MISCELLANEOUS OF THE LATE WORKS PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD: CONSISTING OF LETTERS TO HIS NEVER BEFORE PRINTED, AND VARIOUS OTHER ARTICLES, TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED, MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE, TENDING TO ILLUSTRATE THE CIVIL, LITERARY, AND POLITICAL, By M. MATY, M. D. LATE PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, SIXTEEN CHARACTERS OF GREAT PERSONAGES LORD LORD CHESTERFIELD'S MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. I. FOG'S JOURNAL": SATURDAY, Jan. 17, 1736. N° 376. AM. not of the opinion of those who think that our ancestors were in every respect wiser than we, and who reject every new invention as chimerical, and brand it with the name of project. On the contrary, I am perfuaded, that moft things are ftill capable of improvement; for which reafon I always give a fair and impartial hearing to all new propofals, and have often, in the courfe of my life, found great advantage by fo doing. I very early took Mr. Ward's Drop, notwithstanding the great difcouragement it met with, in its infancy, from an honorable author, eminent for his political fagacity, who afferted it to be liquid Popery and *This was one of the weekly publications against fir R. Walpole's administration. It was first intitled Mift's Journal. I suspect, that lord Chesterfield had, several times before, lent his hand to the -writers of this witty paper; but I have no authority to affert it. This, and the two following effays, were generally allowed to be his. VOL. II. B Jacobitifm. Jacobitifm. I reaped great benefit from it, and recommended it to fo many of my friends, that I queftion whether the author of that great specific is more obliged to any one man in the kingdom than myself, excepting one. I have likewife, as well as my brother Caleb *, great hopes of public advantage, arifing from the fkill and difcoveries of that ingenious operator, Dr. Taylor; notwithstanding the late objections of Mrs. Ofborne +, and her most subtle diftinctions between the eye politic, and the eye patural. Some inventions have been improved ages after their first, difcovery, and extended to yfes fo obvious, and so nearly resembling thofe for which they were ar firft intended, that it is furprizing how they could have fo long escaped the fagacity of mankind. For inftance, printing, though ufed but within thefe few centuries, has in reality been invented thousands of years; and it is aftonishing, that it never occurred to thofe, who firft ftampt images and inscriptions upon metals, to ftamp likewife their thoughts upon wax, barks of trees, or whatever elfe they wrote upon. This example fhould hinder one from thinking any thing brought to its ne plus ultra of perfection, when fo plain an improvement lay for many ages undif covered. The Craftsman, in which lord Bolingbroke was principally engaged, went under the name of Caleb D'Anvers esq. The fignature to one of the ministerial papers being F. Osborne efq; (who was the eldest and graveft of their writers), his antagonists made an old woman of the author, and nick-named him Mother Ofborne, under which title he figures in the fecond book of the Dunciad. The |