The Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I | Page 6

his letters to his friends at home
with comments on the conduct of the French Parliament, of Maupéon,
Maurepas, Turgot, and the King himself, which, in many instances,
attest the shrewdness with which he estimated the real bearing of the
events which were taking place, and anticipated the possible character
of some of those which were not unlikely to ensue.
Thus, with a mind which, to the end, was so active and so happily
constituted as to be able to take an interest in everything around him,
and, even when more than seventy years old, to make new friends to
replace those who had dropped off, he passed a long, a happy, and far
from an useless life. When he was seventy-four he succeeded to his
father's peerage, on the death of his elder brother; but he did not long
enjoy the title, by which, indeed, he was not very careful to be
distinguished, and in the spring of 1797 he died, within a few months
of his eightieth birthday.
A great writer of the last generation, whose studies were of a severer
cast, and who, conscious perhaps of his own unfitness to shine at the
tea-table of fashionable ladies, was led by that feeling to undervalue the
lighter social gifts which formed conspicuous ingredients in Walpole's
character, has denounced him not only as frivolous in his tastes, but
scarcely above mediocrity in his abilities (a sentence to which Scott's
description of him as "a man of great genius" may be successfully
opposed); and is especially severe on what he terms his affectation in
disclaiming the compliments bestowed on his learning by some of his
friends. The expressed estimate of his acquirements and works which
so offended Lord Macaulay was that "there is nobody so superficial,
that, except a little history, a little poetry, a little painting, and some
divinity, he knew nothing; he had always lived in the busy world; had

always loved pleasure; played loo till two or three in the morning;
haunted auctions--in short, did not know so much astronomy as would
carry him to Knightsbridge; not more physic than a physician; nor, in
short, anything that is called science. If it were not that he laid up a
little provision in summer, like the ant, he should be as ignorant as the
people he lived with."[1] In Lord Macaulay's view, Walpole was never
less sincere than when pronouncing such a judgement on his works. He
sees in it nothing but an affectation, fishing for further praises; and,
fastening on his account of his ordinary occupations, he pronounces
that a man of fifty should be ashamed of playing loo till after midnight.
[Footnote 1: Letter to Mann, Feb. 6, 1760.]
In spite, however, of Lord Macaulay's reproof, something may be said
in favour of a man who, after giving his mornings to works which
display no little industry as well as talent, unbent his bow in the
evening at lively supper-parties, or even at the card-table with fair
friends, where the play never degenerated into gambling. And his
disparagement of his learning, which Lord Macaulay ridicules as
affectation, a more candid judgement may fairly ascribe to sincere
modesty. For it is plain from many other passages in his letters, that he
really did undervalue his own writings; and that the feeling which he
thus expressed was genuine is to a great extent proved by the patience,
if not thankfulness, with which he allowed his friend Mann to alter
passages in "The Mysterious Mother," and confessed the alterations to
be improvements. It may be added that Lord Macaulay's disparagement
of his judgement and his taste is not altogether consistent with his
admission that Walpole's writings possessed an "irresistible charm" that
"no man who has written so much is so seldom tiresome;" that, even in
"The Castle of Otranto," which he ridicules, "the story never flags for a
moment," and, what is more to our present purpose, he adds that "his
letters are with reason considered his best performance;" and that those
to his friend at Florence, Sir H. Mann, "contain much information
concerning the history of that time: the portion of English History of
which common readers know the least."
Of these letters it remains for us now to speak. The value of such pour

servir, to borrow a French expression, that is to say, to serve as
materials to supply the historian of a nation or an age with an
acquaintance with events, or persons, or manners, which would be
sought for in vain among Parliamentary records, or ministerial
despatches, has long been recognised.[1] Two thousand years ago,
those of the greatest of Roman orators and statesmen were carefully
preserved; and modern editors do not fear to claim for them a place
"among the most valuable of all the