Life of Lord Chesterfield: An Account of the Ancestry, Personal Character & Public Services of the Fourth Earl of ChesterfieldJ. Lane, 1907 - 378 pages |
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afterwards Ambassador appear appointed army became Bill Blackheath Bretby Carteret character Chevenix conduct correspondence Countess Countess of Chesterfield Court Crown daughter Dayrolles declared Dublin Duchess Duke of Argyll Duke of Newcastle Earl of Chesterfield Earl's England English fact father favour fortunes French George George II Government Hague Hanover Hanoverian Hervey Holland honour hope House of Commons House of Lords Ibid influence interest Ireland Irish King King's Lady less letter lived London Lord Chesterfield Lord Hervey Lord Scarborough Lord Stanhope lordship Madame Mahon Majesty Majesty's manner Marchmont marriage Maty ment Minister Ministry morality never object occasion Opposition Parliament peers person Pitt political Prince of Wales Princess Protestant Pulteney Queen regard remarkable reputation resigned respect royal says Secretary seems Sir Robert Walpole speech things thought tion took Viceroy Walpole's whilst writes young
Popular passages
Page 304 - ... not. For my own part, I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them, as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well : so I resolved to do better than speak to the purpose, and to please instead of informing them.
Page 78 - Chesterfield was allowed by everybody to have more conversable entertaining table-wit than any man of his time ; his propensity to ridicule, in which he indulged himself with infinite humour and no distinction, and with inexhaustible spirits and no discretion, made him sought and feared, liked and not loved, by most of his acquaintance...
Page 353 - CONSISTING OF LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS, NEVER BEFORE PRINTED, AND VARIOUS OTHER ARTICLES. To which are prefixed, MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE, tending to illustrate the Civil, Literary, and Political History of his Time, by M.
Page 275 - London/ and, perhaps, even now it remains unsurpassed, his spacious and beautiful library looking on the finest private garden in London. The walls are covered half-way up with rich and classical stores of literature ; above the cases are in close series the portraits of eminent authors, French and English, with most of whom he had conversed ; over these, and immediately under the massive cornice, extend all round, in foot-long capitals, the Horatian lines —
Page 154 - I shall like to read Bolingbroke's, who, of all those rascals and knaves that have been lying against me these ten years, has certainly the best parts and the most knowledge : he is a scoundrel, but he is a scoundrel of a higher class than Chesterfield. Chesterfield is a little tea-table scoundrel, that tells little womanish lies to make quarrels in families ; and tries to make women lose their reputations, and make their husbands beat them, without any object but to give himself airs ; as if anybody...
Page 292 - He watches how they address themselves to their superiors, how they accost their equals, and how they treat their inferiors ; and lets none of those little niceties escape him, which are to good-breeding what the last delicate and masterly touches are to a good picture, and which the vulgar have no notion of, but by which good judges distinguish the master.
Page 304 - I had made the whole very clear to them, when, God knows, I had not even attempted it. Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill, and who is one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterwards with infinite knowledge, and all the clearness that so intricate a matter would admit of: but as his words, his periods, and his utterance were not near so good as mine, the preference was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me.
Page 158 - Licentiousness is the alloy of liberty: it is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the political body, which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand, lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye upon which it is apt to appear.
Page 312 - In short, all the symptoms which I have ever met with in History, previous to great Changes and Revolutions in Government, now exist and daily increase in France."/ Chapter III — Viaticum.
Page 319 - I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship.