Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield - Character and Works

Character and Works

Chesterfield was selfish, calculating and contemptuous; he was not naturally generous, and he practised dissimulation until it became part of his nature. In spite of his brilliant talents and of the admirable training he received, his life, on the whole, cannot be pronounced a success. His anxiety and the pains he took to become an orator have been already noticed, and Horace Walpole, who had heard all the great orators, preferred a speech of Chesterfield's to any other; yet the earl's eloquence is not to be compared with that of Pitt. Samuel Johnson, according to his extraordinary biographer, James Boswell, expressed himself pointedly about the nobleman, in the following manner, ‘“This man (said he) I thought had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords!” And when his Letters to his natural son were published, he observed, that “they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master.”’ As a courtier he was utterly worsted by Robert Walpole, whose manners were anything but refined, and even by Newcastle. He desired to be known as a protector of letters and literary men; and his want of heart or head over the Dictionary dedication, though explained and excused by Croker, nonetheless inspired the famous change in a famous line "Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail." His published writings have had with posterity a very indifferent success; his literary reputation rests on a volume of letters never designed to appear in print. The son for whom he worked so hard and thought so deeply failed especially where his father had most desired he should succeed.

As a politician and statesman, Chesterfield's fame rests on his short but brilliant administration of Ireland. As an author he was a clever essayist and epigrammatist.