itten. The
intention was not confined to Chesterfield: Carteret and Bolingbroke
entertained a similar design, which was completed by neither. When the
subject was broached before George II., he thus expressed himself; and
his remarks are the more amusing as they were addressed to Lord Hervey,
who was, at that very moment, making his notes for that bitter chronicle
of his majesty's reign, which has been ushered into the world by the
late Wilson Croker--'They will all three,' said King George II., 'have
about as much truth in them as the _Mille et Une Nuits_. Not but I shall
like to read Bolingbroke's, who of all those rascals and knaves that
have been lying against me these ten years has certainly the best parts,
and the most knowledge. He is a scoundrel, but he is a scoundrel of a
higher class than Chesterfield. Chesterfield is a little, tea-table
scoundrel, that tells little womanish lies to make quarrels in families:
and tries to make women lose their reputations, and make their husbands
beat them, without any object but to give himself airs; as if anybody
could believe a woman could like a dwarf baboon.'

Lord Hervey gave the preference to Bolingbroke; stating as his reason,
that 'though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, his satire was keener
than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great
deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty:
every paragraph would be an epigram. _Polish_, he declared, would be his
bane;' and Lord Hervey was perfectly right.

In 1732 Lord Chesterfield was obliged to retire from his embassy on the
plea of ill-health, but probably, from some political cause. He was in
the opposition against Sir Robert Walpole in the Excise Bill; and felt
the displeasure of that all-powerful minister by being dismissed from
his office of High Steward.

Being badly received at court he now lived in the country; sometimes at
Buxton, where his father drank the waters, where he had his recreations,
when not persecuted by two young brothers. Sir William Stanhope and John
Stanhope, one of whom performed 'tolerably ill upon a broken hautboy,
and the other something worse upon a cracked flute.' There he won three
half-crowns from the curate of the place, and a shilling from 'Gaffer
Foxeley' at a cock-match. Sometimes he sought relaxation in Scarborough,
where fashionable beaux 'danced with the pretty ladies all night,' and
hundreds of Yorkshire country bumpkins 'p