that a Frenchman who joins to a good foundation of virtue, learning, and good sense, the manners and politeness of his country, has attained the perfection of human nature." He unites sufficiently well in himself the advantages of the two nations, with one characteristic which belongs exclusively to his race, there is imagination even in his wit. Hamilton himself has this distinctive characteristic, and introduces it into French wit. Bacon, the great moralist, is almost a poet by expression, one cannot say so much of Lord Chesterfield; nevertheless, he has more imagination in his sallies and in the expression of his wit than one meets with in St. Evremond and our acute moralists in general. He resembles his friend Montesquieu in this respect. If in the letters to his son we can, without being severe, lay hold of some cases of slightly damaged morality, we should have to point out, by way of compensation, some very serious and really admirable passages, where he speaks of the Cardinal de Retz, of Mazarin, of Bolingbroke, of Marlborough, and of many others. It is a rich book. One cannot read a page without finding some happy observation worthy of being remembered.

Lord Chesterfield intended this beloved son for a diplomatic life; he at first found some difficulties in the way on account of his illegitimacy. To cut short these objections, he sent his son to parliament; it was the surest method of conquering the scruples of the court. Mr. Stanhope, in his maiden speech, hesitated a moment, and was obliged to have recourse to notes. He did not make a second attempt at speaking in public. It appears that he succeeded better in diplomacy, in those second-rate places where solid merit is sufficient. He filled the post of embassador extraordinary to the court of Dresden. But his health, always delicate, failed before he was old, and his father had the misfortune to see him die before him when he was scarcely thirty-six years old (1768). Lord Chesterfield at that time lived entirely retired from the world, on account of his infirmities, the most painful of which was complete deafness. Montesquieu, whose sight failed, said to him once, "I know how to be blind." But he was not able to say as much; he did not know how to be deaf. He wrote of it to his friends, even to those in France, thus: "The exchange of letters," he remarked, "is the conversation of deaf people, and the only link which connects them with society." He found his latest consolations in his pretty country house at Blackheath, which he had called by the French name

of Babiole. He employed his time there in gardening and cultivating his melons and pineapples; he amused himself by vegetating in company with them:

"I have vegetated here all this year," he wrote to a French friend (September, 1753), "without pleasures and without troubles; my age and deafness prevented the first; my philosophy, or rather my temperament (for one often confounds them), guaranteed me against the last. I always get as much as I can of the quiet pleasures of gardening, walking, and reading, and in the meantime I await death without desiring or fearing it."

He never undertook long works, not feeling himself sufficiently strong, but he sometimes sent agreeable essays to a periodical publication, the World. These essays are quite worthy of his reputation for skill and urbanity. Nevertheless, nothing approaches the work — which was no work to him- of those letters, which he never imagined any one would read, and which are yet the foundation of his literary success.

His old age, which was an early one, lasted a long time. His wit gave a hundred turns to this sad theme. Speaking of himself and of one of his friends, Lord Tyrawley, equally old and infirm, "Tyrawley and I," he said, "have been dead two years, but we do not wish it to be known."

Voltaire, who under the pretense of being always dying, had preserved his youth much better, wrote to him on the twentyfourth of October, 1771, this pretty letter, signed, “Le vieux malade de Ferney":

"Enjoy an honorable and happy old age, after having passed through the trials of life. Enjoy your wit and preserve the health of your body. Of the five senses with which we are provided, you have only one enfeebled, and Lord Huntingdon assures me that you have a good stomach, which is worth a pair of ears. It will be perhaps my place to decide which is the most sorrowful, to be deaf or blind, or have no digestion. I can judge of all these three conditions with a knowledge of the cause; but it is a long time since I ventured to decide upon trifles, least of all upon things so important. I confine myself to the belief that, if you have sun in the beautiful house that you have built, you will spend some tolerable moments; that is all we can hope for at our age. Cicero wrote a beautiful treatise upon old age, but he did not verify his words by deeds; his last years were very unhappy. You have lived longer and more happily than he did. You have had to do neither with perpetual dictators nor with triumvirs. Your lot has been, and still is, one of

the most desirable in that great lottery where good tickets are so scarce, and where the Great Prize of continual happiness has never been gained by any one. Your philosophy has never been upset by chimeras which have sometimes perplexed tolerably good brains. You have never been in any sense a charlatan, nor the dupe of charlatans, and that I reckon as a rare merit, which adds something to the shadow of happiness that we are allowed to taste of in this short life."

Lord Chesterfield died on the twenty-fourth of March, 1773. In pointing out his charming course of wordly education, we have not thought it out of place even in a democracy, to take lessons of savior vivre and politeness, and to receive them from a man whose name is so closely connected with those of Montesquieu and Voltaire, who, more than any of his countrymen in his own time, showed singular fondness for our nation; who delighted, more than was right, perhaps, in our amiable qualities; who appreciated our solid virtues, and of whom it might be said, as his greatest praise, that he was a French wit, if he had not introduced into the verve and vivacity of his sallies that inexplicable something of imagination and color that bears the impress of his

race.

Complete.

GEORGE EDWARD BATEMAN SAINTSBURY

(1845-)

OR nearly two decades past, Saintsbury has been a favorite contributor to the English reviews. Much of his work as an essayist has been in the form of literary biographies and book reviews. As a book reviewer, he is much less aggressive than the slashing critics of the first half of the century. The change of style is as marked as the improvement of literary morality which made it possible. Saintsbury was born at Southampton, England, October 23d, 1845. After graduating from Merton College, Oxford, he taught the Classics at Elizabeth College in Guernsey, and was head master of the Elgin Educational Institute (1874-76). In 1876 he began in London the work as an editor and essayist he has since continued. Among his works are "English Worthies," "History of Elizabethan Literature," and "Essays on English Literature.»

Ο

ON PARTON'S «VOLTAIRE »

F NEARLY all the events of this remarkable life Mr. Parton has given an account, sometimes faulty in form, but sufficient and complete in substance. His book, though it may give some new facts, will, of course, not materially alter the idea of Voltaire to those who have previously studied his life and his works; but to those who do not already possess much knowledge of him it furnishes a convenient means of informing themselves. A book of thirteen hundred pages, deformed by American misspelling of the English tongue, and by references to "inflationists" and such-like irrelevances, not to mention constant expressions of the author's sentiments, which are, to say the least, unimportant, may seem a formidable undertaking. But its copiousness of incident and anecdote and its abundant quotations lighten the task of reading very considerably. At the end of it he must be a somewhat thoughtless reader (if, indeed, any such be likely to reach the end) who does not endeavor to make up for himself, assisted by the critical comments of those of Mr. Parton's predecessors to whom Pallas has been more kind, some no

tion of the singular personality here portrayed. Mr. Parton's own notion of that personality is decided enough. In his own marvelous language he tells us that Voltaire's empty sepulchre "is vocal, it is resonant, it booms and thunders over the earth." The superstition-crusher pushes everything and everybody else aside in his estimate. I think, for my own part, that from such a standpoint it is as difficult to judge Voltaire rightly as from that of my friend who called him a wretch, from that of Johnson, or from that of George III.

The truth seems to be that Voltaire was an extremely complicated character; the wonderful diversity of his literary work only reflects this complexity in part, though the one, no doubt, is the reason of the other. As I can hardly think of any man who displayed so many different forms of the literary faculty, so I can hardly think of any man, whether of letters or of business, who united the capacity and in a way the actual performance of so many different parts. Of his varied ability in practical administrative business there is proof almost as ample as of his varied ability in literary work. If he failed anywhere in what he undertook it was in diplomacy, and it is fair to remember that he had an antagonist to contend with there by whom it was no shame to be beaten. He has not, like Wordsworth, left us explicit intimations that in his own opinion his mission was to be Prime Minister, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or Commander in Chief, or Lord Chancellor, or all of them together. But I have no doubt that if the opportunity of any or all of these posts had come in his way he would have accepted it cheerfully, and would have performed the duties on the whole very well. The complementary defect of the quality of jack of all trades is well known. Voltaire suffered from it less than most people, but he did suffer from it. In no literary style, except in that of satirical prose fiction, or allegory of the social kind, can he be said to have attained the highest mastery. In work requiring research of any kind he was rather rapid than thorough, and he carried to excess the national habit of hasty deduction from insufficiently investigated premises. His moral and intellectual character, with which we are here more specially concerned, shows inconsistencies and blemishes of all kinds. Let us try and sum up what the devil's advocates say against him. He was an unscrupulous liar; he was extraordinarily vain; he was utterly destitute of reverence; he had an impure imagination which was