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carefully copied out and illustrated with notes, with an evident view to their publication.

This Correspondence, the present editor, Lord Dover, justly observes, is the most interesting one of Walpole's that as yet has appeared. The letters are the only ones which give an account of the time when his father Sir Robert Walpole left office. They are more full than any other of political anecdotes, and sketches of character, and passing events: while they are not inferior in the vivacity of their style, in the brilliancy of their wit, in the variety of their anecdotes, and in the elegance of their narrations.

In his youth, and indeed through his whole political life, Walpole was a Whig at times almost a republican. He hung up an engraving of the Death Warrant of Charles the First in his bed-room, and wrote under it "Magna Charta :" but the horrors of the French revolution alarmed him, in common with others who profess the same principles; and in his old age his political opinions would have ranked him in a party, that he would have been, perhaps, unwilling to own. Walpole's opinions seem to have been peculiarly acted upon by the situation of his friends; and by his regard truly filial to the memory of his father; but in some instances the soundness of his judgment and the clearness of his views seems to have passed beyond that of most of his contemporaries. He deprecated the American war even from its commencement; and he has expressed his detestation of slavery in terms that would admit no compromise with that melancholy traffic.

Horace Walpole bought his favourite house at Twickenham of Mrs. Chevenix, the mistress of a celebrated toy-shop, and the residue of his life was spent between his house there and that in Arlington-street; for no Frenchman was more miserable out of his dear Paris, than Walpole when out of reach of London. "Were I a physician," he said, "I would prescribe nothing but Recipe CCCLXV drachms Londin: Would you know why I like London so much? why, if the world must consist of so many fools as it does, I choose to take them in the gross, and not made into separate pills, as they are prepared in the country." He was invariably and pleasingly employed in altering, improving, enlarging, and adorning his fairy palace. He calls it," a little plaything house that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filligree hedges.

A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,
And little finches wave their wings of gold.

"Two delightful roads, that you would call dirty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises. Barges, as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer, move under my window. Richmond-hill, and Ham-walks, bound my prospects: but, thank God, the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers, as plentiful as flounders, inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight."

Walpole's GOTHIC has been the subject of much animadversion, and that not of the most liberal kind. The fact was that he had no examples to copy, and no men of information to consult. He trusted to his own knowledge and taste alone; and the later parts of his little singular structure, the gallery and round tower, are justly pointed out as strong decided marks how much they gradually improved. The material he chose was not to be sure much in keeping with Gothic structures-lath and plaster; and one of his friends observed, "that he had out-lived three sets of his own

battlements." The elegance of the inside did more than justice to the ingenuity of the out. Here, amid pictures and prints and books, and sculpture by Cellini, and drawings by Bentley, and busts by Mrs. Damer, and miniatures by Petitot and Zinck; and lights rich with the ruby glow of his monastic windows; and amid an atmosphere filled with the perfume of his orange flowers and citron groves; on brocaded sofas, drinking his coffee out of cups of the rarest china, while on velvet cushions at his feet lay the little Mignon lapdogs of Madame du Deffand, who understood nothing but the dialect of Paris, and little Vandyck cats with black whiskers and boots, and baubles and Patapans; here,—or in summer, tripping over his soft green lawns, powdered with acacia blossoms, to feed his basin of gold fish, or pay an evening visit to Mrs. Clive,— might be seen the Author of the Castle of Otranto, and the Mysterious Mother-the heart-rending Tragedian, the original founder of the wild supernatural Romance, the acute Historian, the elegant Biographer of the Painters; the Statesman, the Courtier, the man of vertù, the glass of fashion, the very quintessence of wit, the most learned, polite, engaging, well-bred, and cleverest-Gentleman that ever appeared. "It is the . fashion," said Lord Byron, "to underrate Horace Walpole. Firstly, because he was a nobleman; secondly, because he was a gentleman. But to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable Letters, and of the Castle of Otranto, he is the Ultimus Romanorum, the author of the 'Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play. He is the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he "'* may.

Of the "Mysterious Mother "we are not much at present inclined to speak. There is undoubtedly in it a vigorous conception of character, and a powerful delineation of passion; but surely the author who could select such a subject for the foundation of a dramatic story, must be content to forego all claims to judgment and good taste. The "Historic doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third," is, as the editor observes, one of the most ingenious historical and antiquarian dissertations which has ever issued from the press; and may be classed with Laing's essay on Perkin Warbeck at the end of Henry's History of Great Britain. We must pass over the delightful "Reminiscences," the very perfection of such writing; the essay on "Modern Gardening" (a charming sketch), and his grotesque "Hieroglyphic Tales," and again recur to his unrivalled Correspondence, "his incomparable letters," as Lord Byron calls them. Incomparable indeed they are, even though those of his friend Gray are fresh in our recollection. Gray had all the wit of Walpole, with a richer fund of knowledge, and a greater depth of feeling: but he lived in retirement; his spirits and his health were not of the best; his fortune was very limited; he had few anecdotes to report, few incidents to work on, and few adventures to relate; but his little stories, and the chit-chat of the small collegecircle around him, are given in the most finished style of elegance.

There is nothing so DIS-enchanting as the being taken behind the scenes ; wit loses there its brilliancy, beauty its splendour, majesty its pomp, and artifice its cunning. Lord Dover has let us into a secret with regard to Walpole's letters which we never heard before, though we might have conjectured that such was the truth. "Walpole's style," he observes, "in letter writing, is occasionally quaint, and sometimes a little laboured, but for the most part he has contrived to throw into it a great appearance of ease, as if

See Lord Byron's Preface to Marino Faliero.

he wrote rapidly and without premeditation. This, however, was by no means the case, as he took great pains with his letters, and even collected and wrote down beforehand anecdotes, with a view to their subsequent insertion. Some of these stories have been discovered among the papers Strawberry hill.”

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Walpole's temper appears to have been somewhat capricious and testy; his quarrel with Gray is well known; though the editor does not seem to have been aware of the real cause, which was for the first time given in Mr. Mitford's Life of Gray. He quarrelled with his intimate companion Mr. Bentley; and he held in the later years of his life no intercourse with the gay and good-humoured George Montagu. Lady Townshend said, "Oh! Mr. Walpole is all spirits of hartshorn."-But perhaps it is still more difficult to account for the praise (flattery we must call it) which in his later days he profusely showered on such very MODERATE persons as Messrs. Pinkerton and Beloe. Uncertain, however, as his temper might be, there was a solid stratum of valuable and virtuous affection in his heart. If the old rule is a sound one, "That a man may be known by his friends;' then indeed will Walpole stand on a proud and lofty elevation. His offer of sharing his fortune with Marshal Conway, when the latter was dismissed from his employments, is well known; and honourable indeed it is to the character of that excellent and estimable man, that on the same occasion, similar offers were pressed on him by his brother Lord Hertford, and by the Duke of Devonshire, without any concert between them. Of any injustice or cruelty to the unfortunate Chatterton, Walpole was entirely guiltless, though for a considerable time the prejudices of the public were most unwarrantably excited against him. Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed at the time of his correspondence with him. maintained by his mother, and lived with a lawyer. His pleas to Walpole's assistance were disgust of his profession, inclination to poetry, and communication of some suspicious manuscripts.* Chatterton's subsequent distress arose from his leaving his employer and coming to London without any certain means of support.

He was

The old age of Horace Walpole glided on with the same gentle motion, and even course, in which the earlier part of his life had been passed. The gout, indeed, crippled him at last, emaciated his limbs, affected his temper, and was attended with severe suffering, but it never clouded the brightness of his intellect, or diminished the activity of his mind; he says,

Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season,

Tho' unkind to my limbs, has yet left me my reason.

In 1791 he succeeded his unfortunate nephew, George Earl of Orford, in the family estate and the Earldom; but he never took his Seat in the House of Lords, and indeed was unwilling to assume the title. He died in the 80th year of his age, in 1797, and was buried at Houghton, and with him ended the male line t of the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole. The letters to Sir Horace Mann commence in the year 1741,‡ and end in 1760. If compared to the Correspondence of Walpole which has been

Chatterton's Manuscripts are now in the British Museum, and not only is the appearance of them suspicious, but they are clumsily ignorant forgeries, such as could deceive no man who possessed any knowledge of antiquated writing at different periods of time.

+ H. Walpole never married; he says in one letter, "I own I cannot felicitate much any body that marries for love. It is bad enough to marry; but to marry when one lores, ten times worse. It is so charming at first, that the decay of inclination renders it infinitely more disagreeable afterwards."

Horace Walpole landed in England from his foreign trave's in 1741.
GENT. MAG. VOL. I.

D

previously published, it will be found to abound more in political information, and conversational anecdote, and to dwell less on little circumstances of a personal nature, on his daily occupations and amusements, on his garden, his house, his purchases, his visits, and his decorations. This arises from the situation of his correspondent, who, being our Envoy at Florence, was of course greatly interested in the political information that might reach him from the Cabinet of England. The account of the gay, the accomplished, the witty, the careless Lord Carteret; the close, reserved Mr. Pelham; the bustling, vapouring, chattering Duke of Newcastle; the portraits of his old uncle Horace, of Lord Bath, of the Duke of Cumberland, are admirable, painted with the freedom and spirit of Vandyck while the slighter sketches, the Princess of Craon (called Mamie), Lord Carteret, the Duchess of Queensbury, Lady Orford, Lady Pomfret, and Mrs. Pulteney, whom he called the Wife of Bath, squabbling at the gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny, have all the lightness, the grace, the elegance, it is possible to give. The very portraits seem to slide down from the frames, and appear the living models before us.

In most collections of letters which we have met with, the difficulty consists in finding any worthy of selection; in these now before us, we are so overwhelmed by the variety of their elegance, and the entertainment of their information, that one can hardly give one the prefereuce over the other.-There is Sir Thomas Robinson's ball,-a ball has been described ten thousand times, but never in such language as this "Lady Sophia Fermor out of humour, because no minuets were danced, in which she excelled. Churchill's daughter prettyish, and dances well. The Duke of Richmond sitting by his handsome wife all night, and kissing her hand and then there was Alderman Parson's family from Paris who danced, but à force des muscles."-Turn to another scene: "Old Marlborough is dying-but who can tell? Last year she had lain a great while ill, without speaking. Her physicians said, 'She must be blistered, or she will die.' She called out, I won't be blistered, and I won't die.' If she takes the same resolution now, I don't believe she will." We meet with a very characteristic anecdote of the old Duchess of Buckingham, daughter of James the Second, "The Duchess of Buckingham, who is more mad with pride than any mercer's wife in Bedlam, came the other night to the opera en Princesse, literally in robes, red velvet and ermine. I must tell you a story of her last week. She sent for Cori to pay him for her opera-ticket; he was not at home, but went in an hour afterwards. She said, did he treat her like a tradeswoman? She would teach him respect to women of her birth. Said he was in league with Mr. Sheffield to abuse her, and bade him come the next morning at nine. He came, and she made him wait till eight at night, only sending him an omelet and a bottle of wine; and said as it was Friday, and he a Catholic, she supposed he did not eat meat. At last she received him, in all the form of a princess giving audience to an ambassador. Now, she said, she had punished him."

Everybody has heard the story of Lady Sandon and her ear-rings, but when was it ever so well told?

"Lady Sandon is dead, and Lady M- disappointed. She, who is full as politic as my Lord Hervey, had made herself an absolute servant to Lady Sandon, but I don't hear that she has left her even her old clothes. Lord Sandon is in great grief. I am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check on the death of the Queen. She had great power with her, though the Queen pretended to despise her, but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power by some

secret. I was saying to Lady Pomfret, 'To be sure she is dead very rich.'* She replied, with some warmth, She never took money.' When I came home I mentioned this to Sir Robert. No (said he), but she took jewels. Lord Pomfret's place of Master of the Horse to the Queen, was bought of her for a pair of diamond earrings of fourteen hundred pounds value.' One day that she wore them at a visit at old Marlborough's, as soon as she was gone the Duchess said to Lady Mary Wortley, How can that woman have the confidence to go about with that bribe?'' Madam,' said Lady Mary, how would you have people know where wine is to be sold, unless there is a sign held out.' Sir Robert told me that, in the enthusiasm of her vanity, Lady Sandon had proposed to him to unite with her, and govern the Kingdom together.' He bowed, begged her patronage, but said he thought nobody fit to govern the Kingdom but the King and Queen.”

The masquerade at Court is well sketched :

"There were five hundred persons in the greatest variety of rich and handsome dresses I ever saw, and all the jewels of London,-and London has some. There were dozens of ugly queens of sixty, of which I will only name to you the eldest Miss Shadwell. The Princess of Wales was one covered with diamonds, but did not take off her mask. None of the Royalties did; but every body else. Lady Conway was a charming Mary Stuart. Lord and Lady Euston a man and woman Russian. But the two finest and most charming masks were their Graces of Richmond, like Harry the Eighth and Jane Seymour, exceedingly rich, and both so handsome. Here was a nephew of the King of Denmark, who was in armour, and his Governor a most admirable Quixote. There were quantities of pretty Vandykes, and all kinds of old pictures walked out of their frames. It was an assemblage of all ages and nations. My dress was an Aurengzebe: but of all extravagant figures commend me to my friend the Countess! She and my Lord trudged in like pilgrims, with staffs in their hands, and she was so heated, that you would have thought her pilgrimage had been like Pantagruel's voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle. Lady Sophia was in a Spanish dress-so was Lord Lincoln; not, to be sure, by design, but so it happened. When the King came in, the Faussans† were there, and danced an entrée. At the masquerade the King sate by Mrs. Selwyn, and with tears told her, that The Whigs should find that he loved them, as he had done the poor man that had gone.' He had sworn that he would not speak to the Prince at their meeting, but was prevailed on."

His account of Garrick's first appearance is curious:

"There is a little simple farce at Drury Lane, called Miss Lucy in Town, in which Mrs. Clive mimics the Muscovita admirably, and Beard Amorevili intolerably. But all the run is now after Garrick, a wine merchant, who is turned player, at Goodman's Fields. He plays all parts, and is a very good mimic. His acting I have seen, and may say to you, who will not tell it again here, I see nothing wonderful in it, but it is heresy to say so. The Duke of Argyll says, he is superior to Betterton. Now I talk of players, tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning. As she went out, and wanted her clogs, she turned to me, and said, I remember at the playhouse they used to call Mrs. Oldfield's chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!' ''

From Pulteney to Patapan, from George Selwyn's stories to General Braitwitz's deux Potences, every thing came under Walpole's description. In one letter is a Lord Essex who believes he does not exist; in another, a Prince's coachman who left his son 3007. a-year, upon condition that he did not marry a Maid of Honour, so sick was he of driving them. In a third, a General Ilton, who was called the Confectioner of the Guards, because he says he preserved them. In a letter of July 1743, he says:

"There is no determination yet about the Treasury. Most people wish for Mr. Pelham, few for Lord Carteret, none for Lord Bath. My Lady Townshend said an admirable thing the other day to this last. He was complaining much of a pain in his side. Oh (said she) that can't be-you have no side.'

* A Gallicism. "Elle est morte bien riche."

+ Two celebrated comic dancers.

General Braitwitz, commander of the Queen of Hungary's troops, speaking of the two Powers, his Mistress and the King of Sardinia, instead of saving Ces deux Pouvoirs, said, Ces deux Potences!

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