ART. IV.—Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace Mann, His Britannic Majesty's Resident at the Court of Florence, from 1760 to 1785. Now first published from the original MSS. Concluding series, Vols. III. and IV. London. 8vo. 1844. WE E have so recently* and so fully stated our views on the first livraison of this publication, and on the general character of the writer and his works, that our task on this occasion will be light; and might, perhaps, have been altogether spared, but that, looking as we do on Walpole's correspondence as the great reservoir whence future generations will draw the social and domestic history of his times-extending over half a century-we think it our duty not only to complete our readers' acquaintance with this important class of his letters, but to continue that course of general observations by which we have endeavoured to help posterity in sifting the grain from the chaff, and in measuring the very different degrees of confidence to which the several portions of Walpole's miscellaneous mass of evidence is entitled. This is the more necessary from the extreme negligence and incapacity with which all his letters except those to Lord Hertford, a few contributed by Miss Berry to the Collective Edition, and the first three volumes of Sir Horace Mann'shave been originally edited. The two first volumes of the series now before us were, as our readers will remember, the worst handled of all; and we suspect that our observations may have induced the publisher to give these another editor, for, although his performance is very far from satisfactory, it does not exhibit that extreme ignorance and absurdity that marked every note of the former. The main fault of the present editor is, that his explanations are neither sufficiently frequent nor applied to the proper objects. He explains occasionally topics of current news by extracts from other publications. This is convenient to the ordinary reader; but requires little research; and is, moreover, executed with little judgment or taste-as, for example, when Walpole happens to use the words 'grim repose,' the editor thinks it necessary to give the whole stanza of Gray's Bard' where these words occur, and which every one has by heart. Again, when Walpole says that the treaty of peace [of 1782] is signed,' the editor takes that favourable opportunity of telling us that 'amongst the numerous distinguished individuals who had availed themselves of the recess to visit the continent was Mr. Pitt,' (iv. 119,) and then proceeds to extract from Tomline's Life' and 6 and Wilberforce's Diary' some lengthy details of the visit, which have no more relation to the matter in hand than to the siege of Jericho. Again; on the mention of the death of Lord Robert Manners in Rodney's action, we have extracts from the Annual Register' misquoted as notes to Crabbe's Village:' and, again, when mention is made of Lady Lucan's talent for painting, the editor quotes a panegyric on some of her performances as from the Annual Register,' which is in truth from Walpole's' Anecdotes,' and was only extracted into the Annual Register.' We could produce many instances of this superficial and superfluous style of commentary. But what we most regret is, that with Walpole himself, his society, or even his times,* the editor seems little acquainted, and therefore is unable to help the reader where his assistance would be really useful in elucidating the hints, the inuendoes, the figurative allusions and latent satire, which are, we may almost say, the staple of Walpole's correspondence, and which always somewhat enigmatical, as he himself was conscious, from the peculiarity of his style,-are by lapse of time growing obscure, and will by-and-bye be unintelligible to ordinary readers. Swift, at no greater distance than Dublin, complained to Pope that he could not understand the Dunciad,' when first published, for want of more copious explanatory notes; and Walpole himself, living in the very centre of fashion and politics, confesses that he himself needed a key to the ' Rolliad : 'We have at present here a most incomparable set [of poets] not exactly known by their names, but who, till the dead of summer, kept the town in a roar, and, I suppose, will revive by the meeting of Parliament. They have poured forth a torrent of odes, epigrams, and part of an imaginary epic poem, called the Rolliad, with a commentary and notes, that is as good as the Dispensary and Dunciad, with more ease. I would send them, but you would want too many keys; and indeed I want some myself; for, as there are continually allusions to Parliamentary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained.'-vol. iv. pp. 245, 246. Just so, without copious and judicious elucidation applied while the facts are yet recoverable, Walpole must appear even to *There is an instance of this so strong that we cannot in justice omit it. The editor has chosen to reprint (vol. iv. p. 281), from the Selwyn Correspondence, a letter in which Walpole mentions the affair of the Parlement de Bretagne, and the intended trial of the famous M. de Charolais.' The Selwyn editor took no notice, it seems, of the famous M. de Charolais;' the Walpole editor suspects that there is something wrong, but does nothing more than query whether Charolais' be right? It seems wonderful that neither of these editors should have known of the very important affair of M. de la Chalotais in the Parliament of Britanny, which had no small influence in preparing the Revolution-particularly as the name is correctly given in a contemporaneous letter in the Collective Edition. us, us, and still more to the next generation, shorn of much of his talent, and more of his wit. It is true, indeed, that these letters have, as we shall see presently, less of that anecdotic character which requires this sort of elucidation than any former batch, and that the editor's deficiency is proportionably of less consequencebut it is still frequently felt, and, as we see reason to believe that we have not yet exhausted the Walpolean papers, we press this important consideration on the attention of all future publishers and editors. There is prefixed to these volumes an Advertisement by the Editor,' in reply to some observations in our late review, which, for the sake of historic truth, we think it necessary to notice : 66 In a late number of the Quarterly Review, in an article entitled "Horace Walpole," the reviewer, in the course of an estimate which he makes of the character and talents of Walpole, takes the opportunity of indulging in some strictures on what he calls "his scandalous attempts at increasing his already enormous sinecure income;" observing, SO completely had this man, so shrewd and sharp-sighted in detecting the follies of others, blinded himself, or fancied he had blinded the world, to his real motives, that we find that during the long life in which he enjoyed five sinecure offices, producing him at least six thousand three hundred pounds a year, he was not ashamed to inveigh bitterly against the abuses of Ministerial patronage, and to profess, with astonishing effrontery, that the one virtue which he possessed in a singular degree, was disinterestedness and contempt of money." How far this censure was merited, both as regards the number of places held and the amount of public money received by Horace Walpole (for the whole of which he was solely indebted to his father Sir Robert), and especially as regards the spirit in which he viewed the matter himself, will be seen by the detailed account of his income given in the Fourth Volume of this series of letters. As Walpole may fairly be presumed to be the best judge of the extent of his own ways and means, his statement, plain and straightforward as it is, will, we take for granted, be considered quite sufficient refutation.'-vol. iii. pp. v. vi. This is really one of the most surprising things we have ever read! Who would not believe that this refutation thus referred to as forming a part of the present publication, was itself a new discovery now first published?-whereas it was, we believe, printed by Walpole himself at Strawberry Hill, and assuredly was published in the great quarto edition of his works in 1798. It was largely quoted by us in our article on Walpole's Memoirs,' in April, 1822, and is, in fact, our authority for that very statement of which the Editor' says that it is a 'refutation.' The matter is so directly important to Walpole's personal history, and affects consequently so many points of his literary character, that we shall recall to our readers' recollection some of the leading leading facts of the case. March, 1782), he says :— In Walpole's exculpatory paper (dated "In my youth, my father, Sir Robert Walpole, then Prime Minister, gave me the two patent little places I still hold, of Clerk of the Estreats and Comptroller of the Pipe, which, together, produce about or near 3007. per annum. When I was about eighteen or nineteen, he gave me the place of Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Custom-house, which I resigned in about a year, on his giving me the patent place of Usher of the Exchequer, then reckoned worth 900/. a year.'-vol. iv. p. 323. Here was untruth at starting-the place was even then reckoned worth 12007. a-year. See the Historical Register,' Feb. 1738. He proceeds Before my father's quitting his post, he, at the instance of my eldest brother, Lord Walpole, had altered the delivery of Exchequer bills from ten pounds to an hundred pounds. My deputy, after that alteration was made, observed, that as Usher of the Exchequer, who furnishes the materials of Exchequer bills, on which, by the table of rates in the Exchequer, I had a stated profit, I should lose ten per cent., which he represented to my father, who, having altered them to oblige my brother, would not undo what he had done: but, to repair the prejudice I had suffered, my brother, Lord Walpole, engaged, at my father's desire, to pay me 400l. a-year. 'King George the First had graciously bestowed on my father the patent place of Collector of the Customs, for his own life, and for the lives of his two elder sons Robert and Edward; but my father reserved in himself a right of disposing of the income of that place as he should please, during the existence of the grant. Accordingly, having afterwards obtained for his eldest son Robert the great place of Auditor of the Exchequer, and for his second son Edward that of Clerk of the Pells, he bequeathed, by an instrument under his hand, 1000l. a-year to me, out of the patent, for the remainder of the term, and devised the remainder, about 800/. a-year, to be divided between my brother Edward and me.'—ib. 324. Thus then Walpole had three patent sinecure places, and riders (as such jobs used to be called) on two others, which he states as producing-even when he first received them all. This was the confessed value at that early period. But this is not of of the Exchequer, instead of 9007., was even then almost 17007. a-year; and subsequently, when the tax which was laid on places caused an inquiry into such emoluments, Walpole returned the profits of the Usher of the Exchequer' at 18007.; but when, in 1782, the Commissioners of Public Accounts made their inquiry, it then came out, on the evidence of Walpole's deputy, that the Ushership of the Exchequer was not 9007., nor even 18007., but 42007., clear of all deductions! (p. 329) and the main object of Walpole's paper is to exculpate himself from having made a fraudulent return of 18007. instead of 42007., and his explanation is, that although the place had in truth grown to be 42007. in the year 1780, yet that 18007. was the average of the twelve years preceding the date of his return, which date, however, he does not mention, nor does he give us any hint whether the little places of Clerk of the Estreats and Comptroller of the Pipe' had increased in the same proportion as the Ushership.' We, in our statement of the case, took the income that he himself ultimately confessed to, viz. : The rider on the Auditor of the Exchequer £300 4,200 400 1,400 £6,300 And these figures we extracted from the very paper which the editor thinks a sufficient refutation of our assertion that he enjoyed the profits of five sinecure offices producing at least 63007.' ! The editor must certainly have never read or have totally forgotten the paper thus referred to. His next charge against us is as follows: 'With regard to the assertion that "Mr. Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle forfeited his [H. Walpole's] favour by refusing to do a very profligate pecuniary job for him," it will be found that in the Memoir to which we have just been alluding, mention is made of this "job;" and certainly, as Walpole states it, we can discover nothing "profligate" in the character of the transaction.'-vol. iii. p. vi. Again we appeal to Walpole's own evidence. He was a warm partisan of the Pelhams-so much so as to have moved the ministerial address on the opening of the session in 1751. In the course of that session, Walpole, already, as we have seen, in possession of three patent sinecure places, asked Mr. Pelham to grant him a life-interest in the fourth, on which he had a rider— that of Collector of the Customs, which had been originally granted for the lives of Sir Robert and his two eldest sons. This greedy and unreasonable request Mr. Pelham so far resisted as |