a great tendency to le faux brillant, le ranfiement, et l'entortillement. And Lord Roscommon would be more in the right now, than he was then, in saying, that
"The English bullion of one sterling line,
Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine."
[Same date.]
No Stoic.—I confess, the pleasures of high life
are not always strictly philosophical; and I believe
a stoic would blame my indulgence; but I am yet
no stoic, though turned of five-and-fifty; and I am
apt to think that you are rather less so, at eighteen.
The pleasures of the table, among people of the
first fashion, may, indeed, sometimes, by accident,
run into excesses; but they will never sink into a
continued course of gluttony and drunkenness. The
gallantry of high life, though not strictly justifiable,
carries, at least, no external marks of infamy about
it. [March 8, 1750.]
Etiquette.—I did not think that the present
Pope[1] was a sort of man to build seven modern
little chapels at the expense of so respectable a piece
of antiquity as the Coliseum. However, let his
holiness' taste of vertu be ever so bad, pray get
- ↑ Benedict XIV.—the amiable Lambertini, who was thought by Chesterfield too much of a savant and a man of the world to be foolishly devout.
