Part 29

Pic-nic. Johnson does not mention this word, nor do his predecessors, Ashe and Bailey. Richardson does not give it even in his supplement. Worcester cites Widegren, 1788; this then is the earliest use of the word by an author of weight.

On a German question.

An open face with a close (or secret) mind.

This little note is inserted to show that Lord Chesterfield’s repetitions were not unknown to himself. The most flagrant we have omitted.

As indeed did George III. teste the anecdote of Kemble: “Mr. Kemble, obleige me with a pinch of snuff.” “It would become your Majesty’s royal mouth better to say oblige.”

We retain this as a picture of the morals of the time, and to satisfy the reader’s curiosity as to the subject of so much care on the part of his father.

“Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, on the Idea of a Patriot King.”

A notorious, wretched debauchee, who has been pilloried into a miserable and degraded immortality by Arbuthnot, Pope and Hogarth; the painter has given us his portrait in “The Harlot’s Progress,” plate 1. Pope has set him up as an instance of that hardest trial to good men, the success of the wicked:

“Should some lone temple, nodding to its fall, For Chartres’ head reserve the nodding wall.”

And Arbuthnot wrote the most tremendously severe epitaph in the whole range of literature on him while yet alive: “Here continueth to rot the body of Colonel Francis Chartres,” etc. Finally, Chesterfield points him out to his son as the most notorious blasted rascal in the world--blasted, indeed, as by lightning. It is needless to say that this word is not used as a vulgar oath, but to point out a man whose name is, as the Bible of 1551 has it: “Marred forever by blastynge.”

Benedict XIV.--the amiable Lambertini, who was thought by Chesterfield too much of a savant and a man of the world to be foolishly devout.

The lady was turned fifty, and Chesterfield recommends her as a chaperone.

Strong as this reprobation is, it is as much needed to-day as when written; the whole English race (if we credit Westminster Review, March, 1869), especially the upper class, is suffering from the awful effects of vice.

Thus Englished by the famous Tom Brown:

“I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, the reason why I cannot tell, But this I know and know full well, I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”

The Maréchal de Richelieu.

This single word implies decorum, good breeding, and propriety.

As to terminations, so careful were the best French poets of their rhymes.

Chesterfield had at once perceived the emptiness of the saying, which is certainly not in ipsissimis verbis of Lord Shaftesbury. “We have,” says Carlyle, in his “Essay on Voltaire,” “oftener than once endeavored to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury--which, however, we can find nowhere in his works,--that ridicule is the test of truth.” In the “Characteristics of Enthusiasm,” sec. 2, there is this sentence, which comes very near it:--“How is it, etc., that we (Christians) appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule”; but further on (p. 11, ed. 1733, vol. i.) he asks: “For what ridicule can lie against reason? or how can any one of the least justice of thought admire a ridicule wrong placed? Nothing is more ridiculous than this itself.” Shaftesbury often returns to this subject; see “Errors in Wit,” etc.

Ariosto, Tasso, and Boccaccio: the Orlando, Gierusalemme, and Decamerone.

See “Maxims,” p. 328.

These maxims are referred to on page 324.

Upon the back of the original is written, in Mr. Stanhope’s hand, “Excellent Maxims, but more calculated for the meridian of France or Spain than of England.”

This Maxim, as well as several others, evidently prove they were written by a man subject to despotic government.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus italic.