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ART.

VIII.-1. Biologia Centrali-Americana.

Aves, Vol. I., by
Osbert Salvin, M.A., F.R.S., and Frederick Ducane
Godman, F.R.S. London, 1875-1887.

2. The Geographical Distribution of the Family
Charadriide; or, the Plovers, Sandpipers, Snipes,
and their Allies. By Henry Seebohm, F.L.S.
London, 1888.

3. A History of British
Henry Seebohm, F.L.S.
4. Classification of Birds.
London, 1890.

Birds. Three Vols. By
London, 1883.

By Henry Seebohm, F.L.S.

5. The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and
Burma. Birds, Vol. I., by Eugene W. Oates.
London, 1889.

6. A Monograph of the Alcedinidæ, or Family of King-
fishers. By R. B. Sharpe, F.L.S. 1868-1871.

7. Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum.
Vols. I., II., III., IV., VI., VII., X., XII. and XIII.
By R. B. Sharpe, F.L.S. 1874-1890

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IX.-1. Speech of the Marquis of Salisbury at the Mansion
House, August 6th, 1890.

2. Speech of the Marquis
September 3rd, 1890.

3. Hansard's Debates, 1890.

of Hartington at York,

4. The Standing Orders of the House of Commons,
1879 and 1890

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532

NOTE on the Article on Penny Fiction' in No. 341 of the

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We have received a complaint that the Young Folks' Paper' has not been correctly classed by the writer of the article on 'Penny Fiction' in the last number of the Quarterly.' The Editor has in consequence carefully examined several numbers of the Young Folks' Paper,' and has pleasure in stating that the general quality and tone of its contents entitle it to be placed in a superior class of journals.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.—Letters of Philip Dormer, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, to his Godson and Successor. Edited from the Originals, with a Memoir of Lord Chesterfield, by the Earl of CarOxford. At the Clarendon Press.

narvon.

1890.

To

Second edition.

O this volume now belongs a mournful and pathetic interest. The editing of these Letters was the last service which one of the most accomplished and scholarly of English noblemen was to render to literature. It was undertaken, not as a labour of love in the ordinary sense of the term-for Lord Carnarvon has himself admitted that he had at first little pleasure in his task-but as a labour of love in another and higher sense. It was undertaken with the pious intention of fulfilling the wishes of the dead, and of contributing to lighten the obloquy which had long rested on the memory of the dead. With characteristic unobtrusiveness, Lord Carnarvon has made no allusion to the circumstances which must have rendered his

self-imposed task doubly irksome. Our respect for the honourable motives, which prompted him to devote his leisure to the least attractive of literary employments, passes into admiration when we know, as we now know, that it was not only under the pressure of habitual ill-health, but often in the midst of severe distress and pain that this work was carried on. It is gratifying to think that he lived to receive his reward. The high opinion, which he had himself formed of the letters, was amply corroborated by the popular judgment. Very shortly after the appearance of the first edition of his work, a second and cheaper edition was called for, and he had the satisfaction of feeling that, if his labours had not exactly added to the fame of Chesterfield, they had at least revived it. They had done more. They had furnished, as all allowed, conclusive testimony that Vol. 171.-No. 342.

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the severe sentence so long popularly passed on the author of these letters, as a man, needs considerable modification. They had placed his character in a light far more favourable than it had ever been placed before. They had shown that, if in the traditionary estimate of him more than justice had been meted out to his defects and errors, less, and much less than justice had been done to his shining qualities. No one who is acquainted with Chesterfield's later correspondence, his correspondence, for example, with Dayrolles and the Bishop of Waterford, and who possesses any competent knowledge of his public and private life, could fail to see how erroneous, how ridiculously erroneous, would be any conception of his character formed merely from the impression made by certain portions of the correspondence with his son.

But the world has little leisure, and still less inclination, to concern itself about writings which are of interest only for the light which they throw on the character of the writer, or to explore the by-paths of History and Biography. To ninetynine in every hundred of his countrymen, Chesterfield is known only in association with the letters to Philip Stanhope. On the evidence of these letters, or to speak more correctly, on evidence derived from portions of these letters, confirmed and supplemented by current traditions, the popular conception of him has been formed. We have little doubt that in the imagination of thousands, he is still pictured as the epigram of Johnson pictured him more than a century ago. We have little doubt that to many, and to very many, his name is little more than a synonym for a profligate fribble, shallow, flippant, heartless; without morality, without seriousness; a scoffer at religion, an enemy to truth and virtue, passing half his life in practising, and the other half in teaching a son to practise, all that moves loathing and contempt in honest men. Éven among those who do not judge as the crowd judges there exists a stronger prejudice against Chesterfield than exists with equal reason against any other Englishman. He has himself remarked that there is no appeal against character. His own character has been established through the impression made by the testimony of hostile contemporaries, and through the impression made by such portions of the only writings by which he is now remembered as unhappily reflect it on its worst side, and appear therefore to corroborate that testimony. And his character, or what has for a century and a quarter been assumed to be his character, has been fatal to his fame. He will now be judged more fairly. We do not think that the present letters throw any really new light on the man himself, but, unlike the more famous letters, they reflect

only,

only, and very charmingly, what was best and most attractive in him. They show how much amiability, kindliness, humanity, seriousness, existed in one whose name has become a proverb for the very opposite qualities. They exhibit, simply and without alloy, what he took a cynical pleasure in concealing from the world in general, and what is in his other writings obscured and vitiated by baser matter. That their publication will have the effect of creating a reaction in his favour, a reaction the result of which will be a juster estimate of the value of his writings, is highly probable. And we heartily hope that this will be the We have long regarded it as a great misfortune that what was reprehensible in Chesterfield's conduct and teaching should have so completely obscured what was excellent and admirable in both, as practically to deprive his name and works of all popular credit and authority,

case.

With the exception of Machiavelli, we know of no other writer whose opinions and precepts have been so ridiculously misrepresented, and that, unfortunately for Chesterfield's fame, not merely by the multitude, but by men who are among the classics of our literature.

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It is curious to follow the fortune of the volumes which have brought so much discredit on his name. From the moment of their appearance the outcry began. The sensation occasioned twenty years before by the publication of Bolingbroke's philosophical works by Mallet was not greater than that occasioned when Eugenia Stanhope gave this famous Correspondence to the world. In the Annual Register' indeed, a notice, which from internal evidence we have little hesitation in ascribing to Burke, did full justice both to the merits of the letters themselves and to the virtues of their distinguished author. But the storm burst in the Gentleman's Magazine.' An ominous allusion to 'the lurking poison of an artful and profligate father' heralded what was coming. In a few months the letters were the general theme. The invective and ridicule, which had been directed against Bolingbroke as the enemy of religion, were now directed against Chesterfield as the enemy of morality. One writer in a parody of the Catechism, and another in a parody of the Creed, neither of them, in point of decency at least, very creditable to the cause in which they are presumably written, drew up a form of initiation for Chesterfieldian neophytes. But serious refutations of this most pestilential work soon made their appearance. And serious refutation on an elaborate plan began in 1776 with a Mr. William Crawford's Remarks.' Much as we respect Mr. Crawford's intention, which was to protect religion and morality by putting the youth of England on their guard U 2

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