'It should be so contrived,' Johnson remarked, referring to Foote's plan, 'that the father should be the _only_ sufferer by the son's villany, and thus there would be poetical justice.' 'Take out the immorality,' he added, on another occasion, 'and the book (Chesterfield's Letters to his Son) should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.'
We are inclined to differ, and to confess to a moral taint throughout the whole of the Letters; and even had the immorality been expunged, the false motives, the deep, invariable advocacy of principles of expediency, would have poisoned what otherwise might be of effectual benefit to the minor virtues of polite society.
[Footnote 23: The Countess of Chesterfield here alluded to was the second wife of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield. Philip Dormer, fourth Earl, was grandson of the second Earl by his third wife.]
[Footnote 24: In the 'Annual Register,' for 1774, p. 20, it is stated that as George I. had left Lady Walsingham a legacy which his successor did not think proper to deliver, the Earl of Chesterfield was determined to recover it by a suit in Chancery, had not his Majesty, on questioning the Lord Chancellor on the subject, and being answered that he could give no opinion extrajudicially, thought proper to fulfil the bequest.]
[Footnote 25: Lord Mahon, now Earl of Stanhope, if not the most eloquent, one of the most honest historians of our time.]
[Footnote 26: Two years' wages were left to the servants.]
An Eastern Allegory.--Who comes Here?--A Mad Freak and its Consequences.--Making an Abbé of him.--The May-Fair of Paris.--Scarron's Lament to Pellisson.--The Office of the Queen's Patient.--'Give me a Simple Benefice.'--Scarron's Description of Himself.--Improvidence and Servility.--The Society at Scarron's.--The Witty Conversation.--Francoise D'Aubigné's Début.--The Sad Story of La Belle Indienne.--Matrimonial Considerations.--'Scarron's Wife will live for ever.'--Petits Soupers.--Scarron's last Moments.--A Lesson for Gay and Grave.
There is an Indian or Chinese legend, I forget which, from which Mrs. Shelley may have taken her hideous idea of Frankenstein. We are told in this allegory that, after fashioning some thousands of men after the most approved model, endowing them with all that is noble, generous, admirable, and loveable in man or woman, the eastern Prometheus grew weary in his work, stretched his hand for the beer-can, and draining it too deeply, lapsed presently into a state of what Germans call 'other-man-ness.'--There is a simpler Anglo-Saxon term for this condition, but I spare you. The eastern Prometheus went on seriously with his work, and still produced the same perfect models, faultless alike in brain and leg. But when it came to the delicate finish, when the last touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more delicate members went awry. It was thus that instead of the power of seeing every colour properly, one man came out with a pair of optics which turned everything to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted itself to the intelligence. Another, to continue the allegory, whose tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fingers of the man-maker, heard everything in a wrong sense, and his life was miserable, because, if you sang his praises, he believed you were ridiculing him, and if you heaped abuse upon him, he thought you were telling lies of him.