erely of various little things. A graceful motion,
a significant look, a trifling attention, an obliging word dropped 'a
propos', air, dress, and a thousand other undefinable things, all
severally little ones, joined together, make that happy and inestimable
composition, THE ART OF PLEASING. I have in my life seen many a very
handsome woman who has not pleased me, and many very sensible men who
have disgusted me. Why? only for want of those thousand little means to
please, which those women, conscious of their beauty, and those men of
their sense, have been grossly enough mistaken to neglect. I never was so
much in love in my life, as I was with a woman who was very far from
being handsome; but then she was made up of graces, and had all the arts
of pleasing. The following verses, which I have read in some
congratulatory poem prefixed to some work, I have forgot which, express
what I mean in favor of what pleases preferably to what is generally
called mare solid and instructive:

"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 fin