'
By his father the future wit, historian, and orator was utterly
neglected; but his grandmother, the Marchioness of Halifax, supplied to
him the place of both parents, his mother--her daughter, Lady Elizabeth
Saville--having died in his childhood. At the age of eighteen,
Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, was entered at Trinity Hall,
Cambridge. It was one of the features of his character to fall at once
into the tone of the society into which he happened to be thrown. One
can hardly imagine his being 'an absolute pedant,' but such was,
actually, his own account of himself:--'When I talked my best, I quoted
Horace; when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial; and when I
had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I talked Ovid. I was convinced that
none but the ancients had common sense; that the classics contained
everything that was either necessary, useful, or ornamental to men; and
I was not even without thoughts of wearing the toga virilis of the
Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal dress of the moderns.'
Thus, again, when in Paris, he caught the manners, as he had acquired
the language, of the Parisians. 'I shall not give you my opinion of the
French, because I am very often taken for one of them, and several have
paid me the highest compliment they think it in their power to
bestow--which is, "Sir, you are just like ourselves.
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