Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1

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In 1757 Walpole established a private printing-press at
Strawberry Hill, and the first work he printed at it was the Odes
of Gray, with Bentley's prints and vignettes. Among the
handsomest and most valuable volumes which subsequently issued
from this press, in addition to Walpole's own Anecdotes of
Painting, and his description of Strawberry Hill, must be
mentioned the quarto lucan, with the notes of Grotius and
Bentley; the Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury by himself,
flentzner's Travels, and Lord Whitworth's account of Russia. Of
all these he printed a very limited number. It does not,
however, appear, as stated in the Biographical Dictionary, (39)
he reserved all the copies as presents; on the contrary, it would
seem that in most instances he sold a certain portion of the
copies to the booksellers, probably with a view of defraying the
expenses of his printing establishment. As, however, the supply
in the book-market of the Strawberry Hill editions was very
small, they generally sold for high prices, and a great interest
was created respecting them.

In 1764 Walpole published one of the most remarkable of his
works, "The Castle of Otranto;" and in 1768 his still more
remarkable production, "The Mysterious Mother." (40) In speaking
of the latter effort of his genius, (for it undoubtedly deserves
that appellation,) an admirable judge of literary excellence has
made the following remarks; "It is the fashion to underrate
Horace Walpole firstly, because he was a nobleman, and 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." (41)

In speaking Of "The Castle of Otranto," it may be remarked as a
singular coincidence in the life of Walpole, that as he had been
the first person to lead the modern public to seek for their
architecture in the Gothic style and age, so he also opened the
great magazine of the tales of Gothic times to their literature.
"The Castle of Otranto" is remarkable," observes an eminent
critic, "not only for the wild interest of its story, but as the
first modern attempt to found a tale of amusing fiction upon the
basis of the ancient romances of chivalry." (42) "This romance,"
he continues, "has been justly considered not only as the
original and model of a peculiar species of composition,
attempted and successfully executed by a man of great genius, but
as one of the standard works of our literature.' (43)

The account which Walpole himself gives of the circumstances
which led to the composition of "The Castle of Otranto," of his
fancy of the portrait of Lord Deputy Falkland, in the gallery at
Strawberry Hill, walking Out of its frame; and of his dream of a
gigantic hand in armour on the banister of a great staircase, are
well known. Perhaps it may be objected to him, that he makes too
frequent use of supernatural machinery in his romance; but, at
the time it was written, this portion of his work was peculiarly
acceptable to the public. We have since, from the labours of the
immense tribe of his followers and imitators of different degrees
of merit, "supped so full of horrors," that we are become more
fastidious upon these points; and even, perhaps, unfairly so, as
at the present moment the style of supernatural romances in
general is rather fallen again Into neglect and disfavour. "If,"
concludes Walter Scott, in his criticism on this work, (and the
sentiments expressed by him are so fair and just, that it is
impossible to forbear quoting them,) "Horace Walpole, who led the
way in this new species of literary composition, has been
surpassed by some of his followers in diffuse brilliancy of
composition, and perhaps in the art of detaining the mind of the
reader in a state of feverish and anxious suspense through a
protracted and complicated narrative, more will yet remain with
him than the single merit of originality and invention. The
applause due to chastity of style--to a happy combination of
supernatural agency with human interest-to a tone of feudal
manners and language, sustained by characters strongly marked and
well discriminated,-and to unity of action, producing scenes
alternately of interest and grandeur,-the applause, in fine,
which cannot be denied to him who can excite the passions of fear
and pity must be awarded to the author of the Castle of Otranto."
(44)

"The Mysterious Mother," is a production of higher talent and
more powerful genius than any other which we owe to the pen of
Horace Walpole; though, from the nature of its subject, and the
sternness of its character, it is never likely to compete in
popularity with many of his other writings. The story is too
horrible almost for tragedy. It is, as Walpole himself
observes,"more truly horrid even than that of Oedipus." He took
it from a history which had been told him, and which he thus
relates: "I had heard, when very Young, that a gentlewoman, under
uncommon agonies of mind, had waited on Archbishop Tillotson, and
besought his counsel. Many years before, a damsel that served
her, had acquainted her that she was importuned by the
gentlewoman's son to grant him a private meeting. The mother
ordered the maiden to make the assignation, when, she said, she
would discover herself, and reprimand him for his criminal
passion: but, being hurried away by a much more criminal passion
herself, she kept the assignation without discovering herself.
The fruit of this horrid artifice was a daughter, whom the
gentlewoman caused to be educated very privately in the country:
but proving very lovely, and being accidentally met by her
father-brother, who had never had the slightest suspicion of the
truth, he had fallen in love with and actually married her. The
wretched, guilty mother, learning what had happened, and
distracted with the consequence of her crime, had now resorted to
the archbishop, to know in what manner she should act. The
prelate charged her never to let her son or daughter know what
had passed, as they were innocent of any criminal intention. For
herself he bade her almost despair." (45) Afterwards, Walpole
found out that a similar story existed in the Tales of the Queen
of Navarre, and also in Bishop Hall's works. In this tragedy the
dreadful interest is well sustained throughout, the march of the
blank verse is grand and imposing, and some of the scenes are
worked up with a vigour and a pathos, which render it one of the
most powerful dramatic efforts of which our language can boast.

The next publication of Walpole, was his "Historic Doubts on the
Life and Reign of King Richard the Third," one of the most
ingenious historical and antiquarian dissertations which has ever
issued from the press. He has collected his facts with so much
industry, and draws his arguments and inferences from them with
so much ability, that if he has not convinced the public of the
entire innocence of Richard, he has, at all events, diminished
the number of his crimes, and has thrown a doubt over his whole
history, as well as over the credibility of his accusers, which
is generally favourable to his reputation. This work occasioned
a great sensation in the literary world, and produced several
replies, from F. Guydickens, Esq., Dean Milles, and the Rev. Mr.
Masters, and others. These works, however, are now gathered to
"the dull of ancient days;" while the book they were intended to
expose and annihilate remains an instructive and amusing volume;
and, to say the least of it, a most creditable monument of its
author's ingenuity.

The remainder of the works of Walpole, published or printed in
his lifetime, consist of minor, or, as he calls them, Fugitive
pieces." Of these the most remarkable are his papers in "The
World," and other periodicals; " A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese
Philosopher, in London," on the politics of the day; the "Essay
on Modern Gardening;" the pamphlet called "A Counter Address," on
the dismissal of Marshal Conway from his command of a regiment;
the fanciful, but lively "Hieroglyphic Tales;" and "The
Reminiscences," or Recollections of Court and Political
Anecdotes; which last he wrote for the amusement of the Miss
Berrys. All of these are marked with those peculiarities, and
those graces of style, which belonged to him; and may still be
read, however various their subjects, with interest and
instruction. The Reminiscences are peculiarly curious; and may,
perhaps, be stated to be, both in manner and matter, the very
perfection of anecdote writing. We may, indeed, say, with
respect to Walpole, what can be advanced of but few such
voluminous authors, that it is impossible to open any part of his
works without deriving entertainment from them; so much do the
charms and liveliness of his manner of writing influence all the
subjects he treats of.

Since the death of Walpole, a portion of his political Memoires,
comprising the History of the last ten years of the Reign of
George the Second, has been published, and has made a very
remarkable addition to the historical information of that period.
At the same time it must be allowed, that this work has not
entirely fulfilled the expectation which the public had formed of
it. Though full of curious and interesting details; it can
hardly be said to form a very interesting whole; while in no
other of the publications of the author do his prejudices and
aversions appear in so strong and unreasonable a light. His
satire also, and we might even call it by the stronger name of
abuse, is too general, and thereby loses its effect. Many of the
characters are probably not too severely drawn; but some
evidently are, and this circumstance shakes our faith in the
rest. We must, however, remember that the age he describes was
one of peculiar corruption; and when the virtue and character of
public men were, perhaps, at a lower ebb than at any other period
since the days of Charles the Second. The admirably graphic
style of Walpole, in describing particular scenes and moments,
shines forth in many parts of the Memoires: and this, joined to
his having been an actor in many of the circumstances he relates
and a near spectator of all, must ever render his book one of
extreme value to the politician and the historian.

But, the posthumous works of Walpole, upon which his lasting fame
with posterity will probably rest, are his "incomparable
LETTERS." (46) Of these, a considerable portion was published in
the quarto edition of his works in 1798: since which period two
quarto volumes, containing his letters to George Montagu, Esq.
and the Rev. William Cole; and another, containing those to Lord
Hertford and the Rev. Henry Zouch, have been given to the world;
and the present publication of his correspondence with Sir Horace
Mann completes the series, which extends from the year 1735 to
the commencement of 1797, within six weeks of his death-a period
of no less than fifty-seven years.

A friend of Mr. Walpole's has observed, that "his epistolary
talents have shown our language to be capable of all the grace
and all the charms of the French of Madame de S`evign`e;" (47)
and the remark is a true one, for he is undoubtedly the author
who first proved the aptitude of our language for that light and
gay epistolary style, which was before supposed peculiarly to
belong to our Gallic neighbours. There may be letters of a
higher order in our literature than those of Walpole. Gray's
letters, and perhaps Cowper's, may be taken as instances of this;
but where shall we find such an union of taste, humour, and
almost dramatic power of description and narrative, as in the
correspondence of Walpole? Where such happy touches upon the
manners and characters of the time? Where can we find such
graphic scenes, as the funeral of George the Second; as the party
to Vauxhall with Lady Harrington; as the ball at Miss
Chudleigh's, in the letters already published; or as some of the
House of Commons' debates and many of the anecdotes of society in
those now offered to the world? Walpole's style 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 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 stores have been discovered among the
papers at Strawberry Hill.
The account of the letters of Walpole leads naturally to some
mention of his friends, to whom they were addressed. These were,
Gray the poet, Marshal Conway, his elder brother, Lord Hertford,
George Montagu, Esq., the Rev. William Cole, Lord Strafford,
Richard Bentley, Esq., John Chute, Esq., Sir Horace Mann, Lady
Hervey, and in after-life, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Damer, and the
two Miss Berrys. His correspondence with the three latter ladies
has never been published; but his regard for them, and intimacy
with them, are known to have been very great. Towards Mrs.
Damer, the only child of the friend of his heart, Marshal Conway,
he had an hereditary feeling of affection; and to her he
bequeathed Strawberry Hill. To the Miss Berrys he left, in
conjunction with their father, the greater part of his papers,
and the charge of collecting and publishing his works, a task
which they performed with great care and judgment. To these
friends must be added the name of Richard West, Esq., a young man
of great promise, (only son of Richard West, Lord Chancellor of
Ireland, by the daughter of Bishop Burnet,) who died in 1742, at
the premature age of twenty-six.

Gray had been a school friend of Walpole, as has been before
mentioned, they travelled together, and quarrelled during the
Journey. Walter Scott suggests as a reason for their
differences, "that the youthful vivacity, and perhaps
aristocratic assumption, of Walpole, did not agree with the
somewhat formal opinions and habits of the professed man of
letters." (48) This conjecture may very possibly be the correct
one; but we have no clue to guide us with certainty to the causes
of their rupture. In after-life they were reconciled, though the
intimacy of early friendship never appears to have been restored
between them. (49) Scott says of Walpole, that , his temper was
precarious;" and we may, perhaps, affirm the same of Gray. At
all events, they were persons of such different characters, that
their not agreeing could not be surprising. What could be more
opposite than "the self-sequestered, melancholy Gray," and the
eager, volatile Walpole, of whom Lady Townshend said, when some
one talked of his good spirits, "Oh, Mr. Walpole is spirits of
hartshorn." When Mason was writing the life of Gray, Walpole
bade him throw the whole blame of the quarrel upon him. This
might be mere magnanimity, as Gray was then dead; what makes one
most inclined to think it was the truth, is the fact, that Gray
was not the only intimate friend of Walpole with whom he
quarrelled. He did so with Bentley, for which the eccentric
conduct of that man of talent might perhaps account. But what
shall we say to his quarrel with the good-humoured, laughing
George Montagu, with whom for the last years of the life of the
latter, he held no intercourse? It is true, that in a letter to
Mr. Cole, Walpole lays the blame upon Montagu, and says, "he was
become such an humourist;" but it must be remembered that we do
not know Montagu's version of the story; and that undoubtedly
three quarrels with three intimate friends rather support the
charge, brought by Scott against Walpole, of his having "a
precarious temper."

The friendship, however, which does honour both to the head and
heart of Horace Walpole, was that which he bore to Marshal
Conway; a man who, accordant to all the accounts of him that have
come down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a degree
of affection. Burke's panegyric (50)upon his public character
and conduct is well-known; while the Editor of Lord Orford's
Works thus most justly eulogizes his private life. "It is only
those who have had the opportunity of penetrating into the most
secret motives of his public conduct and the inmost recesses of
his private life, that can do real justice to the unsullied
purity of his character-who saw and knew him in the evening of
his days, retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and a
statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private life, happy in the
resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful
science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by pensions or
places, undistinguished by titles or ribands, unsophisticated by
public life, and unwearied by retirement." The offer of Walpole
to share his fortune with Conway, when the latter was dismissed
from his places, an offer so creditable to both parties, has been
already mentioned; and if we wish to have a just idea of the
esteem in which Marshal Conway was held by his contemporaries, it
is only necessary to mention, that upon the same occasion,
similar offers were pressed upon him by his brother Lord
Hertford, and by the Duke of Devonshire, without any concert
between them.

The rest of' Walpole's friends and correspondents it is hardly
necessary to dwell upon; they are many of them already well known
to the public from various causes. it may, however, be permitted
to observe, that, they were, for the most part, persons
distinguished either by their taste in the fine arts, their love
of antiquities, their literary attainments, or their
conversational talents. To the friends already mentioned, but
with whom Walpole did not habitually correspond, must be added,
Mason the poet, George Selwyn, Richard second Lord Edgecumbe,
George James Williams, Esq. Lady Suffolk, and Mrs. Clive the
actress.

With the Marquise du Deffand, the old, blind, but clever leader
of French society, he became acquainted at Paris late in her
life. Her devotion for him appears to have been very great, and
is sometimes expressed in her letters with a warmth and
tenderness, which Walpole, who was most sensitive of ridicule,
thought so absurd in a person of her years and infirmities, that
he frequently reproves her very harshly for it; so much so, as to
give him the appearance of a want of kindly feeling towards her,
which his general conduct to her, and the regrets he expressed on
her death, do not warrant us in accusing him of. (51)

In concluding the literary part of the character of Walpole, it
is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between
him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much
calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The
periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily
scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had,
perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him
bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as
the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of
that misguided son of genius; nay, even the author of "The
Pursuits of Literature," who wrote many years after the
transaction had taken place, and who ought to have known better,
gave in to the prevailing topic of abuse. (52) It therefore
becomes necessary to state shortly what really took place upon
this occasion, a task which is rendered easier by the clear view
of the transaction taken both by Walter Scott in his "Lives of
the Novelists," and by Chalmers in his "Biographical Dictionary,"
which is also fully borne out by the narrative drawn up by
Walpole himself, and accompanied by the correspondence.

it appears then, that in March
1769, Walpole-received a letter from Chatterton, enclosing a few
specimens of the pretended poems of Rowley, and announcing his
discovery of a series of ancient painters at Bristol. To this
communication Walpole, naturally enough, returned a very civil
answer. Shortly afterwards, doubts arose in his mind as to the
authenticity of the poems; these were confirmed by the opinions
of some friends, to whom he showed them; and he then wrote an
expression of these doubts to Chatterton. This appears to have
excited the anger of Chatterton, who, after one or two short
notes, wrote Walpole a very impertinent one, in which he
redemanded his manuscripts. This last letter Walpole had
intended to have answered with some sharpness; but did not do so.
He only returned the specimens on the 4th of August 1769; and
this concluded the intercourse between them, and as Walpole
observes, "I never saw him then, before, or since." Subsequently
to this transaction, Chatterton acquired other patrons more
credulous than Walpole, and proceeded with his forgeries. In
April 1770 he came to London, and committed suicide in August of
that year; a fate which befell him, it is to be feared, more in
consequence of his own dissolute and profligate habits, than from
any want of patronage. However this may be, Walpole clearly had
nothing to say to it.

In addition to the accusation of crushing, instead of fostering
his genius, Walpole has also been charged with cruelty in not
assisting him with money. Upon this, he very truly says himself,
"Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed, at the time of
his correspondence with me. He was maintained by his mother and
lived with a lawyer. His only pleas to my assistance were,
disgust to his profession, inclination to poetry, and
communication of some suspicious MSS. His distress was the
consequence of quitting his master, and coming to London, and of
his other extravagances. He had depended on the impulse of the
talents he felt for making impression, and lifting him to wealth,
honours, and faine. I have already said, that I should have been
blamable to his mother and society, if I had seduced an
apprentice from his master to marry him to the nine Muses;' and I
should have encouraged a propensity to forgery, which is not the
talent most wanting culture in the present age." (53) Such and so
unimportant was the transaction with Chatterton, which brought so
much obloquy on Walpole, and seems really to have given him at
different times great annoyance.

There remains but little more to relate in the life of Walpole.
His old age glided on peacefully, and, with the exception of his
severe sufferings from the gout, apparently contentedly, in the
pursuit of his favourite studies and employments. In the year
1791, he succeeded his unhappy nephew, George, third Earl of
Orford, who had at different periods of his life been insane, in
the family estate and the earldom. The accession of this latter
dignity seems rather to have annoyed him than otherwise. He
never took his seat in the House of Lords, and his unwillingness
to adopt his title was shown in his endeavours to avoid making
use of it in his signature. He not unfrequently signed himself,
"The Uncle of the late Earl of Orford." (54)

He retained his faculties to the last, but his limbs became
helpless from his frequent attacks of gout: as he himself
expresses it,

"Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season,
Though unkind to my limbs, has yet left me my reason." (55)

As a friend of his, who only knew him in the last years of his
life, speaks of "his conversation as singularly brilliant as it
was original," (56) we may conclude his liveliness never deserted
him; that his talent for letter-writing did not, we have a proof
in a letter written only six weeks before his death, in which,
with all his accustomed grace of manner he entreats a lady of his
acquaintance not to show "the idle notes of her ancient
servant."-Lord Orford died in the eightieth year `of his life, at
his house in Berkeley Square, on the 2d of March 1797, and was
buried with his family in the church at Houghton and with him
concluded the male line of the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole.

(20) Originally prefixed to his lordship's edition of Walpole's
Letters to Sir Horace Mann, first published in 1833.

(21) In a MS. note by Walpole, in his own copy of collins's
Peerage, it is stated, that Sir Robert Walpole had, by his first
wife, "another son, William, who died young, and a daughter,
Catherine, who died of a consumption at Bath, aged nineteen."-E.

(22) The occasion of the death of sir John Shorter was a curious
one. It is thus related in the Ellis Correspondence:-"Sir John
Shorter, the present Lord Mayor. is very ill with a fall off his
horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew
Fair. The city custom is, it seems, to drink always under
Newgate when the Lord Mayor passes that way; and at this time the
Lord Mayor's horse, being somewhat skittish,-started at the sight
of the large glittering tankard which was reached to his
lordship." Letter of Aug. 30th, 1688.