he found by experience that this method rendered him universally odious; and that the only way of being popular, is—whether you comply with men’s solicitations or not—to soothe them with hopes and fair speeches.
Lord Chesterfield, when Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, being asked one day whom he thought the greatest man of the time, said—“The last man who arrived from England, be he who he might.” There is some truth in this. Dublin depends a great deal on London for topics of conversation, as every secondary metropolis must; and the last man who arrives from the great scene of action (if of any degree of consequence) is courted as being supposed to know many little particulars not communicated by letters or the public prints. Every person in a distant county-town in England experiences something of this on the arrival of a friend from the metropolis.
The late Lord Southwell (Thomas, third lord), who was a relation of Lord Chesterfield, told me that he had left Memoirs of his own Times behind him, which he (Lord S.) had seen in the possession of Sir W. Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s brother. But they have never been published.
Lord Bath’s Memoirs of the same period are, I believe, in the hands of Dr. Douglas, his chaplain;[1] and I know not why they are kept from the world. The only piece that I have seen of his writing is,
- ↑ Since made Bishop of Carlisle, and afterwards removed to Salisbury.
