These Letters are, in fact, a complete exposition of Lord Chesterfield’s character and views of life.  No other man could have written them; no other man have conceived the notion of existence being one great effort to deceive, as well as to excel, and of society forming one gigantic lie.  It is true they were addressed to one who was to enter the maze of a diplomatic career, and must be taken, on that account, with some reservation.

They have justly been condemned on the score of immorality; but we must remember that the age in which they were written was one of lax notions, especially among men of rank, who regarded all women accessible, either from indiscretion or inferiority of rank, as fair game, and acted accordingly.  But whilst we agree with one of Johnson’s bitterest sentences as to the immorality of Chesterfield’s letters, we disagree with his styling his code of manners the manners of a dancing-master.  Chesterfield was in himself a perfect instance of what he calls les manieres nobles; and this even Johnson allowed.

‘Talking of Chesterfield,’ Johnson said, ’his manner was exquisitely elegant, and he had more knowledge than I expected.’  Boswell:  ’Did you find, sir, his conversation to be of a superior sort?’—­Johnson:  ’Sir, in the conversation which I had with him, I had the best right to superiority, for it was upon philology and literature.’

It was well remarked how extraordinary a thing it was that a man who loved his son so entirely should do all he could to make him a rascal.  And Foote even contemplated bringing on the stage a father who had thus tutored his son; and intended to show the son an honest man in everything else, but practising his father’s maxims upon him, and cheating him.

‘It should be so contrived,’ Johnson remarked, referring to Foote’s plan, ’that the father should be the only sufferer by the son’s villany, and thus there would be poetical justice.’  ’Take out the immorality,’ he added, on another occasion, ’and the book (Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son) should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.’

We are inclined to differ, and to confess to a moral taint throughout the whole of the Letters; and even had the immorality been expunged, the false motives, the deep, invariable advocacy of principles of expediency, would have poisoned what otherwise might be of effectual benefit to the minor virtues of polite society.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 23:  The Countess of Chesterfield here alluded to was the second wife of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield.  Philip Dormer, fourth Earl, was grandson of the second Earl by his third wife.]

[Footnote 24:  In the ‘Annual Register,’ for 1774, p. 20, it is stated that as George I. had left Lady Walsingham a legacy which his successor did not think proper to deliver, the Earl of Chesterfield was determined to recover it by a suit in Chancery, had not his Majesty, on questioning the Lord Chancellor on the subject, and being answered that he could give no opinion extrajudicially, thought proper to fulfil the bequest.]