A DEFENCE OF CHESTERFIELD
Tun'moralists tell us that the only way of dispelling a vice is to implant a virtue. Similarly, it may 1)2 suggested that the only method of eradicating from the public mind an accepted view of a famous personality is by offering it a new portrait of that character,-more vivid and appealing than the conven- tional one. Mr. Coxon is concerned to defend Lord Chester- field against his critics, who, judging him almost exclusiVely by the Letters to his Son, have been too ready to echo JohnsOn's verdict that " they teach the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master." If we are rightly to under- stand the Letters, Mr. Coxon protests, we must remember that Chesterfield deliberately stated that they were to deal mainly with manners, and that it is, therefore, as irrational for us to deplore the absence of moral teaching in them as it would be to condemn that same deficiency in a treatise upon golf. And, in so far as morals are discussed at all in the Letters, we must, bear in mind the period in-which Chesterfield lived—a period in which;Th times and castoMS-being what they were," any father felt " obliged to' abandon as impracticable the thought that his son would lead a chaste life abroad." Chesterfield, being a realist, and inspired by a scrupulous honesty and sin- cerity, accepted that hypothesis. But, once it was frankly faced, his " aversion from all forms of grossness, augmented in this particular ease by the well-founded fear of physical danger, naturally led him to guide his son into the safer, if no less immoral, paths of ` gallantry.' "
But, if Chesterfield's true character is to be appreciated, there must, Mr. Coxon argues, be an end of_the habitual con- centration upon the Letters to his Son- the only work of his known to the majority of Isis readers. In order to present his hero to us in a larger and more generous light, Mr. Coxon not only examines carefully some of the less known periods of his career, such as his second term as Ambassador at The Hague, but reprints a selection of his little read essays from the World, as well as a number of hitherto unpublished letters. It is obvious that Mr. Coxon has made lihnself master of his subject, and we cannot but admire the industry represented by this very fully documented treatise. Nevertheless, we feel that the author hardly succeeds in his avowed purpose, because of the method he has adopted. If, in the light of his new material and in virtue of his elaborate researches, he could have drawn a fresh portrait of Chesterfield, that portrait might have carried conviction with many readers. As it is, Mr. Coxon has not written a biography at all, but has merely indulged in controversy, weighing evidence against evidence, as in a court of law. This necessarily limits very severely the'
apparof his book. •
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