Strong good sense characterized Chesterfield's early pursuits. Desultory
reading he abhorred. He looked on it as one of the resources of age, but
as injurious to the young in the extreme. 'Throw away,' thus he writes
to his son, 'none of your time upon those trivial, futile books,
published by idle necessitous authors for the amusement of idle and
ignorant readers.'
Even in those days such books 'swarm and buzz about one:' 'flap them
away,' says Chesterfield, 'they have no sting.' The earl directed the
whole force of his mind to oratory, and became the finest speaker of his
time. Writing to Sir Horace Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in 1743,
Dec. 15), Walpole praising the speeches of Lords Halifax and Sandwich,
adds, 'I was there, and heard Lord Chesterfield make the finest oration
I have ever heard there.' This from a man who had listened to Pulteney,
to Chatham, to Carteret, was a singularly valuable tribute.
Whilst a student at Cambridge, Chesterfield was forming an acquaintance
with the Hon. George Berkeley, the youngest son of the second Earl of
Berkeley, and remarkable rather as being the second husband of Lady
Suffolk, the favourite of George II., than from any merits or demerits
of his own.
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