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III. Reflections critical and moral on the Letters of the late Earl of Chesterfield. By Thomas Hunter, M. A. 8vo. 41. ferved. Cadell.

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HE author of this work has now had the honour of commenting on the pofthumous productions of the two most illuftrious and admired writers of the prefent age, whether confidered in point of rank, reputation, fortune, natural and acquired talents, or literary and elegant accomplishments. The philofophical character of lord Bolingbroke, however, was certainly much fairer game for critical animadverfion than the epiftolary character of lord Chefterfield; as the works of the former were probably compofed with the view of being fubmitted to the public, and the Letters of the other are only the private and confidential correfpondence maintained with a favourite fon. But it must be acknowledged, that, if. Mr. Hunter be liable to the accufation of feverity, in examining a work of this kind with all the rigour of criticism, the motive by which he profeffes to be actuated fufficiently juftifies his conduct; for, confidering the fuperior popularity of familiar letters, to an abftrufe philofophical work, we cannot deny that fome of lord Chesterfield's admonitions may prove much more pernicious to the caufe of morality, than all the fpeculative principles of Bolingbroke.

This volume is divided into nine fections, in the first and fe cond of which the author examines what he calls the bright fide of lord Chesterfield's character, as a writer and a man.

To do juftice to lord Chefterfield's compofition, fays he, would require a pen like his own or let his lordship's favourites, Venus and the Graces, join in concert to fing his eulogium!

• We should not do him fufficient juftice, fhould we only fay that he is clear and eafy, natural and unaffected: for he is figu rative, florid, ornamented, and highly polifhed. He does not hurt the ear, encumber the fenfe, or perplex our thoughts with long and tedious fentences; but is, every where, pure; thort, but expreffive; concife, but not abrupt; full and fatisfactory, but not voluminous; and has generally united laconic brevity with attic elegance. He is happy in expreffions always fuited to his fubject; and nothing is farther from affectation than his language. I prefume, he was accustomed to fpeak with the fame eafe and propriety that he writes. It feems natural to him; or, art had affumed so just a caft, and fo well imitated the tone of nature, that we cannot diftinguish the one from the other.

† See Crit. Rev. vol. xxx. p. 81. VOL. XLI. Feb. 1775.

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• Lord.

Lord Chesterfield's ftyle is mufic, filling and delighting the ear with the most melting notes, and the sweetest and most happy cadences: or, his hand may be faid to be that of one of the first masters in painting, who prefents you with the gayeft fcenery, the lovelieft landfcapes, and the moft fplendid colouring in nature. A brook, however pure and transparent, is too diminutive an object to give us a juft resemblance of the lord Chefterfield's ftyle and manner. We may compare his lordfhip's compofition to a ftream (were not this, likewife, too trite an image) full, but not redundant; loud, but not noify; smooth and placid, yet not languid or fluggish; ftrong, but not harsh, diffonant, or raging; harmonious in its courfe, mufical in its falls; and, in the whole, feafting the eye, the ear, the fancy, the fenfitive taste, and all the animal faculties and paffions of the man. Its banks are crowned with all the beauties of fimple nature; or with ornaments formed after the models, or anfwering to our ideas, of perfect nature. We have only to lament, that the fource from whence it flows is tainted, and conveys a fubtle poison, fatal to the lives of those who indulge, at large, in the tempting ftream.

In his moral leffons, he gives us not only the trite apothegm, or thread-bare maxim; but he illuftrates his obfervations by happy allufions, enlivens them by wit, enforces them by reafon, and recommends them by proper examples; fo that you are not only inftructed, but pleafed, not, merely, informed, but charmed with his manner, his language and addrefs: with much fimplicity he has much purity; and, is, at the fame time, both eafy and elegant.

He feems to be always calm, recollected, and in good humour; happy in an uniform tranquillity, the effect of natural temper and gaiety of heart; and thefe cherished and improved by cultivation, by polite letters, and by that eafe and ferenity, that indolence, that independence which every friend of the Mufes ought, or would be thought, to be poffeffed cf. His fortune, his titles and honours might be affigned as contributing to this happy fpirit, did we not obferve men poffeffed of all thefe, not diftinguished by their humanity, their placability, or good temper.

He is not fo laboured and affectedly learned as lord Bolingbroke; but, then, he is more clear, more eafy and agreeable; and infults not his readers with fuch a profufion of erudition, and fuch an exhibition of fuperior reafoning, upon every fubject that occurs, as tend to fpeak him fupreme dictator, in letters as in politics, in theology as in philofophy, and, next to the infinite Creator, the first genius in the univerfe. Lord Chesterfield is, in his writings, what, we prefume, he was, in his life ;humane, chearful, complaifant, and obliging; entertaining with. out form, and inftructive without pride or infolence; defirous, at the fame time, to pleafe and to inform; and aiming to advise as a friend, rather than to dictate as a mailer.

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He has a quick and clear conception on the fubjects that lie within his fphere, a fine imagination, an accurate and just tafte for compofition and works of genius, with a peculiar beauty of expreffion; the allufions he, oftentimes, makes ufe of have not, only, a perfect propriety, but a fingular delicacy and poetical juftnefs, in their application. He has not, indeed, given us much that is new, on the fubject of criticifin; but his owu compofition and letters exhibit the jufteft fpecimen of that correanefs, perfpicuity, and elegance, which he recommended to the practice of his fon; and, a thoufand critical precepts would not contribute, so much, to form a perfect ftyle, as his own example.

Our author proceeds to delineate, with great precifion, his lordship's character in refpect of wit, acquired knowledge, lively imagination, and retentive memory, with other extraordinary endowments which it is acknowledged he poffeffed in a high degree. In difplaying thofe feveral qualifications Mr. Hunter has acquitted himself with ingenuity, candour, and difcernment; but we cannot accede to the opinion that the work which is the subject of these reflections affords fufficient ground for affirming his lordship to have been incapable of the fublime and pathetic in compofition, whatever his genius in reality might be. Neither the familiar nature of the epiftolary ftyle, nor the fubjects of the correfpondence, admitted or required the exertion of thofe fining endowments. The inftance produced by Mr. Hunter to fupport his remark, of the majefty which may be perceived even in the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, seems not to be a fair argument for determining the question; for though thofe poems be founded on the fubjects of paftoral and rural life, yet, as poetical compofitions, they are addreffed to the imagination, and might therefore more properly be embellished with higher ornaments than would be fuitable to the natural plainne's and fimplicity of epiftolary writings.

After treating of lord Chesterfield's' ftyle and manner, which, in our author's opinion, refemble more the compofition of Paterculus than of Livy, and of Xenophon than of Plato, he next takes a view of his lordship's matter, which he acknowledges to be entitled to approbation and applaufe, on various fubjects. He allows that lord Chesterfield had acquired by experience and reflection a deep and extenfive knowledge of human nature, particularly of its follies, weakneffes, and vices; though with respect to its dignity and moral perfection, he imagines his conceptions to have been extremely defective. Mr. Hunter readily admits, however, that on other fubjects, with which the great patrician was more converfant,

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verfant, he makes not only pertinent and useful, but deep and refined obfervations. This, he obferves, is particularly the cafe where his lordship treats of politics, the prudential conduct of life, and whatever relates to the knowledge and experience of mankind. He further remarks, that the rules which the noble author delivers refpecting converfation are perfectly just and rational; and that his obfervations on books and reading, on the ufe and abuse of 'time, on the end and advantage of travel, on compofition in general, and the epiftolary in particular, are highly valuable.

Hitherto Mr. Hunter has entertained his readers with a minute, elaborate, and copious difplay of lord Chefterfield's character, fo far as it is confeffedly entitled to admiration and praife. But at this period of the work the agreeable fubject is reverfed, and we are henceforth prefented with an almost uninterrupted feries of cenfure and difapprobation. We wish, for the fake of the great original whofe moral picture is here delineated, that we could not recognize any of the lineaments expreffed in fo deep a fhade; and for the candour of the author, that he had not on fome occafions expofed the blemishes and imperfections, if not with real injuftice, at least with too much afperity.

His four volumes, fays the author of thefe Reflections, may be entitled, An entire Code of Hypocrify and Diffimulation: containing the fineffe, the artifice, the craft, the virtue, or the femblance of virtue, with all the external accomplishments neceffary to form the character of the complete courtier. The Chriftian, or, in other words, the fincere moralift, will look upon the noble lord, with all his wit, his genius, his elegance and penetration, as a little, a frivolous and fuperficial man; engroffed by felfifhnefs, vanity, and ambition; and in order to gratify thefe paffions, a devout conformift to the world, its fashions and follies:-regardless of the interefts or miseries of mortality, but fo far as he may reap advantage from them, and profit by the follies or frailties of mankind.'

Mr. Hunter entirely difapproves of the encomium which lord Chesterfield has beftowed on Voltaire's Hiftory of Lewis XIV. as being altogether partial, and unworthy the good fenfe and moral difcernment of the author; and he fayours us with his own opinion of the work in question, as it appears, he fays, to a plain man, and a fober Englishman, to one who is better acquainted with ancient than modern manners, and more enamoured of the Virtues than the Graces. What is chiefly cenfured in this critique, is the representation which Voltaire has given of the genius of Calvinism; but we alfo meet with feveral mifcellaneous remarks, not ill founded,

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and a general character of Voltaire's hiftorical writings, which is delineated with difcernment.

From the digreffion on Voltaire, the author returns to lord Chesterfield, on whom he feverely animadverts, in respect to fome of the paternal precepts and admonitions contained in the Letters.

In comedy and romance, fays he, we have fometimes loofe fcenes exhibited, loofe fentiments expreffed, and lewd characters and examples held out to us, as copies or pictures of ordinary life, and the real manners of the times :—but leffons of lewdnefs, given profeffedly and coolly by a father to his fon,-pleafure taught and recommended as a neceffary expedient in bufinefs, is fuch a novelty and refinement in the fyftem of good breeding, is fuch an outrage done to decency, and to the moral fenfe generally entertained by mankind, fo contrary to nature, and the ufual workings of parental affection, that we cannot eafily account for it, unlefs we might be allowed to fuppofe, that the father, by engaging the fon in the fame criminal commerce, intended to flatter or juftify their common conduct, and to detract from the infamy of both.

human nature.

But, perhaps, there is fome injuftice in this laft reflection. Lord Chesterfield appears not confcious of any infamy from his illicit commerce with the other fex, or that any dishonour attended the illegitimacy of his fon: whom he published, not without fome pride, in most of the courts of Europe. The truth may feem to be this. He writes, to use his own expreffion, as a man of pleasure to a man of pleasure: but being, as he acknowledges, paft the quick fenfe of it himself, he was perhaps willing to refresh his imagination by dwelling on the gallantries of his fon, and by renewing the memory of his own amours. Nothing is more common than this procefs in the depravity of We have feen, in other inftances, befides this before us, the lewd father triumphing in the lewdness of his fons; into whofe intrigues we have known him, as eagerly and joyously inquifitive as if he had been in fearch of their virtues and perfections. But a letter of lewdnefs containing inftructions how to w-re with difcretion and credit, is one of thofe monfters which ftrikes us with horror at first fight; and we can fcarce conceive more deteftation for the fon who murdered his mother, than for the father who thus murders his fon: and as none but an unnatural tyrant would have dared to perpetrate the former, fo none but a debauchee of quality would have profeffedly avowed and attempted the latter. If, as the noble lord obferves, (reflecting on the abbè Fenelon) no bawd could have written a more falacious letter to an innocent country girl, than the director did to his pupil; it is certain, that no pimp or pander could have wrote more falacious letters than the noble lord has done to debauch his own fon. We may add, upon this oclord Chesterfield had little room to accufe the abbe

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