To the last Lord Lyttelton was poet enough to feel true fellowship with
poets of his day. He loved good literature, and his own works show that
he knew it. He counted Henry Fielding among his friends; he was a friend
and helper to James Thomson, the author of "The Seasons;" and when acting
as secretary to the king's son, Frederick, Prince of Wales (who held a
little court of his own, in which there was much said about liberty), his
friendship brought Thomson and Mallet together in work on a masque for
the Prince and Princess, which included the song of "Rule Britannia."

Before Lord Lyttelton followed their example, "Dialogues of the 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 upon the life of man and
characters of men, and on the issues of men's characters in shaping life,
is a way of essay writing pleasant alike to the writer and the reader.
Lord Lyttelton was at his best in it. The form of writing obliged him to
work with a lighter touch than he used when he sought to maintain the
dignity of history by the style of his "History of Henry II." His calm
liberality of mind enters into the discussion of many topics. 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 itself is called "the
old, old story;" but do we therefore cease from 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 Lyttelton because, in his "Dialogues
of the Dead," "that man sat down to write a book, to tell the world what
the world had all his life been telling him." This was exactly what he
wished to do. In the Preface to his revised edition Lord Lyttelton said,
"Sometimes a new dress may render an old truth more pleasing to those
whom the mere love of novelty betrays into error, as it frequently does
not only the wits, but the sages of these days. Indeed, one of the best