STANHOPE, PHILIP DORMER, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, was born at London, on the 22d of September 1694. He was the son of Philip, the third Earl, by his wife, Lady Elizabeth Savile, daughter of George, Marquis of Halifax. At the age of eighteen he was sent to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied assiduously, and, according to his own account, became an absolute pedant. In 1714 he quitted the university, and travelled on the continent, where a familiarity with good company soon convinced him he was totally mistaken in almost all his notions, and an attentive study of the air, manner, and address of people of fashion soon polished a man whose prominent desire was to please, and who, as it afterwards appeared, valued exterior accomplishments beyond any other human acquirement. While Lord Stanhope, he obtained an early seat in Parliament, and in 1722 succeeded to his father's estate and titles. In 1728 and in 1745 he was appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Holland. This high character he supported with the greatest dignity, serving his own country, and gaining the esteem of the States-General. Upon his return from Holland, he was sent as lord-lieutenant to Ireland, and, during his administration there, gave general satisfaction to all parties. He left Dublin in 1746, and in October succeeded the Earl of Harrington as secretary of state, in which post he officiated until February 6, 1748. In 1752, being seized with a deafness which incapacitated him for the pleasures of society, he from that time led a private and retired life, amusing himself with books and his pen, in particular, he engaged largely as a contributor to a periodical called The World, in which his contributions have a distinguished degree of excellence. He died on the 24th of March 1773, leaving a character for wit and abilities that had few equals. He distinguished himself by his eloquence in parliament on many important occasions, of which we have a characteristic instance of his own relating. He was an active promoter of the bill for altering the style, and on this occasion, as he himself writes in one of his letters to
his son, he made so eloquent a speech in the house that every one was pleased, and said he had made the whole very clear to them. "when," says he, "God knows, I had not even attempted it. I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Selavonian to them as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well." Lord Macclesfield, who was considered as a great mathematician, and who had a principal hand in framing the bill, spoke afterwards, with all the clearness that a thorough knowledge of the subject could dictate, but not having a flow of words equal to Lord Chesterfield, the latter gained the applause which was more justly due to the former. He left no issue by his lady, Melusina de Schulemburg, Countess of Walsingham, but he had a natural son, Philip Stanhope, Esq., whose education was for many years a close object of his attention, and who was afterwards envoy-extraordinary at the court of Dresden, but died before him. The high character which Lord Chesterfield supported during life received no small injury soon after his death, from a fuller display of it by his own hand. After Lord Chesterfield's death, Mr Stanhope's widow published a series of letters, written by the father to the son, filled with instructions suitable to the different gradations of the young man's life to whom they were addressed. These letters contain many fine observations on mankind and rules of conduct, but it is observable that he lays a greater stress on exterior accomplishments and address than on intellectual qualifications and sincerity, and allows a much greater latitude to fashionable pleasures than good morals will justify. Lord Mahon, now Earl Stanhope, who is the last and the most correct editor that Chesterfield's works have received (5 vols. 1853), says regarding his character—"The defects of Chesterfield were neither slight nor few, and the more his contemporaries excused them, lost as they were in the lustre of his fame, the less should they be passed over by posterity. A want of generosity, dissimulation carried beyond justifiable bounds, a passion for deep play, and a contempt for abstract science, whenever of no practical or immediate use, may, I think, not unjustly be ranked among his errors." These Letters to his Son appeared in 1774, in 2 vols. 4to. This publication was followed by a collection of his Miscellaneous Works, 1777, 2 vols. 4to. A third volume was added in 1778.