ot made himself
impossible.

[Sidenote: 1745--The Chesterfield of Dublin Castle]

The time had already come when Chesterfield had to be taken into the
Administration again. He had made himself so particularly disagreeable
to the King when out of office, he had raked the Government, and even
the Court, so hotly with satire and invective in the House of Lords,
that George reluctantly admitted that it was better to try to live with
such a man, seeing that it began to be impossible to live without him.
So it was settled that some place should be found for Chesterfield, and
at the same time it was very desirable that a place should be found
which would not bring him much into personal association with the King.
The condition of Continental Europe, the fluctuations of the war,
suggested a natural opportunity for making use of Chesterfield's
admitted genius for diplomacy, and accordingly he was sent back to his
old quarters at the Hague. He rendered some good service there; and
then suddenly the office of Viceroy of Ireland became vacant, and
Chesterfield was called from the Hague and sent to Dublin Castle in
1745. He had known nothing of Ireland; he had never before been put in
any position where his gift of governing could be tried. The gift of
governing is of course something entirely different from the gift of
managing diplomatic business; and Chesterfield had as yet had no chance
of proving any capacity but that of a parliamentary orator and a
diplomatist. "Administration," according to Aristotle, "shows the
man." Every one remembers the superb and only too often quoted Latin
sentence which tells of one who by the consent of all would have been
declared capable {247} of ruling if only he had not ruled.
Administration was to show the real Chesterfield. He was just the sort
of person to whom one would have expected the Latin saying to apply.
What a likely man, everybody might have said, to make a great
administrator, if only he had not administered! Chesterfield's record,
however, must be read the other way. If he had never had the chance of
administering the affairs of Ireland, how should we ever have known
that he had a genius for governing men?

For, in the minds of all who understand these times and those,
Chesterfield's short season of rule in Ireland was by far the greatest
period of his career. The Chesterfield of Dublin Castle was as high
above the Chesterfield of the House of Lords as Goldsmith the poe