[32] Lord Chesterfield had been urging his son to send a Dresden tea-service to his mother, which he did. [33] A pun; the pillars from Canons in Middlesex. [34] It is well, in the present state of society, to reflect upon the intimacy here shown between persons in trade and those in high life. [35] A somewhat curious use of the phrase, but well explained by Johnson. [36] De Retz, from whose “Mémoires” Lord Chesterfield quoted a sentence in the commencement of the letter. [37] The author, as he says, often repeats himself; see _ante_, p. 180. [38] 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. [39] On a German question. [40] An open face with a close (or secret) mind. [41] This little note is inserted to show that Lord Chesterfield’s repetitions were not unknown to himself. The most flagrant we have omitted. [42] 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_.” [43] 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. [44] “Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, on the Idea of a Patriot King.” [45] 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_.” [46] 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. [47] The lady was turned fifty, and Chesterfield recommends her as a chaperone. [48] 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. [49] 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.” [50] The Maréchal de Richelieu.