If we ask ourselves what is the moral of the Letters, and what is
their significance, we are met with a varied reply. We have here the
outpourings of a man’s soul _in penetralibus_. As such the book stands
for its time unique. Chesterfield, when he wrote these letters, was not
actuated by the criticisms of Grub Street, nor indeed any criticisms.
He never for a moment dreamt that his letters would be published, and
they are therefore bereft of that stifling self-consciousness which is
the bane of so many writers. It is this which makes so frequently a
man’s letters more living than his published works, at any rate more
real. So far, of course, Lord Chesterfield shares this distinction with
other writers. But his letters are noteworthy for more than this. They
combine with it a complete system of education, a system which was
thought out without opposition and expressed without fear. In such a
case, of course, we do not look for style; but so perfect and so equal
was the man that we are even told that these letters are not exceeded
in style by anything in the language.[9]
Manuals, of course, there have been many. In the age gone by there
had been Walsingham’s, there had been Burghley’s _Advice_, there had
been Sir Walter Raleigh’s; but from the time that Cicero wrote his
_De Officiis_ for his own child down to these, we come upon but few
of this sort. There had been Castiglione’s _Cortegiano_, and in a few
years Della Casa’s _Galateo_; there is Roger Ascham’s _Scholemaster_.
Chesterfield had found much to his taste and method in the _Moral
Reflections_ of La Rochefoucauld and the _Characters_ of La Bruyère.
In England had just appeared Locke’s _Essay on Education_, and this he
sends for his son to read.[10] In 1759 Lessing and Wieland were writing
on the same subject; and in 1762 Rousseau published _Emile_. Everywhere
education was, to use a common phrase, in the air. Chesterfield loved
his son passionately and unremittingly. He had been much in France,
and admired the French nation; and he determined that his son should
combine the good qualities of both nationalities--the ideal statesman
and the ideal polished man of society. He did not forget that on
Philip Stanhope would ever remain the brand of the bar sinister; but
we may well believe that this was only one more daring reason for the
experiment which he chose to make. He was playing for high stakes, and
he was not careless of the issue. “My only ambition,” he writes in
1754, “remaining is to be the counsellor and minister of your rising
ambition. Let me see my own youth revived in you; let me be your
mentor, and I promise you, with your parts and knowledge you shall go
far.”--(Letter CCLXXIV.)
It is seldom that we have such a continuous series of original letters
as these. From the first _badinage_ to his son, then five years old,
who was then in Holland, in which he explains what a republic is, and
how clean is Holland in comparison with London; from the times when
he explains how Poetry is made, and who the Muses are, and sends his
little son accounts of all the Greek and Roman legends; from the times
when he writes, “Let us return to our Geography that we may amuse
ourselves with maps;” and in the middle of a letter of affection,
having mentioned Cicero, starts off “apropos of him,” and gives his
little son his whole history, and that of Demosthenes after him; to
the times when the boy is able to retort on him for inconsistency in
calling Ovidius Ovid, and not calling Tacitus Tacit; through all his
explanations of what Irony is and is not; through his pedantic “by the
ways;” his definitions (_pace_ Professor Freeman) of Ancient and Modern
History; his sarcasms and his descriptions: down to the time when his
advice is about quadrille tables and ministers and kings, the series is
absolutely unbroken and of unflagging interest.
They are at the best, as he says himself, “what one man of the world
writes to another.” “I am not writing poetry,” he says, “but useful
reflections.” “Surely it is of great use to a young man before he
starts out for a country full of mazes, windings and turnings, to have
at least a good map of it by some experienced traveller.” And so the
old man gives us his map of life as he had seen it. It is exactly the
same estimate in result as Cicero gave in the _De Oratore_: “Men judge
most things under the influence of either hate, or love, or desire,
or anger, or grief, or joy, or hope, or fear, or error, or some other
passion, than by truth, or precepts, or standard of right, or justice,
or law.”
“The proper study of mankind is man,”
and if we disapprove of the morality of Cicero and his epoch no less
than of Chesterfield’s, we must yet remember that in the one instance,
as in the other, their precepts were the purveyors of very soundest
advice. His standard is, as has been already pointed out, that of the
eighteenth century. “Be wiser than other people if you can; but do
not tell them so.” “It is an active, cheerful, seducing good breeding
which must gain you the good-will and first sentiments of the men and
affections of the women. You must carefully watch and attend to their
passions, their tastes, their little humors and weaknesses, and _aller
au devant_.” “Make love to the most impertinent beauty that you meet
with, and be gallant with all the rest.”
It would be a not uninteresting task to see how many of his moral
sentiments would stand fire at the present day. We know all the facts
of his life, and we have here his opinions on nearly every matter. His
opinions are as concise as they are outspoken. “The best of us have
had our bad sides, and it is as imprudent as it is ill-bred to exhibit
them,”[11] he says. It is this absence of ceremony which makes him so
living and real. Even in Dr. Johnson’s time the merit as well as the
demerit of this series of letters had been settled for the standard of
that day. “Take out the immorality,” said the worthy Doctor, “and it
should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.”
The training to which he subjected his son was in many ways admirable.
Rise regularly, however late o’ nights; work all the morning; take
exercise in the afternoon; and see good company in the evening. The
impressing of this advice upon his son has left us in the possession of
one of the most charming examples of Lord Chesterfield’s most playful
style.--(Letter CLXI.)
Lord Chesterfield was all for modern to the disadvantage of a classical
education. Learn all the modern history and modern languages you can,
and if at the same time you can throw in a little Latin and Greek, so
much the better for you. Roman history study as much as you will, for
of all ancient histories it is the most instructive, and furnishes
most examples of virtue, wisdom, and courage. History is to be studied
morally, he says, but not _only_ so.
When we turn to his judgment of the ancients we are considerably
startled. He seems to have preferred Voltaire’s _Henriade_ to any
epic. “Judge whether,” he writes, “I can read all Homer through _tout
de suite_. I admire his beauties; but, to tell you the truth, when he
slumbers I sleep. Virgil, I confess, is all sense, and therefore I like
him better than his model; but he is often languid, especially in his
five or six last books, during which I am obliged to take a good deal
of snuff....”
If his views on Milton should be known, he adds, he would be abused by
every tasteless pedant and every solid divine in England. His criticism
of Dante it will be best for the reader to discover.
The weightier questions and the weightiest he pushed altogether aside.
“I don’t speak of religion,” he writes. “I am not in a position to do
so--the excellent Mr. Harte will do that.” At any rate, Chesterfield
knew his own ground. Incidentally we find his position cropping
up. “The reason of every man is, or ought to be, his guide; and I
should have as much right to expect every man to be of my height and
temperament as to wish that he should reason precisely as I do.”
It was the doctrine of the French school that he had adopted, with
something of a quietism of his own. “Let them enjoy quietly their
errors,” he says somewhere, “both in taste and religion.”[12] It would
be interesting to compare in these matters the relative positions of
Chesterfield and Bolingbroke.
Of the movement headed by Wesley, as we have seen earlier in his
career, Chesterfield seems to have taken as little heed as the younger
Pliny did of the first holders of Wesley’s faith.
It is a harder and more delicate question which we are met with in
discussing Lord Chesterfield’s position with regard to morality.
Johnson’s criticism of the _Letters_, that “they taught the morals of a
courtesan and manners of a dancing master,” even though epigrammatic,
yet bears within it traces of the sting which the lexicologist felt
about the matter of the Dedication. Of the Earl’s opinions we have
seen something in former extracts and in his own life. He speaks quite
openly--“I wish to speak as one man of pleasure does to another.”
“A polite arrangement,” he says elsewhere, “becomes a gallant man.”
Anything disgraceful or impolite he will not stand.
Yet as a human Picciola does Lord Chesterfield guard the soul of his
son within its prison-house of life. He never speaks, however, to his
son _pulpitically_. It is ever as a wise counsellor: and his tendency
is always the same.
It is suggestive of much to turn aside from the _petitesses_ of these
instructions to the thoughts which were occupying the brain of the
author of _Emilius_ about the same time. From very much the same
foundations and the same materials how different is the result! In the
one we breathe the fresh air of the country, of the rustic home and
the carpenter’s shop: in the other we are stifled by the perfumes of
the court-room and suffocated by tight lacing. In the one we are never
for a moment to wear a mask: in the other we are never for a moment to
move without it. Yet, though the one is built up of social theories by
an enthusiastic dreamer, and the other is a cold, practical experiment
by a man of the world, and “an imperfect man of action, whom politics
had made a perfect moralist,” there is the same verdict of failure to
be pronounced upon them both. Voltaire said of _Emilius_ that it was
a stupid romance, but admitted that it contained fifty pages which he
would have bound in morocco. Lord Chesterfield’s was no romance, but
its pages deserve perhaps as careful treatment. “It is a rich book,”
says Sainte-Beuve; “one cannot read a page without finding some happy
observation worthy of being mentioned.” Yet, as a system of education,
it is blasted with the foul air of the charnel-house.