"A Man of Fashion Never Has Recourse to Proverbs": Lord Chesterfield's Tilting at Proverbial Windmills

Many scholars have claimed that proverbs largely dropped from polite speech during the eighteenth century in England. Often quoted in this context is Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son that proverbs are merely the "rhetoric of the vulgar man" and "a man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms." This article challenges the former assumption and shows that Chesterfield himself regularly used proverbs in his letters, and used them to great effect.