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.