Lord Chesterfield

In 1746, Lord Chesterfield wrote a persuasive and caring letter to his son who had left home to travel and to attain a higher education.   Throughout his profound and powerful, letter, Lord Chesterfield uses many important and meaningful literary and rhetorical devices.   Lord Chesterfield specifically uses experienced and educational logical, hard-working and painful diction, as well as hard work related ethical appeals that he values wisdom, hard work and tolerance.
In multiple places in his written letter, Lord Chesterfield uses logical appeals pertaining to his past life experiences to show that he knows and holds himself true to the value of great wisdom.   When Lord Chesterfield states “Let my experience supply your want of it, and clear your way in the progress of your youth, of those thorns and briars which scratched and disfigured me in the course of mine”, he illustrates his younger days wherein he recounts that, his youth and inexperience had physically and figuratively “scratched and disfigured” him, but the favorable repercussions of learning from mistakes and gaining wisdom outweighed the vexations.   Lord Chesterfield desires the reader to realize and understand that, if wisdom comes from “experience”, and he has through his “youth” gained much experience, then he is in fact a wise and exceptionally knowledgeable man who anyone may rely and depend upon.   Lord Chesterfield once again appeals to the reader’s logic by stating, “I have so often recommended to you attention and application to whatever you learn”.   Lord Chesterfield categorizes learning and advanced education as “absolutely necessary”, and an extremely wise thing of which every living person should partake.   Lord Chesterfield also desires the reader, his son, to see that, by advocating learning and the attainment of knowledge, Lord Chesterfield must obviously have great wisdom, and preciously value that same wisdom.
Throughout his speech, Lord Chesterfield also uses hardworking diction to...