The Wits and Beaux of Society | Page 6

Mill. But they have their
value in their way, and if they contain some utterances so unutterably
foolish as those in which Lord Chesterfield expressed himself upon
Greek literature, they contain some very excellent maxims for the
management of social life. Nobody could become a penny the worse
for the study of Chesterfield; many might become the better. They are
not a whit more cynical than, indeed they are not so cynical as, those
letters of Thackeray's to young Brown, which with all their cleverness
make us understand what Mr. Henley means when in his "Views and
Reviews" he describes him as a "writer of genius who was innately and
irredeemably a Philistine". The letters of Lord Chesterfield would not
do much to make a man a hero, but there is little in literature more
unheroic than the letters to Mr. Thomas Brown the younger.
It is curious to contrast the comparative enthusiasm with which the
Whartons write about Horace Walpole with the invective of Lord

Macaulay. To the great historian Walpole was the most eccentric, the
most artificial, the most capricious of men, who played innumerable
parts and over-acted them all, a creature to whom whatever was little
seemed great and whatever was great seemed little. To Macaulay he
was a gentleman-usher at heart, a Republican whose Republicanism
like the courage of a bully or the love of a fribble was only strong and
ardent when there was no occasion for it, a man who blended the faults
of Grub Street with the faults of St. James's Street, and who united to
the vanity, the jealousy and the irritability of a man of letters, the
affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton. The Whartons
over-praise Walpole where Lord Macaulay under-rates him; the truth
lies between the two. He was not in the least an estimable or an
admirable figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incomparable letters
to which the world is indebted beyond expression. If we can almost say
that we know the London of the last century as well as the London of
to-day it is largely to Horace Walpole's letters that our knowledge is
due. They can hardly be over-praised, they can hardly be too often read
by the lover of last century London. Horace Walpole affected to
despise men of letters. It is his punishment that his fame depends upon
his letters, those letters which, though their writer was all unaware of it,
are genuine literature, and almost of the best.
We could linger over almost every page of the Whartons' volumes, for
every page is full of pleasant suggestions. The name of George Villiers,
second Duke of Buckingham brings up at once a picture of perhaps the
brilliantest and basest period in English history. It brings up too
memories of a fiction that is even dearer than history, of that wonderful
romance of Dumas the Elder's, which Mr. Louis Stevenson has placed
among the half-dozen books that are dearest to his heart, the "Vicomte
de Bragelonne". Who that has ever followed, breathless and enraptured,
the final fortunes of that gallant quadrilateral of musketeers will forget
the part which is played by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in
that magnificent prose epic? There is little to be said for the real
Villiers; he was a profligate and a scoundrel, and he did not show very
heroically in his quarrel with the fiery young Ossory. It was one thing
to practically murder Lord Shrewsbury; it was quite another thing to
risk the wrath and the determined right hand of the Duke of Ormond's

son. But the Villiers of Dumas' fancy is a fairer figure and a finer lover,
and it is pleasant after reading the pages in which the authors of these
essays trace the career of Dryden's epitome to turn to those volumes of
the great Frenchman, to read the account of the duel with de Wardes
and invoke a new blessing on the muse of fiction.
In some earlier volumes of the same great series we meet with yet
another figure who has his image in the Wharton picture gallery. In that
"crowded and sunny field of life"--the words are Mr. Stevenson's, and
they apply to the whole musketeer epic--that "place busy as a city,
bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with
delightful speech," the Abbé Scarron plays his part. It was here that
many of us met Scarron for the first time, and if we have got to know
him better since, we still remember with a thrill of pleasure that first
encounter when in the society of the matchless Count de la Fere and the
marvellous Aramis we made our bow in company with the young
Raoul to the crippled wit and his illustrious companions. The Whartons
write brightly