The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 2

Walpole: This circ.u.mstance is alleged against them as an incident contrived to gain belief, as if they had been in danger of their lives. The argument is gratis dictum.-Works, vol. ii. p. 568.

Junius: They are the trustees, not the owners of the estate. the fee simple is in us.- vol.-vol. i. p. 345.

Walpole: Do you think we shall purchase the fee simple of him for so many years?-Letters, vol. ii.

7. Walpole's time of life, his station in society, means of information, and habits of writing much, and anonymously, and in concealment, all tally with the supposition of his being Junius.

So do his places of residence, when that part of the subject is carefully examined.

8. It is an odd circ.u.mstance that Walpole, who makes remarks on every thing, makes no remark on Junius. If he ever expressed an opinion of him in his letters to any of his numerous correspondents, those letters have been suppressed. There are fewer letters of his in the years during which Junius was writing, than in any others.

9. Walpole's quarrel with the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, and The party whom he calls "the Bedford court," and Junius "the Bloomsbury gang," would account for the rancour of the letters of the latter to the Duke.

10. Walpole's dislike and opinion of the Duke of Grafton, which is nowhere more remarkably expressed than in a letter published for the first time in your third volume, coupled with his friends.h.i.+p for the first d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton, fall in with the attacks of Junius on the Duke.

11. The Memoires of Walpole show an enmity to Lord Mansfield almost equal to that of Junius.

12. Turning from these to a person in a different station, we find, on the part of Walpole, (and, by-the-by, of Mason too,) a sort of spite against Dr. Johnson; and in the works of Walpole, selected by himself for publication after his death,' there is a high-wrought criticism and condemnation of the style of Johnson, which I cannot help believing to have been conceived in revenge of the well-known handling of Junius in Johnson's pamphlet on the Falkland Islands. "Let not injudicious admiration mistake the venom of the s.h.i.+ft for the vigour of the bow," is said by Johnson of Junius: and Walpole says of Johnson, that "he destroys more enemies by the weight of his s.h.i.+eld, than with the point of his spear."

13. There is a host of small facts which might be adduced in support of what I have advanced. Any one who has leisure to examine the voluminous works of Walpole, and who can lend his mind to the inquiry, will find them crowd upon him. Let me mention one well known occurrence.

Junius says, in the postscript of a private note to Mr. Woodfall, Beware of David Garrick. He was sent to pump you, and went directly to Richmond to tell the King I should write no more." He then directed Woodfall to send the following note to Garrick, but not in the handwriting of Junius:-"I am very exactly informed of your impertinent inquiries, and of the information you so busily sent to Richmond, and with what triumph and exultation it was received. I knew every particular of it the next day. Now, mark me, vagabond! Keep to your pantomimes, or be a.s.sured you shall hear of it. Meddle no more, thou busy informer! It is in my power to make you curse the hour in which you dared to interfere with Junius." (19)

Mr. Woodfall remarks on this, that Garrick had received a letter from Woodfall, (the editor of the newspaper in which the letters of Junius first appeared,) before the above-note of Junius was sent to the printer, in which Garrick was told, in confidence, that there were some doubts whether Junius would continue to write much longer. Garrick flew with the intelligence to Mr.

Remus, one of the pages to the King, who immediately conveyed it to his Majesty, at that time residing at Richmond; and from the peculiar sources of information that were open to this extraordinary writer, Junius was apprised of the whole transaction on the ensuing morning, and wrote the above postscript, and the letter that follows it, in consequence. Now all that appears to Mr. Woodfall the younger. to be so wonderful in these circ.u.mstances is very easily explained, if we suppose Walpole to have been Junius. Strawberry Hill is very near Richmond Park, and Walpole had many acquaintances amongst those who were about the King; whilst his friend, Mrs. Clive, the actress, who lived in the adjoining house to his own, and her brother, Mr. Raftor, who frequently visited her, both belonged to Garrick's company.

But I have extended this letter too far. My purpose was merely to invite your attention to a subject of some literary interest, which you have peculiar opportunities of examining; and to enable you, if you should think fit, to draw to it the attention of the public also. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, CHAS. EDW. GREY.

20.

Albemarle Street, October 24, 1840.

(13) Woodfall's Junius, vol. i. p. 385.

(14) Ibid. p. 312.

(15) Ibid. p. 311.

(16) Ibid., vol. ii. p. 131.

(17) Ibid.,vol. i. p. 454.

(18) Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 361.

(19) Junius, Vol. i. P. 228.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE of HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD: BY LORD DOVER. (20)

Any one who attempts to become a biographer of Horace Walpole must labour under the disadvantage of following a greater master in the art; namely, Sir Walter Scott, whose lively and agreeable account of this Author, contained in his "Lives of the Novelists," is well known and deservedly admired. As, however, the greater part of Walter Scott's pages is devoted to a very able criticism of the only work of fiction produced by Walpole, "The Castle of Otranto," it has been thought, that a more general sketch of his life and writings might not prove unacceptable to the reader.

Horace Walpole was the third and youngest son (21) of that eminent minister, Sir Robert Walpole-the glory of the Whigs, the preserver of the throne of these realms to the present Royal Family, and under whose fostering rule and guidance the country flourished in peace for more than twenty years. The elder brothers of Horace were, Robert, Lord Walpole, so created in 1723, who succeeded his father in the Earldom of Orford in 1745, and died in 1751; and Sir Edward Walpole, Knight of the Bath, whose three natural daughters were, Mrs. Keppel, wife to the Honourable Frederick Keppel, Bishop of Exeter; the Countess of Waldegrave, afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester; and the Countess of Dysart. Sir Edward Walpole died in 1784. His sisters were, Catherine, who died of consumption at the age of nineteen; and Mary, married to George, Viscount Malpas, afterwards third Earl of Cholmondeley: she died in 1732. The mother of Horace, and of his brothers and sisters here mentioned, was Catherine Shorter, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. of Bybrook, in Kent, and grand- daughter of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London in 1688. (22) She died in 1736; and her youngest son, who always professed the greatest veneration for her memory, erected a monument to her in Westminster Abbey, in one of the side aisles of Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Horace Walpole had also a half-sister, the natural daughter of his father, by his mistress, Maria Skerrett, whom he afterwards married. She also was named Mary Walpole, and married Colonel Charles Churchill, the natural son of General Churchill; who was himself a natural son of an older brother of the great Duke of Marlborough.

Horace Walpole was born October 5th, 1717 (23) and educated a Eton School, and at King's College, Cambridge. Upon leaving the latter place, he set out on his travels on the Continent, in company with Gray the poet, with whom he had formed a friends.h.i.+p at school. They commenced their journey in March 1739, and continued abroad above two years. Almost the whole of this time was spent in Italy, and nearly a year of it was devoted to Florence; where Walpole was detained by the society of his friends, Mr. Mann, Mr. Chute, and Mr. Whithed. It was in these cla.s.sic scenes, that his love of art, and taste for elegant and antiquarian literature, became more developed; and that it took such complete possession of him as to occupy the whole of his later life, diversified only by the occasional amus.e.m.e.nt of politics, or the distractions of society. Unfortunately, the friends.h.i.+p of Walpole and his travelling companion could not survive two years of constant intercourse: they quarrelled and parted at Reggio, in July 1741, and afterwards pursued their way homewards by different routes. (24)

Walpole arrived in England in September 1741, at which time his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann commences. He had been chosen member for Callington, in the parliament which was elected in June of that year, and arrived in the House of Commons just in time to witness the angry discussions which preceded and accompanied the downfall of his father's administration. He plunged at once into the excitement of political partisans.h.i.+p with all the ardour of youth, and all the zeal which his filial affection for his father inspired. His feelings at this period are best explained by a reference to his letters in the following collection. Public business and attendance upon the House of Commons, apart from the interest attached to peculiar questions, he seems never to have liked. He consequently took very little part either in debates or committees. In March 1742, on a motion being made for an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole for the preceding ten years, he delivered his maiden speech; (25) on which he was complimented by no less a judge of oratory than Pitt. This speech he has preserved in his letter to Sir Horace Mann, of March 24th, 1742. He moved the Address in 1751; and in 1756 made a speech on the question of employing Swiss regiments in the colonies. This speech he has also himself preserved in the second volume of his "Memoires." In 1757 he was active in his endeavours to save the unfortunate Admiral Byng. Of his conduct upon this occasion he has left a detailed account of his "Memoires." This concludes all that can be collected of his public life, and at the general election of 1768 (26) he finally retired from parliament.

Upon this occasion he writes thus to George Montagu,-" As my senatorial dignity is gone, I shall not put you to the expense of a cover; and I hope the advertis.e.m.e.nt will not be taxed, as I seal it to the paper. In short, I retain so much iniquity from the last infamous parliament, that, you see, I would still cheat the public. The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here, instead of being at Lynn, in the high fever of a contested election, which, at best, Would end in my being carried about that large town, like a figure of a pope at a bonfires is very great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries that I have seen their fathers and grandfather's act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles [email protected]?

Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings?"

(27)

>From this time Walpole devoted himself more than ever to his literary and antiquarian pursuits; though the interest he still, in society at least, took in politics, is obvious, from the frequent reference to the subject in his letters.

In the course of his life, his political opinions appear to have undergone a great change. In his youth, and indeed till his old age, he was not only a strenuous Whig, but, at times, almost a Republican. How strong his opinions were in this sense may be gathered, both from the frequent confessions of his political faith, which occur in his letters, and from his reverence for the death-warrant of Charles the First, of which he hung up the engraving in his bed-room, and wrote upon it with his own hand the words "Major Charta." The horrors of the French Revolution drove him, in the latter period of his life, into other views of politics; and he seems to have become, in theory at least, a Tory, though he probably would have indignantly repudiated the appellation, had it been applied to him.

Even during the earlier part of his career, his politics had varied a good deal (as, indeed, in a long life, whose do not?); but, in his case, the cause of variation was a most amiable one.

His devoted attachment to Marshal Conway, which led him, when that distinguished man was turned out of his command of a regiment, and of his place at court, in 1764, (28) to offer, with much earnestness, to divide his fortune with him caused him also to look with a favourable eye upon the government of the day, whenever Mr. Conway was employed, and to follow him implicitly in his votes in the House of Commons. Upon this subject he writes thus to Conway, who had not told him beforehand of a speech he made on the Qualification Bill, in consequence of which Walpole was absent from the House of Commons upon that occasion--"I don't suspect you of any reserve to me; I only mention it now for an occasion Of telling YOU, that I don't like to have any body think that I would not do whatever you do. I am of no consequence; but, at least, it would give me some to act invariably with you, and that I shall most certainly be ever ready to do." (29) Upon another occasion he writes again in a similar strain:-"My only reason for writing is, to repeat to you, that whatever you do, I shall act with you. I resent any thing done to you as to myself.

My fortunes shall never be separated from yours, except that, some day or other, I hope yours will be great, and I am content with mine." (30)

Upon one political point Horace Walpole appears to have entertained from the first the most just views, and even at a time when such were not sanctioned by the general opinion of the nation. From its very commencement, he objected to that disastrous contest the American war, which, commenced in ignorant and presumptuous folly, was prolonged to gratify the wicked obstinacy of individuals, and ended, as Walpole had foretold it would, in the discomfiture of its authors, and the national disgrace and degradation, after a profuse and useless waste of blood and treasure. Nor must his sentiments upon the Slave Trade be forgotten-sentiments which he held, too, in an age when, far different from the present one, the a.s.siento Treaty, and other horrors of the same kind, were deemed, not only justifiable, but praiseworthy. "We have been sitting," he writes, on the 25th of February 1750, "this fortnight on the African Company. We, the British Senate, that temple of Liberty, and bulwark of Protestant Christianity, have, this fortnight, been considering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared to us, that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our plantations alone! It chills one's blood-I would not have to say I voted for it, for the continent of America! The destruction of the miserable inhabitants by the Spaniards was but a momentary misfortune that flowed from the discovery of the New World, compared to this lasting havoc which it brought upon Africa. We reproach Spain, and yet do not even pretend the nonsense of butchering the poor creatures for the good of their souls." (31)

One of the most favourite pursuits of Walpole was the building and decoration of his Gothic villa of Strawberry Hill. It is situated at the end of the village of Twickenham, towards Teddington, on a slope, which gives it a fine view of the reach of the Thames and the opposite wooded hill of Richmond Park. He bought it in 1747, of Mrs. Chenevix, the proprietress of a celebrated toy-shop. He thus describes it in a letter of that year to Mr. Conway. "You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:-

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

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, 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 G.o.d! the Thames is between me and the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry. (32) Dowagers, as plenty as flounders, inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight." (33)

He commenced almost immediately adding to the house, and Gothicizing it, a.s.sisted by the taste and designs of his friend Mr. Bentley; till, in the end, the cottage of Mrs. Chenevix had increased into the castellated residence we now behold. He also filled it with collections of various sorts-books, prints, pictures, portraits, enamels, and miniatures, antiquities, and curiosities of all kinds. Among these miscellaneous h.o.a.rds are to be found some fine works of art, and many things most valuable in an historical and antiquarian point of view. For these various expenses he drew upon his annual income, which arose from three patent places conferred on him by his father, of which the designations were, Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats. As early as the year 1744, these sinecures produced to him, according to his own account, nearly two thousand a-year; and somewhat later, the one place of Usher of Exchequer rose in value to double this sum. This income, with prudent management, sufficed for the gratification of his expensive tastes of building and collecting, to which his long life was devoted.

With regard to the merits of Strawberry Hill, as a building, it is perhaps unfair, in the present age, when the principles of Gothic architecture have been so much studied, and so often put in practice, to criticise it too severely. Walpole himself, who, in the earlier part of his life, seems to have had an unbounded admiration for the works of his own hands, appears in later times to have been aware of the faults in style of which he had been guilty; for, in a letter to Mr. Barrett, in 1788, he says, "If Mr. Matthews was really entertained" (with seeing Strawberry Hill), "I am glad. But Mr. Wyatt has made him too correct a Goth not to have seen all the imperfections and bad execution of my attempts; for neither Mr. Bentley nor my workmen had studied the science, and I was always too desultory and impatient to consider that I should please myself more by allowing time, than by hurrying my plans into execution before they were ripe. My house, therefore, is but a sketch for beginners; yours (34) is finished by a great master; and if Mr. Matthews liked mine, it was en virtuose, who loves the dawnings of an art, or the glimmerings of its restoration." (35)

In fact, the building of Strawberry Hill was "the glimmering of the restoration" of gothic architecture, which had previously, for above a century, been so much neglected that its very principles seemed lost. If we compare the Gothic of Strawberry Hill with that of buildings about the same period, or a little anterior to it, we shall see how vastly superior it is to them, both in its taste and its decorations. If we look at some of the restorations of our churches of the beginning of the eighteenth century , we shall find them a most barbarous mixture of Gothic forms and Grecian and Roman ornaments. Such are the western towers of Westminster Abbey, designed by Wren; the attempts at Gothic, by the same architect, in one or two of his City churches; Gibbs's quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford; and the buildings in the same style of Kent, Batty, Langley, etc. To these Strawberry is greatly superior: and it must be observed, that Walpole himself, in his progressive building, went on improving and purifying his taste. Thus the gallery and round-tower at Strawberry Hill, which were among his latest works, are incomparably the best part of the house; and in their interior decorations there is very little to be objected to, and much to be admired.

It were to be wished, indeed, that Walpole's haste to finish, to which he alludes in the letter just quoted, and perhaps also, in some degree, economy, had not made him build his castle, which, with all its faults, is a curious relic of a clever and ingenious man, with so little solidity, that it is almost already in a state of decay. Lath and plaster, and wood, appear to have been his favourite materials for construction; which made his friend Williams (36) say of him, towards the end of his life, "that he had outlived three sets of his own battlements." It is somewhat curious, as a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that, having built his castle with so little view to durability, Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a degree of strictness, which would have been more fitting for a baronial estate. And that, too, after having written a fable ent.i.tled "The Entail," in consequence, of some one having asked him whether he did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in ridicule of such a proceeding.

Whether Horace Walpole conferred a benefit upon the public by setting the fas.h.i.+on of applying the Gothic style of architecture to domestic purposes, may be doubtful; so greatly has the example he gave been abused in practice since. But, at all events, he thus led the professors of architecture to study with accuracy the principles of the art, which has occasioned the restoration and preservation in such an admirable manner of so many of our finest cathedrals. colleges, and ancient Gothic and conventual buildings. This, it must be at least allowed, was the fortunate result of the rage for Gothic, which succeeded the building of Strawberry Hill. For a good many years after that event, every new building was pinnacled and turreted on all sides, however little its situation, its size, or its uses might seem to fit it for such ornaments. Then, as fas.h.i.+on is never constant for any great length of' time, the taste of the public rushed at once upon castles; and loopholes, and battlements, and heavy arches, and b.u.t.tresses appeared in every direction. Now the fancy of the time has turned as madly to that b.a.s.t.a.r.d kind of architecture, possessing, however, many beauties, which compounded of the Gothic, Castellated, and Grecian or Roman, is called the Elizabethan, or Old English. No villa, no country-house, no lodge in the outskirts of London, no box of a retired tradesman is now built, except in some modification of this style. The most ludicrous situations and the most inappropriate destinations do not deter any one from pointing his gables, and squaring his bay-windows, in the most approved Elizabethan manner. And this vulgarizing and lowering Of the Old English architecture, by over use, is sure, sooner or later, to lose its popularity, and to cause it to be contemned and neglected, like its predecessors.

All these different styles, if properly applied, have their peculiar merits. In old English country-houses, which have formerly been conventual buildings, the gothic style may be, with great propriety, introduced. On the height of Belvoir or in similar situations, nothing could be devised so appropriate as the castellated; and in additions to, or renovations of old manor-houses the Elizabethan may be, with equal advantage, adopted. It is the injudicious application of all three which has been, and is sure to be, the occasion of their fall in public favour.

The next pursuit of Walpole, to -which it now becomes desirable to advert, are his literary labours, and the various publications with which, at different periods of his life, he favoured the world. His first effort appears to have been a copy of verses, written at Cambridge. His poetry is generally not of a very high order; lively, and with happy turns and expressions, but injured frequently by a sort of quaintness, and a somewhat inharmonious rhythm. Its merits, however, exactly fitted it for the purpose which it was for the most part intended for; namely, as what are called vers de soci'et'e." (37) Among the best of his verses may be mentioned those "On the neglected Column in the Place of St.

Mark, at Florence," which contains some fine lines; his "Twickenham Register;" and "The Three Vernons."

In 1752 he published his "Edes Walpolianae," or description of the family seat' of Houghton Hall, in Norfolk, where his father had built a palace, and had made a fine collection of pictures, which were sold by his grandson George, third Earl of Orford, to the Empress Catherine of Russia. This work, which is, in fact, a mere catalogue of pictures, first showed the peculiar talent of Horace Walpole for enlivening, by anecdote and lightness of style, a dry subject. This was afterwards still more exemplified in his "Anecdotes of Painting in England," of which the different volumes were published in 1761, 1763, and 1771; and in the "Catalogue of Engravers," published in 1763. These works were compiled from papers of Vertue, the engraver; but Walpole, from the stores of his own historical knowledge, from his taste in the fine arts, and his happy manner of sketching characters, rendered them peculiarly his own. But his masterpiece in this line was his "Catalogue of Royal and n.o.ble Authors," originally published in 1758. It is very true, as Walter Scott observes, that "it would be difficult, by any process or principle of subdivision, to select a list of so many plebeian authors, containing so very few whose genius was worthy of commemoration." (38) But this very circ.u.mstance renders the merit of Walpole the greater, in having, out of such materials, composed a work which must be read with amus.e.m.e.nt and interest, as long as liveliness of diction and felicity in anecdote are considered ingredients of amus.e.m.e.nt in literature.

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 fas.h.i.+on to underrate Horace Walpole firstly, because he was a n.o.bleman, 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)