266 WHAT IS A FRIEND? in bequeathing his possessions to his heir, as he expected, and godson, Philip Stanhope, he inserts this clause: In case my said godson, Philip Stanhope, shall at any time hereinafter keep, or be concerned in keeping of, any race-horses, or pack of hounds, or reside one night at Newmarket, that infamous seminary of iniquity and illmanners, during the course of the races there; or shall resort to the said races; or shall lose, in any one day, at any game or bet whatsoever, the sum of 500l., then, in any the cases aforesaid, it is my express will that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and pay, out of my estate, the sum of 5000l. to and for the use of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.' When we say that Lord Chesterfield was a man who had no friend, we sum up his character in those few words. Just after his death, a small but distinguished party of men dined together at Topham Beauclerk's. There was Sir Joshua Reynolds; Sir William Jones, the orientalist; Bennet Langton; Steevens; Boswell; Johnson. The conversation turned on Garrick, who, Johnson said, had friends, but no friend. Then Boswell asked, 'what is a friend?' 'One who comforts and supports you, while others do not.' Friendship, you know, sir, is the cordial drop to make the nauseous draught of life go down.' Then one of the company mentioned Lord Chesterfield as one who had no friend; and Boswell said: 'Garrick was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf, Lord Chesterfield was tinsel.' And, for once, Johnson did not contradict him. But not so do we judge Lord Chesterfield. He was a man who acted on false principles through life; and those principles gradually undermined everything that was noble and generous in character; just as those deep under-ground currents, noiseless in their course, work through fine-grained rock, and produce a chasm. Everything with Chesterfield was self: for self, and for self alone, were agreeable qualities to be assumed; for self, was the country to be served, because that country protects and serves us; for self, were friends to be sought and cherished, as useful auxiliaries, or pleasant accessories: in the very core of the cankered LES MANIÈRES NOBLES. 267 heart, that advocated this corrupting doctrine of expediency, lay unbelief; that worm which never died in the hearts of so many illustrious men of that period-the refrigerator of the feelings. One only gentle and genuine sentiment possessed Lord Chesterfield, and that was his love for his son. Yet in this affection the worldly man might be seen in mournful colours. He did not seek to render his son good; his sole desire was to see him successful: every lesson that he taught him, in those matchless Letters which have carried down Chesterfield's fame to us when his other productions have virtually expired, exposes a code of dissimulation which Philip Stanhope, in his marriage, turned upon the father to whom he owed so much care and advancement. These Letters are, in fact, a complete exposition of Lord Chesterfield's character and views of life. No other man could have written them; no other man have conceived the notion of existence being one great effort to deceive, as well as to excel, and of society forming one gigantic lie. It is true they were addressed to one who was to enter the maze of a diplomatic career, and must be taken, on that account, with some reservation. They have justly been condemned on the score of immorality; but we must remember that the age in which they were written was one of lax notions, especially among men of rank, who regarded all women accessible, either from indiscretion or inferiority of rank, as fair game, and acted accordingly. But whilst we agree with one of Johnson's bitterest sentences as to the immorality of Chesterfield's letters, we disagree with his styling his code of manners the manners of a dancing-master. Chesterfield was in himself a perfect instance of what he calls les manières nobles; and this even Johnson allowed. 'Talking of Chesterfield,' Johnson said, 'his manner was exquisitely elegant, and he had more knowledge than I expected.' Boswell: 'Did you find, sir, his conversation to 268 LETTERS TO HIS SON. be of a superior sort?-Johnson: Sir, in the conversation which I had with him, I had the best right to superiority, for it was upon philology and literature.' It was well remarked how extraordinary a thing it was that a man who loved his son so entirely should do all he could to make him a rascal. And Foote even contemplated bringing on the stage a father who had thus tutored his son; and intended to show the son an honest man in everything else, but practising his father's maxims upon him, and cheating him. It should be so contrived,' Johnson remarked, referring to Foote's plan, 'that the father should be the only sufferer by the son's villany, and thus there would be poetical justice.' Take out the immorality,' he added, on another occasion, and the book (Chesterfield's Letters to his Son) should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.' We are inclined to differ, and to confess to a moral taint throughout the whole of the Letters; and even had the immorality been expunged, the false motives, the deep, invariable advocacy of principles of expediency, would have poisoned what otherwise might be of effectual benefit to the minor virtues of polite society. THE ABBÉ SCARRON. An Eastern Allegory.-Who comes Here?-A Mad Freak and its consequences.Making an Abbé of him.-The May-Fair of Paris.-Scarron's Lament to Pellisson.-The Office of the Queen's Patient.-Give me a Simple Benefice.'Scarron's Description of Himself.-Improvidence and Servility. The Society at Scarron's.-The Witty Conversation.-Françoise D'Aubigne's Debut.-The Sad Story of La Belle Indienne.-Matrimonial Considerations.-Scarron's Wife will live for ever.'-Petits Soupers.-Scarron's last Moments.-A Lesson for Gay and Grave. THERE is an Indian or Chinese legend, I forget which, from which Mrs. Shelley may have taken her hideous idea of Frankenstein. We are told in this allegory that, after fashioning some thousands of men after the most approved model, endowing them with all that is noble, generous, admirable, and loveable in man or woman, the eastern Prometheus grew weary in his work, stretched his hand for the beer-can, and draining it too deeply, lapsed presently into a state of what Germans call 'other-man-ness.' There is a simpler Anglo-Saxon term for this condition, but I spare you. The eastern Prometheus went on seriously with his work, and still produced the same perfect models, faultless alike in brain and leg. But when it came to the delicate finish, when the last touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more delicate members went awry. It was thus that instead of the power of seeing every colour properly, one man came out with a pair of optics which turned everything to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted itself to the intelligence. Another, to continue 270 AN EASTERN ALLEGORY. the allegory, whose tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fingers of the man-maker, heard everything in a wrong sense, and his life was miserable, because, if you sang his praises, he believed you were ridiculing him, and if you heaped abuse upon him, he thought you were telling lies of him. But as Prometheus Orientalis grew more jovial, it seems to have come into his head to make mistakes on purpose. I'll have a friend to laugh with,' quoth he; and when warned by an attendant Yaksha, or demon, that men who laughed one hour often wept the next, he swore a lusty oath, struck his thumb heavily on a certain bump in the skull he was completing, and holding up his little doll, cried, 'Here is one who will laugh at everything!' I must now add what the legend neglects to tell. The model laugher succeeded well enough in his own reign, but he could not beget a large family. The laughers who never weep, the real clowns of life, who do not, when the curtain drops, retire, after an infinitesimal allowance of 'cordial,' to a half-starved, complaining family, with brats that cling round his parti-coloured stockings, and cry to him-not for jokesbut for bread, these laughers, I say, are few and far between. You should, therefore, be doubly grateful to me for introducing to you now one of the most famous of them; one who with all right and title to be lugubrious, was the merriest man of his age. On Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1638, the good city of Mans was in a state of great excitement: the carnival was at its height, and everybody had gone mad for one day before turning pious for the long, dull forty days of Lent. The market-place was filled with maskers in quaint costumes, each wilder and more extravagant than the last. Here were magicians with high peaked hats covered with cabalistic signs, here Eastern sultans of the medieval model, with very fierce looks and very large scimitars: here Amadis de |