on in the literature of the period is also
among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.

On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
been with all the princes in Europe.'

As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
of them from a moral p