“I would an author like a mistress try,
        Not by a nose, a lip, a cheek, or eye,
        But by some nameless power to give me joy.”

Lady Chesterfield bids me make you many compliments; she showed me your letter of recommendation of La Vestres; with which I was very well pleased:  there is a pretty turn in it; I wish you would always speak as genteelly.  I saw another letter from a lady at Paris, in which there was a high panegyrical paragraph concerning you.  I wish it were every word of it literally true; but, as it comes from a very little, pretty, white hand, which is suspected, and I hope justly, of great partiality to you:  ’il en faut rabattre quelque chose, et meme en le faisant it y aura toujours d’assez beaux restes’.  Adieu.

LETTERS TO HIS SON 1753-54

By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

on the Fine Art of becoming a

MAN OF THE WORLD

and a

Gentleman

LETTER CLXXXV

London, New Years’ Day, 1753

My dear friend:  It is now above a fortnight since I have received a letter from you.  I hope, however, that you are well, but engrossed by the business of Lord Albemarle’s ‘bureau’ in the mornings, and by business of a genteeler nature in the evenings; for I willingly give up my own satisfaction to your improvement, either in business or manners.

Here have been lately imported from Paris two gentlemen, who, I find, were much acquainted with you there Comte Zinzendorf, and Monsieur Clairant the Academician.  The former is a very pretty man, well-bred, and with a great deal of useful knowledge; for those two things are very consistent.  I examined him about you, thinking him a competent judge.  He told me, ’que vous parliez l’Allemand comme un Allemand; que vous saviez le droit public de l’empire parfaitement bien; que vous aviez le gout sur, et des connoissances fort etendues’.  I told him that I knew all this very well; but that I wanted to know whether you had l’air, les manieres, les attentions, en fin le brillant d’un honnete homme’:  his answer was, ‘Mais oui en verite, c’est fort bien’.  This, you see, is but cold in comparison of what I do wish, and of what you ought to wish.  Your friend Clairant interposed, and said, ‘Mais je vous assure qu’il est fort poli’; to which I answered, ’Je le crois bien, vis-a-vis des Lapons vos amis; je vous recuse pour juge, jusqu’a ce que vous ayez ete delaponne, au moins dix ans, parmi les honnetes gens’.  These testimonies in your favor are such as perhaps you are satisfied with, and think sufficient; but I am not; they are only the cold depositions of disinterested and unconcerned witnesses, upon a strict examination.  When, upon a trial, a man calls witnesses to his character, and that those witnesses only say that they never