Letters Written by Lord Chesterfield to His Son (With Notes)
This collection of letters comprises more than 400 letters written beginning in 1737 or 1738 and continuing until his son's death in 1768. The majority of the letters were written between 1746 and 1754. They are mostly instructive letters on such subjects as geography, history, and classical literature. Later letters, written when the author had become an established minor diplomat, deal largely with political matters.
The letters were first published by his son's widow Eugenia Stanhope in 1774. The Letters are brilliantly written, full of elegant wisdom, of keen wit, of admirable portrait-painting, of exquisite observation and deduction. In the Letters to his Son Chesterfield epitomises the restraint of polite 18th-century society.
It is a singular fate that has overtaken Lord Chesterfield. One of the more important figures in the political world of his time; one of the few Lord-Lieutenants of Ireland whose name was afterwards respected and admired; the first man to introduce Voltaire and Montesquieu to England; and the personal acquaintance of men like Addison and Swift, Pope and Bolingbroke; the ally of Pitt, and the enemy of three Georges; though he married a king's daughter and took up the task of the world's greatest emperor.
Yet, the record of his actions has passed away, and he is remembered now only by an accident. Lord Chesterfield lives by that which he never intended for publication, his letters, while that which he published has already passed from the thoughts of men. It is one more example of the fact that our best work is that which is our heart's production. We have Lord Chesterfield's secret, and it bears witness to the strength of that part of him in which an intellectual anatomist has declared him to be deficient a criticism which is but another proof of that which has been somewhere said of him, that he has had the fate to be generally misunderstood. Yet nothing is more certain than that Lord Chesterfield did not mean to be anything but inscrutable. "Dissimilation is a shield," he used to say, "as secrecy is armour." "A young fellow ought to be
wiser than he should seem to be, and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not."
It is still worth while attempting to solve the problem which is offered to us by his inscrutability, not only on its own account, but because Lord Chesterfield is a representative spirit of the eighteenth century.
Chesterfield, if we may make a comparison, is like one of those great trees that we see upon the banks of a river, which, while drawing its nurture half from its native soil and the stream by its side, and half from the sky above it, has had that very soil worn away by the current of the stream, so that the tree, by its own natural weight and under the force of adverse winds and circumstance, has bowed itself over towards the waves, losing its natural height and grandeur forever.
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The letters were first published by his son's widow Eugenia Stanhope in 1774. The Letters are brilliantly written, full of elegant wisdom, of keen wit, of admirable portrait-painting, of exquisite observation and deduction. In the Letters to his Son Chesterfield epitomises the restraint of polite 18th-century society.
It is a singular fate that has overtaken Lord Chesterfield. One of the more important figures in the political world of his time; one of the few Lord-Lieutenants of Ireland whose name was afterwards respected and admired; the first man to introduce Voltaire and Montesquieu to England; and the personal acquaintance of men like Addison and Swift, Pope and Bolingbroke; the ally of Pitt, and the enemy of three Georges; though he married a king's daughter and took up the task of the world's greatest emperor.
Yet, the record of his actions has passed away, and he is remembered now only by an accident. Lord Chesterfield lives by that which he never intended for publication, his letters, while that which he published has already passed from the thoughts of men. It is one more example of the fact that our best work is that which is our heart's production. We have Lord Chesterfield's secret, and it bears witness to the strength of that part of him in which an intellectual anatomist has declared him to be deficient a criticism which is but another proof of that which has been somewhere said of him, that he has had the fate to be generally misunderstood. Yet nothing is more certain than that Lord Chesterfield did not mean to be anything but inscrutable. "Dissimilation is a shield," he used to say, "as secrecy is armour." "A young fellow ought to be
wiser than he should seem to be, and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not."
It is still worth while attempting to solve the problem which is offered to us by his inscrutability, not only on its own account, but because Lord Chesterfield is a representative spirit of the eighteenth century.
Chesterfield, if we may make a comparison, is like one of those great trees that we see upon the banks of a river, which, while drawing its nurture half from its native soil and the stream by its side, and half from the sky above it, has had that very soil worn away by the current of the stream, so that the tree, by its own natural weight and under the force of adverse winds and circumstance, has bowed itself over towards the waves, losing its natural height and grandeur forever.
Letters Written by Lord Chesterfield to His Son (With Notes)
This collection of letters comprises more than 400 letters written beginning in 1737 or 1738 and continuing until his son's death in 1768. The majority of the letters were written between 1746 and 1754. They are mostly instructive letters on such subjects as geography, history, and classical literature. Later letters, written when the author had become an established minor diplomat, deal largely with political matters.
The letters were first published by his son's widow Eugenia Stanhope in 1774. The Letters are brilliantly written, full of elegant wisdom, of keen wit, of admirable portrait-painting, of exquisite observation and deduction. In the Letters to his Son Chesterfield epitomises the restraint of polite 18th-century society.
It is a singular fate that has overtaken Lord Chesterfield. One of the more important figures in the political world of his time; one of the few Lord-Lieutenants of Ireland whose name was afterwards respected and admired; the first man to introduce Voltaire and Montesquieu to England; and the personal acquaintance of men like Addison and Swift, Pope and Bolingbroke; the ally of Pitt, and the enemy of three Georges; though he married a king's daughter and took up the task of the world's greatest emperor.
Yet, the record of his actions has passed away, and he is remembered now only by an accident. Lord Chesterfield lives by that which he never intended for publication, his letters, while that which he published has already passed from the thoughts of men. It is one more example of the fact that our best work is that which is our heart's production. We have Lord Chesterfield's secret, and it bears witness to the strength of that part of him in which an intellectual anatomist has declared him to be deficient a criticism which is but another proof of that which has been somewhere said of him, that he has had the fate to be generally misunderstood. Yet nothing is more certain than that Lord Chesterfield did not mean to be anything but inscrutable. "Dissimilation is a shield," he used to say, "as secrecy is armour." "A young fellow ought to be
wiser than he should seem to be, and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not."
It is still worth while attempting to solve the problem which is offered to us by his inscrutability, not only on its own account, but because Lord Chesterfield is a representative spirit of the eighteenth century.
Chesterfield, if we may make a comparison, is like one of those great trees that we see upon the banks of a river, which, while drawing its nurture half from its native soil and the stream by its side, and half from the sky above it, has had that very soil worn away by the current of the stream, so that the tree, by its own natural weight and under the force of adverse winds and circumstance, has bowed itself over towards the waves, losing its natural height and grandeur forever.
The letters were first published by his son's widow Eugenia Stanhope in 1774. The Letters are brilliantly written, full of elegant wisdom, of keen wit, of admirable portrait-painting, of exquisite observation and deduction. In the Letters to his Son Chesterfield epitomises the restraint of polite 18th-century society.
It is a singular fate that has overtaken Lord Chesterfield. One of the more important figures in the political world of his time; one of the few Lord-Lieutenants of Ireland whose name was afterwards respected and admired; the first man to introduce Voltaire and Montesquieu to England; and the personal acquaintance of men like Addison and Swift, Pope and Bolingbroke; the ally of Pitt, and the enemy of three Georges; though he married a king's daughter and took up the task of the world's greatest emperor.
Yet, the record of his actions has passed away, and he is remembered now only by an accident. Lord Chesterfield lives by that which he never intended for publication, his letters, while that which he published has already passed from the thoughts of men. It is one more example of the fact that our best work is that which is our heart's production. We have Lord Chesterfield's secret, and it bears witness to the strength of that part of him in which an intellectual anatomist has declared him to be deficient a criticism which is but another proof of that which has been somewhere said of him, that he has had the fate to be generally misunderstood. Yet nothing is more certain than that Lord Chesterfield did not mean to be anything but inscrutable. "Dissimilation is a shield," he used to say, "as secrecy is armour." "A young fellow ought to be
wiser than he should seem to be, and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not."
It is still worth while attempting to solve the problem which is offered to us by his inscrutability, not only on its own account, but because Lord Chesterfield is a representative spirit of the eighteenth century.
Chesterfield, if we may make a comparison, is like one of those great trees that we see upon the banks of a river, which, while drawing its nurture half from its native soil and the stream by its side, and half from the sky above it, has had that very soil worn away by the current of the stream, so that the tree, by its own natural weight and under the force of adverse winds and circumstance, has bowed itself over towards the waves, losing its natural height and grandeur forever.
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940015289749 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balefire Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/12/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 300 |
| File size: | 17 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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