For some time Lord Chesterfield remained in England, and his letters are dated from Bath, from Tonbridge, from Blackheath.  He had, in 1726, been elevated to the House of Lords upon the death of his father.  In that assembly his great eloquence is thus well described by his biographer:—­[25]

’Lord Chesterfield’s eloquence, the fruit of much study, was less characterized by force and compass than by elegance and perspicuity, and especially by good taste and urbanity, and a vein of delicate irony which, while it sometimes inflicted severe strokes, never passed the limits of decency and propriety.  It was that of a man who, in the union of wit and good sense with politeness, had not a competitor.  These qualities were matured by the advantage which he assiduously sought and obtained, of a familiar acquaintance with almost all the eminent wits and writers of his time, many of whom had been the ornaments of a preceding age of literature, while others were destined to become those of a later period.’

The accession of George II., to whose court Lord Chesterfield had been attached for many years, brought him no political preferment.  The court had, however, its attractions even for one who owed his polish to the belles of Paris, and who was almost always, in taste and manners, more foreign than English.  Henrietta, Lady Pomfret, the daughter and heiress of John, Lord Jeffreys, the son of Judge Jeffreys, was at that time the leader of fashion.

Six daughters, one of them, Lady Sophia, surpassingly lovely recalled the perfections of that ancestress, Arabella Fermor whose charms Pope has so exquisitely touched in the ‘Rape of the Lock.’  Lady Sophia became eventually the wife of Lord Carteret, the minister, whose talents and the charms of whose eloquence constituted him a sort of rival to Chesterfield.  With all his abilities, Lord Chesterfield may be said to have failed both as a courtier and as a political character, as far as permanent influence in any ministry was concerned, until in 1744, when what was called the ‘Broad-bottomed administration’ was formed, when he was admitted into the cabinet.  In the following year, however, he went, for the last time, to Holland, as ambassador, and succeeded beyond the expectations of his party in the purposes of his embassy.  He took leave of the States-General just before the battle of Fontenoy, and hastened to Ireland, where he had been nominated Lord-Lieutenant previous to his journey to Holland.  He remained in that country only a year; but long enough to prove how liberal were his views—­how kindly the dispositions of his heart.

Only a few years before Lord Chesterfield’s arrival in Dublin, the Duke of Shrewsbury had given as a reason for accepting the vice-regency of that country, (of which King James I. had said, there was ‘more ado’ than with any of his dominions,) ’that it was a place where a man had business enough to keep him from falling asleep, and not enough to keep him awake.’