The Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I | Page 7

remains of Roman literature; the
specimens which they give of familiar intercourse, and of the public
and private manners of society, drawing up for us the curtain from
scenes of immense historical interest, and laying open the secret
workings, the complications, and schemes of a great revolution
period."[2] Such a description is singularly applicable to the letters of
Walpole; and the care which he took for their preservation shows that
he was not without a hope that they also would be regarded as
interesting and valuable by future generations. He praises one of his
correspondents for his diligence in collecting and publishing a volume
of letters belonging to the reigns of James I. and Charles I., on the
express ground that "nothing gives so just an idea of an age as genuine
letters; nay, history waits for its last seal from them." And it is not too
much to say that they are superior to journals and diaries as a mine to
be worked by the judicious historian; while to the general public they
will always be more attractive, from the scope they afford to elegance
of style, at which the diary-keeper does not aim; and likewise from
their frequently recording curious incidents, fashions, good sayings,
and other things which, from their apparently trifling character, the
grave diarist would not think worth preserving.
[Footnote 1: D'Israeli has remarked that "the gossiping of a profound
politician, or a vivacious observer, in one of their letters, often by a
spontaneous stroke reveals the individual, or by a simple incident
unriddles a mysterious event;" and proceeds to quote Bolingbroke's
estimate of the importance, from this point of view, of "that valuable
collection of Cardinal d'Ossat's Memoirs" ("Curiosities of Literature,"
iii. p. 381).]
[Footnote 2: The Rev. J.E. Yonge, Preface to an edition of "Cicero's

Letters."]
He, however, was not the first among the moderns to achieve a
reputation by his correspondence. In the generation before his birth, a
French lady, Madame de Sévigné, had, with an affectionate industry,
found her chief occupation and pleasure in keeping her daughters in the
provinces fully acquainted with every event which interested or
entertained Louis XIV. and his obsequious Court; and in the first years
of the eighteenth century a noble English lady, whom we have already
mentioned, did in like manner devote no small portion of her time to
recording, for the amusement and information of her daughter, her
sister, and her other friends at home, the various scenes and
occurrences that came under her own notice in the foreign countries in
which for many years her lot was cast, as the wife of an ambassador. In
liveliness of style, Lady Mary Montague is little if at all inferior to her
French prototype; while, since she was endowed with far more brilliant
talents, and, from her foreign travels, had a wider range of observation,
her letters have a far greater interest than could attach to those of a
writer, however accomplished and sagacious, whose world was Paris,
with bounds scarcely extending beyond Versailles on one side, and
Compiègne on the other. To these fair and lively ladies Walpole was
now to succeed as a third candidate for epistolary fame; though, with
his habit of underrating his own talents, he never aspired to equal the
gay Frenchwoman; (the English lady's correspondence was as yet
unknown). There is evident sincerity in his reproof of one of his
correspondents who had expressed a most flattering opinion: "You say
such extravagant things of my letters, which are nothing but gossiping
gazettes, that I cannot bear it; you have undone yourself with me, for
you compare them to Madame de Sévigné's. Absolute treason! Do you
know there is scarcely a book in the world I love so much as her
letters?"
Yet critics who should place him on an equality with her would not be
without plausible grounds for their judgement. Many circumstances
contributed to qualify him in a very special degree for the task which,
looking at his letters in that light, he may be said to have undertaken.
His birth, as the son of a great minister; his comparative opulence; even

the indolent insignificance of his elder brothers, which caused him to
be looked upon as his father's representative, and as such to be
consulted by those who considered themselves as the heirs of his policy,
while the leader of that party in the House of Commons, General
Conway, was his cousin, and the man for whom he ever felt the
strongest personal attachment,--were all advantages which fell to the lot
of but few. And to these may be added the variety of his tastes, as
attested by the variety of his published works. He was a man who
observed everything, who took an interest in everything. His
correspondents, too, were