, fourth earl of Chesterfield, was born in London, on the 22d of September
, fourth earl of Chesterfield, was born in London, on the 22d of September 1694.
He was the son of Philip third earl of Chesterfield by his
wife lady Elizabeth Savile, daughter of George marquis
of Halifax. He received his first instructions from private
tutors, under the care of his grandmother, lady Halifax
and, at the age of eighteen, was sent to Trinity- hall,
Cambridge. $ere he studied assiduously, and became,
according to his own account, an absolute pedant. “When
I talked my best,
” he says, “I talked 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 every thing that was either necessary,
or useful, or ornamental to men: and I was not without
thoughts of wearing the toga virilis of the Romans, instead
of the vulgar and illiberal dress of the moderns.
” He was,
however, only two years exposed to this danger, for in the
spring of 1714, lord Stanhope left the university for the
tour of Europe, but without a governor. He passed the
summer of that year at the Hague, among friends who
quickly laughed him out of his scholastic habits, but taught
him one far more disgraceful and pernicious, as he himself
laments, which was that of gaming. Still his leading object was that of becoming an eminent statesman, and of
this, among all his dissipations, he never lost sight. From
the Hague he went to Paris, where, he informs us, he received his final polish, under the tuition of the belles of
that place.