[1] The greatest English writer of the present day thus sums up the eighteenth century:--“An age of which Hoadly was the bishop, and Walpole the minister, and Pope the poet, and Chesterfield the wit, and Tillotson the ruling doctor.”--Newman, _Essays Critical and Historical_, i. 388. [2] For another, very different, view of the life and studies at Cambridge at the time, see the _Life of Ambrose Bonwicke_ (1694-1714). [3] [“_Pasquin._ A Dramatic Satire on the Times, by Henry Fielding. Acted at the Haymarket, 1736; 1740.” (Baker.)] [4] [“_King Charles I._ Hist Tr. by W. Havard, 1737.” (Ibid.).] [5] Chesterfield says he had been accustomed to read and translate the great masterpieces to improve and form his style. His indebtedness to Milton in his _Areopagitica_ in the above passage is obvious. [6] See Letter CCXV., also CCXII. [7] It is just possible, though I have nowhere seen it affirmed, that Voltaire and Chesterfield may have met, still earlier, in Holland. For in 1713 they were both there. Their attainments there were all but parallel, Voltaire succumbing to a fatal passion in 1713, which did not, to our knowledge, overtake Chesterfield till his second visit in 1729. [8] He must just have escaped traveling from Leipzig to Berlin with Lessing. Both took the journey in February, 1749. [9] For his fine sense of the quality of words witness: “An unharmonious and rugged period at this time shocks my ears, and I, like all the rest of the world, will willingly exchange and give up some degree of rough sense for a good degree of pleasing sound.” [10] Characteristically, no mention is made of Shaftesbury nor of Hutcheson. [11] _Cf._ Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Every Man’s Folly ought to be his greatest secret.”--(_Instructions to his Son._) [12] “A wise Atheist (if such a thing there is) would, for his own interest and character in the world, pretend to some religion.”--Letter CLXXX. [13] In this Essay, by the late M. Sainte-Beuve, nothing has been altered, although, in one or two places, even his critical acuteness seems to have missed its point. [14] This is no longer a conjecture, but a certainty, after what I read in the edition of _Lord Chesterfield’s Letters_, published in London by Lord Mahon in 1847 (4 vols.). See vol. iii., page 159. I was not acquainted with this edition when I wrote my article.--C. DE S. B. [15] This was written in June, 1850. [16] This first letter will form a key to Chesterfield’s character. It is partly badinage, and yet contains the elements of his lordship’s idea. He has already begun to teach “Mr. Stanhope,” and addresses as Monsieur a child of the mature age of five years. We have purposely omitted other letters, some in Latin, _Phillipo Stanhope, adhuc puerulo_, which contain merely historical and geographical information fit for a little schoolboy.