The Wits and Beaux of Society | Page 5

which immediately if
whimsically suggests poetry. The man was, like Touchstone's Audrey,
not poetical and yet a great poet has been pleased to address him, very
much as Pindar might have addressed the Ancestral Hero of some
mighty tyrant.
Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe--no, Yours was the
wrong way!--always understand, Supposing that permissibly you
planned How statesmanship--your trade--in outward show Might figure
as inspired by simple zeal For serving country, king, and commonweal,
(Though service tire to death the body, teaze The soul from out an
o'ertasked patriot-drudge) And yet should prove zeal's outward show
agrees In all respects--right reason being judge-- With inward care that
while the statesman spends Body and soul thus freely for the sake Of
public good, his private welfare take No harm by such devotedness.
Thus Robert Browning in Robert Browning's penultimate book, that
"Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day" which fell
somewhat coldly upon all save Browning fanatics, and which, when it

seemed to show that the poet's hand had palsied, served only as the
discordant prelude to the swan song of "Asolando," the last and almost
the greatest of his glories. Perhaps only Browning would ever have
thought of undertaking a poetical parley with Bubb Dodington.
Dodington is now largely, and not undeservedly forgotten. His dinners
and his dresses, his poems and his pamphlets, his plays and his
passions--the wind has carried them all away. If Pope had not
nicknamed him Bubo, if Foote had not caricatured him in "The Patron,"
if Churchill had not lampooned him in "The Rosciad," he would
scarcely have earned in his own day the notoriety which the publication
of his "Diary" had in a manner preserved to later days. If he was hardly
worth a corner in the Whartons' picture-gallery he was certainly
scarcely deserving of the attention of Browning. Even his ineptitude
was hardly important enough to have twenty pages of Browning's
genius wasted upon it, twenty pages ending with the sting about
The scoff That greets your very name: folks see but one Fool more, as
well as knave, in Dodington.
Dodington has been occasionally classed with Lord Hervey but the
classification is scarcely fair. With all his faults--and he had them in
abundance--Lord Hervey was a better creature than Bubb Dodington. If
he was effeminate, he had convictions and could stand by them. If Pope
sneered at him as Sporus and called him a curd of asses' milk, he has
left behind him some of the most brilliant memoirs ever penned. If he
had some faults in common with Dodington he was endowed with
virtues of which Dodington never dreamed.
The name of Lord Chesterfield is in the air just now. Within the last
few months the curiosity of the world has been stimulated and satisfied
by the publication of some hitherto unknown letters by Lord
Chesterfield. The pleasure which the student of history has taken in this
new find is just dimmed at this moment by the death of Lord Carnarvon,
whose care and scholarship gave them to the worlds. They are indeed a
precious possession. A very eminent French critic, M. Brunetière, has
inveighed lately with much justice against the passion for raking
together and bringing out all manner of unpublished writings. He

complains, and complains with justice, that while the existing classics
of literature are left imperfectly edited, if not ignored, the activity of
students is devoted to burrowing out all manner of unimportant
material, anything, everything, so long as it has not been known
beforehand to the world. The French critic protests against the class of
scholars who go into ecstacies over a newly discovered washing list of
Pascal or a bill from Racine's perruquier. The complaint tells against us
as well on our side of the Channel. We hear a great deal about newly
discovered fragments by this great writer and that great writer, which
are of no value whatever, except that they happen to be new. But no
such stricture applies to the letters of Lord Chesterfield which the late
Lord Carnarvon so recently gave to the world. They are a valuable
addition to our knowledge of the last century, a valuable addition to our
knowledge of the man who wrote them. And knowledge about Lord
Chesterfield is always welcome. Few of the famous figures of the last
century have been more misunderstood than he. The world is too ready
to remember Johnson's biting letter; too ready to remember the cruel
caricatures of Lord Hervey. Even the famous letters have been taken
too much at Johnson's estimate, and Johnson's estimate was one-sided
and unfair. A man would not learn the highest life from the
Chesterfield letters; they have little in common with the ethics of an A
Kempis, a Jean Paul Richter, or a John Stuart