Stanhope
Lord Chesterfield’s “Letters to his Son,” though unrivalled as models for epistolary style, have incurred strong reprehension on two grounds: first, because some of their maxims are repugnant to good morals; and, secondly, as insisting too much on manners and graces instead of more solid acquirements. What effect these lessons in the art of dissimulation, these precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces, had upon Philip Stanhope, for whom they were designed, may be inferred from the following stanzas:
“Vile Stanhope—Demons blush to tell—
In twice two hundred places
Has shown his son the road to hell
Escorted by the Graces;
But little did the ungenerous lad
Concern himself about them;
For base, degenerate, meanly bad,
He sneaked to hell without them.”