PREFATORY NOTE.
BY CHARLES SAYLE.
It is a singular fate that has overtaken Lord
Chesterfield. One of the more important figures
in the political world of his time; one of the few
Lord-Lieutenants of Ireland whose name was afterward
respected and admired; the first man to introduce
Voltaire and Montesquieu to England; and
the personal acquaintance of men like Addison and
Swift, Pope and Bolingbroke; the ally of Pitt
and the enemy of three Georges; though he married
a king's daughter and took up the task of the world's
greatest emperor; yet the record of his actions has
passed away, and he is remembered now only by an
accident.
Lord Chesterfield lives by that which he never intended for publication, while that which he published has already passed from the thoughts of men. It is one more example of the fact that our best work is that which is our heart's production. We have Lord Chesterfield's secret, and it bears witness to the strength of that part of him in which an intellectual anatomist has declared him to be defi-
