters are never ad-
mitted. In this fashionable good company, the best
manners and the best language of the place are most
unquestionably 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.

A company consisting wholly of people of the
first quality cannot for that reason be called good
company, 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
merit or parts may be, can never be called good
company; and consequently 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

100 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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 literati by
profession, 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
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. You will perhaps be surprised that I should
think it necessary to warn you against such com-
pany, but yet I do not think it wholly unnecessary
from the many instances which I have seen of men
of sense and rank discredited, vilified, and undone
by keeping such company. Vanity, that source of
many of our follies and of some of our crimes, has
sunk many a man into company in every light

TO HIS SON. lOI

infinitely below himself, for the sake of being the
first man in it. There he dictates, is applauded, ad-
mired ; and for the sake of being the Coryphaeus of
that wretched chorus, disgraces and disqualifies him-
self soon for any better company. Depend upon
it, you will sink or rise to the level of the company
which you commonly keep ; people will judge of
you, and not unreasonably, by that. There is good
sense in the Spanish saying, '^'ell me whom yo^
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 in the place
allows to be the best company 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 good company. Good
company (as I have before observed) is composed
of a great variety of fashionable people, whose
characters and morals are very different, though
their manners are pretty much the same. When a
young man, new in the world, first gets into that
company, he very rightly determines to conform to
and imitate it. But then he too often and fatally
mistakes the objects of his imitation. He has often
heard that absurd term of " genteel and fashionable
vices." He there sees some people who shine and
who in general are admired and esteemed, and
observes that these people are . . . drunkards or
gamesters, upon which he adopts their vices, mis-
taking their defects for their perfections, and think-
ing that they owe their fashion and their lustre to

I02 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

those genteel vices. Whereas it is exactly the
reverse ; for these people have acquired their repu-
tation by their parts, their learning, their good
breeding, and other accomplishments, and are
only blemished and lowered, in the opinions of all
reasonable people, and of their own in time, by
these genteel and fashionable vices.

XXX.

CONDUCT IN GOOD COMPANY. — ON MIMICRY.

Bath, Oct. 19, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — Having in my last pointed out what
sort of company you should keep, I will now give
you some rules for your conduct in it, — rules which
my own experience and observation enable me to
lay down and communicate to you with some degree
of confidence. I have often given you hints of this
kind before, but then it has been by snatches ; I
will now be more regular and methodical. I shall
say nothing with regard to your bodily carriage
and address, but leave them to the care of your
dancing-master and to your own attention to the
best models ; remember, however, that they are of
consequence.

often, but never long ; in that case, if you do
lease, at least you are sure not to tire your
shearers^ Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat
lole company, — this being one of the very
few cases in which people do not care to be treated,

TO HIS SON. 103

every one being fully convinced that he has where-
withal to pay.

Tell stories very 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 unfortunate
man in company (commonly him whom they ob-
serve 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.

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 compan-
ies, argumentative, polemical conversations, — which

104 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose
for a time the contending parties toward each other ;
and if the controversy grows warm and noisy, en-
deavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity
or joke. I quieted such a conversation-hubbub once
by representing 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

tural 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.

some abruptly speak advantageously of them-
selves, without either pretence or provocation. They
are impudent. Others proceed more artfully as
they imagine, and forge accusations against them-
selves, complain of calumnies which they never heard,
in order to justify themselves by exhibiting a cata-
logue of their many virtues. ' They acknowledge it
may indeed seem odd that they should talk in that
manner of themselves ; it is what they do not like,
and what they never would have done, — no, no tor-
tures should ever have forced it from them, if they
had not been thus unjustly and monstrously accused !
But in these cases justice is surely due to one's self
as well as to others, and when our character is at-
tacked, we may say in our own justification what
otherwise we never would have said.' This thin veil
of modesty drawn before vanity is much too tran-

TO HIS SON. 105

sparent to conceal it even from very moderate
discernment.

Others go more modestly and more slyly still (as
they think) to work, but in my mind, still more
ridiculously. They confess themselves (not without
some degree of shame and confusion) into all the
cardinal virtues by first degrading them into weak-
nesses, and then owning their misfortune in being
made up of those weaknesses. 'They cannot see
people suffer without sympathizing with and endea-
voring to help them. They cannot see people want
without relieving them, though truly their own cir-
cumstances cannot very well afford it. They cannot
help speaking truth, though they know all the im-
prudence of it. In short, they know that with all
these weaknesses, they are not fit to live in the
world, much less to thrive in it ; but they are now
too old to change, and must rub on as well as they
can.' This sounds too ridiculous and oiitre, almost,
for the stage ; and yet, take my word for it, you will
frequently meet with it upon the common stage of
the world. And here I will observe, by the by, that
you will often meet with characters in Nature so
extravagant, that a discreet poet would not venture
to set them upon the stage in their true and high
coloring.

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 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

I06 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

post an hundred miles in six hours : probably it is
a lie ; but supposing it to be trae, what then ? Why
he is a very good post-boy, 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.

Such, and a thousand more, are the follies and
extravagances which vanity draws people into, and
which always defeat their own purpose; and as
Waller says, upon another subject, —

/' Make the wretch the most despised \
V Where most he wishes to be prized.'^

The only sure way of avoiding these evils is
never to speak of yourself at all. But when, histori-
cally, you are obliged to mention yourself, take care
not to drop one single word that can directly or in-
directly 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 var-
nish your defects or add lustre to your perfections ;
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 however
artfully dressed or disguised, they will all conspire
against you, and you will be disappointed of the
very end you aim at.

TO HIS SON. IQ-J

Take care never to seem dark and mysterious, — -
which is not only a very unamiable character but a
very suspicious one too. If you seem mysterious
with others, they will be really so with you, and you
will know nothing. The height of abilities is to
have volto sciolto and pensieri stretti ; that is, a\
frank, Qp£.n, and ingenuous exterior with a prudent j
interior ; to be upon your own guard, and yet byj
a seeming natural openness to put people off theirs/
Depend upon it, nine in ten of every company you
are in will avail themselves of every indiscreet and
unguarded expression of yours, if they can turn it to
their own advantage. A prudent reserve is, there-
fore, as necessary as a seeming openness is prudent,
dways look people in the face when you speak to \
them ; the not doing it is thought to irnply con-^
cious guily Besides that, you lose the advantage
otobserving by their countenances what impression
ryour discourse makes upon them. In order to\
know people's real sentiments, I trust much more \
to my eyes than to my ears ; for they can say what- I
ever they have a mind I should hear, but they can I

V seldom help looking what they have no intentionV
that I should know. "^^

f Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly ; de-1
ffamation of others may for the present gratify the
I malignity of the pride of our hearts, cool reflection
j will draw very disadvantageous conclusions from
I such a disposition ; and in the case of scandal, as
I in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as^
\^d as the thief.

Mimicry, which is the common and favorite amuse-

I08 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

ment 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, be able to take every dif-
ferent hue, which is by no means a criminal or 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
interlard their discourse with oaths, by way of em-
bellishment, as they think; but you must observe
too, that those who do so are never those who con-
tribute 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.

TO HIS SON. 109

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 coun-
tenance, or a silly, disconcerted grin, will be ill re-
ceived. 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, awk-
ward, 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 fnay be had,
if properly and diligently pursued. Adieu.

XXXI.

FURTHER RULES FOR CONDUCT IN GOOD COMPANY.

Bath, October 29, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — My anxiety for your success in-
creases in proportion as the time approaches of
your taking your part upon the great stage of the
world. ... I have long since done mentioning
your great religious and moral duties, because I

I lO LETTERS CF LORD CHESTERFIELD

could not make your understanding so bad a compli-
ment as to suppose that you wanted or could re-
ceive any new instructions upon these 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 nat-
ural ebriety, and want rails and gardefoiis 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 dis-
cretion and decency. These 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 gayety 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 of-
fend. 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.
Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some
virtue which some in company notoriously want,
or declaim against any vice which others are notor-
iously infected with, your reflections, however gen-
eral and unapplied, will by being applicable be

TO HIS SON. Ill

thought personal, and levelled at those people.
This consideration points out to you sufficiently not
to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to sup-
pose that things, because they may be, are therefore
meant at you. The manners of well-bred people
secure one from those indirect and mean attacks;
but if by chance a flippant woman, or a pert cox-
comb, lets off anything of that kind, it is much
better not to seem to understand than to reply
to it.

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 that
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
real situations 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
transplanting. Every company is differently cir-
cumstanced, 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. Nothing
makes a man look sillier than a pleasantry not rel-
ished or not understood ; and if he meets with a
profound silence when he expected a general ap-

112 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

plause, or, what is worse, if he is desired to explain
the bon mot, his awkward and embarrassed situation
is easier imagined than described. A propos of re-
peating, take great care never to repeat (I do not
mean here the pleasantries) in one company what
you hear in another. Things seemingly indifferent
may by circulation have much graver consequences
than you would imagine. Besides there is a gene-
ral tacit trust in conversation by which a man is
obliged not to report anything out of it, though he
is not immediately enjoined secrecy. A retailer of
this kind is sure to draw himself into a thousand
scrapes and discussions, and to be shyly and uncom-
fortably received wherever he goes.

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, bons 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 whatever is said or done
in the company ; and adopt with the same alacrity
the most virtuous or the most criminal, the wisest
or the siUiest, scheme that happens to be enter-
tained by the majority of the company. This
foohsh and often criminal complaisance flows from
a foolish cause, — the want of any other merit. I
hope that you will hold your place in 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.

TO HIS SON. 113

good breeding, and (if you have it) with urbanity ;
for you have not yet beard enough either to preach
or censure.

All other kinds of complaisance are not only
blameless but necessary in good company. Not to
seem to perceive the little weaknesses and the idle
but innocent affectations of the company, but even to
flatter them in a certain manner is not only very
allowable, but in truth a sort of polite duty. They
will be pleased with you if you do, and will cer-
tainly not be reformed by you if you do not. For
instance ; you will find in every groupe of company
two principal figures, — namely, the fine lady and the
fine gentleman, who absolutely give the law of wit,
language, fashion, and taste to the rest of that
society. There is always a strict and Often for the
time being a tender alliance between these two
figures. The lady looks upon her empire as
founded upon the divine right of beauty (and full as
good a divine right it is as any king, emperor, or
pope can pretend to) ; she requires, and commonly
meets with, unlimited passive obedience. And why
should she not meet with it? Her demands go no
higher than to have her unquestioned pre-eminence
in beauty, wit, and fashion firmly established. Few
sovereigns (by the way) are so reasonable. The
fine gentleman's claims of right are, mutatis
mutandis, the same ; and though indeed he is not
always a wit de jure, yet as he is the wit de facto
of that company, he is entitled to a share of your
allegiance ; and everybody expects at least as much
as they are entitled to, if not something more.

114 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

Pradence bids you make your court to these joint
sovereigns, and no duty that I know of forbids it.
Rebellion here is exceedingly dangerous, and in-
evitably punished by banishment and immediate
forfeiture of all your wit, manners, taste, and
fashion ; as, on the other hand, a. cheerful submis-
sion, not without some flattery, is sure to procure
you a strong recommendation and most effectual
pass throughout all their and probably the neighbor-
ing dominions. With a moderate share of sagacity,
you will, before you have been half an hour in their
company, easily discover those two principal
figures, both by the deference which you will
observe the whole company pay them, and by that
easy, careless, and serene air which their conscious-
ness of power gives them. As in this case, so in all
others, aim always at the highest ; get always into the
highest company, and address yourself particularly to
the highest in it. The search after the unattainable
philosopher's stone has occasioned a thousand useful
discoveries which otherwise would never have been
made.

What the French justly call les manieres nobles
are only to be acquired in the very best companies.
They are the distinguishing 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 circumstances, fine
clothes, and equipages will insolently show con-
tempt for all those who cannot afford as fine

TO HIS SON. 115

clothes, as good an equipage, and who have
not (as their term is) 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
hkewise jealous of being slighted, and consequently
suspicious and captious ; they are eager and hot
about trifles because trifles were at first their af-
fairs of consequence. Les manih-es nobles imply
exactly the reverse of all this. Study them early ;
you cannot make them too habitual and familiar
to you.

XXXII.

IMPORTANCE OF THE GRACES ILLUSTRATED IN A
DESIGN OF CARLO MARATTL— THE DUKE OF MARL-
BOROUGH.

London, Nov. 18, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — Whatever I see, or whatever I
hear, my first consideration is whether it can in
any way be useful to you. As a proof of this, I
went accidentally the other day into a print-shop,
where, among many others, I found one print from
a famous design of Carlo Maratti,J who died about
thirty years ago and was the last eminent painter
in Europe. The subject is // Studio del Disegno, or
the School of Drawing. An old man, supposed to
be the master, points to his scholars, who are

1 The date of his death is Dec. 15, 17 13.

Il6 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

variously employed in perspective, geometry, and
the observation of the statues of antiquity. With
regard to perspective, of which there are some
little specimens, he has wrote tanto che basti, that
is, as much as is sufficient ; with regard to geom-
etry, tanto che basti again ; with regard to the con-
templation of the ancient statues there is written,
non mai a bastanza, — there never can be enough.
But in the clouds at the top of the piece are
represented the three Graces, with this just sen-
tence written over them : senza di noi ogni fatica e
vana, — that is, without us all labor is vain. This
everybody allows to be true in painting; but all
people do not seem to consider, as I hope you
will, that this truth is full as applicable to every
other art or science, — indeed to everything that is
to be said or done. I will send you the print itself
by Mr. Ehot when he returns ; and I will advise
you to make the same use of it that the Roman
Catholics say they do of the pictures and images of
their Saints, — which is only to remind them of
those, for the adoration they disclaim. Nay, I will
go further ; as the transition from popery to pagan-
ism is short and easy, I will classically and poetically
advise you to invoke and sacrifice to them every
day and all the day. It must be owned that the
Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain,
and I doubt the best of us here have more of the
rough than the polished diamond. Since barbarism
drove them out of Greece and Rome, they seem to
have taken refuge in France, where their temples
are numerous and their worship the established one.

TO HIS SON. \iy

Examine yourself seriously why such and such
people please and engage you more than such and
such others of equal merit, and you will always find
that it is because the former have the Graces and
the latter not. I have known many a woman with
an exact shape and a symmetrical assemblage of
beautiful features please nobody ; while others
with very moderate shapes and features have
charmed everybody. Why? Because Venus will
not charm so much without her attendant Graces
as they will without her. Among men, how often
have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge
neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected for want of
them ; while flimsy parts, little knowledge, and
less merit introduced by the Graces have been
received, cherished, and admired ! Even virtue,
which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms if
unaccompanied by them.

If you ask me how you shall acquire what neither
you nor I can define or ascertain, I can only
answer — by observation. Form yourself with
regard to others upon what you feel pleases you in
them. I can tell you the importance, the advan-
tage, of having the Graces ; but I cannot give
them you. I heartily wish I could, and I certainly
would ; for I do not know a better present that I
could make you. To show you that a very wise,
philosophical, and retired man thinks upon that
subject as I do, who have always lived in the world,
I send you by Mr. Eliot the famous Mr. Locke's ^lu-^-oW'
book upon education, in which you will find the
stress that he lays upon the Graces, which he calls

Il8 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

(and very truly) good breeding. I have marked
all the parts of that book that are worth your atten-
tion, 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 say so while you are there. But the place
which you are going to in a great degree is ; for 1
have known as many well-bred, pretty men come
from Turin as from any part of Europe. The late
King Victor Amed^e took great pains to form such
of his subjects as were of any consideration both to
business and manners. The present king, I am
told, follows his example : this however is certain,
that in all courts and congresses where there are
various foreign ministers, those of the King of
Sardinia are generally the ablest, the politest, and
les plus de'lies. You will therefore at Turin have
very good models to form yourself upon; and
remember that with regard to the best models,
as well as to the antique Greek statues in the print,
non mai a bastanza. Observe every word, look,
and motion of those who are allowed -to be the
most accomplished persons there, Observe their
natural and careless but genteel air, their unem-
barrassed good breeding, their unassuming but yet
unprostituted dignity. Mind their decent mirth,
their discreet frankness, and that eniregent which,
as much above the frivolous as below the important
and the secret, is the proper medium for conversa-
tion in mixed companies. I will observe, by the
by, that the talent of that light entregent is often of

TO HIS SON. 1 19

great use to a foreign minister, — not only as it helps
him to domesticate himself in many families, but
also as it enables him to put by and parry some
subjects of conversation, which might possibly lay
him under difficulties both what to say and how to
look.

Of all the men that ever I knew in my life (and
I knew him extremely well) the late Duke of Marl-
borough possessed 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 ass'ign
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 some-
thing 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 Cleve-
land, 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 foundation
of his subsequent fortune. His figure was beautiful,
but his manner was irresistible by either man or

120 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

woman. It was by this engaging, graceful 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 separate views, jeal-
ousies, and wrongheadednesses. Whatever Court he
went to (and he was often obliged to go himself to
some resty 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 grace-
fully 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 grace-
fulness no man living was more conscious of his
situation nor maintained his dignity better.

XXXIII.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DRESS.

London, Dec. 30, o. s. 1748.
Dear Boy, — I direct this letter to Berlin, where
I suppose it will either find you or at least wait but a
very little time for you. I cannot help being anxious

TO HIS SON. 121

for your success at this your first appearance upon
the great stage of the world ; for though the specta-
tors are ahvays candid enough to give great allow-
ances and to show great indulgence to a new actor,
yet from the first impressions which he makes upon
them they are apt to decide, in their own minds at
least whether he will ever be a good one or not. If
he seems to understand what he says, by speaking
it properly ; if he is attentive to his part, instead of
staring negligently about ; and if, upon the whole, he
seems ambitious to please, they willingly pass over
little awkwardnesses and inaccuracies, which they
ascribe to a commendable modesty in a young and
inexperienced actor. They pronounce that he will
be a good one in time ; and by the encouragement
which they give him, make him so the sooner. This
I hope will be your case. You have sense enough to
understand your part ; a constant attention and am-
bition to excel in it, with a careful observation of
the best actors, will inevitably qualify you, if not for
the first, at least for considerable parts.

Your dress (as insignificant a thing as dress is in
itself) is now become an object worthy of some
attention ; for I confess I cannot help forming
some opinion of a man's sense and character from
his dress, and I believe most people do as well as
myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies,
in my mind, a flaw in the understanding. 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

122 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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 bumpkins
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 any
particular character in his dress ; he is accurately
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 than 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. 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 mo-
tions be as easy and natural 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.

TO HIS SON. 123

XXXIV.

ON PREJUDICES. — LIBERTY OF THE PRESS,

London, Feb. 7, o. s. 1749.
Dear Boy, — You are now come to an age capa-
ble of reflection, and I hope you will do, what
however few people at your age do, exert it for
your own sake in the search of truth and sound
knowledge, I will confess (for I am not unwilling
to discover my secrets to you) that it is not many
years since I have presumed to reflect for myself.
Till sixteen or seventeen I had no reflection, and
for many years after that, I made no use of what I
had. I adopted the notions of the books I read,
or the company I kept, without examming whether
they were just or not; and I rather chose to run
the risk of easy error than to take the time and
trouble of investigating truth. Thus, partly from
laziness, partly from dissipation, and partly from the
mauvaise honte of rejecting fashionable notions, I
was (as I have since found) hurried away by preju-
dices instead of being guided by reason, and
quietly cherished error instead of seeking for truth.
But since I have taken the trouble of reasoning for
myself and have had the courage to own that I do
so, you cannot imagine how much my notions of
things are altered, and in how different a light I
now see them from that in which I formerly viewed
them through the deceitful medium of prejudice or
authority. Nay, I may possibly still retain many

124 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

errors, which from long habit have perhaps grown
into real opinions ; for it is very difficult to distin-
guish habits, early acquired and long entertained,
from the result of our reason and reflection.

My first prejudice (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 convinced 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
modem. And I could almost have said with re-
gard to the ancients what Cicero very absurdly and
unbecomingly for a philosopher says with regard to
Plato, Clan quo er7-are maliin qiiam cum aliis rede
sentire. Whereas now, without any extraordinary
effort of genius, I have discovered 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 brute and a

TO HIS SON. 125

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 Aga-
memnon about a strumpet; and then afterwards,
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
horse- shoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would
have been sufficient. On the other hand, with sub-
mission to the favorers of the modems, I assert
with Mr. Dryden that the Devil is in truth the hero
of Milton's poem, — his plan, which he lays, pursues,
and at last executes, being the subject of the poem.
From all which considerations I impartially con-
clude that the ancients had their excellences 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 prejudices kept pace with my classical
ones, and there was a time when I thought it im-
possible 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 that it is as natural and
as allowable that another man should differ in

1 In 1716 Chesterfield actively opposed the repeal of an
outrageous disabling Act passed by the Tories in Queen
Anne s reign against dissenters.

126 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

opinion from me as that I should differ from him ;
and that if we are both sincere, we are both blame-
less, and should consequently have mutual indul-
gence for each other.

The next prejudices that I adopted were those of
the beau monde, in which, as I was determined to
shine, I took what are commonly called the genteel
vices to be necessary. I had heard them reckoned
so, and without further inquiry I believed it, or at
least should have been ashamed to have denied it
for fear of exposing myself to the ridicule of those
whom I considered as the models of fine gentlemen.
But I am now neither ashamed nor afraid to assert
that those genteel vices, as they are falsely called,
are only so many blemishes in the character of even
a man of the world and what is called a fine gentle-
man, and degrade him in the opinions of those very
people to whom he hopes to recommend himself by
them. Nay, this prejudice often extends so far that
I have known people pretend to vices they had not,
instead of carefully concealing those they had.

Use and assert your own reason ; reflect, examine,
and analyze everything, in order to form a sound
and mature judgment ; let no oStos e<^a impose upon
your understanding, mislead your actions, or dictate
your conversation. Be early what if you are not,
you will when too late wish you had been. Con-
sult 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 impUcitly;

TO HIS SON. 127

try both by that best rule which God has given to
direct us, — reason. Of all the troubles, do not de-
cline, 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 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 th^t the Pope is both
Antichrist and the W — of Babylon, is a more effec-
tual preservative in this country against popery
than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of
Chillingworth.

The idle story of the Pretender's having been in-
troduced 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 ab-
surdity 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.

A Frenchman ventures his life with alacrity pour
Vhonneur du Rot ; were you to change the object
which he has been taught to have in view, and tell
him that it was pour le bien de la patrie, he would

128 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

very probably run away. Such gross local preju-
dices prevail with the herd of mankind, and do not
impose upon cultivated, informed, and reflecting
minds ; but then there are notions equally false,
though not so glaringly absurd, which are enter-
tained by people of superior and improved under-
standings merely for want of the necessary pains to
investigate, the proper attention to examine, and
the penetration requisite to determine the truth.
Those are the prejudices which I would have you
guard against by a manly exertion and attention of
your reasoning faculty. To mention one instance
of a thousand that I could give you, — it is a general
prejudice, and has been propagated for these six-
teen hundred years, that arts and sciences cannot
flourish under an absolute government, and that
genius must necessarily be cramped where freedom
is restrained. This sounds plausible, but is false in
fact. Mechanic arts, as agriculture, etc., will indeed
be discouraged, where the profits and property are
from the nature of the government insecure ; but
why the despotism of a government should cramp
the genius of a mathematician, an astronomer, a
poet, or an orator, I confess I never could discover.
It may indeed deprive the poet or the orator of
the liberty of treating of certain subjects in the man-
ner they would wish ; but it leaves them subjects
enough to exert genius upon if they have it.

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

TO HIS SON'. 129

they are wise and well-regulated ones. This is the
present general complaint 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 in-
deed they think in a manner destructive of all
religion, morality, or good manners, or to the dis-
turbance 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?

XXXV.

DIGNITY OF MANNERS RECOMMENDED: IN WHAT
IT CONSISTS.

London, Aug. 10, o. s. 1749.

There is a certain dignity of manners absolutely
necessary to make even the most valuable character
either respected or respectable.

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of
laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate famili-
arity will sink both merit and knowledge into a de-
gree of contempt. They compose at most a merry
9

130 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

fellow, and a merry fellow was never yet a respect-
able man. Indiscriminate familiarity either offends
your superiors, or else dubs you their dependant and
led captain. It gives your inferiors just but trou-
blesome 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 either admitted
or sought for in company upon any other account
than that of his merit and manners, is never re-
spected 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 all vilifying distinctions, mortifying pref-
erences, 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 ; conse-
quently never respected, let his merits be what they
will.

This dignity of manners which I recommend so
much to you is not only as different from pride as
true courage is from blustering, or true wit from jok-
ing, but is absolutely inconsistent with it ; for noth-
ing vilifies and degrades more than pride. The pre-
tensions of the proud man are oftener treated with
sneer and contempt than with indignation ; as we offer
ridiculously too little to a tradesman who asks ridicu-
lously too much for his goods, but we do not haggle
with one who only asks a just and reasonable price.

TO HIS SON. 131

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation de-
grade as much as indiscriminate contradiction and
noisy debate disgust. 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.

Frivolous curiosity about trifles and laborious at-
tention to little objects, which neither require nor
deserve a moment's thought, lower a man ; who from
thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of
greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously
marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind from
the moment that he told him he had wrote three
years with the same pen, and that it was an excel-
lent good one still.

XXXVI.

COURT MANNERS AND METHODS.

Aug. 21, o. s. 1749.

You will soon be at Courts, where though you will
not be concerned, yet reflection and observation
upon what you see and hear there may be of use to
you when hereafter you may come to be concerned
in courts yourself. Nothing in courts is exactly as it
appears to be, — often very different, sometimes di-
rectly contrary. Interest, which is the real spring

132 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

of everything there, equally creates and dissolves
friendship, produces and reconciles enmities ; or
rather, allows of neither real friendships nor enmi-
ties ; for as Dryden very justly observes, " Politicians
neither love nor hate." This is so true that you may
think you connect yourself with two friends to-day
and be obliged to-morrow to make your option be-
tween them as enemies. Observe therefore such a
degree of reserve with your friends as not to put
yourself in their power if they should become your
enemies, and such a degree of moderation with
your enemies as not to make it impossible for them
to become your friends.

Courts are unquestionably the seats of politeness
and good breeding ; were they not so, they would
be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who
now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab
each other, if manners did not interpose ; but ambi-
tion and avarice, the two prevailmg passions at courts,
found dissimulation more effectual than violence ;
and dissimulation introduced that habit of polite-
ness which distinguishes the courtier from the coun-
try gentleman. In the former case the strongest
body would prevail ; in the latter, the strongest
mind.

A man of parts and efficiency need not flatter every-
body at court, but he must take great care to offend
nobody personally, it being in the power of very
many to hurt him who cannot serve him. Homer
supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth
to connect him with mortals. There is at all courts
a chain which connects the prince or the minister

TO HIS SON. 133

with the page of the backstairs or the chamber-
maid. The king's wife, or mistress, has an influence
over him ; a lover has an influence over her ; the
chambermaid or the valet de chambre has an in-
fluence over both ; and so ad infinittim. You must
therefore not break a link of that chain by which
you hope to climb up to the prince.

XXXVII.

ON AWKWARDNESS AND ABSENCE OF MIND.— DRESS.

London, Sept. 22, o. s. 1749.
Dear Bov, — 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. I 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,
till, satisfied entirely with his accounts of your
character and learning, I inquired into other matters
intrinsically indeed of less consequence but still
of great consequence to every man, and of more
to you than to almost any man, — I mean your
address, manners, and air. To these questions

134 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

the same truth which he had observed before
obliged him to give me much less satisfactory an-
swers. And as he thought himself in friendship
both to you and me obliged to tell me the disa-
greeable as well as the agreeable truths, upon the
same principle I think myself obliged to repeat
them to you.

He told me then that in company you were
frequently 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.

These things, howsoever immaterial they may
seem to people who do not know the world and
the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to
be exceedingly material, very great concern. I
have long distrusted you and therefore frequently
admonished you upon these articles ; and I tell you
plainly that I shall not be easy till I hear a very
different account of them. I know no one thing
more offensive to a company than that inattention
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

TO HIS SON. 135

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 attention. Besides, can an absent man make
any observations upon the characters, customs, and
manners of the company ? No. He may be in the
best companies 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 our-
selves 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. 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 description of these flappers and
the use they were of to your friends the Laputans,
whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with
intense speculations that they neither can speak nor
attend to the discourses of others without being
roused by some external taction upon the organs of
speech and hearing ; for which reason those people
who are able to afford it always keep a flapper in
their family as one of their domestics, nor ever
walk about or make visits without him. This flapper
is likewise employed diligently to attend his master
in his walks, and upon occasion to give a soft flap

136 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

upon his eyes, because he is always so wrapped up
in cogitation that he is in manifest danger of falling
down every precipice and bouncing his head
against every post, and in the streets of jostling
others or being jostled into the kennel himself. If
Christian will undertake this province into the bar-
gain, with all my heart ; but 1 will not allow him
any increase of wages upon that score. In short,
I give you fair warning that when we meet, if you
are absent in mind I will soon be absent in body,
for it will be impossible for me to stay in the room j
and if at table you throw down your knife, plate,
bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for
half an hour without being able to cut it off, and
your sleeve all the time in another dish, I must rise
from table to escape the fever you would certainly
give me. Good God ! how I should be shocked
if you came into my room for the first time with
two left legs, presenting yourself with all the graces
and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging
upon you like those in Monmouth Street, upon
tenter- hooks ! whereas I expect, nay, require to see
you present yourself with the easy and genteel air
of a man of fashion who has kept good company.
I expect you not only well dressed but very well
dressed ; I expect a gracefulness in all your mo-
tions and something particularly engaging in your
address. All this I expect, and all this it is in your
power, by care and attention, to make me find ; but
to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it we
shall not converse very much together, for I cannot
stand inattention and awkwardness, — it would en-

TO HIS SON. 137

danger my health. You have often seen and I
have as often made you observe L 's * distin-
guished inattention and awkwardness. Wrapped
up Uke a Laputan in intense thought, and possibly
sometimes in no thought at all (which I believe is
very often the case witH absent people) , he does not
know his most intimate acquaintance by sight or
answers them as if he were at cross purposes. He
leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another,
and would leave his shoes in a third, if his buckles
though awry did not save them ; his legs and arms
by his awkward management of them seem to have
undergone the question extraordinaire; and his
head always hanging upon one or other of his
shoulders seems to have received the first stroke
upon a block. I sincerely value and esteem him
for his parts, learning, and virtue, but for the soul
of me I cannot love him in company. This will be
universally the case in common life of every inat-
tentive awkward man, let his real merit and knowl-
edge be ever so great. When I was of your age I
desired to shine as far as I was able in every part
of life, and was as attentive to my manners, my
dress, and my air in company of evenings as to my
books and my tutor in the mornings. A young
fellow should be ambitious to shine in everything,
and of the two always rather overdo than underdo.
These things are by no means trifles ; they are of
infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown
into the great world and who would make a figure
or a fortune in it. It is not sufficient to deserve
^ Lord Lyttleton.

138 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

well ; one must please well too. Awkward, disagree-
able merit will never carry anybody far. Wherever
you find a good dancing- master, pray let him put
you upon your haunches ; not so much for the sake
of dancing as for coming into a room and present-
ing yourself genteelly and' gracefully. Women,
whom you ought to endeavor to please, cannot for-
give v-ulgar and awkward air and gestures ; // leur
faut du brillant. The generality of men are pretty
like them, and are equally taken by the same
exterior graces.

I am very glad that you have received the dia-
mond buckles safe ; all I desire in return for them
is that they may be buckled even upon your feet
and that your stockings may not hide them. I
should be sorry that you were an egregious fop,
but I protest that of the two I woula 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 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.

TO HIS SON. 139

XXXVIII.

VULGARISMS. — AN AWKWARD MAN.— THE MAN
OF TASTE.

London, Sept. 27, o. s. 1749.
Dear Boy, — A vulgar ordinary way of thinking,
acting, or speaking implies a low education and a
habit of low company. Young people contract it
at school, or among servants, with whom they are
too often used to converse ; but after they frequent
good company, they must want attention and ob-
servation very much if they do not lay it quite
aside. And indeed if they do not, good company
will be very apt to lay them aside. The various
kinds of vulgarisms are infinite ; I cannot pretend
to point them out to you, but I will give some
samples by which you may guess at the rest.
C A vulgar man is captious and jealous, eager and
impetuous 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-
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 con-
scious that he deserves it. And if (which very
seldom happens) the company is absurd or ill bred

I40 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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
"TOte sayings areTHe flowers of the rhetoric of a
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 pronunciation of proper words carries the
mark of the beast along with it. He calls the
earth y earth ; 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,

TO HIS SO AT. 141

which he always mangles, like a learned woman.
A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs
and vulgar aphorisms ; 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.

An awkward address, ungraceful attitudes and
actions, and a certain left-handedness (if I may
use that word), loudly proclaim low education and
low company ; for it is impossible 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 his awkwardness ; but he must be im-
penetrably dull if in a month or two's time he
cannot perform at least the common manual exer-
cise and look like a soldier. The very accoutre-
ments of a man of fashion are grievous encumbrances
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 perpetual war
with every cup of tea or coffee he drinks, — destroys
them first, and then accompanies them in their fall.
His sword is formidable only to his own legs, which
would possibly carry him fast enough out of the
way of any sword but his own. His clothes fit him
so ill, and constrain him so much, that he seems
rather their prisoner than their proprietor. He
presents himself in company like a criminal in a
court of justice ; his very air condemns him, and
people of fashion will no more connect themselves

142 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

with the one than people of character will with the
other. This repulse drives and sinks him into low
company, a gulf from whence no man, after a certain
age, ever emerged.

Les manieres nobles et aisees, la tournure (Tun
homme de condition, le ton de la bonne co7npagnie,
les graces, le je ne sais quoi qui plait, are as neces-
sary to adorn and introduce your intrinsic merit
and knowledge as the polish is to the diamond,
which without that polish would never be worn,
whatever it might weigh. 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
good 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-
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. Con-
sider the importance of these things as they de-
serve and you will not lose one minute in the
pursuit of them.

You are travelling now in a country ^ once so fa-
mous both for arts and arms that (however degen-
1 Italy.

TO HIS SON. 143

erate at present) it still deserves your attention and
reflection. View it therefore with care, compare its
former with its present state, and examine into the
causes of its rise and its decay. Consider it classi-
cally and politically, and do not run through it, as too
many of your young countrymen do, musically and
(to use a ridiculous word) knick-knackically. No pip-
ing nor fiddling, I beseech you ; no days. lost in por-
ing 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 be-
come a man of fashion very well. But beyond cer-
tain bounds the man of taste ends, and the frivolous
virtuoso begins.

XXXIX.

THREE SORTS OF GOOD BREEDING.

London, Nov. 3, o. s. 1749.
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 imperfe.QtiQna-Of
human nature will allow ; tn ' thiTView I have grudgec
no pains nor expense in your education, convinced
that education more than nature is the cause of that
great difference which you see in the characters of
men. While you were a child, I endeavofS^Tto form

144 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

your heart habitually 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 persuaded fixed and confirmed by reason.
And indeed they are so plain and clear that they re-
quire but a very moderate degree of understand-
ing either to comprehend or practise them. Lord
Shaftesbury says very prettily that he would be vir-
tuous 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. This view of mine I
consider as fully attained. My next object was sound
and useful learning. My own care first, Mr. Harte's
afterwards, and of late (I will own it to your praise)
your own application have more than answered my
expectations in that particular, and I have reason
to believe will answer even my wishes. All that re-
mains for me then to wish, to recommend, to incul-
cate, to order, and to insist upon is good breeding,
without which all your other qualifications will be
lame, unadorned, and to a certain degree unavailing.
And here I fear and have too much reason to be-
lieve that you are greatly deficient. The remainder
of this letter, therefore, shall be (and it will not be
the last by a great many) upon that subject.

(a friend of yours and mine has very justly defined

TO HIS SON. 145

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 indul-
gence from them."y ^'TaHng iKis lorgranted (as I
thmk 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 and places and circum-
stances, and are only to be acquired by observation
and experience ; but the substance of it is every-
where and eternally the same. Good manners are
to particular societies what good morals are to so-
ciety 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 me to be less dif-
ference both between the crimes and between the
punishments than at first one would imagine. The
immoral man who invades another man's property
is justly hanged for it ; and the ill bred man who
by his ill manners invades and disturbs the quiet and
comforts of private life is by common consent as
justly banished society. Mutual complaisances, at-
tentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences are as
natural an implied compact between civilized people
as protection and obedience are between kings and
subjects ; whoever in either case violates that com-
pact justly forfeits all advantages arising from it.
For my own part, I really think that next to the

146 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing
a civil one is the most pleasing ; and the epithet
which I should covet the most, next to that of Aris-
tides, would be that of well-bred. Thus much for
good breeding in general ; I will now consider some
of the various modes and degrees of it.
/ Very few, scarcely any, are wanting in the respect
/which they should show to those whom they ac-
/ knowledge to be infinitely their superiors, — such as
/ crowned heads, princes, and public persons of dis-
/ tinguished and eminent posts. It is the manner of
/ showing that respect which is different. The man of
fashion and of the world expresses it in its fullest
extent, but naturally, easily, and without concern ;
whereas a man who is not used to keep good com-
pany, expresses it awkwardly. One sees that he is not
J«sed to it, and that it costs him a great deal ; but I
•^ never saw the worst-bred man living guilty of lolling,
whistling, scratching his head, and such-like indecen-
cies in company that he respected. In such com-
panies, therefore, the only point to be attended to is
to show that respect which everybody means to
show in an easy, unembarrassed, and graceful man-
ner. This is what observation and experience must
teach you.

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

TO HIS son: 147

bounds which are upon no occasion to be tfans-
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 frivol-
ously, 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 entitled in con-
sideration of their sex not only to an attentive but
an officious good breeding from men. Their littl
wants, likings, dislikes, preferences, antipathies, fan
cies, whims, and even impertinencies must be offi-
ciously attended to, flattered, and if possible, guessed
at and anticipated by a well-bred man. /You must
never usurp to yourself those conveniences and agrt-
mens which are of common right, such as the best
places, the best dishes, etc., but on the contrary al-
ways decline them yourself and offer them to others,
who in their turns will offer them to you ; so that
upon the whole you will in your turn enjoy your share
of the common right. It would be endless for me to
enumerate all the particular instances in which a well-
bred man shows his good breeding in good company,
and it would be injurious to you to suppose that your
own good sense will not point them out to you ; and
then your own good-nature will recommend, and your
self-interest enforce the practice.

There is a third sort of good breeding in which

148 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

people are the most apt to fail from a very mis-
taken notion that they cannot fail at all, — I mean
with regard to one's most familiar friends and ac-
quaintances, or those who really are our inferiors ;
and there undoubtedly a greater degree of ease is
not only allowed but proper, and contributes much
to the comforts of a private social life. But that
ease and freedom have their bounds too, which
must by no means be violated. A certain degree
of negligence and carelessness becomes injurious
and insulting from the real or supposed inferiority
of the persons ; and that delightful liberty of con-
versation among a few friends is soon destroyed, as
liberty often has been, by being carried to licen-
tiousness. But example explains things best, and I
will put a pretty strong case. Suppose you and me
alone together ; I believe you will allow that I have
as good a right to unlimited freedom in your com-
pany as either you or I can possibly have in any
other, and I am apt to believe too that you would
indulge me in that freedom as far as anybody
would. But notwithstanding this, do you imagine
that I should think there were no bounds to that
freedom ? I assure you I should not think so ; and
I take myself to be as much tied down by a cer-
tain degree of good manners to you as by other
degrees of them to other people. Were I to show
you by a manifest inattention to what you said to
me that I was thinking of something else the whole
time ; were I to yawn extremely or snore in your
company, I should think that I behaved myself to
you like a beast and should not expect that you

TO HIS SON. 149

would care to frequent me. No ; the most famil-
iar and intimate habitudes, connections, and friend-
ships require a degree of good breeding both to
preserve and cement them. If ever a man and hisN
/ wife, who pass nights as well as days together, abso-
/ lutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy
I will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarit}^!!^.
V fallibly productive of contempt or disgust. /The
best of us have our bad sides, and it is as impru-
dent as it is ill bred to exhibit them. I shall cer-
tainly 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.

I will say no more now upon this important sub-
ject of good breeding, which I have already dwelt
upon too long, it may be, for one letter, and upon
which I shall frequently refresh your memory here-
after ; but I will conclude with these axioms :

That the deepest learning without good breeding
is unwelcome and tiresome pedantry and of no use
nowhere but in a man's own closet, and conse-
quently, of little or no use at all.

That a man who is not perfectly well bred is un-
fit for good company and unwelcome in it, will
consequently dislike it soon, afterwards renounce it;
and be reduced to solitude or (what is worse) low
and bad company.

That a man who is not well bred is full as unfit
for business as for company.

150 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

Make then, my dear child, I conjure you, good
breeding the great object of your thoughts and ac-
tions, at least half the day. Observe carefully the
behavior and manners of those who are distin-
guished by their good breeding; imitate, nay, en-
deavor to excel, that you may at last 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.

XL.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

London, Nov. 14, o s. 1749.
Dear Boy, — There is a natural good breeding
which occurs to every man of common-sense and
is practised by every man of common good-nature.
This good breeding is general, independent of
modes, and consists in endeavors to please and
oblige our fellow-creatures by all good offices short
of moral duties. This will be practised by a good-
natured American savage as essentially as by the
best-bred European. But then I do not take it to
extend to the sacrifice of our own conveniences for
the sake of other people's. Utility introduced this
sort of good breeding as it introduced commerce,
and established a truck ^ of the little agremens and

1 Barter.

TO HIS soj\r. 151

pleasures of life. I sacrifice such a conveniency to
you, you sacrifice another to me ; this commerce
circulates, and every individual finds his account in
it upon the whole. The third sort of good breeding
is local and is variously modified in not only
different countries but in different towns of the
same country. But it must be founded upon the
two former sorts ; they are the matter to which, in
this case, fashion and custom only give the different
shapes and impressions. Whoever has the two
first sorts will easily acquire this third sort of good
breeding, which depends singly upon attention and
observation. It is properly the polish, the lustre,
the last finishing stroke of good breeding. It is to
be found only in capitals, and even there it varies, —
the good breeding of Rome differing in some things
from that of Paris ; that of Paris in others from that
of Madrid ; and that of Madrid in many things
from that of London, A man of sense, therefore,
carefiilly attends to the local manners of the re-
spective places where he is and takes for his
models those persons whom he observes to be at
the head of fashion and good breeding. He
watches how they address themselves to their supe-
riors, how they accost their equals, and how they
treat their inferiors ; and lets none of those little
niceties escape him which are to good breeding
what the last delicate and masterly touches are to a
good picture, and of which the vulgar have no
notion, but by which good judges distinguish the
master. He attends even to their air, dress, and
motions, and imitates them liberally and not ser-

152 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

vilely ; he copies but does not mimic. These per-
sonal graces are of very great consequence. They
anticipate the sentiments before merit can engage
the understanding; they captivate the heart, and
gave rise I believe to the extravagant notions of
charms and philters. Their effects were so sur-
prising that they were reckoned supernatural. The
most graceful and best-bred men and the hand-
somest 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 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. But on the other hand if your motions and
carriage are not graceful, genteel, and natural, your
fine clothes will only display your awkwardness the
more. But I am unwilling to suppose you still
awkward, for surely by this time you must have
catched a good air in good company. When you
went from hence you were naturally awkward, but
your awkwardness was adventitious and Westmonas-
terial. Leipsic, I apprehend, is not the seat of the
Graces, and I presume you acquired none there.
But now if you will be pleased to observe what peo-
ple of the first fashion do with their legs and arms,
heads and bodies, you will reduce yours to certain
decent laws of motion. 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

TO HIS SON. 153

danse donne du brillant h un 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 wanteo/X
/ talked of, impatiently expected, and unwillingly/
Iparted with in company.^"! should be glad to hear
half a dozen women of fashion say, " Ou est done le
petit Stanhope? Que ne 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 varia-
tions the same things that please women please
men, and a man whose manners are softened and
polished by women of fashion and who is formed
by them to an habitual attention and complaisance,
will please, engage, and connect men much easier
and more than he would otherwise. i»Tournust~be
sensible that you cannot rise in the world without
forming connections and engaging different charac-
ters to conspire in your point. You must make^
them your dependants without their knowing it,
and dictate to them while you seem to be directed/
by them. Those necessary connections can never
be formed or preserved but by an uninterrupted
series of complaisance, attentions, politeness, and ,
some constraint. You must engage their hearts iL
you would have their support ; you must watch the
mollia tempora, and captivate them by the agrimens
and charms of conversation. People will not be
called out to your service only when you want them ;
and if you expect to receive strength from them,

154 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

they must receive either pleasure or advantage
from you.

XLI.

GOOD BREEDING IMPORTANT IN DIPLOMACY. — CIV-
ILITY TOWARD WOMEN. —ILLUSTRATION DRAWN
FROM ARCHITECTURE.

\No date.]

Dear Boy, — 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
negative than positive. This therefore should go
further 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 ne-
glect, 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 breed-
ing. 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

TO HIS SON. 155

are to negotiate. Can you ever get into the confi-\
dence 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 superior good breeding, insinuating manner^
and genteel address are half your business. /''"^ur
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 understanding where you have
first engaged the heart ! and hearts are by no
means to be gained by that mere common civility
which everybody practises. 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. It is an active, cheerful, officious,N
seducing good breeding that must gain you the
good will and first sentiments of men and theaffec/
tions of the women. You must carefully watch and^
attend to their passions, their tastes, their little hu-
mors and weaknesses, and aller au devant. You
must do it at the same time with alacrity and em-
pressement, and not as if you graciously conde-
scended 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 j
should say, " You seemed to me at such and such a I
place to give this dish a preference, and therefore I /

156 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

I ordered it. This is the wine that I observed you
VJiked and therefore I procured some." The more
trifling these things are the more they prove your
attention for the person and are consequently the
more engaging. Consult your own breast and rec-
ollect 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 afterwards to all which that per-
son says or does. The same causes will have the
same effects in your favor. Women in a great de-
gree establish or destroy every man's reputation of
good breeding ; you must, therefore, in a manner
overwhelm them with these attentions, — 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 atten-
tions present themselves perpetually ; 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 : " Si
nullus, tamen excute nullum." Your conversation
/with women should always be respectful, but at the
/ same time enjou^, and always addressed to their
I 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.

TO HIS SON. 157

/ Men have possibly as much vanity as women, though \
(of another kind ; and both art and good breeding
require that instead of mortifying, 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 understanding. 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, thev^
seldom weigh. Your lustre, not your solidity, must
take them ; your inside will afterwards support and
secure what your outside has acquired. With weakX
people (and they undoubtedly are three parts in I
four of mankind) good breeding, address, and xndcc^
ners are everything; they can go no deeper; but
let me assure you that they are a great deal even

1 An apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined with
porphyry; it was reserved for the use of the pregnant em-
presses, and the royal birth of their children was expressed
by the appellation of " Porphyrogenite," or Born in the Pur-
ple.— Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.
xlviii.

158 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

with people of the best understandings. Where the
eyes are not pleased and 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. Awkward-
ness 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 ;
1 hastily decide in myself that he can have none,
and am not sure that I should not even be sorry to
know that he had any. I often paint you in my
imagination in your present lontananza, and while
I view you in the light of ancient and modem
learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am
charmed with the prospect ; but when I view you
in another light, and represent you awkward, un-
graceful, ill bred, with vulgar air and manners,
shambling towards me with inattention and dist^'ac-
tions, 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 countenance of the father.^

I dare say you know already enough of Architec-
ture to know that the Tuscan is the strongest and most
solid of all the Orders ; but at the same time, it is the
coarsest and clumsiest of them. Its solidity does ex-
tremely well for the foundation and base floor of a
great edifice ; but if the whole building 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 can-
not be worth seeing where the front is so unadorned

1 Probably an allusion to Timanthes' painting of the sac-
rifice of Iphigeneia.

TO HIS son: 159

and clumsy. But if upon the solid Tuscan founda-
tion, 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 pres-
ent I fear has more of the Tuscan than of the Cor-
inthian 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 ; genteel motions ; an insinuating V,
softness in your looks, words, and actions ; a spruce, a^
lively air, fashionable dress ; and all the glitter that^ i
a young fellow should have. /

I am sure you would do a great deal for my sake ; "^
and therefore consider, at your return here, what a
disappointment and concern it would be to me, if I
could not safely depute you to do the honors of my
house and table, and if I should be ashamed to
present you to those who frequent both. Should
you be awkward, inattentive, and distrait, and hap-
pen to meet Mr. L [yttleton] at my table, the con-
sequences of that meeting must be fatal ; you would
run your heads against each other, cut each other's
fingers instead of your meat, or die by the precipi-
tate infusion of scalding soup.

This is really so copious a subject that there is no
end of being either serious or ludicrous upon it. It
is impossible, too, to enumerate or state to you the
various cases in good breeding; they are infinite.

l60 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

There is no situation or relation in the world so re-
mote or so intimate that does not require a degree
of it. Your own good sense must point it out to
you; your own good-nature must incline, and your
interest prompt you to practise it ; and observation
and experience must give you the manner, the air,
and the graces which complete the whole.

I have often asserted that the profoundest learn-
ing and the politest manners were by no means in-
compatible, 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 con-
cern indeed would be mine, but the loss will be yours.
Lord Bolingbroke 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 pro-
ceeded 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 ap-
proach 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,

TO HIS SON. l6l

you will be nobody ; with them, you may be any-
thing.

Adieu, my dear child. My compliments to Mr.
Harte.

XLII.

GREAT EVENTS FROM TRIVIAL CAUSES. — HOW TO
SHINE AS AN ORATOR.

London, Dec. 5, o. s. 1749.
Dear Boy, — Those who suppose that men in
general act rationally because they are called ra-
tional creatures know very Uttle 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 en-
tirely agree ; but for the rationale, I can only allow
it him in actu prima (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 characters 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 deep-
est motives for the most trifling actions instead of
often ascribing the greatest actions to the most
trifling causes, in which they would be much sel-
domer mistaken. They read and write of kings,
heroes, and statesmen as never doing anything
but upon the deepest principles of sound policy.

1 62 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

But those who see and observe kings, heroes, and
statesmen discover that they have headaches, in-
digestions, humors, and passions, just like other
people, every one of which in their turns determine
their wills in defiance of their reason. Had we only
read in the Life of Alexander that he burnt Perse-
polis, it would doubtless have been accounted for
from deep policy; we should have been told that
his new conquest could not have been secured with-
out the destruction of that capital which would have
been the constant seat of cabals, conspiracies, and
revolts. But luckily we are informed at the same
time that this hero, this demi-god, this son and heir
of Jupiter Ammon, happened to get extremely
dnmk with his mistress, and by way of frolic de-
stroyed one of the finest cities in the world. Read
pien, therefore, yourself, not in books but in nature.
\Adopt no systems but study them yourself. Ob-
^serve their weaknesses, their passions, their humors,
kof all which their understandings are nine times in
Ven the dupes. You will then know that they are
to be gained, influenced, or led much oftener by
little things than by great ones ; and consequently
you will no longer think those things little which
tend to such great purposes.

Let us apply this now to the particular object of
this letter, — I mean speaking in and influencing
public assemblies. The nature of our constitution
makes eloquence more useful and more necessary
in this country than in any other in Europe. A
certain degree of good sense and knowledge is re-
quisite for that as well as for everything else; but

TO HIS SON. 163

beyond that, the purity of diction, the elegance of
style, the harmony of periods, a pleasing elocution,
and a graceful action are the things which a public
speaker should attend to the most, because his
audience certainly does, and understands them the
best, or rather indeed understands little else. The
late Lord Chancellor Cowper's strength as an ora-
tor lay by no means in his reasonings, for he often
hazarded very weak ones. But such was the purity
and elegance of his style, such the propriety and
charms of his elocution, and such the gracefulness
of his action, that he never spoke without universal
applause ; the ears and the eyes gave him up the
hearts and the understandings of the audience. On
the contrary, the late Lord Townshend always spoke
materially, with argument and knowledge, but never
pleased. Why? His diction was not only inele-
gant but frequently ungrammatical, always vulgar,
his cadences false, his voice unharmonious, and his
action ungraceful. Nobody heard him with pa-
tience, 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 audi-
ence,— 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-
gance of style, and a strength of emphasis conspired

1 Of whom Thomson wrote, —

" From his rich tongue

Persuasion flows and wins the high debate."

164 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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
ornaments in which he had dressed it, I often found
the matter flimsy, the arguments weak, and I was
convinced of the power of those adventitious con-
curring circumstances which ignorance of mankind
only calls trifling ones. Cicero in his book de Ora-
tore, in order to raise the dignity of that profession
which he well knew himself to be at the head of,
asserts that a complete orator must be a complete
everything, lawyer, philosopher, divine, etc. That
would be extremely well if it were possible, but
man's Ufe is not long enough ; and I hold him to
be the completest orator who speaks the best upon
that subject which occurs, — whose happy choice of
words, whose lively imagination, whose elocution
and action adorn and grace his matter at the same
time that they excite the attention and engage the
passions of his audience.

You will be of the House of Commons as soon as
you are of age ; and you must first make a figure
there, if you would make a figure or a fortune in
your country. This you can never do without that
correctness and elegance in your own language
which you now seem to neglect and which you have
entirely to learn. Fortunately for you, it is to be
learned. Care and observation will do it ; but do
not flatter yourself that all the knowledge, sense,
and reasoning in the world will ever make you a
popular and applauded speaker without the orna-

TO HIS SON. 165

ments and the graces of style, elocution, and action.
Sense and argument, though coarsely delivered, will
have their weight in a private conversation withtwo
or three people of sense ; but in a public assembly
they will have none, if naked and destitute of the
advantages I have mentioned. Cardinal de Retz'
observes very justly that every numerous assembly
is a mob, influenced by their passions, humors, and
affections, which nothing but eloquence ever did or
ever can engage. This is so important a consid^ra-^
tion for everybody in this country, and more par-
ticularly for you, that I earnestly recommend it to
your most serious care and attention. Mind your
diction in whatever language you either write or
speak ; contract a habit of correctness and elegancej^
consider your style even in the freest conversation
and most familiar letters. After at least, if not be-\
fore, you have said a thing, reflect if you could not\
have said it better. Where you doubt of the pro- 1
priety or elegance of a word or a phrase, consulty
some good dead or living authority in that larf^
guage. Use yourself to translate from various lan-
guages into English ; correct those translations till
they satisfy your ear as well as your understanding.
And be convinced of this truth, that the best sense
and reason in the world will be as unwelcome in a
public assembly without these ornaments as they
will in public companies without the assistance of
manners and politeness. If you will please people
you must please them in their own way; and as
you cannot make them what they should be, you
must take them as they are. I repeat it again, they

1 66 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

are only to be taken by agretfiens 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 everybody
liked, extravagant as it was. Adieu.

XLIII.

" THE TONGUE TO PERSUADE."

London, Dec. 12, o. s. 1749.
Dear Boy, — Lord Clarendon in his history says
of Mr. Tohn_ Hampijen that ^) he had a head to con-
^'-ttTve, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute
yany mischief." I shall not now enter into the just-
ness 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 sin-
gle word. Good, instead of Mischief, I would have
you aspire to, and use your utmost endeavors to de-
serve. 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 re-
flection. 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 ex-
ecute depends likewise, in my opinion, in a great
measure upon yourself. Serious reflection will al-
ways give courage in a good cause ; and the courage
arising from reflection is of a much superior nature

TO HIS SON. 167

to the animal and constitutional courage of a foot sol-
dier. The former is steady and unshaken, where the
nodus is digniis vindice ; the latter is oftener im-
properly than properly exerted, but always brutally.

The second member of my text (to speak eccle-
siastically) shall be the subject of my following
discourse, — the tongiie to persuade, — as judicious
preachers recommend those virtues which they think
their several audiences want the most, such as truth
and continence at Court, disinterestedness in the
city, and sobriety in the country.

You must certainly in the course of your little
experience have felt the different effects of elegant
and inelegant speaking. Do you not suffer when
people accost you in a stammering or hesitating
manner, in an untuneful voice with false accents and
cadences, puzzling and blundering through sole-
cisms, barbarisms, and vulgarisms, misplacing even
their bad words, and inverting all method? Does
not this prejudice you against their matter, be it
what it will ; nay, even against their persons ? I am
sure it does me. On the other hand, do you not
feel yourself inclined, prepossessed, nay, even en-
gaged in favor of those who address you in the direct
contrary manner? The effects of a correct and
adorned style, of method and perspicuity, are in-
credible towards persuasion ; they often supply the
want of reason and argument, but when used in the
support of reason and argument, they are irresistible.
The French attend very much to the purity and ele-
gance of their style, even in common conversation ;
insomuch that it is a character to say of a man, " qu'il

1 68 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

narre bien." Their conversations frequently turn
upon the deUcacies of their language, and an academy
is employed in fixing it. The Crusca in Italy has the
same object ; and I have met with very few Italians
who did not speak their own language correctly and
elegantly. How much more necessary is it for an
Englishman to do so, who is to speak it in a public
assembly where the laws and liberties of his country
are the subjects of his deliberation? The tongue that
would persuade there must not content itself with
mere articulation. ... If you have the least defect
in your elocution, take the utmost care and pains to
correct it. Do not neglect your style, whatever lan-
guage 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 con-
tent 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 ex-
hibit naked, or even worse dressed than people of
your sort are.

XLIV.

MAN'S INCONSISTENCY. —RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.
— WOMEN MORE ALIKE THAN MEN. — ON RASH
CONFIDENCES.

London, Dec. 19, o. s. 1749.
I Dear Boy, — The knowledge of mankind is a very
\^seful knowledge for everybody, — a most necessary

TO HIS SON. i6g

one for you, who are destined to an active public
life. You will have to do with all sorts of characters ;
you should therefore know them thoroughly in order
to manage them ably. This knowledge is not to be
gotten systematically; you must acquire it yourself
by your own observation and sagacity. I will give
you such hints as I think may be useful land-marks
in your intended progress.

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 rationally ; or because he has such or such
a predominate passion, that he will act invariably and
consequentially 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 Uttle wheels, which in their turns re-
tard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.

There are two inconsistent passions, which however
frequently accompany each other, like man and wife ;
and which, like man and wife too, are commonly
clogs upon each other. I mean ambition and ava-
rice. The latter is 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
an usurer, because it carried profit along with it.
Whoever should have formed his opinion or taken /

\

I/O LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

his measures singly, from the ambitious part ot" Car-
dinal 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 immense riches
only the natural consequences of that ambition grati-
fied; and yet I make no doubt but that ambition
had now and then its turn with the former, and ava-
rice 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 concerting the criticism upon
the "Cid." Could one think this possible if one did
not know it to be true? Though men are all of one
composition, the several ingredients are so differently
proportioned in each individual, that no two are ex-
actly alike, and no one at all times like himself.

'The ablest man will sometimes do weak things ; the
proudest man, mean things; the honestest man, ill
things ; and th'e wickedest man, good ones. Study

^individuals then, and if you take (as you ought to
do) their outlines from their prevailing passion, sus-
pend your last finishing strokes till you have attended
to and discovered the operations of their inferior pas-

TO HIS SON. 171

sions, appetites, and humors. A man's generaF
character may be that of the honestest man of tha
world. Do not dispute it, — you might be thought
envious or ill-natured; but at the same time do
not take this probity upon trust to such a degree
as to put your life, fortune, or reputation in his
power. This honest man may happen to be -yourj
rival in power, in interest, or in love, — three pas-i
sions that often put honesty to most severe trialgf
in which it is too often cast ; but first analyze thi^
honest man yourself, and then only you will be
able to judge how far you may, or may not, witn
safety trust him. ~— «^

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 Agrip-
pina may sacrifice them to ambition, or a Messalina
to lust, but those instances are rare ; and in general
all they say and all they do, tends to the gratifica-
tion of their vanity or their love. He who flattersX
them most pleases them best, and they are the \
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 ; as, on the other
hand, the least word or action that can possibly
be construed into a slight or contempt is unpar-
donable, and never forgotton. Men are in this
respect tender too, and will sooner forgive an injury
than an insult. Some men are more captious than
others; some are always wrong-headed; but every
man living has such a share of vanity as to be hurt by
marks of slight and contempt. Every man does not

V

1/2 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

pretend to be a poet, a mathematician, or a states-
man, and considered as such ; but every man pre-
tends to common-sense and to fill his place in the
world with common decency, and consequently
does not easily forgive those negligences, inatten-
tions, and slights which seem to call in question
or utterly deny him both these pretensions.

Suspect, in general, those who remarkably affect
any one virtue ; who raise it above all others, and
who in a manner intimate that they possess it
exclusively. I say suspect them, for they are com-
monly impostors ; but do not be sure that they are
always so, for I have sometimes known saints really
religious, blusterers really brave, reformers of man-
ners really honest, and prudes really chaste. . Pry
mto the recesses of their hearts yourself, as far as
you are able, and never implicitly adopt a character
upon common fame, — which though generally right
as to the great outlines of characters is always wrong
in some particulars.

/"Be upon your guard against those who upon very

/slight acquaintance obtrude their unasked and un-

/ merited friendship and confidence upon you, for

1 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. Exam-

/ ine further and see whether those unexpected offers

I flow from a warm heart and a silly head, or from

V 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

TO HIS son: 173

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 con-
sequences. A parcel of warm hearts and inexperi-
enced heads, heated by convivial mirth and possibly
a little too much wine, vow, and really mean at the
time, eternal friendships to each other, and indis-
creetly 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, — but keep your serious views secret.
Trust those only to some tried friend, more experi-
enced than yourself, and who being in a different
walk of life from you, is not likely to become your
rival ; for I would not advise you to depend so
much upon the heroic virtue of mankind as to
hope or believe that your competitor will ever be
your friend as to the object of that competition.

These are reserves and cautions very necessary to
have, but very imprudent to show ; the volto sciolto
should accompany them. Adieu.

174 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

XLV.

ON THE LENIORES VIRTUTES.

[JVo Daie.]
Dear Boy, — Great talents and great virtues (if
you should have them) will procure you the respect
and the admiration of mankind ; but it is the lesser
talents, the leniores viriutes, which must procure you
their love and affection. The former, unassisted
and unadorned by the latter, will extort praise, but
will at the same time excite both fear and envy, —
two sentiments absolutely incompatible with love
and affection.

Caesar had all the great vices and Cato all the
great virtues that men could have. But Caesar had
the leniores viriutes, which Cato wanted, and which
made him beloved even by his enemies and gained
him the hearts of mankind in spite of their reason ;
while Cato was not even beloved by his friends, not-
withstanding 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 ! "
By which he means those lesser but engaging virtues
of gentleness, affability, complaisance, and good hu-
mor. The knowledge of a scholar, the courage of

TO HIS SON. 175

a hero, and the virtue of a Stoic, will be admired ;
but if the knowledge be accompanied with arro-
gance, the courage with ferocity, and the virtue
with inflexible severity, the man will never be loved.
The heroism of Charles XII. of Sweden (if his bru-
tal courage deserves that name) was universally ad-
mired, but the man nowhere beloved ; whereas
Henry IV. of France, who had full as much courage
and was much longer engaged in wars, was generally
beloved upon account of his lesser and social vir-
tues. We are all so formed that our understandings
are generally the dupes of our hearts, that is, of
our passions; and the surest way to the former is
through the latter, which must be engaged by the
leniores virtutes alone and the manner of exerting
them. The insolent civility of a proud man is, fo
example, if possible more shocking than his rude-
ness could be, because he shows you by his man-
ner that he thinks it mere condescension in him
and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what\
you have no pretence to claim. He intimates his \
protection instead of his friendship by a gracious J
nod instead of an usual bow; and rather signifies /
his consent that you may, than his invitation that/
you should, sit, walk, eat, or drink with him. ^"^^

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 I
difference between your situation 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 know-

176 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

ledge. He does not give it 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 mentioned, but likewise in
all others, shock and revolt that little pride and
vanity which every man has in his heart, and obli-
terate in us the obligation for the favor conferred
by reminding us of the motive which produced
and the manner which accompanied it.

These faults point out their opposite perfections,
and your own good sense will naturally suggest
them to you.

But besides these lesser virtues, there are what
may be called the lesser talents, or accomplishments,
which are of great use to adorn and recommend all
the greater; and the more so as all people are
judges of the one and but few are of the other.
Everybody feels the impression which an engaging
address, an agreeable manner of speaking, and an
easy politeness makes upon them ; and they pre-
pare the way for the favorable reception of their
betters. Adieu.

XLVI.

THE WRITER'S NOVITIATE.

London, y;?«. 11, o. s. 1750.
My dear Friend,^ — Yesterday I received a letter
from Mr. Harte of the 31st December, n. s., which

1 Lord Chesterfield uses this form of address in all the
subsequent letters to his son.

TO HIS son: 177

I will answer soon, and for which I desire you to
return him my thanks now. He tells me two things
that give me great satisfaction : one is, that there
are very few English at Rome ; the other is, that
you frequent the best foreign companies. This lastx
is a very good symptom ; for a man of sense is \
never desirous to frequent those companies where I
he is not desirous to please or where he finds that /
he displeases. It will not be expected in those contT —
panics that at your age you should have the garbo,
the disuivoUura, and the leggiadria of a man of five
and twenty who has been long used to keep the
best companies ; and therefore do not be discour-
aged and think yourself either slighted or laughed
at, because you see others older and more used to
the world easier, more familiar, and consequently
rather better received in those companies than
yourself. In time your turn will come ; and if you
do but show an inclination, a desire to please,
though you should be embarrassed or even err in
the means which must necessarily happen to you at
first, yet the will — to use a vulgar expression — will
be taken for the deed ; and people instead of laugh-
ing at you will be glad to instruct you. Good sense
can only give you the great outlines of good breed-\
ing, but observation and usage can alone give you)
the delicate touches and the fine coloring. ?foii
will naturally endeavor to show the utmost respect
to people of certain ranks and characters, and con- •
sequently you will show it; but the proper, the
delicate manner of showing that respect nothing
but observation and time can give.

178 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

I remember that when with all the awkwardness
and rust of Cambridge about me, I was first intro-
duced 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, steteruntque comae et vox
faucibus haesit. If I saw people whisper, I was sure
it was at me ; 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 criminal at the bar, and should cer-
tainly have renounced all polite company forever
if I had not been so convinced 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 em-
barrassment and being desoeuvri 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 afterwards 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
J conversation ceased on my part for some time, till
/ she good-naturedly resuming it spoke to me thus :
Y " I see your embarrassment, and I am sure that the

TO HIS SON. 179

few words you said to me cost you a great deal ; but \
do not be discouraged for that reason and avoid good
company. We see that you desire to please, and \
that is 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 novitiate before
you can profess good breeding ; and if you will be /
my novice I will present you to my acquaintancd-
as such."

You will easily imagine how much this speech
pleased me and how awkwardly I answered it. I
hemmed once or twice (for it gave me a burr in my
throat) before I could tell her that I was very much
obliged to her ; that it was true that I had a great
deal of reason to distrust my own behaviop, not
being used to fine company; and that I should
be proud of being her novice and receiving her
instructions.

As soon as I had fumbled out this answer, she
called up three or four people to her and said,
" Do you know that I have undertaken this young
man and that he must be encouraged? As for me
I think I have made a conquest of him, for he
just now ventured to tell me, although tremblingly,
that it is warm. You will assist me in polishing
him.". . .

The company laughed at this lecture, and I was
stunned with it. I did not know whether she was
serious or in jest. By turns I was pleased, ashamed,
encouraged, and dejected. But when I found after-
wards that both she and those to whom she had
presented me countenanced and protected me in

l80 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

company, I gradually got more assurance, and be-
gan not to be ashamed of endeavoring to be civil.
I copied the best masters, at first servilely, after-
wards more freely, and at last I joined habit and
invention.

XLVII.

TO ACQUIRE THE GRACES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS,
STUDY THE BEST MODELS. — A LIST OF THE
GRACES.

London, y^rw. i8, o. s. 1750.
My dear Friend, — I consider the solid part of
your little edifice as so near being finished and com-
pleted that my only remaining care is about the
embellishments ; and that must now be your princi-
pal care too. Adorn yourself with all those graces
and accomplishments which without solidity are
frivolous, but without which solidity is to a great
degree useless. Take one man with a very moder-
ate degree of knowledge, but with a pleasing figure,
a- prepossessing address, graceful in all that he says
|. and does, polite, liant, and in short, adorned with
^ all the lesser talents ; and take another man, with
.' sotm^ sense and profound knowledge, but without
the above-mentioned advantages : the former will
not only get the better of the latter in every pursuit
of every kind, but in truth there will be no sort of
competition between them. But can every man ac-
quire these advantages ? I say, Yes, if he please ;
suppose he is in a situation and in circumstances to

TO HIS SON. l8l

frequent good company. Attention, observation,
and imitation will most infallibly do it. When you
see a man whose first abord strikes you, prepossesses
you in his favor, 'and makes you entertain a good
opinion of him, you do not know why, analyze that
abord and examine within yourself the several parts
that compose it, and you will generally find it to be
the result, the happy assemblage, of modesty unem-
barrassed, respect without timidity, a genteel but
unaffected attitude of body and limbs, an open,
cheerful, but unsmirking countenance, and a dress
by no means negligent, and yet not foppish. Copy
him then not servilely, but as some of the greatest
masters of painting have copied others, — insomuch
that their copies have been equal to the originals
both as to beauty and freedom. When you see a
man who is universally allowed to shine as an agree-
able well-bred man, and a fine gentleman (as for
example, the Duke de Nivemois) , attend to him, ^
watch him carefully ; observe in what manner he^
addresses himself to his superiors, how he lives with
his equals, and how he treats his inferiors. Mind
his turn of conversation in the several situations of
morning visits, the table, and the evening amuse-
ments. Imitate without mimicking him ; and be his
duplicate, but not his ape. You will find that he
takes care never to say or do anything that can be
construed into a slight or a negligence, or that can
in any degree mortify people's vanity and self-love ;
on the contrary you will perceive that he makes peo-
ple pleased with him by making them first pleased
with themselves; he shows respect, regard, esteem,

1 82 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

and attention, where they are severally proper ; he
sows them with care, and he reaps them in plenty.
^^^TUsse amiable accomplishments are all to be ac-
/ quired by use and imitation; for we are in truth
V more than half what we are by imitation. The
great point is to choose good models, and to study
them with care. People insensibly contract not
only the air, the manners, and the vices, of those
with whom they commonly converse, but their vir-
tues too, and even their way of thinking. This is
so true that I have known very plain understandings
catch a certain degree of wit by constantly convers-
ing with those who had a great deal. Persist there-
fore in keeping the best company, and you will
insensibly become like them ; but if you add atten-
tion and observation, you will very soon become
one of them. The inevitable contagion of company
shows you the necessity of keeping the best and
avoiding all other ; for in every one something will
stick. You have hitherto, I confess, had very few
opportunities of keeping polite company. West-
minster school is undoubtedly the seat of illiberal
manners and brutal behavior ; Leipsig, I suppose,
is not the seat of refined and elegant manners ;
Venice, I believe, has done something; Rome, I
hope, will do a great deal more ; and Paris will, I
dare say, do all that you want, — always supposing
that you frequent the best companies and in the
intention of improving and forming yourself, for
without that intention nothing will do.

I here subjoin a list of all those necessary orna-
mental accomplishments (without which no man

TO HIS SON. 183

living can either please or rise in the world) which
hitherto I fear you want, and which only require
your care and attention 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 littley
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 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 your dress while
you were a school-boy was pardonable^ butwoulf
not be so now.

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.

l84 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

XLVIII.

IMPORTANCE OF THE MORAL VIRTUES. — WARNING
AGAINST VANITY.

London, May 17, o. s. 1750.
My DEAR Friend, — Your apprenticeship is near
out, and you are soon to set up for yourself; that
approaching moment is a critical one for you, and
^n anxious one for me. A tradesman who would
succeed in his way must begin by establishing a
character of integrity and good manners : without
the former, nobody will go to his shop at all ; with-
out the latter, nobody will go there twice. This
rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade. He
may sell his goods at the best price he can, within
certain bounds. He may avail himself of the hu-
mor, the whims, and the fantastical tastes of his
customers \ but what he warrants {o be good must
be really so, what he seriously asserts must be true,
or his first fraudulent profits will soon end in a
bankruptcy. It is the same in higher life and in
the great business of the world. A man who does
not solidly establish, and really deserve, a character
of truth, probity, good manners, and . good morals
at his first setting out in the world, may impose
and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but
will very soon vanish, and be extinguished with
\ contempt. People easily pardon in young men
\ the common irregularities of the senses ; but they
^o not forgive the least vice of the heart. The

TO HIS SON. 185

heart never grows better by age ; I fear rather
worse ; always harder. A young Uar will be an old
one, and a young knave will only be a greater
knave as he grows older. But should a bad young
heart, accompanied with a good head (which by
the way very seldom is the case), really reform in a
more advanced age, from a consciousness of its
folly, as well as of its guilt, such a conversion
would only be thought prudential and poHtical, but
never sincere. I hope in God, and I verily believe,
that you want no moral virtue. But the possession
of all the moral virtues in actu prima, as the logi-
cians call it, is not sufficient ; you must have them
in actu secundo too ; nay, that is not sufficient
neither, you must have the reputation of them also.
Your character in the world must be built upon that
solid foundation, or it will soon fall, and upon your
own head. You cannot therefore be too careful,
too nice, too scrupulous, in establishing this charac-
ter at first, upon which your whole career depends.
Let no conversation, no example, no fashion, no bon
mot, no silly desire of seeming to be above what
most knaves and many fools call prejudices, ever
tempt you to avow, excuse, extenuate, or laugh at
the least breach of morality ; but show upon all
occasions, and take all occasions to show, a detesta-
tion and abhorrence of it. There, though young,
you ought to be strict ; and there only, while young,
it becomes you to be strict and severe. But there
too, spare the persons while you lash the crimes.
All this relates, as you easily judge, to the vices of
the heart, such as lying, fraud, envy, malice, detrac-

1 86 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

tion, etc., and I do not extend it to the little frail-
ties of youth flowing from high spirits and warm
blood. It would ill become you at your age to
declaim against them, and sententiously censure an
accidental excess of the table, a frolic, an inadver-
tency ; no, keep as free from them yourself as you
can, but say nothing against them in others. They
certainly mend by time, often by reason ; and a
man's worldly character is not affected by them,
provided it be pure in all other respects.

To come now to a point of much less but yet of
very great consequence at your first setting out.
Be extremely upon your guard against vanity, the
common failing of inexperienced youth ; but partic-
ularly against that kind of vanity that dubs a man a
coxcomb, — a character which, once acquired, is

^more indelible than that of the priesthood. It is not
to be imagined by how many different ways vanity
defeats its own purposes. Some men decide per-
emptorily upon every subject, betray their ignorance
upon many, and show a disgusting presumption
upon the rest. . . . Others flatter their vanity by lit-
tle extraneous objects, which have not the least rela-
tion to themselves, — such as being descended from,
related to, or acquainted with people of distin-
guished merit and eminent characters. They talk
perpetually of their grandfather such-a-one, their
uncle such-a-one and their intimate friend Mr.
Such-a-one, with whom possibly they are hardly
acquainted. But admitting it all to be as they
would have it, what then? Have they the more
merit for those accidents ? Certainly not. On the

TO HIS SON. 187

contrary, their taking up adventitious proves their
want of intrinsic merit ; a rich man never borrows.
Take this rule for granted, as a never-faiUng one, —
that you must never seem to affect the character
in which you have a mind to shine. Modesty i§.
the only sure bait when you angle for praisg. The
affectation ofcourage will make even a brave man
pass only for a bully, as the affectation of wit will
make a man of parts pass for a coxcomb. By this
modesty I do not mean timidity and awkward bash-
fulness. On the contrary, be inwardly firm and
steady, know your own value whatever it may be,
and act upon that principle ; but take great care to
let nobody discover that you do know your own
value. Whatever real merit you have, other people
will discover, and people always magnify their own
discoveries, as they lessen those of others.

XLIX.

HOW TO READ HISTORY, AND HOW TO CONVERSE
WITH ADVANTAGE.— A MODEST ASSURANCE.

London, Nov. i, o. s. 1750.
My DEAR Friend, — ... 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 rela- \
tive, — not__only books but persons being. ever at j
hand to solve doubts and clear up. difficulties. I do /
by no means" advise you to throw away your time iny

1 88 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and
unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times.
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

i Conversation in France, if you have the address
and dexterity to turn it upon useful subjects, will
/exceedingly improve your historical knowledge, for
/ people there, however classically ignorant they may
be, think it a shame to be ignorant of the history of
their own country; they read that, if they read
nothing else, and having often read nothing else
are proud of having read that, and talk of it will-
ingly ; even the women are well instructed in that
sort of reading. I am far from meaning by this
that you should always be talking wisely in company
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 distin-
guish the company and the time. Ypu must trifle
only with triflers and be serious only with the
serious,~"5ut "dance to those who pipeT^ '^ur in
theatrum Cato severe venTsti ? " 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 de-
sired ; the producing of the one unasked implies
/that you are weary of the company, and the pro-
( ducing of the other unrequired will make the com-
\ pany weary of you. Company is a republic too
jealous of its liberties to suffer a dictator even for a

TO HIS SOiV. 189

quarter of an hour, and yet in that, as in all repub-
lics, there are some few who really govern; but
then it is by seeming to disclaim, instead of at-
tempting to usurp the power. That is the occasion
in which manners, dexterity, address, and the unde-
finable je ne sais quoi 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.

I know that many of your countrymen are apt to
call the freedom and vivacity of the French petu-
lancy and ill breeding ; but should you think so, I
desire upon many accounts that you will not say so.
I admit that it may be so in some instances of
petits maltres ^totirdis, and in some young people
unbroken to the world ; but I can assure you that
you will find it much otherwise with people of a
certain rank and age, upon whose model you will do
very well to form yourself. We call their steady
assurance, impudence. Why? Only because what
we call modesty is awkward bashfulness and maic-
vaise honte. For my part I see no impudence, but
on the contrary infinite utility and advantage, in
presenting one's self with the same coolness and
unconcern in any and every company ; till one can
do that, I am very sure that one can never present
one's self well. Whatever is done under concern
and embarrassment, must be ill done ; and till a
man is absolutely easy and unconcerned in every
company he will never be thought to have kept
good, nor be very welcome in it. A steady assur-

190 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

ance with seeming modesty is possibly the most
useful qualification that a man can have in every
part of life. A man would certainly make a very
considerable fortune and figure in the world, whose
modesty and timidity should often, as bashfulness
always does, put him in the deplorable and lament-
able situation of the pious ^neas, when obstiipuit^
steteruntque comce, et vox faucibus hcesit Fortune,

" born to be controlled,

Stoops to the forward and the bold."

Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner
01 seemmg modesFy," clear the way for merit, that
wmild otherwise Be discouraged by difficulties in its
journey ; whereas barefaced impudence is the noisy
and blustering harbinger of a worthless and sense-
less usurper.

You will think that I shall never have done
recommending to you these exterior worldly ac-
complishments, and you will think right, for I never
shall. They are of too great consequence to you for
me to be indifferent or negligent about them ; the
shining part of your future figure and fortune de-
pends now wholly upon them. These are the ac-
quisitions which must give efficacy and success to
those you have already made. To have it said and
believed that you are the most learned man in Eng-
land would be no more than was said and believed
of Dr. Bentley ; but to have it said at the same time
that you are also the best bred, most polite, and
agreeable man in the kingdom, would be such a
happy composition of a character as I never yet

TO HIS SON. 191

knew any one man deserve, and which I will en-
deavor as well as ardently wish that you may. Ab-
solute perfection is I well know unattainable ; but I
know too that a man of parts may be unweariedly
aiming at it, and arrive pretty near it. Try, labor,
persevere. Adieu.

GOOD MANNERS THE SOURCE OF ESTEEM.— SUPPOSED
ALLUSION TO DR. JOHNSON.

London, Feb. 28, o. s. 1751.
My DEAR Friend, — This epigram in Martial,

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 con-
ceive 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 can-
not particularly say why. You are not aimable ;
you have not those engaging manners, those pleas-
ing attentions, those graces, and that address, which
1 Recalling, —

" 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."

192 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

are absolutely necessary to please though impossible
to define. I cannot say it is this or that particular
thing that 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.
But subsequent observation and reflection have
taught me why. There is a man whose moral
character, deep learning, and superior parts, I ac-
knowledge, admire, and respect ; but whom it is so
impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a
fever whenever I am in his company. His figure
(without being deformed) seems made to disgrace
or ridicule the common structure of the human
body. His legs and arms are never in the position
which according to the situation of his body they
ought to be in, but constantly employed in com-
mitting acts of hostility upon the Graces. He
throws anywhere but down his throat whatever he
means to drink, and only mangles what he means
to carve. Inattentive to all the regards of social
life, he mis-times or misplaces everything. He
disputes with heat, and indiscriminately, mindless of
the rank, character, and situation of those with
whom he disputes ; absolutely ignorant of the sev-
eral gradations of familiarity or respect, he is

TO HIS SON. 193

exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and
his inferiors, and therefore, by a necessary conse-
quence absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to
love such a man ? No. The utmost I can do for
him is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.^

LI.

SUAVITER IN MODO, FOR TITER IN RE.

[No Date].
My de.\r Friend, — I mentioned to you some
time ago, a sentence, which I would most earnestly
wish you always to retain in your thoughts and
observe in your conduct. It is Suaviter in modo,
fortiter in re. I do not know any one rule so un-
exceptionably useful and necessary in every part of
life. I shall therefore take it for my text to-day ;
and as old men love preaching, and I have some
right to preach to you, I here present you with my
sermon upon these words. To proceed then regu-
larly and pulpitically, I will first show you, my

1 Lord Chesterfield probably alludes to Dr. Johnson in
this passage. Boswell had no doubt of it, and says : — "I
have heard Johnson himself talk of the character, and say
that it was meant for Lord George Lyttelton, in which I
could by no means agree ; for his Lordship had nothing of
that violence which is a conspicuous feature in the composi-
tion. Finding that my illustrious friend could bear to have
it supposed that it might be meant for him, I said laughingly
that there was one /ra// which did not belong to him, — he
throws meat everywhere but down his oum throat. * Sir,' said
he, ' Lord Chesterfield never saw me eat in his life ! ' "
13

194 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

beloved, the necessary connection of the two mem-
bers of my text, — suaviter in modo ; fortiier in re.
In the next place, I shall set forth the advantages
and utility resulting from a strict observance of the
precept contained in my text ; and conclude with
an application of the whole. The suaviter ifi modo
alone would degenerate and sink into a mean,
timid complaisance and passiveness, if not sup-
ported and dignified by the fortiter in re, which
would also run into impetuosity and brutality, if
not tempered and softened by the suaviter in modo ;
however, they are seldom united. The warm, chol-
eric man with strong animal spirits despises the
suaviter in modo, and thinks to carry all before
him by the fortiter in re. He may possibly, by
great accident, now and then succeed, when he
has only weak and timid people to deal with ; but
his general fate will be to shock, offend, be hated,
and fail. On the other hand, the cunning, crafty
man thinks to gain all his ends by the suaviter in
modo only ; he becomes all things to all men ; he
seems to have no opinion of his own, and servilely
adopts the present opinion of the present person ;
he insinuates himself only into the esteem of fools,
but is soon detected, and surely despised by every-
body else. The wise man (who differs as much
from the cunning as from the choleric man) alone
joins the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re.
Now to the advantages arising from the strict ob-
servance of this precept. If you are in authority
and have a right to command, your commands
delivered sudviter in modo will be willingly, cheer-

TO HIS SON. 195

fully, and consequently well obeyed; whereas, if
given oxAy fortiter, that is brutally, they will rather,
as Tacitus says, be interrupted than executed. For
my own part, if I bid my footman bring me a glass
of wine in a rough insulting manner, I should ex-
pect that in obeying me he would contrive to spill
some of it upon me, and I am sure I should deserve
it. A cool, steady resolution should show that
where you have a right to command you will be
obeyed, but at the same time a gentleness in the
manner of enforcing that obedience should make
it a cheerful one, and soften as much as possible
the mortifying consciousness of inferiority. If you
are to ask a favor or even to solicit your due you
must do it suaviter in modo or you will give those
who have a mind to refuse you either, a pretence to
do it by resenting the manner; but on the other
hand you must by a steady perseverance and decent
tenaciousness show the fortiter in re. The right
motives are seldom the true ones of men's actions,
— especially of kings, ministers, and people in high
stations, who often give to importunity and fear
what they would refuse to justice or to merit. By
the suaviter in modo engage their hearts if you can ;
at least prevent the pretence of offence : but take
care to show enough of the fortiter in re to extort
from their love of ease or their fear what you might
in vain hope for from their justice or good nature.
People in high life are hardened to the wants and
distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bod-
ily pains; they see and hear of them all day long
and even of so many simulated ones that they do

196 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

not know which are real and which not. Other sen-
timents are therefore to be appUed to than those of
mere justice and humanity. Their favor must be
captivated by the suaviter in niodo ; their love of
ease disturbed by unwearied importunity; or their
fears wrought upon by a decent intimation of im-
placable cool resentment, — this is the true fortiter
in re. This precept is the only way I know in the
world of being loved without being despised and
feared without being hated. It constitutes the dig-
nity of character which every wise man must en-
deavor to establish.

Now to apply what has been said and so
conclude.

If you find that you have a hastiness in your
temper which unguardedly breaks out into indis-
creet sallies or rough expressions to either your
superiors, your equals, or your inferiors, watch it
narrowly, check it carefully, and call the suaviter in
modo to your assistance ; at the first impulse of pas-
sion, be silent till you can be soft. Labor even to
get the command of your countenance so well
that those emotions may not be read in it, — a most
unspeakable advantage in business. On the other
hand, let no complaisance, no gentleness of temper,
no weak desire of pleasing on your part, no whee-
dling, coaxing, nor flattery on other people's, make
you recede one jot from any point that reason and
prudence have bid you pursue ; but return to the
• charge, persist, persevere, and you will find most
things attain:\bTe" that are possible. A yielding,
timid meekness is always abused and insulted by

710 HIS soi\r. 197

the unjust and the unfeeling, but when sustained
by Xhefortiter in re is ahvays respected, commonly
successful. In your friendships and connections,
as well as in your enmities, this rule is particularly
useful : let your firmness and vigor preserve and
invite attachments to you, but at the same time
let your manner hinder the enemies of your friends
and dependants from becoming yours ; let your
enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your
manner, but let them feel at the same time the^
steadiness of your just resentment, — for there is a
great difference between bearing malice, which is
always ungenerous, and a resolute self-defence, which
is always prudent and justifiable. In negotiations
with foreign ministers remember the fortiter in re ;
give up no point, accept of no expedient, till theN
utmost necessity reduces you to it, and even then
dispute the ground inch by inchj^^ut then while
you are contending with the minister fortiter in re,
remember to gain the man by the suaviter in modo.
If you engage his heart, you have a fair chance for
imposing upon his understanding and determining
his will. Tell him in a frank gallant manner that
your ministerial wrangles do not lessen your per-t
sonal regard for his merit, but that on the contrary!
his zeal and ability in the service of his master!
increase it, and that of all things you desire to make I
a good friend of so good a servant. ' By these means
you may and will very often be a gainer ; you never
can be a loser. Some people cannot gain upon
themselves to be easy and civil to those who are
either their rivals, competitors, or opposers, though,

198 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

independently of those accidental circumstances,
they would like and esteem them. They betray

(a shyness and an awkwardness in company with
them and catch at any little thing to expose them,
and so from temporary and only occasional oppo-
nents make them their personal enemies. This is
exceedingly weak and detrimental, as indeed is all
humor in business, which can only be carried on
successfully by unadulterated good policy and right
reasoning. In such situations I would be more
particularly and noblement civil, easy, and frank with
the man whose designs I traversed. This is com-
monly called generosity and magnanimity but is in
truth good sense and policy. The rnanne£ is often
as important as-th^.- matter, sometimes more so. A
favor may make an enemy and an injur}- may make
a^ friend according to the different manner in which
they are severally done. The countenance, the
address, the words, the enunciation, the Graces add
great efficacy to the suaviter in niodo and great
dignity to the fortiter in re ; and consequently they
deserve the utmost attention.

,' From what has been said, I conclude with this

/ observation, — that gentleness of manners with firm-

// ness of mind is a short but full description of human

perfection on this side of religious and moral duties.

That you may be seriously convinced of this truth

and show it in your life and conversation, is the

most sincere and ardent wish of.

Yours.

TO HIS SON. 199

LII.

LES BIENSEANCES.—TB.^ PROPER DEMEANOR WITH
ONE'S SUPERIORS, IN MIXED COMPANIES, AND
WITH ONE'S INFERIORS.

Greenwich, yM«^ 13, o. s. 1751.

My dear Friend, — Les bienseances ^ 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 perfects them (supposing always an atten-
tion 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 J
of conversation ; and you must even take care that
the given subject of such conversation do not lead
you into any impropriety. The art would hetoj
carry it, if possible, to some indirect flattery,— /such
as commending those virtues in some other person V
in which that prince either thinks he does, or at/
least would be thought by others to excel. Almost
the same precautions are necessary to be used with
ministers, generals, etc, who expect to be treated
1 Good breeding; decorum; propriety.

2CX) LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

with very near the same respect as their masters,
and commonly deserve it better. There is, how-
ever, this difference, that one may begin the con-
versation with them, if on their side it should hap-
pen to drop, provided one does not carry it to any
subject upon which it is improper either for them
to speak or be spoken to. In these two cases
certain attitudes and actions would be extremely
absurd, because too easy and consequently disre-
spectful. As for instance if you were to put your
arms across in your bosom, twirl your snufif-box,
trample with your feet, scratch your head, etc., it
would be shockingly ill bred in that company ; and
indeed not extremely well bred in any other. The \
/great difficulty in those cases, though a very sur- \
I mountable one by attention and custom, is to join )
y perfect inward ease with perfect outward 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 biens^ant to

^ Never to mention a rope in the family of a man who
has been hanged.

TO HIS SON. 201

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 offen-
sive to equals, brutal and insulting to inferiors.
That easiness of carriage and behavior which is
exceedingly engaging widely differs from negligence
and inattention, and by no means implies that one
may do whatever one pleases, — it only means that
one is not to be stiff, formal, embarrassed, discon-
certed, and ashamed, like country bumpkins and
people who have never been in good company;
but it requires great attention to and a scrupulous
observation of les biens'eances. Whatever one ought[
to do is to be done with ease and unconcern
whatever is improper must not be done at all. In
mixed companies also, different ages and sexes are
to be differently addressed. You would not talk of
your pleasures to men of a certain age, gravity, and
dignity; they justly expect from young people a
degree of deference and regard. You should be
full as easy with them as with people of your own
years, but your manner must be different ; more
respect must be implied ; and it is not amiss to
insinuate that from them you expect to learn. It*
flatters and comforts age for not being able to take
a part in the joy and titter of youth. To women
you should always address yourself with great out-
ward respect and attention, whatever you feel in^
wardly. Their sex is by long prescription entitled
to it ; and it is among the duties of bienseance. At

202 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

the same time that respect is very properly and
very agreeably 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
disadvantage. 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, zestd
meme d^un pen de polissonerie is pardonable with
the latter.

Another important point of les bienseances, seldom
enough attended to, is not to run your own present
humor and disposition indiscriminately against every-
body ; but to observe, conform to, and adopt theirs.
For example, if you happened to be in high good-
humor and a flow of spirits, would you go and sing
a pont neuf^ or cut a caper to la Marechale de
Coigny, the Pope's Nuncio, or Abbd Sallier, or to any
person of natural gravity and melancholy, or who
at that time should be in grief? I believe not;
as on the other hand, I suppose that if you were
in low spirits or real grief, you would not choose
to bewail your situation with la petite Blot. If you
cannot command your present humor and disposi-
tion, single out those to converse with who happen
to be in the humor the nearest to your own.

Loud laughter is extremely inconsistent with les
bienseances, as it is only the illiberal and noisy testi-
1 Ballad.

TO HIS SON. 203

mony 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 biense'ances
than horse-play, or jeux de maiti of any kind what-
ever, and has often very serious, sometimes vei
fatal consequences. Romping, struggling, throwing
things at one another's head, are the becoming
pleasantries of the mob, but degrade a gentleman ;
Giuoco di mano, giuoco di villano is a very true say-
ing, among the few true sayings of the Italians.

Peremptoriness and decision in young people is
contraire aux biens^ances, and they should seldom
seem to assert, and always use some softening,
mitigating expression, — such as, s' il ni' est permis de
le dire ; je croirois plutdt ; si j'^ose ni' expliquer^
which soften the manner without giving up or even
weakening the thing. People of more age and ex-
perience expect and are entitled to that degree of
deference.

There is a biense'ance 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 oi
insult ; he speaks to neither d'un ton brusque^'h^
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 biens^ances are another word for man-
ners, and extend to every part of life. They are
propriety; the Graces should attend, in order to
complete them. The Graces enable us to do, gen-
teelly and pleasingly, what les biense'ances require

204 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

to be done at all. The latter are an obligation
upon every man ; the former are an infinite advan-
tage and ornament to any man. May you unite
both!

LIII.

THE GRACES. — THE WRITER'S EARLY DEFECTS.—
DRESS.

London, June 24, o. s. 1751.
My DEAR Friend, — Air, address, manners, and
graces are of such infinite advantage to whoever
has them, and so peculiarly and essentially neces-
sary for you, that now as the time of our meeting
draws near I tremble for fear I should not find you
possessed of them ; and to tell you the truth, I
doubt you are not yet sufficiently convinced of their
importance. There is, for instance, your intimate
friend Mr. H[ayes], who with great merit, deep
knowledge, and a thousand good qualities will,
never make a figure in the world while he lives.
Why ? Merely for want of those external and show-
ish accomplishments which he began the world too
late to acquire, and which with his studious and
philosophical turn, I believe he thinks are not worth
bis attentigju-^ He may very probably make a fig-
ure in the republic of letters ; but he had ten thou-
sand times better make a figure as a man of the
world and of business in the republic of the United
Provinces, which, take my word for it, he never will.

TO HIS SON. 205

As I open myself without the least reserve when-
ever I think that my doing so can be of any use to
you, I will give you a short account of myself when
I first came into the world, which was at the age
you are of now, so that, by the way, you have got
the start of me in that important article by two or
three years at least. At nineteen, I left the Uni
versity of Cambridge, where I was an absolute^
pedant. When I talked my best, I quoted Horace ;
when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial ;
and when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I
talked Ovid. I was convinced that none but the
ancients had common-sense ; that the classics con-
tained everything that was either necessary, useful,
or ornamental to men ; and I was not without
thoughts of wearing the toga virilis of the Romans
instead of the vulgar and illiberal dress of the'^^
moderns.-^ With these excellent notions, I went
first to the Hague, where, by the help of several
letters of recommendation, I was soon introduced
into all the best company, and where I very soon
discovered that I was totally mistaken in almost
every one notion I had entertained. Fortunately,
I had a strong desire to please (the mixed result
of good-nature and a vanity by no means blame-
able) and was sensible that I had nothing but the
desire. I therefore resolved, if possible, to acquire
the means too. I studied attentively and minutely

1 " Yet there is reason to suspect that this was not the real
fact with himself, but only an encouraging example held
forth to his son to show him how pedantry may be success-
fully surmounted." (Lord Mahon.)

206 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

the dress, the air, the manner, the address, and the
turn of conversation of all those whom I found to
be the people in fashion and most generally allowed
to please. I imitated them as well as I could ; if
I heard that one man was reckoned remarkably
genteel, I carefully watched his dress, motions, and
attitudes, and formed my own upon them. When
I heard of another whose conversation was agree-
able and engaging, I listened and attended to the
turn of it. I addressed myself, though de tres mau-
vaise grace, to all the most fashionable fine ladies ;
confessed, and laughed with them at my own awk-
wardness and rawness, recommending myself as an
object for them to try their skill in forming. By
these means, and with a passionate desire of pleas-
ing everybody, I came by degrees to please some ;
and I can assure you that what little figure I have
made in the world has been much more owing to
that passionate desire of pleasing universally than
to any intrinsic merit or sound knowledge I might
ever have been master of. My passion for pleasing
\ was so strong (and I am very glad it was so) that
' I own to you fairly, I wished to make every woman
\ I saw in love with me and every man I met with
admire me. Without this passion for the object,
I should never have been so attentive to the means ;
and I own I cannot conceive how it is possible
for any man of good nature and good sense to be
without this passion. Does not good nature incline
us to please all those we converse with, of whatever
rank or station they may be ? And does not good
sense and common observation show of what in-

TO HIS SON. 207

finite use it is to please ? Oh ! but one may please
by the good qualities of the heart and the know-
ledge of the head, without that fashionable air,
address, and manner, which is mere tinsel. I deny
it. A man may be esteemed and respected, but
I defy him to please without them. Moreover, at
your age I would not have contented myself with
barely pleasing; I wanted to shine and to distin-
guish myself in the world as a man of fashion and
gallantry, as well as business. And that ambition
or vanity, call it what you please, was a right one ;
it hurt nobody, and made me exert whatever talents
I had. It is the spring of a thousand right and
good things. y^

I was talking you over the other day witlTone
very much your friend, and who had often been
with you, both at Paris and in Italy. Among the
innumerable questions which you may be sure I
asked him concerning you, I happened to mention
your dress (for, to say the truth, it was the only
thing of which I thought him a competent judge) ,
upon which he said that you dressed tolerably well
at Paris; but that in Italy you dressed so ill that
he used to joke with you upon it, and even to tear
your clothes. Now, I must tell you that at your
age it is as ridiculous not to be very well dressed as
at my age it would be if I were to wear a white
feather and red-heeled shoes. Dress is one of vari-
ous ingredients that contribute to the art of pleas-
ing ; it pleases the eyes at least, and more especially i
of women. Address yourself to the senses, if yoi
would please ; dazzle the eyes, soothe and flatta

208 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

;heea.of...nd;e„,ase.e.Heans,a„d,e.
their reason do its worst against you. Suaviter in
modo is the great secret. Whenever you find your-
self engaged insensibly in favor of anybody of no
superior merit nor distinguished talents, examine
and see what it is that has made those impressions
upon you, and you will find it to be that douceur,
that gentleness of manners, that air and address,
which I have so often recommended to you ; and
from thence draw this obvious conclusion, — that
what pleases you in them, will please others in you,
for we are all made of the same clay, though some of
the lumps are a little finer and some a little coarser ;
but in general the surest way to judge of others
is to examine and analyze one's self thoroughly.
When we meet I will assist you in that analysis, in
which every man wants some assistance against his
own self-love. Adieu.

LIV.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH PLAYS COMPARED.

London, y««. 23. o. s. 1752.
My DEAR Friend, — Have you seen the new trag-
edy of " Varon " ^ and what do you think of it ? Let
me know, for I am determined to form my taste
upon yours. I hear that the situations and inci-
dents are well brought on and the catastrophe

^ Written by the Vicomte de Grave, and at that time the
general topic of conversation at Paris.

TO HIS SON. 209

unexpected and surprising, but the verses bad. I
suppose it is the subject of all the conversations at
Paris, where both women and men are judges and
critics of all such performances. Such conversations
that both form and improve the taste and whet the
judgment are surely preferable to the conversations
of our mixed companies here, which if they hap-
pen to rise above bragg and whist infallibly stop
short of everything either pleasing or instructive.
I take the reason of this to be that (as women gen-
erally give the ton to the conversation) our English
women are not near so well informed and cultivated
as the French ; besides that they are naturally more
serious and silent.

I could wish there were a treaty made between theN
French and English theatres in which both parties
should make considerable concessions. The Eng-
lish ought to give up their notorious violations of
all the unities, and all their massacres, racks, dead
bodies, and mangled carcasses which they so fre-
quently exhibit upon their stage. The French shoul
engage to have more action and less declamation ;
and not to cram arid crowd things together to al-
most a degree of impossibility from a too scrupu-
lous adherence to the unities. The English 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
14

2IO LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

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 prin-
cess 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 re-
course 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 little to the delusion ; and I am very
willing to carry that complaisance a little farther
than the French do.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life or it
would not effect 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.

TO HIS SON. 2 1 1

It is quite otherwise with comedy, which should
be mere common hfe and not one jot bigger.
Every character should speak upon the stage, not
only what it would utter in the situation there re-
presented, 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
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
turn 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.

';

LV.

UTILITY OF AIMING AT PERFECTION.

London, Feb. 20, o. s. 1752.
My dear Friend, — In all systems whatsoever,
whether of religion, government, morals, etc., perfec-

212 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

tion is the object always proposed, though possibly
unattainable, — hitherto at least certainly unattained.
However, those who aim carefully at the mark itself
will unquestionably come nearer it than those who
from despair, negligence, or indolence 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 unattainable ;
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 com-
mon course of things I need not be, — perfect ? "

I am very sure that I need not point out to you
the weakness and the folly of this reasoning, if it
deserves the name of reasoning. It would discour-
age and put a stop to the exertion of any one of our
faculties. On the contrary a man of sense and
spirit says to himself, " Though the point of perfec-
tion may (considering the imperfection of our
nature) be unattainable, my care, my endeavors, my
attention, shall not be wanting to get as near it as I
can. I will approach it every day ; possibly I may
arrive at it at last ; at least — what I am sure is in
my own power — I will not be distanced." Many
fools (speaking of you) say to me, " What ! would
you have him perfect? " I answer. Why not? What
hurt would it do him or me ? " Oh, but that is im-
possible," say they; I reply I am not sure of that :
perfection in the abstract I admit to be unattainable,
but what is commonly called perfection in a char-

TO HIS son: 213

acter I maintain to be attainable, and not only that
but in every man's power. " He has," continue they,
" a good head, a good heart, a good fund of know-
ledge, which would increase daily : what would you
have more?" Why, I would have everything more
that can adorn and complete a character. Will it
do his head, his heart, or his knowledge any harm
to have the utmost delicacy of manners, the most
shining advantages of air and address, the most
endearing attentions and the most engaging graces ?
" But as he is," say they, *' he is loved wherever he is
known." I am very glad of it, say I ; but I would
have him be liked before he is known and loved
afterwards. I would have him by his first abord
and address, make people wish to know him, and
inclined to love him; he will save a great deal of
time by it. " Indeed," reply they, " you are too
nice, too exact, and lay too much stress upon things
that are of very little consequence." Indeed, rejoin
I, you know very little of the nature of mankind if
you take those things to be of little consequence ;
one cannot be too attentive to them ; it is they that
always engage the heart, of which the understanding
is commonly the bubble. And I would much rather
that he erred in a point of grammar, of history, of
philosophy, etc., than in point of manners and ad-
dress. " But consider, he is very young : all this will
come in time." I hope so ; but that time must be
when he is young or it will never be at all ; the
right /// must be taken young, or it will never be
easy or seem natural. " Come, come," say they
(substituting as is frequently done, assertion instead of

214 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

argument), " depend upon it he will do very well;
and you have a great deal of reason to be satisfied
with him." I hope and believe he will do well but I
would have him do better than well. I am very well
pleased with him but I would be more, — I would
be proud of him. I would have him have lustre as
well as weight. " Did you ever know anybody that
re-united all these talents? " Yes, I did; Lord Bo-
lingbroke joined all the politeness, the manners, and
the graces of a courtier to the solidity of a states-
man and to the learning of a pedant. He was
omnis homo ; and pray what should hinder my boy
from being so too, if he has as I think he has all
the other qualifications that you allow him ? Noth-
ing can hinder him but neglect of or inattention to
those objects which his own good sense must tell
him are of infinite consequence to him, and which
therefore I will not suppose him capable of either
neglecting or despising.

This (to tell you the whole truth) is the result of
a controversy that passed yesterday between Lady
Hervey and myself, upon your subject and almost
in the very words. I submit the decision of it to
yourself; let your own good sense determine it, and
make you act in consequence of that determination.
The receipt to make this composition is short and
infallible ; here I give it you : —

Take variety of the best company wherever you
are; be minutely attentive to every word and
action; imitate respectively those whom you ob-
serve to be distinguished and considered for any
one accomplishment; then mix all those several

TO HIS son: 215

accomplishments together and serve them up your-
self to others.

THE STUDY OF THE WORJff). — COMPANY THE
ONLY.SeHOOL.

London, March 16, o. s. 1752.
My dear Friend, — How do you go on with the
most useful and most necessary of all studies,-
the study of the world ? Do you find that you gain
knowledge ; and does your daily experience at
once extend and demonstrate your improvement?
You will possibly ask me how you can judge of that
yourself. I will tell you a sure way of knowing.
Examine yourself and see whether your notions of
the world are changed by experience from what
they were two years ago in theory ; for that alone is
one favorable symptom of improvement. At that
age (I remember it in myself) every notion that
one forms is erroneous ; one has seen few models
and those none of the best to form one's self upon.,
One thinks that everything is to be carried by spirit
and vigor ; that art is meanness, and that versatility
and complaisance are the refuge of pusillanimity and
weakness. This most mistaken opinion gives an'
indelicacy, a brusquerie, and a roughness to the
manners. Fools, who can never be undeceived, re-
tain them as long as they live ; reflection with a^
little experience makes men of sense shake them off

2l6 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

^QQS_^Vhen they come to be a little better ac-
/ quainted with themselves and with their own species,
( they discover that plain right reason is nine times in
{ ten the fettered and shackled attendant of the
Vs„,Jfiumph of the heart and the passions ; and conse-
/quently they address themselves nine times in ten
/ to the conqueror, not to the conquered : and con-
querors you know must be applied to in the gen-
\ tlest, the most engaging, and the most insinuating
Vjnanner. Have you found out that every woman is
\ infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery, and
/ every man by one sort or other ? Have you dis-
/ covered what variety of little things affect the heart
/ and how surely they collectively gain it? If you
have, you have made some progress. I would try a
man's knowledge of the world as I would a school-
boy's knowledge of Horace, — not by making him
construe Mczcenas atavis edite regibus, which he
// could do in the first form, but by examining him
*'*-^«/j as to the delicacy and curiosa felicitas of that poet.
' ' ^^^ man requires very little knowledge and experience
of the world to understand glaring, high-colored,
and decided characters ; they are but few and they
\ strike at first. But to distinguish the almost imper-
ceptible shades and the nice gradations of virtue
and vice, sense and folly, strength and weakness
j (of which characters are commonly composed), de-
1 mands some experience, great observation, and
I minute attention. In the same cases most people
1 do the same things, but with this material difference,
y upon which the success commonly turns, — a man
\fho has studied the world knows when to time and

TO HIS SON. 217

where to place them ; he has analyzed the charac-
ters he applies to, and adapted his address and his
arguments to them : but a man of what is called\
plain good sense, who has only reasoned by himself \
and not acted with mankind, mistimes, misplaces, \
runs precipitately and bluntly at the mark, and faUsy
upon his nose in the way. In the common man-
ners of social life every man of common-sense has
the rudiments, the A B C of civility ; he means not
to offend and even wishes to please, and if he has
any real merit will be received and tolerated in
good company. But that is far from being enough ;
for though he may be received he will never be
desired ; though he does not offend he will never
be loved ; but like some little, insignificant, neutral
power surrounded by great ones, he will neither be
feared nor courted by any, but by turns invaded by
all, whenever it is their interest; "^ most "cOTltemp-'
tible situation ! Whereas a man who has carefully
attended to and experienced the various workings
of the heart and the artifices of the head, and who
by one shade can trace the progression of the whole
color ; who can at the proper times employ all the
several means of persuading the understanding, and
engaging the heart, may and will have enemies, but
will and must have friends. He may be opposed,
but he will be supported too ; his talents may excite
the jealousy of some, but his engaging arts will make
him beloved by many more ; he will be consider-
able ; he will be considered. Many different quali-
fications must conspire to form such a man, and to
make him at once respectable and amiable ; and the

2l8 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

least must be joined to the greatest; the latter
would be unavailing without the former, and the
former would be futile and frivolous without the
latter^^^/Learning is acquired by reading books ; but
the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of
the world, is only to be acquired by reading men
and studying all the various editions of them.
[any words in every lanp^age are generally thought
to be synonymous ; but those who study the lan-
guage attentively will find that there is no such
thing. They will discover some little difference, some
distinction between all those words that are vulgarly
called synonymous ; one has always more energy,
extent, or delicacy than another. It is the same
with men ; all are in general, and yet no two in par-
^ticular,- ex,a.ctly_iilike^Those who have not accu-
rately studied, perpetually mistake them ; they do
not discern the shades and gradations that distin-
guish characters seemingly alike. Company, various
company, 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
uppermost is easy and quick; but then you must
have application and vivacity, and you must not
only bear with but even seek restraint in most com-
panies instead of stagnating in one or two only
where indolence and love of ease may be indulged.

TO HIS SON. 219

LVII.
How HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.— LOUIS XIV.

London, April 13, o. s. 1752.

Voltaire sent me from Berlin his history " du
Si^cle de Louis XIV." It came at a very proper
time ; Lord Bolingbroke had just taught me how
history should be read ; Voltaire shows me how it
should be written. I am sensible that it will meet
with almost as many critics as readers. Voltaire
must be criticised : besides, every man's favorite is
attacked, for every prejudice is exposed, _and_our^
prejudices are our mistresses j/^feason is at best our
wi?gi^.veryj2fteif heafd indeed^ but seldom minded.
It is the history of the human understanding written
by a man of parts for the use of men of parts. Weak
minds will not like it, even though they do not un-
derstand it, — which is commonly the measure of
their admiration. Dull ones will want those minute
and uninteresting details with which most other
histories are encumbered. He tells me all I want
to know and nothing more. His reflections are
short, just, and produce others in his readers. Free
from religious, philosophical, political, and national
prejudices beyond any historian I ever met with,
he relates all those matters as truly and as impar-
tially as certain regards, which must always be to
some degree observed, will allow him : for one sees
plainly that he often says much less than he would
say if he might. He has made me much better

220 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

acquainted with the times of Louis XIV. than the
innumerable volumes which I had read could do ;
and has suggested this reflection to me which I
have never made before, — his vanity, not his knowl-
edge, made him encourage all and introduce many
arts and sciences in his country. He opened in a
manner the human understanding in France and
brought it to its utmost perfection ; his age equalled
in all, and greatly exceeded in many things (pardon
me, pedants !), the Augustan. This was great and
rapid ; but still it might be done by the encourage-
ment, the applause and the rewards of a vain, liberal,
and magnificent prince. What is much more sur-
prising is, that he stopped the operations of the
human mind just where he pleased, and seemed
to say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther."
For, a bigot to his religion, and jealous of his power,
free and rational thoughts upon either never entered
into a French head during his reign ; and the
greatest geniuses that ever any age produced never
entertained a doubt of the divine right of kings,
or the infallibility of the Church. Poets, orators,
and philosophers, ignorant of their natural rights,
cherished their chains ; and blind active faith
triumphed in those great minds over silent and
passive reason. The reverse of this seems now to
be the case in France : reason opens itself; fancy
and invention fade and decline .^

^ " Chesterfield," says Lord Carnarvon, " foretold the
French Revolution when the cloud was not bigger than a
man's hand."

TO HIS SON. 221

LVIII.

A VOIR DU MONDE EXPLAINED AND RECOMMENDED.

London, April 30, o. s. 1752.
My DEAR Friend, — Avoir du monde is in my \
opinion a very just and happy expression for hav-
ing address, manners, and for knowing how to
behave properly in all companies; and it implies
very truly that a man who has not those accom-
plishments is not of the world. Without them the
best parts are inefficient, civility is absurd, and
freedom offensive. A learned parson rusting in his
cell at Oxford or Cambridge will reason admirably
well upon the nature of man ; will profoundly analyze
the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the pas-
sions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those sub-
divisions of we know not what ; and yet unfortu-
nately he knows nothing of man, for he has not
lived with him, and is ignorant of all the various
modes, habits, prejudices, and tastes that always
influence and often determine him. He views
man as he does colors in Sir Isaac Newton's prism,
where only the capital ones are seen ; but an ex-
perienced dyer knows all their various shades and
gradations, together with the result of their several
mixtures. Few men are of one plain decided color ;
most are mixed, shaded, and blended, and vary as
much from different situations as changeable sill
do from different lights. The man qui a du monde
knows all this from his own experience and observa-
tion : the conceited cloistered philosopher knows

222 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

nothing of it from his own theory ; his practice is
absurd and improper, and he acts as awkwardly as
a man would dance who had never seen others
dance nor learned of a dancing-master, but who
had only studied the notes by which dances are now
pricked down as well as tunes. Observe and imi-
tate, then, the address, the arts, and the manners of
those qui ont du monde ; see by what methods they
first make and afterwards improve impressions in
their favor. Those impressions are much oftener
owing to little causes than to intrinsic merit, which
is less volatile and has not so sudden an effect.
Strong minds have undoubtedly an ascendant over
weak ones, as Galigai Mardchale d'Ancre very justly
observed, when to the disgrace and reproach of
those times she was executed ^ for having governed
Mary of Medicis by the arts of witchcraft and magic.
But then ascendant is to be gained by degrees, and
by those arts only which experience and the knowl-
edge of the world teaches ; for few are mean\
enough to be-huHied, though most are weak .eweuglLx
to be bubbled. I have often seen people of supe-
rior governed by people of much inferior parts,
without knowing or even suspecting that they were
so governed. This can only happen when those
people of inferior parts have more worldly dexterity
and experience than those they govern. They see
the weak and unguarded part, and apply to it ; they
take it and all the rest follows. Would you gain
either men or women — and every man of sense
desires to gain both — ilfaut du monde. You have
1 On the 8th of July, 1617.

TO HIS son: 223

had more opportunities than ever any man had at
your age of acquiring ce monde ; you have been in
the best companies of most countries at an age when
others have hardly been in any company at all. You
are master of all those languages which John Trott
seldom speaks at all, and never well ; consequently
you need be a stranger nowhere. This is the way,
and the only way, of having du monde ; but if you
have it not, and have still any coarse rusticity
about you, may not one apply to you the rusticus
expectat of Horace?

This knowledge of the world teaches us more
particularly two things, both which are of infinite

clines us ; I mean, the command of our tempe
and of our countenance. A man who has no monde
is inflamed with anger or annihilated with shame
at every disagreeable incident ; the one makes him
act and talk like a madman, the other makes him
look like a fool. But a man who has du monde
seems not to understand what he cannot or ought
not to resent. If he makes a slip himself, he re-
covers it by his coolness, instead of plunging deeper
by his confusion, like a stumbling horse. He is
firm, but gentle ; and practises that most excellent
maxim, suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. The other
is the zwlto sciolto e pensieri stretti} People unused
to the world have babbling countenances, and are
unskilful enough to show what they have sense
enough not to tell. In the course of the world, a
man must very often put on an easy, frank counte-
1 An open countenance and a reserved mind.

lerj

224 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

nance upon very disagreeable occasions ; he must
seem pleased when he is very much otherwise ; he
must be able to accost and receive with smiles those
whom he would much rather meet with swords. In
Courts he must not turn himself inside out. All
this may, nay, must be done, without falsehood and
treachery ; for it must go no further than politeness
and manners, and must stop short of assurances
and professions of simulated friendship. Good
manners to those one does not love, are no more
a breach of truth than "your humble servant" at
the bottom of a challenge is ; they are universally
agreed upon and understood to be things of course,
"hey are necessary guards of the decency and
peace of society ; they must only act defensively, and
then not with arms poisoned with perfidy. Truth,
but not the whole truth, must be the invariable
principle of every man who has either religion,
honor, or prudence. Those who violate it may be
cunning, but they are not able. Lies and perfidy
are the refuge of fools and cowards. Adieu !

LIX.

ON MILITARY MEN. -SMALL CHANGE.

London, Sept. 19, 1752.

Your attending the parades has also another good
effect, — which is that it brings you of course ac-
quainted with the officers, who, when of a certain
rank and service, are generally very polite, well bred

TO HIS SON. 225

people, et du bon ton. They have commonly seen
a great deal of the world and of Courts, — and noth-
ing else can form a gentleman, let people say what
they will of sense and learning, with both which a
man may contrive to be a very disagreeable com-
panion. I dare say there are very few captains of
foot who are not much better company than ever
Descartes or Sir Isaac Newton were. I honor and
respect such superior geniuses ; but I desire to con-
verse with people of this world, who bring into
company their share at least of cheerfulness, good
breeding, and knowledge of mankind. In commoli^v
life, one much oftener wants small money and J
silver than gold. Give me a man who has ready
cash about him for present expenses, — sixpences,
shillings, half-crowns, and crowns, which circulate
easily; but a man who has only an ingot of gold
about him is much above common purposes, 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.

IS

226 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

LX.

ADAPTATION OF MANNERS TO PERSONS, PLACES,
AND TIMES.

London, Sept. 22, 1752.

The reception which you have met with at Han-
over I look upon as an omen of your being well
received everywhere else ; for, to tell you the truth,
it was the place that I distrusted the most in that
particular. But there is a certain conduct, there
are certaines manieres that will and must get the
better of all difficulties of that kind ; it is to acquire
them that you still continue abroad, and go from
Court to Court ; they are personal, local, and tem-
poral; they are modes which vary and owe their
existence to accidents, whim, and humor. All the
sense and reason in the world would never point
them out ; nothing but experience, observation, and
what is called knowledge of the world, can possibly
teach them. For example, it is respectful to bow
to the King of England ; it is disrespectful to bow
to the King of France ; it is the rule to courtesy to
the Emperor; and the prostration of the whole body
is required by eastern monarchs. These are estab-
lished ceremonies, and must be complied with ; but
why they were established, I defy sense and reason
to tell us. It is the same among all ranks, where
certain customs are received and must necessarily
be complied with, though by no means the result of
sense and reason. As for instance, the very absurd

TO HIS son: 227

though almost universal custom of drinking people's
healths. Can there be anything in the world less
relative to any other man's health than my drinking
a glass of wine? Common sense certainly never
pointed it out : but yet common sense tells me I
must conform to it. Good sense bids one be civil
and endeavor to please, though nothing but expe-
rience and observation can teach one the means,
properly adapted to time, place, and persons. This
knowledge is the true object of a gentleman's trav-
elling, if he travels as he ought to do. By frequent-
ing good company in every country, he himself
becomes of every country ; he is no longer an Eng-
lishman, a Frenchman, or an Italian, but he is a
European; he adopts, respectively, the best man-
ners of every country, and is a Frenchman at Paris,
an Italian at Rome, an Englishman at London.

This advantage, I must confess, very seldom
accrues to my countrymen from their travelling,
as they have neither the desire nor the means of
getting into good company abroad : for, in the first
place, they are confoundedly bashful, and in the
next place, they either speak no foreign language
at all, or, if they do, it is barbarously. You possess
all the advantages that they want; you know the
languages in perfection, and have constantly kept
the best company in the places where you have
been ; so that you ought to be a European. Your
canvas is solid and strong, your outlines are good ;
but remember that you still want the beautiful color-
ing of Titian and the delicate graceful touches of
Guido. Now is your time to get them. There is

228 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

in all good company a fashionable air, countenance,
manner, and phraseology, which can only be ac-
quired by being in good company, and very atten-
tive to all that passes there. When you dine or
sup at any well-bred man's house, observe carefully
how he does the honors of his table to the different

'Attend to the compliments of congratula-
"^tion or condolence that you hear a well-bred man
make to his superiors, to his equals, and to his
watch even his countenance and his tone
of voice, for they all conspire in the main point of
pleasing. There is a certain distinguishing diction
of a man of fashion ; he will not content himself
with saying, like John Trott, to a new married man,
" Sir, I wish you much joy," or to a man who lost his
son, " Sir, I am sorry for your loss," and both with
a countenance equally unmoved ; but he will say in
effect the same thing, in a more elegant and less
trivial manner, and with a countenance adapted to
the occasion. He will advance with warmth, viva-
city, and a cheerful countenance to the new married
maiv-a^d embracing him, perhaps say to him, " If
^ou do justice to my attachment to you, you will
judge of the joy that I feel upon this occasion
better than I can express it," etc. To the other

tion, he will advance slowly, with a grave
composure of countenance, in a more deliberate
manner, and with a lower voice, perhaps say, " I

Chope you do me the justice to be convinced that
I feel whatever you feel, and shall ever be affected
where you are concerned."
"^ Your abord, I must tell you was too cold and

TO HIS SON. 229

uniform ; I hope it is now mended. It should b^
respectfully open and cheerful with your superiors,
warm and animated with your equals, hearty and
free with your inferiors. There is a'Tashionable
kind of small talk, which you should get, whichl
trifling as it is, is of use in mixed companies and\
at table, especially in your foreign department, j
where it keeps off certain serious subjects that /
might create disputes, or at least coldness for a,
time. Upon such occasions it is not amiss to know
how to parler cuisine, and to be able to dissert upon
the growth and flavor of wines. These, it is true,
are very Httle things ; but they are little things that
occur very often, and therefore should be said avec
gentillesse et grace. I am sure they must fall often
in your way ; pray take care to catch them. There
is a certain language of conversation, a fashionable
diction, of which every gentleman ought to be per-
fectly master, in whatever language he speaks.
The French attend to it carefully, and with great
reason ; and their language, which is a language of
phrases, helps them out exceedingly. That deli-
cacy of diction is characteristical of a man of
fashion and good company.

I could write folios upon this subject and not
exhaust it ; but I think and hope that to you I
need not. You have heard and seen enough to be
convinced of the truth and importance of what I
have been so long inculcating into you upon these
points. How happy am I, and how happy are you,
my dear child, that these Titian tints and Guido
graces are all that you want to complete my hopes

230 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFLELD

and your own character ! But then, on the other
hand, what a drawback would it be to that happiness,
if you should never acquire them ! I remember,
when I was of your age, though I had not had near
so good an education as you have or seen a quarter
so much of the world, I observed those masterly
touches and irresistible graces in others, and saw
the necessity of acquiring them myself; but then
an awkward mauvaise honte, of which I had brought
a great deal with me from Cambridge, made me
ashamed to attempt it, especially if any of my coun-
trymen and particular acquaintance were by. This
was extremely absurd in me ; for, without attempt-
ing, I could never succeed. But at last, insensibly,
by frequenting a great deal of good company, and
imitating those whom I saw that everybody liked,
I formed myself, tant Men que mal. For God's
sake, let this last fine varnish, so necessary to give
lustre to the whole piece, be the sole and single
object now of your utmost attention. Berlin may
contribute a great deal to it if you please ; there
are all the ingredients that compose it.

LXI.

VOLTAIRE, HOMER, VIRGIL, MILTON, AND TASSO.—
CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN NOT A HERO.

Bath, October i^, 1752.
My dear Friend, — I consider you now as at
the court of Augustus,^ where, if ever the desire of
1 The court of Frederick II. of Prussia.

TO HIS SON. 231

pleasing animated you, it must make you exert all
the means of doing it. You will see there, full as
well, I dare say, as Horace did at Rome, how
States are defended by arms, adorned by manners
and improved by laws. Nay, you have an Horace
there, as well as an Augustus ; I need not name
Voltaire, qui nil molitur inepte, as Horace himself
said of another poet. I have lately read over all
his works that are published, though I had read
them more than once before. I was induced to
this by his " Siecle de Louis XIV.," which I have yet
read but four times. In reading over all his works,
with more attention I suppose than before, my
former admiration of him is, I own, turned into
astonishment. There is no one kind of writing in
which he has not excelled. You are so severe a
classic that I question whether you will allow me to
call his "Henriade " an epic poem, for want of the
proper number of gods, devils, witches, and other
absurdities requisite for the machinery ; which ma-
chinery is, it seems, necessary to constitute the
Epopee. But whether you do or not, I will declare
(though possibly to my own shame) that I never
read any epic poem with near so much pleasure. I
am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of
that fire which formerly made me love fire in others
at any rate, and however attended with smoke ; but
now I must have all sense, and cannot for the sake
of five righteous lines forgive a thousand absurd ones.
In this disposition of mind, judge whether I can
read all Homer through tout de suite. I admire his
beauties, but to tell you the truth, when he slumbers

s

232 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

I sleep. Virgil, I confess, is all sense, and therefore
I like him better than his model ; but he is often
languid, especially in his five or six last books, dur-
ing which I am obliged to take a good deal of snuff.
Besides, I profess myself an ally of Turnus's against
the pious ^neas, who like many soi disant pious
people, does the most flagrant injustice and violence
in order to execute what they impudently call the
will of Heaven. But what will you say when I tell
you truly that I cannot possibly read our country-
man Milton through? I acknowledge him to
have some most sublime passages, some prodigious
flashes of light ; but then you must acknowledge
that light is often followed by darkness visible, to
use his own expression. Besides, not having the
honor to be acquainted with any of the parties in
his poem, except the man and the woman, the
characters and speeches of a dozen or two of angels
and of as many devils are as much above my reach
as my entertainment. Keep this secret for me ; for
if it should be known, I should be abused by every
tasteless pedant and every solid divine in England.
Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of
these three poems holds much stronger against
Tasso's " Gierusalemme : " it is true he has very fine
and glaring rays of poetry ; but then they are only
meteors, they dazzle, then disappear, and are suc-
ceeded by false thoughts, poor concetti, and absurd
impossibilities. Witness the Fish and the Parrot;
extravagancies unworthy of an heroic poem, and
would much better have become Ariosto, who
professes le coglionerie.

TO HIS SON. 233

I have never read the Lusiad of Camoens, except in
a prose translation, consequently I have never read it
at all, so shall say nothing of it ; but the " Henriade "
is all sense from the beginning to the end, often
adorned by the justest and liveliest reflections,
the most beautiful descriptions, the noblest images,
and the sublimest sentiments, — not to mention the
harmony of the verse, in which Voltaire undoubtedly
exceeds all the French poets. Should you insist
upon an exception in favor of Racine, I must insist
on my part that he at least equals him. What hero
ever interested more than Henry the Fourth, who
according to the rules of epic poetry, carries on one
great and long action, and succeeds in it at last?
What descriptions ever excited more horror than
those, first of the massacre, and then of the famine
at Paris? Was love ever painted with more truth
and morbidezza than in the ninth book? Not
better in my mind, even in the fourth of Virgil.
Upon the whole, with all your classical rigor, if you
will but suppose St. Louis a god, a devil, or a witch,
and that he appears in person and not in a dream,
the " Henriade " will be an epic poem, according to
the strictest statute laws of the Epopee ; but in my
court of equity it is one as it is.

I could expatiate as much upon all his different
works but that I should exceed the bounds of a
letter, and run into a dissertation. How delightful is
his history of that northern brute, the King of Swe-
den ! ^ — for I cannot call him a man ; and I should

1 Charles XII. Voltaire's life of that king first appeared
in 1731.

234 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

be sorry to have him pass for a hero, out of regard
to those true heroes, such as Julius Caesar, Titus,
Trajan, and the present King of Prussia, who culti-
vated and encouraged arts and sciences ; whose
animal courage was accompanied by the tender and
social sentiments of humanity^ and who had more
pleasure in improving than in destroying their fellow-
creatures. What can be more touching or more
interesting, what more nobly thought or more
happily expressed than all his dramatic pieces?
What can be more clear and rational than all his
philosophical letters ; and what ever was so graceful
and gentle as all his little poetical trifles? You are
fortunately a porte'e of verifying by your knowledge
of the man all that I have said of his works.

LXII.

A WORTHY, TIRESOME MAN. — MANNERS ADD LUSTRE
TO LEARNING.

London, May 27, o. s. 1753.
Mv DEAR Friend, — I have this day been tired,
jaded, nay, tormented, by the company of a most
worthy, sensible, and learned man, a near relation
of mine, who dined and passed the evening with
me. This seems a paradox but is a plain truth;
he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no
address. Far from talking without book, as is com-
monly said of people who talk sillily, he only talks
by book, — which in general conversation is ten

TO HIS SON. 235

times worse. He has formed in his own closet
from books certain systems of everything, argues
tenaciously upon those principles, and is both sur-
prised and angry at whatever deviates from them.
His theories are good but unfortunately are all
impracticable. Why? because he has only read
and not conversed. He is acquainted with books
and an absolute stranger to men. Laboring with
his matter he is delivered of it with pangs; he
hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always ex-
presses himself inelegantly. His actions are all
ungraceful ; so that with all his merit and knowl-
edge, I would rather converse six hours with the
most frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew some-
thing of the world than with him. The preposterous
notions of a systematical man who does not know
the world tire the patience of a man who does. It
would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would
he take it kindly, for he has considered everything
deliberately and is very sure that he is in the right.
Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing
one, of these people. Regardless, because ignorant,
of customs and manners, they violate them every
moment. They often shock though they never mean
to offend, never attending either to the general
character or the particular distinguishing circum-
stances of the people to whom or before whom they
talk ; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches
one that the very same things which are exceedingly
right and proper in one company, time, and place
are exceedingly absurd in others. In short, a man
who has great knowledge from experience and ob-

236 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

servation of the character, customs, and manners of
mankind is a being as different from and as superior
to a man of mere book and systematical knowledge
as a well-managed horse is to an ass. Study there-
fore, cultivate, and frequent men and women, — not
only in their outward, and consequently guarded,
but in theii interior, domestic, and consequently less
disguised characters and manners. Take your no-
tions of things as by observation and experience
you find they really are, and not as you read that
they are or should be, for they never are quite what
they should be. For this purpose do not content
yourself with general and common acquaintance, but
wherever you can, establish yourself with a kind of
domestic familiarity in good houses. For instance,
go again to Orli for two or three days and so at two
or three reprises. Go and stay two or three days
at a time at Versailles and improve and extend the
acquaintance you have there. Be at home at St.
Cloud, and whenever any private person of fashion
invites you to pass a few days at his country-house
accept of the invitation. This will necessarily give
you a versatility of mind and a facility to adopt
various manners and customs ; for everybody desires
to please those in whose house they are, and people
are only to be pleased in their own way. Nothing
is more engaging than a cheerful and easy con-
formity to people's particular manners, habits, and
even weaknesses ; nothing (to use a vulgar expres-
sion) should come amiss to a young fellow. He
should be for good purposes what Alcibiades was
commonly for bad ones, — a Proteus assuming with

TO HIS SON. 237

ease and wearing with cheerfulness any shape.
Heat, cold, luxury, abstinence, gravity, gayety, cere
mony, easiness, learning, trifling, business, and pleas-
ure are modes which he should be able to take, lay
aside, or change occasionally with as joauch, ease as
he would take or lay aside his hat. All this is only
to be acquired by use and knowledge of the world,
by keeping a great deal of company, analyzing every
character, and insinuating yourself into the familiarity
of various acquaintance. A right, a generous ambi-
tion to make a figure in the world, necessarily gives
the desire of pleasing ; the desire of pleasing points
'6ut to a great degree the means of doing it; and
the art of pleasing is in truth the art of rising, of
distinguishing one's self, of making a figure and a
fortune in the world. But without pleasing, without
"tKe Graces, as I have told you a thousand times, ogjii
fatica e vana. You are now but nineteen, an age
at which most of your countrymen are illiberally
getting drunk in port at the University. You have
greatly got the start of them in learning, and if you
can equally get the start of them in the knowledge
and manners of the world, you may be very sure of
outrunning them in Court and Parliament, as you set
out so much earlier than they. They generally
begin but to see the world at one and twenty ; you
will by that age have seen all Europe. They set
out upon their travels unlicked cubs, and in their
travels they only lick one another, for they seldom
go into any other company. They know nothing
but the English world, and the worst part of that
too, and generally very little of any but the English

/

238 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

language, and they come home at three or four-and-
twenty refined and polished (as is said in one of
Congreve's plays) like Dutch skippers from a whale-
fishing. The care which has been taken of you,
and to do you justice the care that you have taken
of yourself, has left you at the age of nineteen only
nothing to acquire but the knowledge of the world,
manners, address, and those exterior accomplish-
ments. But they are great and necessary acquisi-
tions to those who have sense enough to know their
true value, and your getting them before you are
one and twenty and before you enter upon the
active and shining scene of life will give you such
an advantage over your contemporaries that they
cannot overtake you ; they must be distanced. You
may probably be placed about a young prince who
will probably be a young king. There all the various
arts of pleasing, the engaging address, the versatility
of manners, the brillant, the Graces, will outweigh
and yet outrun all solid knowledge and unpolished
merit. Oil yourself therefore, and be both supple
and shining for that race if you would be first, or
early at the goal. Ladies will most probably too.
have something to say there, and those who are
best with them will probably be best somewhere else.
Labor this great point, my dear child, indefatigably ;
attend to the very smallest parts, the minutest graces,
the most trifling circumstances that can possibly
concur in forming the shining character of a com-
plete gentleman, un galant homme, un homme de
cour, a man of business and pleasure, estimk des
homtnes, recherche des femmes, ai7nt de tout le monde.

TO HIS SON. 239

In this view, observe the shining part of every man
of fashion who is liked and esteemed ; attend to
and imitate that particular accomplishment for which
you hear him chiefly celebrated and distinguished ;
then collect those various parts and make yourself a
mosaic of the whole. No one body possesses every-
thing, and almost everybody possesses some one
thing worthy of imitation ; only choose your models
well, and in order to do so, choose by your ear more
than by your eye. The best model is always that
which is most universally allowed to be the best,
though in strictness it may possibly not be so. We
must take most things as they are ; we cannot make
them what we would nor often what they should be,
and where moral duties are not concerned, it is
more prudent to follow than to attempt to lead.
Adieu.

LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
TO HIS GODSON.

LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
TO HIS GODSON.

I.

diversion ordered, study requested, ignorance
despised.

London, Nov. 3, 1761.
May it please your honor/ see how punctual
I am. I received your letter but yesterday, and I
do myself the honor of answering it to-day. You
tell me that when you are at Monsieur Robert's, you
will obey my orders, but that is a very unlimited
engagement, for how do you know what orders I
shall give you? As for example, suppose I should
order you to play and divert yourself heartily, would
you do it ? And yet that will be one of my orders.
It is true I shall desire you at your leisure hours to
mind your reading, your writing, and your French ;
but that will be only a request which you may com-
ply with or not as you please ; for no man who
does not desire to know and to be esteemed in the
world should be forced to it, for it is punishment
enough to be a blockhead and to be despised in
all companies.

1 The boy was in his seventh year at the date of this
letter.

244 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

I fancy you have a good memory ; and from time
to time, young as it is, I shall put it to the trial ;
for whatever you get by heart at this age you
will remember as long as you live, and therefore I
send you these fine verses of Mr. Dryden, and give
you a whole month to get them by heart.

" When I consider life, 't is all a cheat ;
Yet fool'd with hope, men favor the deceit,
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow 's falser than the former day ;
Lies worse, and when it bids us most be blest
With some new hope, cuts off what we possest.
Fond cozenage this ; who 'd live past years again ?
Yet all hope pleasure from what still remain ;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly runnings could not give.
I 'm tired of seeking for this chymick gold,
Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.

II.

DUTY TO GOD, AND DUTY TO MAN.

Aug. 2 [ 1762].
Dear Phil, — Though I generally write to you
upon those subjects which you are now chiefly
employed in, such as history, geography, and
French, yet I must from time to time remind you
of two much more important duties which I hope
you will never forget nor neglect. I mean your
duty to God and your duty to man. God has
been so good as to write in all our hearts the duty
that he expects from us, which is adoration and
thanksgiving, and doing all the good we can to our

TO HIS godson: 245

fellow creatures. Our conscience, if we will but
consult and attend to it, never fails to remind us
of those duties. I dare say that you feel an inward
pleasure when you have learned your book well and
have been a good boy, as on the other hand I am
sure you feel an inward uneasiness when you have
not done so. This is called " conscience," which I
hope you will always consult and follow. You owe
all the advantages you enjoy to God, who can and
who probably will take them away whenever you
are ungrateful to him, for he has justice as well as
mercy. Get by heart the four following and ex-
cellent lines of Voltaire, and retain them in your
mind as long as you live : —

"Dieu nous donna lesbiens, il veut qu'on en jouisse ;
Mais n'oublies jamais leur cause et leur Auteur ;
Et quand vous goutez sa Divine faveur,
O Mortels, gardez vous d'oublier sa justice."

Your duty to man is very short and clear, — it is
only to do to him whatever you would be willing
that he should do to you. And remember in all
the business of your life to ask your conscience
this question : " Should I be willing that this should
be done to me?" If your conscience, which will
always tell you truth, answers NO, do not do that
thing. Observe these rules, and you will be happy
in this world and still happier in the next. Bon
soir, mon petit bout d'homme.

Chesterfield.

246 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

III.

ROUGH MANNERS: JOHN TROTT, THE TWO-LEGGED
BEAR.

Black-heath, Ang. 18 [1762].
Dear Phil, — I cannot enough inculcate into
you the absolute necessity and infinite advantages
of pleasing ; that is, d'etre aimable ; and it is so easy
to be so that I am surprised at the folly or stupidity
of those who neglect it. The first great step to-
wards pleasing is to desire to please, and whoever
really desires it will please to a certain degree.
La douceur et la politesse dans I'air et dans les
manieres plairont toujours. I am very sorry to tell
you that you have not / ^air de la politesse ; for you
have got an odious trick of not looking people in
the face who speak to you, or whom you speak to.
This is a most shocking trick, and implies guilt,
fear, or inattention ; and you must absolutely be
cured of it or nobody will love you. You know
what stress both your father and I lay upon it, and
we shall neither of us love you till you are broke
of it. I am sure you would not be called John
Trott, and both I and others will call you so if you
are not more attentive and polite. I believe you
do not know who this same John Trott is. He is
a character in a play of a brutal, bearish English-
man ; for there are English two-legged bears, and
but too many of them. He is rude, inattentive,
and rough, seldom bows to people, and never looks
them in the face. After this description of him,

TO HIS GODSON. 247

tell me which would you choose to be called, John
Trott or a well-bred gentleman. C'est a dire vou-
driez-vous ^tre aimable, ou brutal. II n'y a point
de milieu ; il faut opter et ^tre I'un ou I'autre. I
know which you will choose, — I am sure you will
desire and endeavor to be aimable.

IV.

THE WELL-BRED GENTLEMAN.

Monday Morning [1762].

Dear Phil, — You say that you will not be John
Trott, and you are in the right of it, for I should be
very sorry to call you John Trott, and should not
love you half so well as I do, if you deserved that
name. The lowest and the poorest people in the
world expect good breeding from a gentleman, and
they have a right to it, for they are by nature your
equals, and are no otherwise your inferiors than by
their education and their fortune. Therefore when-
ever you speak to people who are no otherwise your
inferiors than by these circumstances, you must re-
member to look them in the face, and to speak to
them with great humanity and douceur, or else they
will think you proud and hate you. I am sure you
would rather be loved than either hated or laughed
at, and yet I can assure [you] that you will be either
hated or laughed at if you do not make yourself aim-
able. You will ask me perhaps what you must do to
be aimable. Do but resolve to be so and the busi-

248 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

ness is almost done. Ayez seulement de la poli-
tesse, de la douceur, et des attentions, et je vous
reponds que vous serez aime, et d'autant plus, que
les Anglois ne sont pas gdn^ralement aimables.
Among attentions, one of the most material ones is
to look people in the face when they speak to you
or when you speak to them, and this I insist upon
your doing, or upon my word I shall be very angry.
Another thing I charge you always to do ; which is,
when you come into a room, or go out of it, to
make a bow to the company. All this I dare say
you will do, because I am sure that you would rather
be called a well-bred gentleman than John Trott.
I therefore send you this pocket-book, and will one
day this week send for you to dine with me at
Black-heath, before the days grow too short. Adieu ;
soyez honnHe homme.

Chesterfield.

V.

SOME RULES FOR THE BEHAVIOR OF A WELL-BRED
GENTLEMAN.

[1762.]

Dear Phil, — As I know that you desire to be a
well-bred gentleman and not a two-legged bear, and
to be beloved instead of being hated or laughed at,
I send you some general rules for your behavior,
which will make you not only be loved but admired.
You must have great attention to everything that
passes where you are, in order to do what will be
most agreeable to the company.

TO HIS godson: 249

Whoever you speak to, or whoever speaks to you,
you must be sure to look them full in the face.
For it is not only ill bred, but brutal, either to look
upon the ground or to have your eyes wandering
about the room, when people are speaking to you or
you are speaking to them. When people speak to
you, though they do not directly ask you a question
you must give them an answer, and not let them
think that you are deaf or that you do not care
what they say. For example, if a person says to you
" This [is] a very hot day," you must say, "yes " or
" No, sir."

You must call every gentleman " sir " or *' my
lord," and every woman " madam," . . .

When you are at dinner you must sit upright in
your chair, and not loll. And when anybody offers
to help you to anything, if you will have it you must
say, " Yes, if you will be so good," or, " I am ashamed
to give you so much trouble." If you will not have
it you must say, " No, thank you," or, " I am very
much obliged to you." You must drink first to the
mistress of the house and next to the master of it.

When you first come into a room you must not
fail to make a bow to the company, and also when
you go out of it.

You must never look sullen or pouting, but have a
cheerful, easy countenance.

Remember that there is no one thing so neces-
sary for a gentleman as to be perfectly civil and
well bred. Nobody was ever loved that was not
well bred ; and to tell you the truth, neither your
papa nor I shall love you if you are not well bred,

250 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

and I am sure you desire that we should both love
you, as we do now, because you are a very good
boy. And so God bless you.

VI.

THE ART OF PLEASING : SACRIFICE TO THE GRACES.

A Bath, 12 Decern., 1763.
Vous dites que vous souhaittez de briller dans le
monde, et vous avez raison, car on n'y est point
plac^ simplement pour boire et pour manger. Vous
qui etes n6 avec du bon sens naturel, il vous est
ais^ de vous distinguer dans le monde, si vous le
voulez veritablement, mais il ne faut pas perdre du
temps, il faut commencer a votre age, ou bien vous
n'y parviendrez jamais. II n'y a que deux choses a
faire pour cela, et qui dependent absolument de
vous, qui sont d'etre tres poll et tres savant. Si
vous ^tes savant, mais sans politesse et sans mani-
eres, vous pourrez peut-6tre, etre estim^, mais
jamais etre aim^. De I'autre cote si vous etes poli,
mais ignorant, on ne vous haira pas a la verite, mais
on vous meprisera, et on se mocquera de vous. II
faut done necessairement vous rendre en meme
temps aimable et estimable, si vous voulez briller, —
airnable par vos manieres douces et polies, par vos
attentions, par un air prevenant, par les Graces;
et estimable par votre savoir. Le grand art, et le
plus necessaire de tous, c'est Fart de plaire. Vou-
loir tout de bon plaire, est bien la moiti^ du chemin
pour y parvenir, le reste depend de I'observation et

TO HIS GODSON. 251

de I'usage du monde, dont je vous parlerai fort
souvent dans la suite ; mais en attendant, cherchez
a plaire autant que vous le pourrez, et faites vos
petites remarques de tout ce qui vous plait ou vous
deplait dang les autres, et comptez qu'a peu pres
les memes choses en vous plairont ou deplairont aux
autres. Pour les moyens de plaire, ils sont infinis,
mais je vous les developperai peu a peu selon que
votre tge le permettra, a present je me contenterai,
si vous prenez une forte resolution de plaire autant
que vous le pourrez. Sacrifiez toujours aux Graces,

VII.

FLAT CONTRADICTION A PROOF OF ILL BREEDING.—
AN EPIGRAM.— SIMILES AND METAPHORS.

July 13, 1764.

I shall sometimes correspond with my giddy little
boy in English,^ that he may not be a stranger to
his own language ; for though it is very useful and
becoming to a gentleman to speak several languages
well, it is most absolutely necessary for him to speak
his own native language correctly and elegantly, not
to be laughed at in every company. It is a ter-
rible thing to be ridiculous, and little things will
make a man so. For instance, not writing nor \
speUing well makes any man ridiculous, but above^
all things being ill bred makes a man not only
ridiculous but hated. I am sure you know that it is

1 Many of Lord Chesterfield's earlier letters to his god-
son were written in French.

252 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

your most important moral duty to do to others
what you would have them do to you ; and would
you have them civil to you and endeavor to please
you ? To be sure you would ; consequently it is
your duty as well as your interest to be civil to, and
to endeavor to please, them. There is no greater
mark of ill breeding than contradicting people
bluntly, and saying, " No," or " It is not so ; " and
I will give you warning that if you say so, you will
be called Phil Trott, of Mansfield, and perhaps you
would never get off of that name as long as you live,
for ridicule sticks a great while. When well-bred
people contradict anybody, they say, instead of
"No," "I ask pardon, but I take it to be other-
wise," or " It seems to me to be the contrary ; " but a
flat " No " is as much the same as saying " You lie ; "
for which if you were a man you would be knocked
down, and perhaps run through the body. To re-
fresh your English, I send you here a pretty little
gallant epigram, written upon a lady's fan by the
late Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Atterbury.

" Flavia the least and slightest toy
Can with resistless art employ.
This fan in other hands would prove
An engine of small force in love ;
But she with matchless air and mien,
Not to be told nor safely seen,
Directs its wanton motions so,
It wounds us more than Cupid's bow,
Gives coolness to the matchless dame,
To every other breast a flame.

This epigram you see turns upon the flame of
love, which is a common metaphor used by lovers,

TO HIS GODSON. 253

and the coolness that fanning gives. But you will
naturally ask me what is a metaphor, and I will tell
you that it is a short simile, but then what is a
simile? A simile is a comparison, as for example,
if you should say that Charles the Twelfth of Swe-
den was as brave as a lion, that would be a simile,
because you compare him to a lion ; but if you said
that Charles the Twelfth was a lion, that would be
a metaphor, because you do not say that he was like
a lion, but that he was a lion. Do you understand
this? Good-night, my little boy; be attentive to
your book, well bred in company, and alive at your
play. Be totus in Hits.

VIII.

DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD THEY SHOULD
DO UNTO YOU,

Bath, Nov. 7, 1765.
My dear little Boy, — The desire of being
pleased is universal ; the desire of pleasing should be
so too, — it is included in that great and funda-
mental principle of morality, of doing to others what
one wishes that they should do to us. There are
indeed some moral duties of a much higher but
none of a more amiable nature, and I do not hesi-
tate to place it at the head of what Cicero calls
the " leniores virtutes." The benevolent and feeling
heart performs this duty with pleasure, and in a
manner that gives it at the same time ; but the great,
the rich, and the powerful too often bestow their

254 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

favors upon their inferiors in a manner that they
bestow their scraps upon their dogs, — so as neither
to obhge man nor dog. It is no wonder if favors,
benefits, and even charities, thus ungraciously be-
stowed, should be as coldly and faintly acknowl-
edged. Gratitude is a burden upon our imperfect
nature, and we are but too willing to ease ourselves
of it, or at least to lighten it as much as we can.
The manner therefore of conferring favors or bene-
fits is as to pleasing almost as important as the
matter itself. Take care, then, never to throw away
the obligations which you may perhaps have it in
your power to lay upon others, by an air of inso-
lent protection, or by a cold, comfortless, and per-
functory manner, which stifles them in their birth.
Humanity inclines, religion requires, and our moral
/^QUty obliges us to relieve as far as we are able the
{ STstresses and miseries of our fellow creatures ; but
N^this is not all, for a true, heartfelt benevolence and
tenderness will prompt us to contribute what we
can to their ease, their amusement, and their pleas-
ure„_as far ..as innocently we may^ Let us then not
■only scatter benefits but even strew flowers for our
fellow travellers in the rugged ways of this wretched
world. There are some, and but too many in this
country more particularly, who without the least
visible taint of ill-nature or malevolence seem to be
totally indifferent, and do not show the least desire
to please, as on the other hand they never design-
edly offend. Whether this proceeds from a lazy,
negligent, and listless disposition, from a gloomy
and melancholic nature, from ill health and low

TO HIS GODSON. 2$$

spirits, or from a secret and sullen pride arising^
from the consciousness of their boasted liberty and
independency, is hard to determine, considering the
various movements of the human heart, and the
wonderful errors of the human mind; but be the
cause what it will, that neutrality which is the effect
of it makes these people, as neutralities always
do, despicable, and mere blanks in society. They
would surely be roused from this indifference, if
they would seriously consider the infinite utility of
pleasing, which I shall do in my next.

IX.

ON SELF-COMMAND.

Bath, Dec. 12, 1765.
My dear little Boy, — If you have not com-
mand enough over yourself to conquer your humor,
as I hope you will and as I am sure every rational
creature may have, never go into company while
the fit of ill humor is upon you. Instead of com-
panies diverting you in those moments, you will
displease and probably shock them, and you will
part worse friends than you met. But whenever
you find in yourself a disposition to suUenness, con-
tradiction, or testiness, it will be in vain to seek for
a cure abroad ; stay at home, let your humor fer-
ment, and work itself off. Cheerfulness and good
humor are of all qualifications the most amiable in
company, for though they do not necessarily imply
good-nature and good breeding, they act them at

256 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

least very well, and that is all that is required in
mixed company. I have indeed known some very
ill-natured people who are very good-humored in
company, but I never knew anybody generally ill-
humored in company who was not essentially ill-
natured. When there is no malevolence in the
heart, there is always a cheerfulness and ease in the
countenance and the manners. By good humor
and cheerfulness I am far from meaning noisy mirth
and loud peals of laughter, which are the distinguish-
ing characteristics of the vulgar and the ill bred,
whose mirth is a kind of a storm. Observe it, the
vulgar often laugh but never smile, whereas well-
bred people often smile and seldom or never laugh.
A witty thing never excited laughter ; it pleases only
the mind and never distorts the countenance. A
glaring absurdity, a blunder, a silly accident, and
those things that are generally called comical may
excite a momentary laugh, though never a loud nor
a long one among well-bred people. Sudden pas-
sion is called a short-lived madness ; it is a mad-
ness indeed, but the fits of it generally return so
often in choleric people that it may well be called
a continual madness. Should you happen to be
of this unfortunate disposition, which God forbid,
make it your constant study to subdue or at least to
check it. When you find your choler rising, resolve
neither to speak to nor answer the person who
excites it, but stay till you find it subsiding and
then speak deliberately. I have known many people
who by the rapidity of their speech have run away
with themselves into a passion. I will mention to

TO HIS GODSON. 25/

you a trifling and perhaps you will think a ridiculous
receipt toward checking the excess of passion, of
which I think that I have experienced the utility
myself. Do everything in Menuet time ; speak,
think, and move always in that measure, equally
free from the dulness of slow or the hurry and
huddle of quick time. This movement moreover
will allow you some moments to think forwards, and
the Graces to accompany what you say or do, for
they are never represented as either running or
dozing. Observe a man in a passion ; see his eyes
glaring, his face inflamed, his limbs trembling, and
his tongue stammering and faulting with rage, and
then ask yourself calmly whether you would upon
any account be that human wild beast. Such crea-
tures are hated and dreaded in all companies where
they are let loose, as people do not choose to be
exposed to the disagreeable necessity of either
knocking down these brutes or being knocked down
by them. Do on the contrary endeavor to be cool
and steady upon all occasions. The advantages of
such a steady calmness are innumerable and would
be too tedious to relate. It may be acquired by
care and reflection. If it could not, that reason
which distinguishes men from brutes would be
given us to very little purpose. As a proof of this
I never saw and scarcely ever heard. of a Quaker
in a passion. In truth there is in that sect a de-
corum, a decency, and an amiable simplicity that
I know in no other. Having mentioned the Graces
in this letter, I cannot end it without recommending
to you most earnestly the advice of the wisest of the
17

258 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

ancients, — to sacrifice to them devoutly and daily.
When they are propitious they adorn everything
and engage everybody. But are they to be ac-
quired ? Yes, to a certain degree they are, by atten-
tion, observation, and assiduous worship. Nature,
I admit, must first have made you capable of adopt-
ing them, and then observation and imitation will
make them in time your own. There are graces of
the mind as well as of the body ; the former give an
easy, engaging turn to the thoughts and the expres-
sions, the latter to motions, attitude, and address.
No man perhaps ever possessed them all ; he
would be too happy that did : but if you will atten-
tively observe those graceful and engaging manners
which please you most in other people, you may
easily collect what will equally please others in you
and engage the majority of the Graces on your side,
insure the casting vote, and be returned aimable.
There are people whom the Pre'cieuse of Moli^re
very justly though very affectedly calls " les Antipodes
des Graces." If these unhappy people are formed
by nature invincibly Maussades and awkward, they
are to be pitied rather than blamed or ridiculed ;
but nature has disinherited few people to that
degree.

X.

TRUE WIT AND ITS JUDICIOUS USE.

Bath, Dec. 18, 1765.
My dear little Boy, — If God gives you wit,
which I am not sure that I wish you unless He

TO HIS GODSON. 259

gives you at the same time an equal portion at
least of judgment to keep it in good order, wear it
like your sword in the scabbard and do not bran-
dish it to the terror of the whole company. If you
have real wit it will flow spontaneously, and you
need not aim at it, for in that case the rule of the
Gospel is reversed, and it will prove, Seek and you
shall not find. Wit is so shining a quality
everybody admires it, most people aim at
people fear it, and few love it unless in
selves. A man must have a good share
himself to endure a great share of it in another.
When wit exerts itself in satire it is a most malig-
nant distemper ; wit it is true may be shown in
satire, but satire does not constitute wit, as most
fools imagine it does. A man of real wit will find
a thousand better occasions of showing it. Abstain
therefore most carefully from satire, which though
it fall upon no particular person in company and
momentarily from the malignity of the human heart
pleases all, upon reflection it frightens all too ; they
think it may be their turn next, and will hate you
for what they find you could say of them more
than be obhged to you for what you do not say.
Fear and hatred are next-door neighbors. The
more wit you have the more good nature and po-
liteness you must show, to induce people to pardon
your superiority, for that is no easy matter. . . . The
character of a man of wit is a shining one that
every man would have if he could, though it is
often attended by some inconveniencies ; the dull-
est alderman even aims at it, cracks his dull joke.

260 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

and thinks or at least hopes that it is wit. But
the denomination of a wit is always formidable
and very often ridiculous. These titular wits have
commonly much less wit than petulance and pre-
sumption. They are at best les rieurs de leur quar-
tier, in which narrow sphere they are at once feared
arirt pHmirp^d^Ji You will perhaps ask me, and justly,
how, considering the delusions of self love and van-
ity, from which no man living is absolutely free,
how you shall know whether you have wit or not.
To which the best answer I can give you is, not to
trust to the voice of your own judgment, for it will
deceive you ; nor to your ears, which will always
greedily receive flattery, if you are worth being
flattered ; but trust only to your eyes, and read in
the countenances of good company their approba-
jion or dislike of what you say. Observe carefully
too whel'her you axe sought for, solicited, and in a
manner pressed into good company. But even all
this will not absolutely ascertain your wit, therefore
do not upon this encouragement flash your wit in
people's faces a ricochets, in the shape of botis mots,
epigrams, smart repartees, etc. Have rather less
tlmn-more wit than you really have^ A wise man
■^11 live at least as much within his wit as within
his income.j Content yourself with good sense and
reason, which at long run are sure to please every-
body who has either. If wit comes into the bar-
gain, welcome it, but never invite it. Bear this
truth always in your mind, that you may be admired
for your wit if you have any, but that nothing but
good sense and good qualities can make you be

TO HIS godson: 261

loved. They are substantial, every day's wear. Wit
is for ks Jours de gala, where people go chiefly to
be stared at.

XL

RAILLERY, MIMICRY, WAGS, AND WITLINGS.

Dec. 28, 1765.

My dear little Boy, — There is a species of
minor wit which is much used and much more
abused, — I mean Raillery. It is a most mischievous
and dangerous weapon when in unskilful or clumsy
hands, and it is much safer to let it quite alone j
than to play with it ; and yet almost everybody does J
play with it, though they see daily the quarrels and.^ -^
heart-burnings that it occasions. In truth it impHes j —
a supposed superiority in the railleur to the raille ; I
which no man likes even the suspicion of in his
own case, though it may divert him in other peo- I
pie's. An innocent raillerie is often inoffensively \ \ y.
begun but very seldom inoffensively ended, for y/j
that depends upon the raille, who if he cannotr T
defend himself well grows brutal, and if he can, \
very possibly his railleur, baffled and disappointed,
becomes so. It is a sort of trial of wit in which
no man can patiently bear to have his inferiority
made appear. The character of a railleur is mor6
generally feared and more heartily hated than any
one I know in the world. The injustice of a bad
man is sooner forgiven than the insult of a witty

262 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

one. The former only hurts one's hberty or prop-
erty, but the latter hurts and mortifies that secret
pride which no human breast is freeJixyn^/ I will
allow that there is a sort of raillery which may not
only be inoffensive but even flattering, as when by
a genteel irony you accuse people of those imper-
fections which they are most notoriously free from
and consequently insinuate that they possess the
contrary virtuejy' You may safely call Aristides a
knave, of "a very handsome woman an ugly one ;
but take care that neither the man's character nor
the lady's beauty be in the least doubtful. But
this sort of raillery requires a very light and steady
hand to administer it. A little too rough, it may
be mistaken into an offence, and a little too smooth,
it may be thought a sneer, which is a most odious
thing. There is another sort, I will not call it of
wit, but rather of merriment and buffoonry, which
is mimicry ; the most successful mimic in the world
is always the most absurd fellow, and an ape is
infinitely his superior. His profession is to imitate
and ridicule those natural defects and deformities
for which no man is in the least accountable, and
in their imitation of them make themselves for the
time as disagreeable and shocking as those they
mimic. But I will say no more of these creatures,
who only amuse the lowest rabble of mankind.
There is another sort of human animals called
wags, whose profession is to make the company
laugh immoderately, and who always succeed pro-
vided the company consist of fools, but who are
greatly disappointed in finding that they never can

TO HIS GODSON. 263

alter a muscle in the face of a man of sense. This
is a most contemptible character and never es-
teemed, even by those who are silly enough to be
diverted by them. Be content both for yourself
with sound good sense and good manners, and let
wit be thrown into the bargain where it is proper
and inoffensive. Good sense will make you be es
teemed, good manners be loved, and wit give a
lustre to both.

XII.

THE COXCOMB.— THE TIMID MAN.

Jan. 2, 1766.

My dear uttle Boy, — If there is a lawful and
proper object of raillery it seems to be a coxcomb,
as an usurper of the common rights of mankind.
But here some precautions are necessary. Some
wit and great presumption constitute a coxcomb,
for a true coxcomb must have parts. The most
consummate coxcomb I ever knew was a man of
the most wit, but whose wit, bloated with presump-
tion, made him too big for any company, where he
always usurped the seat of empire and crowded out
common sense. Raillerie seems to be a proper rod
for these offenders, but great caution and skill are
necessary in the use of it or you may happen to
catch a Tartar as they call it, and then the laughers
will be against you. The best way with these peo-
ple is to let them quite alone and give them rope
enough. On the other hand there are many and

264 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

perhaps more who suffer from their timidity and
?fiauvaise honte, which sink them infinitely below
their levejL-*"Timidity is generally taken for stupidity,
which for the most part it is not, but proceeds from
^want of education in good company. Mr. Addi-
son was the most timid and awkward man in good
company I ever saw, and no wonder, for he had
been wholly cloistered up in the cells of Oxford till
he was five and twenty years old. La Bruyere says,
and there is a great deal of truth in it, " qu'on ne
vaut dans ce monde que ce que Ton veut valoir ; "
for in this respect mankind show great indulgence
and value people at pretty near the price they set
upon themselves, if it be not exorbitant. I could
wish you to have a cool intrepid assurance with
great seeming modesty, — never dhnoiit^ and never
forward.^ Very awkward timid people who have
not been used to good company are either ridicu-
|ouslybashful or absurdly impudent. I have known
many a man impudent from shamefacedness, en-
deavoring to act a reasonable assurance and lashing
himself up to what he imagines to be a proper and
pfi-sy be^iavjor.y A very timid bashful man is anni-
hilated in good company, especially of his superiors.
He does not know what he says or does and is in a
ridiculous agitation both of body and mind. Avoid
both these extremes and endeavor to possess your-
self with coolness and steadiness. Speak to the
King with full as little concern (though with more
respect) as you would to your equals. This is the
distinguishing characteristic of a gentleman and a
man of the world. The way to acquire this most

egfij
/^ila

TO HIS GODSON. 26$

necessary behavior is, as I have told you before, to
keep company, whatever difificulty it may cost you
at first, with your superiors and with women of
fashion, instead of taking refuge as too many young
people do in low and bad company in order to
avoid the restraint of good breeding. It is, I con-
fess, a pretty difificult, not to say an impossible thing,
for a young man at his first appearance in the
world and unused to the ways and manners of it,
not to be disconcerted and embarrassed. When he
first comes into what is called the best company, he
sees that they stare at him, and if they happen to
laugh he is sure that they laugh at him. This awk-
wardness is not to be blamed, as it often proceeds
from laudable causes, from a modest diffidence of
himself and a consciousness of not yet knowing the
modes and manners of good company ; but let him
persevere with a becoming modesty and he will find
that all people of good nature and good breeding
will assist and help him out instead of laughing at
him, and then a very little usage of the world and
an attentive observation will soon give him a proper
knowledge of it. It is the characteristic of low and
bad company, which commonly consists of wags and
witlings, to laugh at, disconcert, and as they call it
bamboozle a young fellow of ingenuous modesty.
You will tell me perhaps that to do all this one
must have a good share of vanity ; I grant it, but
the great point is ne quid nimis, for I fear that
Monsieur de la Rochefoucault's maxim is too true,
" que la vertu n'iroit pas loin, si la vanite' ne lui tenoit
pas compagnie." A man who despairs of pleasing

266 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

will never please ; a man who is sure that he shall
always please wherever he goes, is a coxcomb ; but
the man who hopes and endeavors to please, and
believes that he may, will most infallibly please.

XIII.

THE "MAN OF SPIRIT." — SCANDAL AND INSINUATION.

Jail. 10, 1766.

My dear little Boy, — I know that you are gener-
ous and benevolent in your nature, but that, though
the principal point, is not quite enough ; you must
seem so too. I do not mean ostentatiously, but do not
be ashamed as many young fellows are of owning the
laudable sentiments of good-nature and humanity
which you really feel. I have known many young
men who desired to be reckoned men of spirit af-
fect a hardness and an unfeelingness which in real-
ity they never had. Their conversation is in the
decisive and minatory tone ; they are for breaking
bones, cutting off ears, throwing people out of the
window, etc., and all these fine declarations they
ratify with horrible and silly oaths. All this is to
be thought men of spirit ! Astonishing error this,
which necessarily reduces them to this dilemma, —
if they really mean what they say, they are brutes,
and if they do not, they are fools for saying it. This
however is a common character amongst young
men. Carefully avoid this contagion and content
yourself with being calmly and mildly resolute and
steady when you are thoroughly convinced that you
are in the right, for this is true spirit. What is

TO HIS GODSON. 267

commonly called in the world a man or a woman
of spirit, are the two most detestable and most dan-
gerous animals that inhabit it. They are wrong-
headed, captious, jealous, offended without reason
and offending with as little. The man of spirit has
immediate recourse to his sword and the woman of
spirit to her tongue, and it is hard to say which of
the two is the most mischievous weapon. It is too
usual a thing in many companies to take the tone
of scandal and defamation ; some gratify their ma-
lice and others think that they show their wit by it.
But I hope that you will never adopt this tone.
On the contrary do you always take the favorable
side of the question, and, without an offensive and
flat contradiction, seem to doubt, and represent the
uncertainty of reports, where private malice is at
least very apt to mingle itself. This candid and
temperate behavior will please the whole uncandid
company, though a sort of gentle contradiction to
their unfavorable insinuations, as it makes them hope
that they may in their turns find an advocate in you.
There is another kind of offensiveness often used in
company, which is to throw out hints and insinua-
tions only applicable to and felt by one or two per-
sons in the company, who are consequently both
embarrassed and angry, and the more so as they
are the more unwilling to show that they apply
these hints to themselves. Have a watch over
yourself never to say anything that either the whole
company or any one person in it can reasonably or
probably take ill, and remember the French saying,
"qu'il ne faut pas parler de corde dans la maison

268 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

d'un pendu." Good- nature universally charms even
all those who have none, and it is impossible to be
aimable without both the reality and the appear-
ances of it.

XIV.

VANITY. — FEIGNED SELF-CONDEMNATION.

Ja7i. 14, 1766.

My dear LITTLE BoY, — The Egotism is the usual
and favorite figure of most people's rhetoric,. which
I hope you will never adopt, but on the contrary
most scrupulously avoid. Nothing is more dis-
agreeable nor irksome to the company than to hear
a man either praising or condemning himself: for
both proceed from the same motive, vanity. I
would allow no man to speak of himself unless in a
Court of Justice in his own defence, or as a witness.
Shall a man speak in his own praise, however justly ?
No. The hero of his own little tale always puzzles
and disgusts the company, who do not know what
to say nor how to look. Shall he blame himself?
No. Vanity is as much the motive of his self-
condemnation as of his own panegyric. I have
known many people take shame to themselves, and
with a modest contrition confess themselves guilty
of most of the cardinal virtues. They have such a
weakness in their nature that they cannot help
being too much moved with the misfortunes and
miseries of their fellow-creatures, which they feel
perhaps more but at least as much as they do their
own. Their generosity, they are sensible, is impru-

TO HIS godson: 269

dence, for they are apt to carry it too far, from the
weak though irresistible beneficence of their nature.
They are possibly too jealous of their honor, and
too irascible whenever they think that it is touched ;
and this proceeds from their unhappy warm con-
stitution, which makes them too tender and sensible
upon that point. And so on of all the virtues pos-
sible. A poor trick, and a wretched instance of
human vanity that defeats its own purpose. Do
you be sure never to speak of yourself, for yourself,
nor against yourself; but let your character speak
for you. Whatever that says will be believed, but
whatever you say of it will not, and only make you
odious or ridiculous. Be constantly upon your
guard against the various snares and effects of vanity
and self-love. It is impossible to extinguish them ;
they are without exception in every human breast,
and in the present state of nature it is very right
that they should be so ; but endeavor to keep them
within due bounds, which is very possible. In this
case dissimulation is almost meritorious, and the
seeming modesty of the hero or of the patriot
adorns their other virtues ; I use the word of "seem-
ing," for their valets de chanibre know better.
Vanity is the more odious and shocking to every-
body, because everybody without exception has
vanity; and two vanities can never love one an-
other, any more than according to the vulgar
saying, two of a trade can.

270 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

XV.

ATTENTION. — THE SENSE OF PROPRIETY.

Jan. 21, 1766.
My DEAR LITTLE BoY, — I have more than once
recommended to you in the course of our corres-
pondence Attention, but I shall frequently recur to
that subject, which is as inexhaustible as it is impor-
tant. Attend carefully in the first place to human
nature in general, which is pretty much the same in
all human creatures and varies chiefly by modes,
habits, education, and example. Analyze, and if I
may use the expression, anatomize it. Study your
own, and that will lead you to know other people's.
Carefully observe the words, the looks, and gestures
of the whole company you are in, and retain all
their little singularities, humors, tastes, antipathies,
and affections, which will enable you to please or
avoid them occasionally as your judgment may
direct you. I will give you the most trifling in-
stance of this that can be imagined, and yet will be
sure to please. If you invite anybody to dinner
you should take care to provide those things which
you have observed them to like more particularly,
and not to have those things which you know they
have an antipathy to. These trifling things go a
great way in the art of pleasing, and the more so
from being so trifling that they are flattering proofs
of your regard for the persons even to minucies.
These things are what the French call des atteiitions,
which (to do them justice) they study and practise

TO HIS GODSON. 2/1

more than any people in Europe. Attend to and
look at whoever speaks to you ; and never seem dis-
trait or reveur, as if you did not hear them at all,
for nothing is more contemptuous and consequently
more shocking. It is true you will by these means
often be obliged to attend to things not worth any-
body's attention, but it is a necessary sacrifice to be
made to good manners in society. A minute atten-
tion is also necessary to time, place, and characters.
A bon mot in one company is not so in another, but
on the contrary may prove offensive. Never joke
with those whom you observe to be at that time
pensive and grave ; and on the other hand do not
preach and moralize in a company full of mirth and
gayety. Many people come into company full of
what they intend to say in it themselves without the
least regard to others, and thus charged up to the
muzzle are resolved to let it oif at any rate. I
knew a man who had a story about a gun which he
thought a good one and that he told it very well ;
he tried all means in the world to turn the conver-
sation upon guns, but if he failed in his attempt he
started in his chair and said he heard a gun fired,
but when the company assured him that they heard
no such thing, he answered, " Perhaps then I was
mistaken but however, since we are talking of guns ; "
— and then told his story, to the great indignation
of the company. Become, as far as with innocence
and honor you can, all things to all men, and you
will gain a great many. Have des prevenances to,
and say or do what you judge beforehand will be
most agreeable to them without their hinting at or

272 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

expecting it. It would be endless to specify the
numberless opportunities that every man has of
pleasing if he will but make use of them. Your
own good sense will suggest them to you, and your
good- nature and even your interest will induce you
to practise them. Great attention is to be had to
times and seasons ; for example, at meals, talk often
but never long at a time, for the frivolous bustle of
the servants, and often the more frivolous conver-
sation of the guests, which chiefly turns upon
kitchen-stuff and cellar-stuff, will not bear any long
reasonings or relations. Meals are and were always
reckoned the moments of relaxation of the mind,
and sacred to easy mirth and social cheerfulness.
Conform to this custom and furnish your quota of
good-humor, but be not induced by example to the
frequent excess of gluttony or intemperance. The
former inevitably produces dulness, the latter mad-
ness. Observe the a propos in everything you say
or do. In conversing with those who are much
your superiors, however easy and familiar you may
and ought to be with them, preserve the respect
that is due to them. Converse with your equals
with an easy familiarity and at the same time with
great civility and decency. But too much familiar-
ity, according to the old saying, often breeds con-
tempt and sometimes quarrels ; and I know nothing
more difficult in common behavior than to fix due
bounds to familiarity; too little implies an unso-
ciable formality, too much destroys all friendly and
social intercourse. The best rule I can give you to
manage familiarity, is never to be more familiar

TO HIS GODSON. 2/3

with anybody than you would bewiHing and even
glad that he should be with you^)/on the other hand \
avoid that uncomfortable reserve and coldness which )
is generally the shield of cunning, or thejprotection^
of dulness/ The Italian maxim is a wise one, ""Vblto
sciolto e pensieri stretti; " that is, let your counte-
nance be open, and your thoughts be close. To
your inferiors you should use a hearty benevolence
in your words and actions instead of a refined po-
liteness which would be apt to make them suspect
that you rather laughed at them. For example, you
must show civility to a mere country gentleman in a
very different manner from what you do to a man
of the world. Your reception of him should seem
hearty and rather coarse to relieve him from the
embarrassment of his own mauvaise honte. Have
attention even in company of fools, for though they
are fools they may perhaps drop or repeat something
worth your knowing and which you may profit by.
Never talk your best in the company of fools, for
they would not understand you, and would perhaps
suspect that you jeered them, as they commonly call
it ; but talk only the plainest common-sense to them,
and very gravely, for there is no jesting nor badinage
with them. Upon the whole with attention and les
attentions you will be sure to please ; without them
you will be as sure to offend.

i8

274 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
XVI.

AFFECTATIONS. — POLITE CONVERSATION.

[yVb Date:\
My dk\r little Boy, — Carefully avoid all affec-
tation either of mind or body. It is a very true
and a very trite observation that no man is ridiculous
for being what he really is, but for affecting to be
what he is not. No man is awkward by nature, but
by affecting to be genteel ; and I have known many
a man of common-sense pass generally for a fool,
because he affected a degree of wit that God had
denied him. A ploughman is by no means awkward
in the exercise of his trade, but would be exceed-
ingly ridiculous if he attempted the air and graces
of a man of fashion. You learned to dance, but it
was not for the sake of dancing, but it was to bring
your air and motions back to what they would
naturally have been if they had had fair play, and
had not been warped in your youth by bad exam-
ples and awkward imitations of other boys. Nature
may be cultivated and improved both as to the body
and as to the mind ; but it is not to be extinguished
by art, and all endeavors of that kind are absurd,
and an inexhaustible fund for ridicule. Your body
and mind must be at ease to be agreeable ; but
affectation is a perpetual constraint under which no
man can be genteel in his carriage or pleasing in
his conversation. Do you think that your motions
would be easy or graceful if you wore the clothes of
another man much slenderer or taller than yourself?

TO HIS GODSON. 275

Certainly not ; it is the same thing with the mind,
if you affect a character that does not fit you, and
that Nature never intended for you. But here do
not mistake and think that it follows from hence
that you should exhibit your whole character to the
public because it is your natural one. No; many
things must be suppressed, and many occasionally
concealed in the best character. Never force
Nature, but it is by no means necessary to show it
all. Here discretion must come to your assistance,
that sure and safe guide through life, — discretion,
that necessary companion to reason, and the useful
garde-fou, if I may use that expression, to wit and
imagination. Discretion points out the d, propos,
the decorum, the ne quid nimis ; and will carry a
man of moderate parts further than the most shining
parts would without it. It is another word for "judg-
ment," though not quite synonymous to it. Judg-
ment is not upon all occasions required, but discre-
tion always is. Never affect nor assume a particular
character, for it will never fit you, but will probably
give you a ridicule ; but leave it to your conduct,
your virtues, your morals, and your manners to give
you one. Discretion will teach you to have particu-
lar attention to your mceurs, which we have no one
word in our language to express exactly. "Morals "
are too much, " manners " too little ; " decency "
comes the nearest to it, though rather short of it.
Cicero's word "decorum" is properly the thing,
and I see no reason why that expressive word should
not be adopted and naturalized in our language ; I
have never scrupled using it in that sense. A propos

2/6 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

of words, study your own language more carefully
than most English people do. Get a habit of
speaking it with propriety and elegancy. For there
are few things more disagreeable than to hear a
gentleman talk the barbarisms, the solecisms, and
the vulgarisms of porters. Avoid, on the other hand,
a stiff and formal accuracy, especially what the
women call " hard words," when plain ones as
expressive are at hand. The French make it a
study to " bien narrer," and to say the truth they
are apt to " narrer trop," and with too affected an
elegancy. The three commonest topics of conver-
sation are religion, politics, and news. All people
think that they understand the two first perfectly,
though they never studied either, and are therefore
very apt to talk of them both dogmatically and
ignorantly, consequently with warmth. But religion
is by no means a proper subject for conversation in
a mixed company. It should only be treated among
a very few people of learning for mutual instruction.
It is too awful and respectable a subject to become
a familiar one. Therefore never mingle yourself in
it, any further than to express a universal toleration
and indulgence to all errors in it, if conscientiously
entertained ; for every man has as good a right to
think as he does as you have to think as you do ;
nay, in truth he cannot help it. As for politics,
they are still more universally understood, and as
every one thinks his private interest more or less
concerned in them, nobody hesitates to pronounce
decisively upon them, not even the ladies; the
copiousness of whose eloquence is more to be ad-

TO HIS GODSON. 2'J'J

mired upon that subject than the conclusiveness of
their logic. It will be impossible for you to avoid
engaging in these conversations, for there are hardly
any others ; but take care to do it very coolly and
with great good-humor; and whenever you find
that the company begins to be heated and noisy
for the good of their country, be only a patient
hearer ; unless you can interpose by some agreeable
badinage and restore good-humor to the company.
And here I cannot help observing to you that
nothing is more useful either to put off or to
parry disagreeable and puzzling affairs, than a good-
humored and genteel badinage. I have found it so
by long experience, but this badinage must not be
carried to mauvaise plaisanterie. It must be light
without being frivolous, sensible without being in
the least sententious, and in short have that pleasing
je ne sais quoi, which everybody feels, and nobody
can describe.

XVII.

EPITAPH ON A WIFE.

Black-heath, Mercredi, 4 Jimt \ 1766 ].
MoN CHER PETIT Drole, — Ne negligeons pas
le Francois, qu'il faut que vous sachiez parler et
dcrire correctement et avec elegance. Un honnete
homme doit scavoir I'Anglois et le Francois 6gale-
ment bien, I'Anglois parceque c'est votre propre
langue, et que ce seroit honteux d'en ignorer
meme les minucies, et le Francois parceque c'est
en quelque fa^on la langue universelle. Voicy done

2/8 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

un epitaphe que fit un homme sur la mort de sa
femme, qui lui 6toit fort incommode et dont il
^toit fort las.

Cy git ma femme, Ah ! qu'elle est bien
Pour son repos et pour le mien.

XVIII.

EVERY MAN THE ARCHITECT OF HIS OWN
FORTUNE.

Black-heath, Aug. 26, 1766.

My dear LITTLE BoY, — Your French letter was
a very good one, considering how long you have
been disused to write in that language. There are
indeed some few faults in it, which I will show you
when we meet next, for I keep your letter by me
for that purpose. One cannot correct one's faults
without knowing them, and I always looked upon
those who told me of mine as friends, instead of
being displeased or angry, as people in general are
too apt to be. You say that I laugh at you when
I tell you that you may very probably in time be
Secretary of State. No, I am very serious in saying
that you may if you please, if you take the proper
methods to be so. Writing well and speaking well
in public are the necessary qualifications for it, and
they are very easily acquired by attention and ap-
plication. In all events, aim at it ; and if you do
not get it, let it be said of you what was said of
Phaethon, " Magnis tamen excidit ausis."

Every man of a generous, noble spirit desires

TO HIS GODSON. 279

first to please and then to shine ; Facere digna
scribi vel scribere digna legi. Fools and indolent
people lay all their disappointments to the charge
of their ill fortune, but there is no such thing as
good or ill fortune. Every man makes his own
fortune in proportion to his merit. An ancient
author whom you are not yet, but will in time be,
acquainted with says very justly, " Nullum numen
abest si sit prudentiaj_nos te fortuna Deam facimus
caeloque locamus." Prudence there means those \
qualifications and that conduct that will command J
fortune. Let that be your motto and have it alwa^"'^
in your mind. I was sure that you would soon come
to like your voluntary study, and I will appeal to
yourself, could you employ that hour more agree-
ably? And is it not better than what thoughtless
boys of your age commonly call play, which is run-
ning about without any object or design and only
pour tuer le temps ? Faire des riens is the most
miserable abuse and loss of time that can possibly
be imagined. You must know that I have in the
main a great opinion of you; therefore take great
care and pains not to forfeit it. And so God bless
you. Non progredi est regredi.

XIX.

INATTENTION. — HOC A GE

Black-heath, Od. 4, 1766.
Mv DEAR LITTLE BoY, — Anioto quueramus seria
ludo. I have often trifled with you in my letters and

280 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

there is no harm in trifling sometimes. Dr. Swift
used often to say, " Vive la bagatelle," but everything
has its proper season ; and when I consider your age
now it is proper, I think, to be sometimes serious.
You know I love you mightily, and I find but one sin-
gle fault with you. You are the best-natured boy;
you have good parts and an excellent memory ; but
now to your fault, which you may so easily correct
that I am astonished that your own good sense does
not make you do it. It is your giddiness and inatten-
tion which you confessed to me. You know that with-
out a good stock of learning you can never, when
you are a man, be received in good company ; and
the only way to acquire that stock is to apply with
attention and diligence to whatever you are taught.
The hoc age is of the utmost consequence in every
part of life. No man can do or think of two things
at a time to any purpose, and whoever does two
things at once is sure to do them both ill. It is the
characteristic of a futile, frivolous man to be doing
one thing and at the same time thinking of another.
Do not imagine that I would have you plod and
study all day long ; no, leave that to dull boys.
On the contrary I would have you divert yourself
and be as gay as ever you please ; but while you
are learning, mind that only, and think of nothing
else ; it will be the sooner over. They tell an idle
story of Julius Caesar that he dictated to six secre-
taries at once and upon different businesses. This
I am sure is as false as it is absurd, for Caesar had
too good sense to do any two things at once. I am
sure that for the future you will attend diligently to

TO HIS GODSON. 28 1

whatever you are doing, and that for two reasons ;
the one is that your own good sense at eleven years
old will show you not only the utility but the ne-
cessity of learning, the other is that if you love me
as I believe you do, you will cheerfully do what I
so earnestly ask of you for your own sake only.
When I see you next, which shall not be very long,
first I flatter myself that the Doctor will give
me a very good account of your close attention.
Good-night.

XX.

THE PRIDE OF RANK AND BIRTH.

Bath, Nov. 5, 1766.
My dear little Boy, — See how punctual I am ;
I told you that I would write to you first from
hence ; I arrived here but yesterday, and I write to-
day. When I saw you last Sunday you assured me
that you had a clear conscience ; and I believe it,
for I cannot suppose you could be guilty of so
horrible a crime as that of asserting an untruth.
To say the truth I think you have but few faults ;
and as I perceive them I shall make it my business
to correct them, and assume the office of censor.
If I mistake not, I have discovered in that little
heart some lurking seeds of pride, which nature,
who has been very kind to you, never sowed there,
but were transplanted there by vulgar folly and
adulation at Mansfield. You were there my Young
Squire, and sometimes, perhaps, by anticipation my

282 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

Young Lord. Well, and what then? Do not you
feel that you owe those advantages wholly to chance,
and not to any merit of your own ? Are you better
born, as silly people call it, than the servant who
wipes your shoes ? Not in the least ; he had a father
and a mother, and they had fathers and mothers
and grandfathers and grandmothers and so on, up
to the first creation of the human species, and is
consequently of as ancient a family as yourself.^
It is true your family has been more lucky than his,
but not one jot better. You will find in Ulysses's
speech for the armor of Achilles this sensible ob-
servation : " Nam genus et proavos, et quae non
fecimus ipsi vix ea nostra voco."

Moreover you desire, and very laudably, to please ;
which if you have any pride is absolutely impos-
sible, for there is not in nature so hateful and so
ridiculous a character as that of a man who is
proud of his birth and rank. All people hate and
ridicule him ; he is mimicked and has nick-names
given him, such as ''the Sovereign," " the Sublime,"
" the Stately," etc. I allow you to be proud of su-
perior merit and learning when you have them, but
that is not the blameable and absurd pride of birth

1 There is a story illustrative of this passage and char-
acteristic of Lord Chesterfield's humor. A picture of a man
and woman and two boys with the Stanhope Arms in the
corner was given by some one to Lord Chesterfield, as an
evidence of family antiquity. He accepted the gift and
wrote under it, " Adam Stanhope of Eden Garden and Eve
Stanhope his wife, with their two sons, Cain Stanhope and
Abel Stanhope." See Mrs. Carter's Letters from 1741 to
I770> i- 32. — Earl of Carnarvon : Memoir of Chesterfield.

TO HIS godson: 283

and rank that I mean ; on the contrary, it is a blame-
less and pardonable vanity, if not carried too far.

XXI.

SHINING THOUGHTS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN
AUTHORS.

Saturday Morning [January , 1767].

My Dear Boy, —

I send you a book which I think must gratify
your love of variety. It is a collection of the most
shining thoughts both of the ancients and of the
moderns, compiled by the famous P^re Bouhours,
a Jesuit, a man of great parts and sound judgment.
I endeavor to stock your mind with the most ingeni-
ous thoughts of other people, in hopes that they may
suggest to you materials for thinking yourself; for
an honest man will no more live upon the credit of
other people's thoughts than of their fortune. When,
therefore, you dip into this book, and that any
thought pleases you much, ask yourself why it pleases
you, and examine whether it is founded upon truth
and nature, for nothing else can please at long run.
Tinsel false thoughts may impose upon one for a
short time, like false money ; but sterling coin alone
will always and everywhere pass current. God bless
you and make you both an honest and an able man,
but the former above all things.

284 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

XXII.

AVARICE AND AMBITION.

Monday Morning [March, 1767].
My DEAR Boy, — I was very glad to hear that in
one of your late essays you preferred ambition to
avarice, and indeed there is hardly any comparison
between them. Avarice is a mean, ignoble, and
dirty passion ; I never knew a miser that had any
one great or good quality ; but ambition, even where
it is a vice, is at least the vice of a gentleman.
Ambition, according to its object, is either blamable
or commendable. Tyrants and conquerors, who
ravage and desolate the world, and trample upon
all the rights of mankind to gratify their ambition,
are doubtless the greatest and most dangerous of
all criminals. But an ambition to excel others in
all virtuous and laudable things is not only blame-
less, but highly meritorious, and should extend from
the least to the greatest objects. You may and I
hope have that ambition in your little sphere. I
remember that when I was of your age, I had a strong
ambition to excel all my contemporaries in what-
ever was praiseworthy. I labored hard to outstrip
them in learning; I was mortified if in our little
plays they seemed more dexterous than I was ; nay,
I was uneasy if they danced, walked, or sat more
genteelly than myself. Those little things are by
no means to be neglected, for they are of more use
in the common intercourse of life than you imagine
them to be, especially in your profession, which is

TO HIS GODSON. 285

speaking in public. I say in your profession^ for
you must excel in that or you will be nobody. You
guess, I am sure, that I mean speaking well, both
in public assemblies and in private conversation.
Cicero speaks of eloquence as the principal object
of a laudable ambition, and asserts it to be the chief
distinction between man and beast. " Quam ob rem
quis hoc non jure miretur, summeque in eo elabo-
randum esse arbitretur, ut, quo uno homines maxime
bestiis praestent, in hoc hominibus ipsis antecellat."
This is one kind of ambition, whose object is pleas-
ure and public utility, and consequently merito-
rious. Oh, what exquisite joy must it give an honest
man (you see I endeavor to imitate your florid
eloquence) to see multitudes hang upon his tongue,
and persuaded to adopt his opinion instead of their
own ! — if they had any, for very often they have none,
and if they have, it is probably an erroneous one.
I send you herewith an excellent collection of Cicero's
thoughts upon various subjects, the Latin on one side,
and the French translation by L'Abbd d' Olivet on
the other, which French translation will enable you
to imderstand the original Latin better than can be
expected at your age. I have marked what he says
upon eloquence ; read it with attention. God bless
my boy.

286 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

XXIII.

THE ENDEAVOR TO ATTAIN PERFECTION. — SPORT-
ING TASTES.

Bath, Nov. 17, 1767.
My dear LITTLE BoY, — Youi last letter was so
good a one that had it not been for Dr. Dodd's
attestation that it was all your own, I should have
thought it a translation of one of Cicero's or Pliny's,
those two acknowledged standards of epistolary
perfection. However, go on, and strive to attain to
absolute perfection in writing, as in everything else
that you do ; for though absolute perfection is
denied to human nature, those who take the most
pains to arrive at it will come the nearest to it.
The famous disturber and scourge of mankind,
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, in his low camp
style used to say that by resolution and perseverance
a man might do everything. ... I own I cannot
entirely agree with his Swedish Majesty; but so
much I will venture to say, that every man may by
unremitting application and endeavors, do much
V more than at the first setting out he thought it
possible tha.t_he ever cottki,_dgj,--' Learn to distin-
■giiish between difficulties and impossibilities, which
/ many people do not. The silly and the sanguine
look upon impossibilities to be only difficulties ; as
on the other hand the lazy and the timorous take
every difficulty for an impossibility. A greater
knowledge of the world will teach you the proper
medium between those two extremes. I approve

TO HIS godson: 287

greatly of your father's method of shooting his
game with his pen only, and heartily wish that when
you have game of your own you may use no other.
For my part I never in my life killed my own meat,
but left it to the poulterer and butcher to do it for
me. All those country sports, as they are called,
are the effects of the ignorance and idleness of
country esquires, who do not know what to do with
their time ; but people of sense and knowledge never
give in to those illiberal amusements. You make
me fair promises in your letter of what you will do ;
but remember that at the same time you give me
great claims upon you, for I look upon your prom-
ises to be engagemeijts upon the word and honor
of a gentleman, which I hope you will never violate
upon this or any other occasion. I have long ago
and often repeated to you " qu'un homme d'honneur
n'a que sa parole." God bless you.
My compliments to your whole house.

XXIV.

THE TREATMENT OF INFERIORS.

Black-heath, Tuesday.
My dear Boy, — You behaved yourself last Sat-
urday very much like a gentleman, and better than
any boy in England of your age would or could
have done. Go on so, and when you are a man you
will be with more acquaintance with the world and
good company what I most earnestly wish you to be,
the best bred and consequently the best liked gen-

288 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

tleman in England. Good breeding, and a certain
suavitas morum, shines and charms in every situation
of life with relation to all sorts and ranks of people,
as well the lowest as the highest. There is a degree
of good breeding towards those who are greatly
your inferiors which is in truth common humanity
and good- nature ; and yet I have known some per-
sons who in other respects were well bred brutal to
their servants and dependents. This is mean, and
implies a hardness of heart, and is what I am sure
you never will be guilty of.. When you use the im-
perative mood to your servants or dependents, who
are your equals by nature (and only your inferiors by
the malice of their fortune), yc^u will add some soft-
ening word, such as " pray do so and so," or ** I wish
you would do so." You cannot conceive how much
that suavity of manners will endear you to every-
body, even to those who have it not themselves. In
high life there are a thousand mimuies of good
breeding which though miniicies in themselves are
so necessary and agreeable as to deserve your ut-
most attention and imitation, — as for instance what
the French call " le bon ton " or " le ton de la bonne
compagnie," by which is meant the fashionable tone
of good company. This consists of many trifling ar-
ticles in themselves which when cast up and added
together make a total of infinite consequence.

Observe and adopt all those little graces and
modes of the best company. Suppose two men of
equal abilities employed in the same business, but
one of them perfectly well bred and engaging, and
the other with only the common run of civility ; the

TO HIS GODSON. 289

former will certainly succeed much better and
sooner than the latter.

XXV.

THE FALSE PRIDE OF RANK.

Black-heath, July 16, 1768.
I dare say you know, and perhaps too well, that in
time probably you will have a title and a good
estate ; but I dare say you know too that you will
owe them merely to chance and not to any merit of
your own, be your merit never so great. Whenever
you come to tke possession of them, there will be
people enough mean and absurd enough to flatter
you upon them. Be upon your guard against such
wretches, and be assured that they must think you a
fool and that they have private views to gratify by
such impudent adulation. The most absurd char-
acter that I know of in the world, and the finest food
for satire and ridicule, is a sublime and stately man
of quality, who without one grain of any merit struts
pompously in all the dignity of an ancient descent
from a long, restive race of droning kings, or more
probably derived to him from fool to fool. I could
name many men of great quality and fortune who
would pass through the world quietly, unknown and
unlaughed at, were it not for those accidental ad-
vantages upon which they value themselves and
treat their inferiors, as they call them, with arrogance
and contempt. But I never knew a man of quality
and fortune respected upon those accounts unless he

19

290 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

was humble with his title, and extensively generous
and beneficent with his fortune. "My Lord " is be-
come a ridiculous nick-name for those proud fools, —
" See, My Lord comes," " There 's My I^rd ; " that is,
in other words, " See the puppy," " There is the block-
head." I am sure you would by all means avoid
ridicule, for it sticks longer even than an injury ; and
to avoid it, wear your title as if you had it not ; but
for your estate, let distress and want even without
merit feel that you have one. I remember four fine
lines of Voltaire upon this subject : —

" Repandez vos bienfaits avec magnificence,
Meme aux moins vertueux ne les refusez pas;
Ne vous informez pas de leur recoftnoissance,
II est grand, il est beau, de faire des ingrats."

By these virtues you may dignify your title when
you have one, but remember that your title without
them can never dignify you. Nothing is more
common than pride without dignity. A man of
sense and virtue will always have dignity; but a
fool, if shuffled by chance into great rank and for-
tune, will be proud of both. There is as much differ-
ence between pride and dignity as there is between
power and authority. Power may fall to the share
of a Nero or a Caligula, but authority can only be
the attendant of the confidence mankind have in
your sense and virtue. Aristides and Cato had
authority.

TO HIS GODSON. 29 1

XXVI.

THE STRICT VERACITY OF A GENTLEMAN.

Black-heath, July 30, 1768.
My DEAR Boy, — My two objects in your educa-
tion are and always have been to give you learning
enough to distinguish yourself in Parliament, and
manners to shine in courts. The former is in the
best hands, Dr. Dodd's ; but the latter department
I shall undertake myself, from my long experience
and knowledge of the ways of the world. I am
sure you would be a gentleman, and I am as sure
that I would by all means have you one. " A gentle-
man " is a complex term, answers exactly to the
French word " honnete homme," and comprehends
manners, decorum, politeness, but above all strict
veracity; for without that all the accomplishments
in the world avail nothing. A man who is once
detected in a lie — and every liar is sooner or later
detected — is irrecoverably sunk into infamy. No-
body will believe him afterwards even upon his oath.
To tell a man that he lies is the greatest affront that
can be offered him, and according to the mad but
indispensable custom of the world, can only be
washed off by blood. If a man gives another the
lie, though ever so justly, what must the liar do?
He must fight him, and so justify one crime by (if
possible) a greater, — a chance of murdering or of
being murdered ; and this is what every one who
deviates from truth is sooner or later exposed to.

292 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

Besides all this there is a moral turpitude in a lie
which no palliatives can excuse ; and a plain proof
of the infamy of this practice is that no man, not
even the worst man living, will own himself a liar,
though many will own as great crimes. Some peo-
ple excuse themselves to themselves by only adding
to and embellishing truth in their narrations, but
falsehood never can be innocent, for it can only be
intended to mislead and deceive. But I am sure
I have dwelt too long upon this subject to you, who
I am persuaded have a just horror for a lie of any
kind, or else I should have a horror for you,

I have often recommended to you the good breed-
ing and the manners of a gentleman, and to my
great comfort, not without success, for you are in
general civil and well bred ; the article in which you
fail the most is at meals. You eat with too much
avidity, and cram your mouth so full that if you
were to speak you must sputter the contents of it
amongst the dishes and the company. You some-
times eat off of your knife, which is never to be
done, and sometimes you play with your knife, fork,
or spoon, too, like a boy. These are but little faults,
I confess, but however are better corrected than
persevered in. In the main it goes very well and I
love you mightily. God bless you.

TO HIS GODSON. 293

XXVII.
ON THE JE NE SAIS QUOI.

Black-heath, Aug. 9, 1768.
My dear Boy, — I dare say you have heard and
read of the je ne sais quoi^ both in French and
EngHsh, for the expression is now adopted into our
language ; but I question whether you have any
clear idea of it, and indeed it is more easily felt
than defined. It is a most inestimable quality, and
adorns every other. I will endeavor to give you
a general notion of it, though I cannot an exact
one ; experience must teach it you, and will if you
attend to it. It is in my opinion a compound of
all the agreeable qualities of body and mind, in
which no one of them predominates in such a
manner as to give exclusion to any other. It is not
mere wit, mere beauty, mere learning, nor indeed
mere any one thing that produces it, though they
all contribute something towards it. It is owing to
this je ne sais quoi that one takes a liking to some
one particular person at first rather than to another.
One feels oneself prepossessed in favor of that
person without being enough acquainted with him
to judge of his intrinsic merit or talents, and one
finds oneself inclined to suppose him to have good
sense, good-nature, and good-humor. A genteel

1 It would be difficult to find anything on such a subject
where the touch is lighter, the turn of expression happier, and
the distinctions more delicately drawn. — Earl of Carnar-
von : Memoir of Chesterfield.

294 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

address, graceful motions, a pleasing elocution, and
elegancy of style are powerful ingredients in this
compound. It is in short an extract of all the
" Graces." Here you will perhaps ask me to define
the " Graces," which I can only do by the " je ne
sais quoi," as I can only define the "je ne sais
quoi " by the " Graces." No one person possesses
them all, but happy he who possesses the most, and
wretched he who possesses none of them. I can
much more easily describe what their contraries
are, — as for example a head sunk in between the
shoulders, feet turned inwards instead of outwards,
the manner of walking or rather waddling of a
mackaw, so as to make Mrs. Dodd very justly call
you her mackaw. All these sort of things are most
notorious insults upon the Graces and indeed upon
all good company. Do not take into your head
that these things are trifles ; though they may seem
so if singly and separately considered, yet when
considered aggregately and relatively to the great
and necessary art of pleasing, they are of infinite
consequence. Socrates, the wisest and honestest
pagan that ever lived, thought the Graces of such
vast importance that he always advised his disciples
to " sacrifice to them." From so great an authority
I will most earnestly recommend to you to sacrifice
to them. Invite, entreat; supplicate them to ac-
company you, in all you say or do ; and sacrifice
to them every little idle humor and laziness. They
will then be propitious, and accept and reward your
offerings. The principal object of my few remain-
ing years is to make you perfect, if human nature

TO HIS godson: 295

could be so ; and it would make me happy if you
would give me reason to say in time of you, what
Lucretius says of Memmius : — •

" Quem tu Dea tempore in omni,
Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus."

Turn out your right foot, raise your head above
your shoulders, walk like a gentleman ; if not I
know not what Mrs. Dodd intends to do to you.
God bless thee.

XXVIII.

THE INDECENT OSTENTATION OF VICES.

Black-heath, Sept. 3, 1768.
My DEAR Boy, — You are now near that age in
which imitation is not only natural, but in some
degree necessary. You are too young to be able
to form yourself, and yet you are of an age when
you should begin to be forming. Your greatest
difficulty will be to choose good models to work
from, and I am sorry to tell you that there are at
least twenty very bad ones to one good one, espe-
cially amongst the youth of the present times. Their
manners are illiberal and even their vices are de-
graded by their indecent ostentation of them. When
you come more into the world, be very cautious
what model you choose ; or rather choose no one
singly, but pick and cull the accomplishments of
many, as Apelles or Praxiteles, I have forgot which,
did to form his celebrated Venus, — not from any
one beauty, but by singling out and uniting the

296 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

best features of a great many. When you hear of
any young man, of an universal good character,
observe him attentively, and in great measure imi-
tate him ; I say in a great measure, for no man
living is so perfect as to deserve imitation in every
particular. When you hear of another whose good
breeding and address are generally applauded, form
yourself upon his model in those particulars. Ill
examples are sometimes useful to deter from the
vices that characterize them. Horace tells us that
his father trained him up to virtue by pointing
out to him the turpitude of the vices of several
individuals.

XXIX.

THE ART OF LETTER-WRITING.

Black-heath, Sept. 15, 1768.
My DK4R Boy, — I send you enclosed a letter
from your friend young Mr. Chenevix, which you
should answer in about a month. Politeness is as
much concerned in answering letters within a reason-
able time as it is in returning a bow immediately.
A propos of letters, let us consider the various kinds
of letters, and the general rules concerning them.
Letters of business must be answered immediately,
and are the easiest either to write or to answer, for
the subject is ready and only requires great clear-
ness and perspicuity in the. treating. There must
be no prettinesses, no quaintnesses, no antitheses,
nor even wit. Non est his locus. The letters that

TO HIS godson: 297

are the hardest to write are those that are upon no
subject at all, and which are like small talk in
conversation. They admit of wit if you have any,
and of agreeable trifling or badinage. For as they
are nothing in themselves, their whole merit turns
upon their ornaments ; but they should seem easy
and natural, and not smell of the lamp, as most of
the letters I have seen printed do, and probably
because they were wrote in the intention of print-
ing them. Letters between real intimate friends
are of course frequent, but then they require no
care nor trouble, for there the heart leaves the un-
derstanding little or nothing to do. Matter and
expression present themselves. There are two other
sorts of letters, but both pretty much of the same
nature. These are letters to great men, your supe-
riors, and let/res galantes — I do not mean love let-
ters — to fine women. Put flattery enough in
them both, and they will be sure to please. I can
assure you that men, especially great men, are not in
the least behindhand with women in their love of
flattery. Whenever you write to persons greatly
your inferiors, and by way of giving orders, let your
letters speak what I hope in God you will always
feel, — the utmost gentleness and humanity. If you
happen to write to your valet de chambre or your
bailiff", it is no great trouble to say " Pray do such a
thing ; " it will be taken kindly, and your orders will
be the better executed for it. What good heart
would roughly exert the power and superiority
which chance more than merit has given him over
many of his fellow creatures ? I pray God to bless

298 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

you, but remember at the same time that probably
he will only bless you in proportion to your deserts.

XXX.

TREATMENT OF SERVANTS.

Black-heath, Aug. 29, 1769.
My dear Boy, — It gave me great pleasure to
observe the indignation which you expressed at the
brutality of the Pacha you lately dined with to his
servant, which I am sure you are and ever will be
incapable of. Those Pachas seem to think that
their servants and themselves are not made of the
same clay, but that God has made by much the
greatest part of mankind to be the oppressed and
abused slaves of the superior ranks. Service is a
mutual contract, — the master hires and pays his ser-
vant, the servant is to do his master's business ; but
each is equally at liberty to be off of the engage-
ment upon due warning. Servants are full as neces-
sary to their masters as their masters are to them,
and so in truth is the whole human species to each
other ; God has connected them by reciprocal wants
and conveniences which must or at least ought to
create that sentiment of universal benevolence or
good -will which is called humanity. Consider were
you the only living creature upon this globe what a
wretched, miserable being you must be. Where
would you get food or clothes? You are full as
much obliged to the ploughman for your bread as
the ploughman is to you for his wages. In this

TO HIS godson: 299

state then of mutual and universal dependence,
what a monster of brutality and injustice must that
man be who, though of the highest rank, can
treat his fellow creatures even of the lowest with
insult and cruelty as if they were of a different and
inferior species. But this exhortation is not neces-
sary to you, for I thank God he has given you a
good and tender heart ; but I would have your
benevolence proceed equally from a sense of your
duty both to God and man as from the compassion-
ate sentiments and feelings of your heart. Say often
to yourself, " Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum ,
puto." I will encroach no longer upon Dr. Dodd'^
province, who can and will explain the whole duty
of man to you much better than I can ; so God bless
you, my dear boy.

XXXI.

PRIDE OF RANK AND BIRTH.

Black-heath, Sept. 12, i;69.
My dear Boy, — After my death. Sir William's,
and your father's, you will be in a situation that
would make a fool proud and insolent, and a wise
man more humble and obliging. I therefore easily
judge of the effect which it will have upon you.
You will have a pretty good estate, and a pretty
ancient title. I allow you to be glad of both, but I
charge you to be proud of neither of those merely
fortuitous advantages, the attendants of your birth,
not the rewards of any merit of yours. Your title

300 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD

will enable you to serve your country, your estate
to serve your friends, and to realize your present
benevolence of heart into beneficence to your fellow-
creatures. The rabble — that is, at least three parts in
four of mankind — admire riches and titles so much
that they envy and consequently hate the possessors
of them ; but if (which too seldom happens) those
riches are attended by an extensive beneficence,
and the titles by an easy affability, the possessors
will then be adored. Take your choice ; I am sure
you will not hesitate. There is not in my mind a
finer subject for ridicule than a man who is proud
of his birth and jealous of his rank; his civility is
an insolent protection, his walk is stately and pro-
cessional, and he calls his inferiors only " fellows."
I remember a silly lord of this kind who one day,
when the House was up, came to the door in Palace
Yard, and finding none of his servants there, asked
the people who stood at the door, " Where are my
fellows ; " upon which one of them answered him,
" Your lordship has no fellow in the world." All
silly men are not proud, but I aver that all proud
men are silly without exception. Vanity is not
always pride, but pride is always a foolish, ill-grounded
vanity. Vanity that arises from a consciousness of
virtue and knowledge is a very pardonable vanity,
but then even that vanity should be prudently con-
cealed. Upon the whole, the greater your rank, the
greater your fortune may be, the more affability,
complaisance, and beneficence will be expected
from you, if you would not be hated or ridiculous.
But I need not I am sure have treated this subject.

TO HIS godson:

301

for your own good sense and good heart would
have suggested to you all I have said, and more.
God bless you.

XXXII.

THE SNARES OF YOUTH.

Tuesday, June 19, [1770].!
My dear Boy, — From the time I took you under
my care I loved you, because I thought that I saw
in you a good and benevolent heart. I then wished
that your parts might be as good ; and they have
proved so ; they have not only answered my hopes
but my most sanguine wishes ; I esteem, I admire
you, and you are esteemed and admired by others
in your now little sphere. But the more I love you
now the more I dread the snares and dangers that
await you, the next six or seven years of your life,
from ill company and bad examples. Should you
be corrupted by them what a fall would that be !
You would " fall, like setting stars, to rise no more."
When yOu see young fellows, whatever may be their
rank, swearing and cursing as senselessly as wickedly,'
. . . drunk, and engaged in scrapes and quarrels,
shun them. Foenum habent in cornu, longe fuge.
You can only get disgrace and misfortunes by fre-
quenting them. Do not think that these exhorta-

1 In his excellent edition of Chesterfield's Letters to his
Godson, the Earl of Carnarvon says : — " This letter, as far as
I can decide, is the last of the letters; and Tuesday, June 19,
as determined by the chronological tables indicates the year
1770. It is a fitting close to the series."

302 LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD.

tions are the formal preachings of a formal old
fellow; on the contrary they are the best proofs I
can give you of my tenderness. I would have you
lead a youth of pleasures ; but then for your sake I
would have them elegant pleasures becoming a man
of sense and a gentleman ; they will never sully nor
disgrace your character. Keep the best company,
both of men and women, and make yourself an in-
teresting figure in it. Have no mauvaise honte,
which always keeps a man out of good company
and sinks him into low and bad company. I really
believe that these exhortations and dehortations are
unnecessary to your good sense ; but however, the
danger is so great from the examples of the youth
of the present times that I shall frequently return
to the charge with my preventives. Mithridates
(I think it was) had used himself so much to anti-
dotes that he could not bring it about when he
wished to poison himself. What would I not give
for such an antidote to administer to you?

THE END.

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