Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
by
LORD LYTTELTON.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london, paris,new york & melbourne.
1889.
George, Lord Lyttelton, was born in 1709, at Hagley, in Worcestershire. He was educated at Eton and at Christchurch, Oxford, entered Parliament,became a Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1757 he withdrew from politics, was raised to the peerage, and spentthe last eighteen years of his life in lettered ease. In 1760Lord Lyttelton first published these “Dialogues of the Dead,”which were revised for a fourth edition in 1765, and in 1767 he publishedin four volumes a “History of the Life of King Henry the Secondand of the Age in which he Lived,” a work upon which he had beenbusy for thirty years. He began it not long after he had published,at the age of twenty-six, his “Letters from a Persian in Englandto his Friend at Ispahan.” If we go farther back we findGeorge Lyttelton, aged twenty-three, beginning his life in literatureas a poet, with four eclogues on “The Progress of Love.”
To the last Lord Lyttelton was poet enough to feel true fellowshipwith poets of his day. He p. 6lovedgood literature, and his own works show that he knew it. He countedHenry Fielding among his friends; he was a friend and helper to JamesThomson, the author of “The Seasons;” and when acting assecretary to the king’s son, Frederick, Prince of Wales (who helda little court of his own, in which there was much said about liberty),his friendship brought Thomson and Mallet together in work on a masquefor the Prince and Princess, which included the song of “RuleBritannia.”
Before Lord Lyttelton followed their example, “Dialogues ofthe Dead” had been written by Lucian, and by Fenelon, and by Fontenelle;and in our time they have been written by Walter Savage Landor. This half-dramatic plan of presenting a man’s own thoughts uponthe life of man and characters of men, and on the issues of men’scharacters in shaping life, is a way of essay writing pleasant aliketo the writer and the reader. Lord Lyttelton was at his best init. The form of writing obliged him to work with a lighter touchthan he used when he sought to maintain the dignity of history by thestyle of his “History of Henry II.” His calm liberalityof mind enters into the discussion of many p. 7topics. His truths are old, but there are no real truths of human life and conduct,worth anything at all, that are of yesterday. Human love itselfis called “the old, old story;” but do we therefore ceasefrom loving, or from finding such ways as we can of saying that we love. Dr. Johnson was not at his wisest when he found fault with Lord Lytteltonbecause, in his “Dialogues of the Dead,” “that mansat down to write a book, to tell the world what the world had all hislife been telling him.” This was exactly what he wishedto do. In the Preface to his revised edition Lord Lyttelton said,“Sometimes a new dress may render an old truth more pleasing tothose whom the mere love of novelty betrays into error, as it frequentlydoes not only the wits, but the sages of these days. Indeed, oneof the best services that could now be done to mankind by any good writerwould be the bringing them back to common sense, from which the desireof shining by extraordinary not