THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD; INCLUDING NUMEROUS LETTERS AND PAPERS NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS. EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY LORD MAHON. IN FIVE VOLUMES. VOL. V. (MISCELLANIES.) PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. PREFACE TO THIS VOLUME. THIS Volume is to be considered as supplemental to the four published by the same Editor in 1845; the collection being now intended to comprise the whole of Lord Chesterfield's Writings. In compiling this Volume, as in the other four, the Editor has derived the greatest advantage from the MS. drafts and papers most kindly placed at his disposal by his kinsman, Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq.; these MSS. being inherited from Mr. Lovel Stanhope, one of the Executors under Lord Chesterfield's Will. From this source have been derived the two Dialogues, the Essay on the Clergy, and the Detached Thoughts, which appear for the first time in the present publication. The Editor desires also to express his thanks to Lord Lyttelton for entrusting to him, with full permission to print from, the original letters addressed to the first Peer of that name, by his early friend, Lord Chesterfield. These MSS. had been already, with one or two exceptions, made public by Robert Phillimore, Esq., in his Memoirs of George Lord Lyttelton, in 1845; but owing, probably, to some V defect in the transcripts, they were then, as a comparison with the original shows, by no means accurately printed. To give only two instances: Lord Chesterfield mentions the expected death of Queen Caroline, as "what I take to be the present situation of affairs." As hitherto printed, the expression has been altered to the very unbecoming one, "I hope." Thus, again, where Lord Chesterfield speaks of the Roman History "after the first five hundred years," a change of to "the last," transforms his remark from an acute into a silly one. The Editor is very far from having any wish to find fault with other contemporary publications, and he acknowledges the difficulty there may often be in detecting or correcting the error of transcribers, but he thinks that, in justice to Lord Chesterfield and to his readers, he was bound not to leave unnoticed the variations which he has observed. The recovery of Lord Chesterfield's original MSS. in his letters to his son, and to the Bishop of Waterford, has enabled the Editor to produce many important passages, chiefly political, which the first Editors suppressed.* In the Preface to the first volume, the Editor has explained his reasons for omitting the early Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son, when only seven or * [In the present edition these passages, indicated by being enclosed within brackets, have been inserted in their appropriate places.] |