Chesterfield was near the apex of English society--born to high rank, rich, and serving a series of politically important roles and positions in both govt. and opposition. As far as I can tell from the DNB and from the spotty record of his authorship in the ESTC, he did not use poetry as an aristocratic attainment in its own right on the Spenserian/Sidneyan Renaissance model (did anyone in the mid 18-c? Horace Walpole?) Rather, he used it the way other whig political writers did--as a political tool in the London press, a continuation of prose political essays by other means.; note also huge flood of posthumous publications in ESTC