“ Since his purpose is to entertain through exaggeration, a parodist is not required to be fair or to distinguish between an editor without judgment and the writer of intimate letters; so long as something can be made ludicrous, 'twill suffice. Yet essentially the burlesquers and many a critic then and since have missed what Chesterfield was writing in his letters and living in his long life. Blinded by the trivia inevitable in hundreds of letters carrying anxious parental advice, the critics have too often ignored or misinterpreted Chesterfield's passion for helping. ”

“ And waste in busy thought the midnight oil:
Whose page the Critics ever must revere,
As long as genius is reputed dear,
Whose heart exults, or swells with honest rage,
As Vice, or Virtue marks the rising age ”

“ The two pieces here reprinted, typical verse pamphlets of the 1770's, illustrate both a type of writing and an age. The subject of both is contemporary—the best-selling Letters to his Son of Lord Chesterfield. The method falls between burlesque and caricature; the aim is amusement; the substance is negligible. Neither poem made more than a ripple on publication, neither initiated a critical fashion, and neither survived in its own right, yet each has merit enough to justify inclusion today in such a series as the Augustan reprints. ”

“ One can understand why, despite the absence of personal danger, a public figure like Lord Chesterfield should yet conceal his connection with a piece on the Hanoverian troops, or why Horace Walpole might often not put his name to an item listed in his Short Notes of his life or young Boswell to his communications to the press. ”

“ Reviewers sprang to words if not into action. Entire books came to the defence of morality. A sermon announced "The Unalterable Nature of Vice and Virtue" (a second edition placed Virtue before Vice) ; the Monthly Review for [Pg ii] December 1775 praised it: "This sensible and well written discourse is chiefly directed against the letters of the late Lord Chesterfield, though his Lordship is not mentioned." All of these approached the subject directly. ”

“ No distortion of countenance, or aukward behaviour; no absence of mind; but to keep the Graces always in remembrance.
[8] Mr. Stanhope dined one day with some company at his father's, when the following circumstance happen'd, which so much enrag'd him, that he called for his servant to take him from table and wash him clean.
[9] A female polisher of manners.
[10] Have your stiffness remov'd.
[11] You should dress like a man of the great world.
[12] Always in the fashion, and your cloaths well put on.
[13] What success with the Graces. ”

“ Chesterfield did his level best with his godson; he gave what was seemly to his young friend Huntingdon and likewise to Solomon Dayrolles. Five unpublished letters at Yale, to a Mr. Clements of Dublin, repeat the formula on a minor scale, the fifty-five-year-old earl laying out a plan of education for the family hopeful. Chesterfield's interest to do good shows at its best in his too little known letter to the Duke of Bedford condemning the brutal treatment of French prisoners (Dobree, VI, 2960) . These all reveal something more praiseworthy in the man than the common interpretation of him. ”

“ The Monthly Miscellany for June 1776 provided a few kindly lines: "This didactic rhapsody, the precepts contained in which are founded upon passages referred to in his Lordship's letters, is written in hendecasyllable measure, and is not destitute of humour." The Monthly Review for the same month had less to say: "We should be miserably deficient in the fine Gentleman's Etiquette, were we to criticise a lady for employing her time as she pleases."
In one sense, both burlesquers hit the weak spot in Chesterfield's Letters. ”

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“ Far hence the Wag's and Witling's scurril jest,
Whose noise and nonsense shock the decent guest;
True Wit and Humour such low helps decline,
Nor will the Graces owe their charms to wine.
Fools fly to drink (in native dullness sunk)
In vain; they're ten times greater fools when drunk.—
Thus, free from riot, innocently gay,
We'll neither wish, nor fear our final day.
Sidney L. Gulick
San Diego State College
[Pg vi]
NOTES Except for the title page of The Fine Gentleman's Etiquette, which comes from the University of North Carolina. ”

“ Revenge is their passion, and well I discern,
" (g) Like Orpheus, in pieces, by them you'd be torn:"
" (h) One maxim pray treasure as long as you live,
"No mark of contempt either sex will forgive;
"The vanity flatter'd of women, or men, [Pg 25]
"Ensures you success with just nine out of ten:"
Resolve me a question I wish much to know,
" (i) Your passion, how stands it, for Madame de Blot?
"Does she list to your tale, are there hopes of success? ”

“ Stanhope (the son's widow, who had sold the letters to James Dodsley the publisher for £1575 and was represented as the editor) , two novels showing the pernicious effects of the Chesterfieldean "system"—The Pupil of Pleasure, by Courtney Melmoth (Samuel Jackson Pratt) , and The Two Mentors, by Clara Reeve—and a parody by Horace Walpole of the first three letters (published years later in his Works) . ”

“ The Westminster Magazine carried a "Petition of the Women of Pleasure" and the London Chronicle a farcical skit on Lord Chesterfield's refined manners. [1] In a play called The Cozeners, Samuel Foote took advantage of current interest in Chesterfield to ridicule the graces. Not the least interesting examples of the indirect reaction to the Letters are the two verse caricatures or burlesques here reprinted. ”

“ The London Chronicle for February 16-18, quoting 88 lines of the total 170 and working from the first edition, mentioned that the piece was written by Mr. Woty, but so far as bibliography was concerned this attribution remained hidden until recently, for Woty's obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine for March 1791 omitted mention of The Graces, as did the DNB and its additional sources, John Nichols' Leicestershire and David Erskine Baker's Biographia Dramatica (1812 ed.) . ”

“ The index to the Hill-Powell Boswell lists Woty (and Fawkes) only in this connection, but someone had sufficient interest with the lexicographer to induce him to subscribe to Woty's anonymous Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760; the subscription list of some 500 names includes not only Samuel Johnson, A.M., but David Garrick, Mr. William Mason, Dr. Smollett, Mr. Strahan, and Mr. Newbery, of St. Paul's Church Yard, who bought 6 books—not unnaturally, for he was the publisher. A decade later, the subscribers to The Poetical Works of William Woty included James Boswell, Esq., George Colman, Esq., Mr. ”

“ These maxims, thro' life, I wou'd have you pursue,
I practis'd them once, and now hand them to you;
Successful they were, they brought honors and fame,
For still I had art to preserve my good name;
" (e) 'Twere wrong to suppose, what the polish'd world say;
"That in manners, and carr'age, you're horrid outré;"
"Your air [2] Pollissôn, and the taste of your cloaths,
"Makes you pass for a Bourgeois that nobody knows ”