The Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I | Page 3

not
require literary fame to secure them a lasting remembrance; and they
have not contented themselves with showing their appreciation of
intellectual excellence by their patronage of humbler scholars, but have
themselves afforded examples to other labourers in the hive, taking
upon themselves the toils, and earning no small nor undeserved share
of the honours of authorship. The very earliest of our poets, Chaucer,
must have been a man of gentle birth, since he was employed on
embassies of importance, and was married to the daughter of a French
knight of distinction, and sister of the Duchess of Lancaster. The long
civil wars of the fifteenth century prevented his having any immediate
followers; but the sixteenth opened more propitiously. The conqueror
of Flodden was also "Surrey of the deathless lay";[1] and from his time
to the present day there is hardly a break in the long line of authors who
have shown their feeling that noble birth and high position are no
excuses for idleness, but that the highest rank gains additional
illustration when it is shown to be united with brilliant talents worthily
exercised. The earliest of our tragic poets was Sackville Earl of Dorset.
The preux chevalier of Elizabeth's Court, the accomplished and
high-minded Sidney, took up the lyre of Surrey: Lord St. Albans, more
generally known by his family name of Bacon, "took all learning for
his province"; and, though peaceful studies were again for a while
rudely interrupted by the "dark deeds of horrid war," the restoration of
peace was, as it had been before, a signal for the resumption of their
studies by many of the best-born of the land. Another Earl of Dorset
displayed his hereditary talent not less than his martial gallantry. Lord
Roscommon well deserved the praises which Dryden and Pope, after
his death, liberally bestowed. The great Lord Chancellor Clarendon
devoted his declining years to a work of a grander class, leaving us a
History which will endure as long as the language itself; while ladies of
the very highest rank, the Duchess of Newcastle and Lady Mary
Wortley Montague, vindicated the claims of their sex to share with
their brethren the honours of poetical fame.

[Footnote 1: "Lay of the Last Minstrel," vi. 14.]
Among this noble and accomplished brotherhood the author of these
letters is by general consent allowed to be entitled to no low place.
Horace Walpole, born in the autumn of 1717, was the youngest son of
that wise minister, Sir Robert Walpole, who, though, as Burke
afterwards described him, "not a genius of the first class," yet by his
adoption of, and resolute adherence to a policy of peace throughout the
greater part of his administration, in which he was fortunately assisted
by the concurrence of Fleury of France, contributed in no slight degree
to the permanent establishment of the present dynasty on the throne. He
received his education at the greatest of English schools, Eton, to which
throughout his life he preserved a warm attachment; and where he gave
a strong indication of his preference for peaceful studies and his
judicious appreciation of intellectual ability, by selecting as his most
intimate friend Thomas Gray, hereafter to achieve a poetical
immortality by the Bard and the Elegy. From Eton they both went to
Cambridge, and, when they quitted the University, in 1738, joined in a
travelling tour through France and Italy. They continued companions
for something more than two years; but at the end of that time they
separated, and in the spring of 1741 Gray returned to England. The
cause of their parting was never distinctly avowed; Walpole took the
blame, if blame there was, on himself; but, in fact, it probably lay in an
innate difference of disposition, and consequently of object. Walpole
being fond of society, and, from his position as the Minister's son,
naturally courted by many of the chief men in the different cities which
they visited; while Gray was of a reserved character shunning the
notice of strangers, and fixing his attention on more serious subjects
than Walpole found attractive.
In the autumn of the same year Walpole himself returned home. He had
become a member of Parliament at the General Election in the summer,
and took his seat just in time to bear a part in the fierce contest which
terminated in the dissolution of his father's Ministry. His maiden
speech, almost the only one he ever made, was in defence of the
character and policy of his father, who was no longer in the House of
Commons to defend himself.[1] And the result of the conflict made no

slight impression on his mind; but gave a colour to all his political
views.
He began almost immediately to come forward as an author: not,
however, as--
Obliged by hunger and request