Part 19

31. The instant in which we receive the most favorable accounts, is just that wherein we ought to redouble our vigilance, even in regard to the most trifling circumstances.

32. It is dangerous to have a known influence over people; as thereby we become responsible even for what is done against our will.

33. One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.

34. Nothing lowers a great man so much, as not seizing the decisive moment of raising his reputation. This is seldom neglected, but with a view to fortune; by which mistake, it is not unusual to miss both.

35. The possibility of remedying imprudent actions is commonly an inducement to commit them.

36. Every numerous assembly is a mob; consequently everything there depends upon instantaneous turns.

37. Whatever measure seems hazardous, and is in reality not so, is generally a wise one.

38. Irresolute minds always adopt with facility whatever measure can admit of different issues, and consequently do not require an absolute decision.

39. In momentous affairs, no step is indifferent.

40. There are times in which certain people are always in the right.

41. Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually as what they do not comprehend.

42. When factions are only upon the defensive, they ought never to do that which may be delayed. Upon such occasions, nothing is so troublesome as the restlessness of subalterns; who think a state of inaction total destruction.

43. Those who head factions have no way of maintaining their authority, but by preventing or quieting discontent.

44. A certain degree of fear produces the same effects as rashness.

45. In affairs of importance, the choice of words is of as much consequence, as it would be superfluous in those of little moment.

46. During those calms which immediately succeed violent storms, nothing is more difficult for ministers than to act properly; because, while flattery increases, suspicions are not yet subsided.

47. The faults of our friends ought never to anger us so far as to give an advantage to our enemies.

48. The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.

49. In matters of a delicate nature, all unnecessary alterations are dangerous, because odious.

50. The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

51. We must run all hazards, where we think ourselves in a situation to reap some advantage, even from the want of success.

52. Irresolute men are diffident in resolving upon the means, even when they are determined upon the end.

53. It is almost a sure game, with crafty men, to make them believe we intend to deceive those whom we mean to serve.

54. One of the greatest difficulties with princes is in the being often obliged, in order to serve them, to give advice, the true reasons of which we dare not mention.

55. The saying things which we foresee will not be pleasing, can only be softened by the greatest appearance of sincerity.

56. We ought never to trifle with favor. If real, we should hastily seize the advantage; if pretended, avoid the allurement.

57. It is very inconsequent to enter into engagements upon suppositions we think impossible, and yet it is very usual.

58. The generality of mankind pay less attention to arguments urged against their opinion, than to such as may engage the disputant to adopt their own.

59. In times of faction and intrigue, whatever appears inert is reckoned mysterious by those who are not accustomed to affairs of moment.

60. It is never allowable in an inferior to equal himself in words to a superior, although he may rival him in actions.

61. Every man whom chance alone has, by some accident, made a public character, hardly ever fails of becoming, in a short time, a ridiculous private one.

62. The greatest imperfection of men is the complacency with which they are willing to think others not free from faults, of which they are themselves conscious.

63. Experience only can teach men not to prefer what strikes them for the present moment, to what will have much greater weight with them hereafter.

64. In the management of important business, all turn to raillery must be more carefully avoided than in any other.

65. In momentous transactions, words cannot be sufficiently weighed.

66. The permanency of most friendships depends upon the continuity of good fortune.

67. Whoever assembles the multitude will raise commotions.

LORD CHESTERFIELD’S REMARKS UPON THE FOREGOING MAXIMS.

I have taken the trouble of extracting and collecting, for your use, the foregoing Political Maxims of the Cardinal de Retz, in his Memoirs. They are not aphorisms of his invention, but the true and just observations of his own experience, in the course of great business. My own experience attests the truth of them all. Read them over with attention as here above, and then read with the same attention, and _tout de suite_, the Memoirs, where you will find the facts and characters from whence those observations are drawn, or to which they are applied; and they will reciprocally help to fix each other in your mind. I hardly know any book so necessary for a young man to read and remember. You will there find how great business is really carried on; very differently from what people, who have never been concerned in it, imagine. You will there see what courts and courtiers really are, and observe that they are neither so good as they should be, nor so bad as they are thought by most people. The court poet, and the sullen, cloistered pedant, are equally mistaken in their notions, or at least in the accounts they give us of them. You will observe the coolness in general, the perfidy in some cases, and the truth in a very few, of court friendships. This will teach you the prudence of a general distrust, and the imprudence of making no exception to that rule, upon good and tried grounds. You will see the utility of good breeding toward one’s greatest enemies, and the high imprudence and folly of either insulting or injurious expressions.

FOOTNOTES

[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.

[17] Lord Chesterfield was, as will be afterwards seen, particularly anxious that his son should imbibe political, geographical, and historical knowledge, hence these details to a child of five.

[18] Young Mr. Stanhope’s tutor.

[19] In a previous letter, which has been lost, Chesterfield has been teaching rhetoric to a boy of about seven years old, for, referring to it, he says: “En vérité je crois que vous êtes le premier garcon à qui, _avant l’âge de huit ans_, on ait jamais parlé des figures de la rhétorique, comme j’ai fait dans ma dernière.”

[20] We learn by a subsequent reference that the little fellow wished not to be called Colas, but Polyglot, from knowing already three or four languages.

[21] CAREFUL IMITATION.--_Philip Chesterfield to his dear little boy Philip Stanhope, wishing health, etc._ Your last letter was very grateful to me; not only was it nicely written, but in it you promise to take great care and to win, deservedly, true praise. But I must say plainly that I much suspect you of having had the help of a good and able master in composing it; and he being your guide and adviser, it will be your own fault if you do not acquire elegancy of style, learning, and all that can make you good and wise. I entreat you, therefore, carefully to imitate so good a pattern; the more you regard him the more you will love me. [_About July, 1741._]

[22] In the beginning of this letter, which contains a lesson upon Julius Cæsar, Chesterfield says: “You know so much more and learn so much better than any boy of your age, that you see I do not treat you like a boy, but write to you on subjects fit for men to consider.”

[23] So also Home,--

“Amen! and virtue is its own reward.”

_Douglas_, Act. iii. Sc. 1.

And Claudian, quoted by Chesterfield,

“Ipsa quidem virtus pretium sibi, solaque latè Fortunæ secura nitet,” etc.

[24] Written in Latin. _Philippus Chesterfield, Phillippo Stanhope adhuc puerulo, sed eras e pueritiâ egressuro. S. D._ Dated, Kalend, Maii, 1741.

[25] In the compilation called “Lord Chesterfield’s Maxims,” wherein part of this letter is given, all the characteristic points are left out. Thus, where Chesterfield reminds his son that manner is of consequence in pleasing, _especially the women_, the purist has excised the words in italics.

[26] His Lordship’s badinage, or it may be sarcasm, which the little boy quickly perceived.

[27] His lordship was then Viceroy of Ireland.

[28] Mr. Stanhope was then travelling with his tutor in Germany.

[29] A good natured but somewhat silly book in which M. L’Abbé instructs certain young ladies and gentlemen by means of sundry conversations and reflections.

[30] His lordship had during this year been made one of his Majesty’s Secretaries of State.

[31] Chesterfield had inclosed in a letter from Mr. Stanhope’s mamma one from his own sister, thanking the boy for some Arquebusade water. His lordship sent a rough copy of a polite answer to this note.

[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.

[51] This single word implies decorum, good breeding, and propriety.

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

[53] 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.

[54] Ariosto, Tasso, and Boccaccio: the Orlando, Gierusalemme, and Decamerone.

[55] See “Maxims,” p. 328.

[56] These maxims are referred to on page 324.

[57] 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.”

[58] 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_.