[2] The name of Horatio I dislike. It is theatrical, and not English. I have, ever since I was a youth, written and subscribed Horace, an English name for an Englishman. In all my books (and perhaps you will think of the numerosus Horatius) I so spell my name.—Walpoliana, i. 62.

[3] It is also to be found asserted as a current story in the Note Books (unpublished) of the Duchess of Portland, the daughter of Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford, and the 'noble, lovely little Peggy' of her father's friend and protÉgÉ, Matthew Prior.

[4] These, hereafter referred to as the Short Notes, are the chief authority for three parts of Walpole's not very eventful life. They were first published with the concluding series of his Letters to Sir Horace Mann, 2 vols., 1844, and are reprinted in Mr. Peter Cunningham's edition of the Correspondence, vol. i. (1857), pp. lxi-lxxvii.

[5] Martin's Old Chelsea, 1889, p. 82; Beaver's Memorials of Old Chelsea, 1892, p. 291.

[6] Cunningham, v. 36, and ix. 519. The Duchess of Tyrconnell's portrait, copied by Milbourn from the original at Lord Spencer's, was one of the prominent ornaments of the Great Bedchamber at Strawberry Hill. (See A Description of the Villa, etc., 1774, p. 138.) There are some previously unpublished particulars respecting her as 'Mlle. Genins' in M. Jusserand's extremely interesting French Ambassador at the Court of Charles the Second, 1892, pp. 153 et seq., 170, 182.

[7] Walpole to the Miss Berrys, 5 March, 1791.

[8] Reminiscences of the Courts of George the First and Second, in Cunningham's Corr., i. xciii-xciv.

[9] The book referred to is a 'little lounging miscellany' of notes and anecdotes by John Pinkerton, and was printed, soon after Walpole's death, by Bensley, who lived in Johnson's old house, No. 8 Bolt Court. It requires to to be used with caution (see Quarterly Review, vol. lxxii., No. cxliv.), and must not be confused with Lord Hardwicke's privately printed Walpoliana, which relate to Sir Robert Walpole.

[10] This is quoted by Mr. Hayward and others as if the last words were Sir Robert Walpole's. But Lady Louisa Stuart says nothing to indicate this (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters, etc., 1887, i. xciii).

[11] Letter to Montagu, 6 May, 1736.

[12] Walpole to Montagu. Cunningham, 1857, i. 15.

[13] Mr. D.C. Tovey (Gray and his Friends, 1890, 3 n.) thinks that Ashton probably never preached at Eton before he was made Fellow, in December, 1745,—which would greatly advance the date of Walpole's communication. But it is cited here solely for its reminiscences of his school-days.

[14] Saunderson had lost both his eyes in infancy from small-pox. This, however, did not prevent him from lecturing on Newton's Optics, and becoming Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Another undergraduate who attended his lectures was Chesterfield. (See Letter to Jouneau, 12 Oct., 1712.) There is an interesting account of Saunderson by a former pupil, together with an excellent portrait, in the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1754.

[15] Walpole to Miss Berry, 16 Aug., 1796.

[16] Indeed, she is given too much to allicholly and musing.—Merry Wives of Windsor, act i. sc. iv.

[17] Walpole to Montagu, 30 May, 1736.

[18] Walpole to West, 17 Aug., 1736.

[19] Walpole to Montagu, 20 May, 1736.

[20] Notes and Queries, 2 Jan., 1869.

[21] Gray's Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 9.

[22] Account of my Conduct, etc., Works, 1798, ii. 363-70.

[23] Gray's Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 18-19.

[24] Gray to West, 22 May, 1739.

[25] Walpole to West, no date, 1739.

[26] Gray to West, 22 May, 1739.

[27] Walpole to West, no date, 1739.

[28] Walpole to West, 18 June, 1739.

[29] Gray's Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 30.

[30] Walpole to West, Sept. 28-2 Oct., 1739.

[31] Tory, however, was not illachrymabilis. He found his vates sacer in one Edward Burnaby Greene, once of Bennet College; and in referring to this, thirty-five years later, Walpole explains how Tory got his name. 'His godmother was the widow of Alderman Parsons [Humphrey Parsons, of Goldsmith's 'black champagne'], who gave him at Paris to Lord Conway, and he to me' (Walpole to Cole, 10 Dec., 1775).

[32] Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, 2d ed., 1858, pp. 305-8.

[33] Jarchius has taken the trouble to give us a list of those clubs, or academies [i. e., the academies of Italy], which amount to five hundred and fifty, each distinguished by somewhat whimsical in the name. The academicians of Bologna, for instance, are divided into the Abbandonati, the Ausiosi, Ociosi, Arcadi, Confusi, Dubbiosi, etc. There are few of these who have not published their Transactions, and scarce a member who is not looked upon as the most famous man in the world, at home.—Goldsmith, in The Bee, No. vi., for 10 November, 1759.

[34] Walpole to West, no date, 1739.

[35] Dr. Doran ('Mann' and Manners at the Court of Florence, 1876, i. 2) describes this connection as 'a distant cousinship.'

[36] Shortly after Lady Walpole's death, Sir Robert Walpole married his mistress, Maria Skerret, who died 4 June, 1738, leaving a daughter, Horace Walpole's half-sister, subsequently Lady Mary Churchill.

[37] Walpole to Conway, 25 September, 1740.

[38] Letters, etc., of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ii. 325.

[39] Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, 2nd edn., 1858, p. xxiii.

[40] This rests upon the authority of a shadowy Mr. Roberts of the Pell-office, who told it to Isaac Reed in 1799, more than half a century after the event. The subject is discussed at some length, but of necessity inconclusively, by Mr. D. C. Tovey in his interesting Gray and his Friends, 1890. Mr. Tovey thinks that Ashton was obscurely connected with the quarrel.

[41] Walpole to Mason, 2 March, 1773. The letters to Mason were first printed in 1851 by Mitford. But Pinkerton, in the Walpoliana, i. 95, had reported much the same thing. 'The quarrel between Gray and me [Walpole] arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraints of the university, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, etc., while I was for perpetual balls and plays. The fault was mine.'

[42] Juvenis, non tam generis nobilitate, ac paterni nominis gloriÂ, quam ingenio, doctrinÂ, et virtute propri illustris. Ille vero haud citius fere in patriam reversus est, quam de studiis meis, ut consuerat, familiariter per literas quÆrens, mihi ultro de copi suÂ, quicquid ad argumenti mei rationem, aut libelli ornamentum pertineret, pro arbitrio meo utendum obtulit.—Pref. ad Germana quÆdam Antiq. Monumenta, etc., p. 6 (quoted in Mitford's Corr. of Walpole and Mason, 1851, i. x-xi).

[43] Walpole's Works, 1798, i. 6.

[44] Gray's Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 221.

[45] Walpole's Works, 1798, i. 8-9.

[46] He gave this up at first, but afterwards, when his affairs became involved, reclaimed it (Cunningham's Corr., i. 126 n.).

[47] Patapan's portrait was painted by John Wootton, who illustrated Gay's Fables in 1727 with Kent. It hung in Walpole's bedroom at Strawberry, and now (1892) belongs to Lord Lifford. In 1743 Walpole wrote a Fable in imitation of La Fontaine, to which he gave the title of Patapan; or, the Little White Dog. It was never printed.

[48] Walpole to Chute, 20 August, 1743. Mr. John Chute was a friend whom Walpole had made at Florence, and with whom, as already stated in Chapter II., Gray had travelled when they parted company. Until, by the death of a brother, he succeeded to the estate called The Vyne, in Hampshire, he lived principally abroad. His portrait by MÜntz, after Pompeio Battoni, hung over the door in Walpole's bedchamber at Strawberry Hill. An exhaustive History of The Vyne was published in 1888 by the late Mr. Chaloner W. Chute, at that time its possessor.

[49] Mr. Vertue the engraver made a very ingenious conjecture on this story; he supposes that Apelles did not draw a straight line, but the outline of a human figure, which not being correct, Protogenes drew a more correct figure within his; but that still not being perfect, Apelles drew a smaller and exactly proportioned one within both the former.—Walpole's note.

[50] Walpole's Works, 1798, ii. 229-30. The final quotation is from Martial.

[51] Ranby wrote a Narrative of the last Illness of the Earl of Orford, 1745, which provoked much controversy.

[52] Walpole to Mann, 15 April, 1745.

[53] Walpole to Mann, 26 May, 1742.

[54] According to Pinkerton, another anecdote connects Mrs. Bracegirdle with the Walpoles. 'Mr. Shorter, my mother's father [he makes Horace say], was walking down Norfolk Street in the Strand, to his house there, just before poor Mountfort the player was killed in that street, by assassins hired by Lord Mohun. This nobleman, lying in wait for his prey, came up and embraced Mr. Shorter by mistake, saying, 'Dear Mountfort!' It was fortunate that he was instantly undeceived, for Mr. Shorter had hardly reached his house before the murder took place' (Walpoliana, ii. 96). Mountfort, it will be remembered, owed his death to Mrs. Bracegirdle's liking for him.

[55] Walpole to Mann, 22 April, 1742.

[56] Walpole to Mann, 26 May, 1742.

[57] Walpole to Conway, 29 June, 1744.

[58] Walpole to Montagu, 17 Sept., 1745.

[59] Walpole later revised this verdict: 'General Cope was tried afterwards for his behaviour in this action, and it appeared very clearly that the Ministry, his inferior officers, and his troops, were greatly to blame; and that he did all he could, so ill-directed, so ill-supplied, and so ill-obeyed.'

[60] Walpole to Mann, 27 Sept., 1745.

[61] Walpole to Mann, 25 April, 1746.

[62] Walpole to Mann, 1 Aug., 1746.

[63] Walpole to Mann, 21 August, 1746. Gray, who was at the trial, also mentions Balmerino, not so enthusiastically. 'He is an old soldier-like man, of a vulgar manner and aspect, speaks the broadest Scotch, and shews an intrepidity, that some ascribe to real courage, and some to brandy' (Letter to Wharton, August). 'Old Balmerino, when he had read his paper to the people, pulled off his spectacles, spit upon his handkerchief, and wiped them clean for the use of his posterity; and that is the last page of his history' (Letter to Wharton, 11 Sept., 1746).

[64] Walpole's Works, 1798, i. 25-7.

[65] Englefield, i. e. Englefield Green, in Berkshire, on the summit of Cooper's Hill, near Windsor, where Edward Walpole lived.

[66] Robert Walpole, second Earl of Orford, Horace Walpole's eldest brother, died in March, 1751.

[67] Walpole's Works 1798, i. 21-2.

[68] Writing to Walpole in March, 1751, Gray says: 'In the last volume [of Peregrine Pickle] is a character of Mr. Lyttleton [sic], under the name of "Gosling Scrag," and a parody of part of his Monody, under the notion of a Pastoral on the death of his grandmother' (Works by Gosse, 1884, ii. 214).

[69] Walpole to Mann 15 Sept., 1746.

[70] She was the sister of Pope's Mrs. Bertrand, an equally fashionable toy-woman at Bath. Her shop, according to an advertisement in the Daily Journal for May 24, 1733, was then 'against Suffolk Street, Charing Cross.' It is mentioned in Fielding's Amelia. When, in Bk. viii., ch. i., Mr. Bondum the bailiff contrives to capture Captain Booth, it is by a false report that his Lady has been 'taken violently ill, and carried into Mrs. Chenevix's Toy-shop.' It is also mentioned in the Hon. Mrs. Osborne's Letters, 1891, p. 73; and again by Walpole himself in the World for 19 Dec., 1754.

[71] This is slightly varied from ll. 29, 30, of Pope's fifth Moral Essay ('To Mr. Addison: Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals').

[72] Walpole to Conway, 8 June, 1747.

[73] In the Tribune (see chap. viii.) was a drawing by Mr. Bentley, representing two lovers in a church looking at the tombs of Abelard and Eloisa, and illustrating Pope's lines:—

[74] The chiaroscuros of John Baptist Jackson, published at Venice in 1742. At this date he had returned to England, and was working in a paper-hanging manufactory at Battersea.

[75] Lord Radnor's fantastic house on the river, which Walpole nicknamed Mabland, came between Strawberry Hill and Pope's Villa, and is a conspicuous object in old views of Twickenham, notably in that, dated 1757, by MÜntz, a Jersey artist for some time domiciled at Strawberry Hill (see p. 138). It was in the garden of Radnor House that Pope first met Warburton.

[76] Walpole to Mann, 12 June, 1753.

[77] The version here followed is that given in A Description of the Villa, etc., 1774, pp. 117-19.

[78] World, 19 Dec., 1754 (Works, 1798, i. 177-8).

[79] Another instance of Maclean's momentary vogue is given by Cunningham. He is hitched into Gray's Long Story, which was written at the very time he was taken:

This couplet has been recently explained by Gray's latest editor, Dr. Bradshaw, to be a reference to Maclean's only observation when called to receive sentence. 'My Lord [he said], I cannot speak.'

[80] He was popularly known as 'Peter Shamble.' He afterwards became Earl of Harrington.

[81] Elizabeth Neale, here referred to, was a well-known personage in St. James's Street, where, for many years, she kept a fruit shop. From Lady Mary Coke's Letters and Journals, 1889, vol. ii., p. 427, Betty appears to have assiduously attended the debates in the House of Commons being characterized as a 'violent Politician, & always in the opposition.' In Mason's Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight, she is spoken of as 'Patriot Betty.' She survived until 1797, when her death, at the age of 67, is recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine.

[82] Walpole to Montagu, 23 June, 1750.

[83] Nevertheless, when this 'Roi en Exil' shortly afterwards died, Walpole erected a tablet in St. Anne's Churchyard, Soho, to his memory, with the following inscription:—

'Near this place is interred
Theodore, King of Corsica;
Who died in this parish, Dec. 11, 1756,
Immediately after leaving the King's-Bench-Prison,
By the benefit of the Act of Insolvency;
In consequence of which he registered
His Kingdom of Corsica
For the use of his Creditors.

Theodore's Great Seal, and 'that very curious piece by which he took the benefit of the Act of Insolvency,' and in which he was only styled Theodore Stephen, Baron de Neuhoff, were among the treasures of the Tribune. (See Chapter VIII.)

[84] A copy of the poems, 'illustrated with the original designs of Mr. Richard Bentley, ... and also with Mr. Gray's original sketch of Stoke House, from which Mr. Bentley made his finished pen drawing,' was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842 to H. G. Bohn for £8 8s.

[85] The verses include this magnificent stanza:—

[86] It is copied in Cunningham, vol. iii. p. 475. It was sold for £157 10s. at the Strawberry Hill sale, and passed into the collection of the late Lord Taunton.

[87] See p. 192 n.

[88] It may be observed that when Walpole's letter was published, it was briefly noticed in the Monthly Review, where at this very date Oliver Goldsmith was working as the hind of Griffiths and his wife. It is also notable that the name of Xo Ho's correspondent, Lien Chi, seems almost a foreshadowing of Goldsmith's Lien Chi Altangi. Can it be possible that Walpole supplied Goldsmith with his first idea of the Citizen of the World?

[89] A four-wheeled carriage with a movable hood. Cf. Prior's Down Hall: 'Then answer'd Squire Morley: Pray get a calash, That in summer may burn, and in winter may splash,' etc.

[90] Works, 1798, i. 208.

[91] These, though printed in 1758, were not circulated until 1759. See, at end, 'Appendix of Books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press,' which contains ample details of all these publications.

[92] Walpole to Zouch, 14 May, 1759.

[93] Walpole to Zouch, 12 January, 1759.

[94] 'Mr. Vertue's Manuscripts, in 28 vols.,' were sold at the Sale of Rare Prints and Illustrated Works from the Strawberry Hill Collection on Tuesday, 21 June, 1842, for £26 10s. Walpole says in the Short Notes that he paid £100. The Vertue MSS. are now in the British Museum, which acquired them from the Dawson Turner collection.

[95] The Anecdotes of Painting was enlarged by the Rev. James Dallaway in 1826-8, and again revised, with additional notes, by Ralph N Wornum in 1839. This last, in three volumes, 8vo is the accepted edition.

[96] She was married to Charles, 3rd Viscount Townshend in 1723, and was the mother of Charles Townshend, the statesman. She died in 1788. There was an enamel of her by Zincke after Vanloo in the Tribune at Strawberry Hill, which is engraved at p 150 of Cunningham's second volume.

[97] Sic. in orig.; but query 'print.'

[98] Works, 1798, vol. iv., pp. 382-3.

[99] See chapter ix.

[100] Cf. chapter vi. of Fielding, by the present writer, in the Men of Letters series, 2nd edition, 1889, pp. 145-7.

[101] Letter to Cole, 9 March, 1765.

[102] It is curious to note in one of his letters at this date a mot which may be compared with the famous 'Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.' Walpole is more sardonic. 'Paris,' he says, ' ... like the description of the grave, is the way of all flesh' (Walpole to Mann, 30 June, 1763).

[103] Gilly Williams to Selwyn, 19 March, 1765.

[104] Lady Mary Coke, to whom the second edition of the Gothic romance was dedicated, was the youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich. At this date, she was a widow,—Lord Coke having died in 1753. Two volumes of her Letters and Journals, with an excellent introduction by Lady Louisa Stuart, were printed privately at Edinburgh in 1889 from MSS. in the possession of the Earl of Home. A third volume, which includes a number of epistles addressed to her by Walpole, found among the papers of the late Mr. Drummond Moray of Abercairny, was issued in 1892. Walpole's tone in these documents is one of fantastic adoration; but the pair ultimately (and inevitably) quarrelled. There is a well-known mezzotint of Lady Mary by McArdell after Allan Ramsay, in which she appears in white satin, holding a tall theorbo. The original painting is at Mount Stuart, and belongs to Lord Bute.

[105] Walpole to Montagu, 22 September, 1765.

[106] Walpole to Chute, 3 October, 1765.

[107] Madame de Genlis mentions this fearsome monster in her MÉmoires: 'Tout le monde a entendu parler de la hyÈne de GÉvaudan, qui a fait tant de ravages.' The point of Walpole's allusion to Pitt is explained in one of his hitherto unpublished letters to Lady Mary Coke at this date: 'I had the fortune to be treated with the sight of what, next to Mr. Pitt, has occasioned most alarm in France, the Beast of the GÉvaudan' (Letters and Journals, iii. [1892], xvii). In another letter, to Pitt's sister Ann, maid of honour to Queen Caroline, he says: 'It is a very large wolf, to be sure, and they say has twelve teeth more than any of the species, and six less than the Czarina' (Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS. Commission, 13th Rept., App. iii., 1892, i. 147).

[108] Of Mad. de Forcalquier it is related that, entering a theatre during the performance of Gresset's Le MÉchant, just as the line was uttered, 'La faute est aux dieux, qui la firent si belle,' the applause was so great as to interrupt the play. The point of this, in a recent repetition of the anecdote, was a little blunted by the printer's substitution of 'bÊte' for 'belle.'

[109] Louis-Jules-Barbon Mancini-Mazarini, Duc de Nivernais (1716-98), who had visited Twickenham three years earlier, when he was Ambassador to England. He was a man of fine manners, and tastes so literary that his works fill eight volumes. They include a translation of Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening (see appendix at end). In his letters to Miss Ann Pitt at this date, Walpole speaks of the Duke's clever fables, by which he is now best remembered. Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1749 that Nivernais was 'one of the prettiest men he had ever known,' and in 1762 his opinion was unaltered. 'M. de Nivernais est aimÉ, respectÉ, et admirÉ par tout ce qu' il y a d'honnÊtes gens À la cour et À la ville,' he writes to Madame de Monconseil. The Duke's end was worthy of Chesterfield himself, for he spent some of his last hours in composing valedictory verses to his doctor. (See 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' second series, pp. 107-137.)

[110] One of her logogriphes, or enigmas, is as follows:—

The answer is noblesse. Lord Chesterfield thought it so good that he sent it to his godson (Letter 166).

[111] Walpole to Gray, 25 January, 1766.

[112] He was malicious enough to add, 'a pretty round half.' In middle life Mrs. Clive, like her Twickenham neighbour, Mrs. Pritchard, grew excessively stout; and there is a pleasant anecdote that, on one occasion, when the pair were acting together in Cibber's Careless Husband, the audience were regaled by the spectacle of two leading actresses, neither of whom could manage to pick up a letter which, by ill-luck, had been dropped upon the ground.

[113] In a recently printed letter to Miss Ann Pitt, 19 Jan., 1766, Walpole makes reference to the popularity which this jeu d'esprit procured for him. 'Everybody wou'd have a copy [of course he encloses one to his correspondent]; the next thing was, everybody wou'd see the author.... I thought at last I shou'd have a box quilted for me, like Gulliver, be set upon the dressing-table of a maid of honour, and fed with bonbons.... If, contrary to all precedent, I shou'd exist in vogue a week longer, I will send you the first statue that is cast of me in bergamotte or biscuite porcelaine' (Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS. Commision, 13th Rept., App. iii. [1892], i, 153).

[114] Hume's narrative of the affair may be read in A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau: with the Letters that passed between them during their Controversy. As also, the Letters of the Hon. Mr. Walpole, and Mr. D'Alembert, relative to this extraordinary Affair. Translated from the French. London. Printed for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, near Surry-street, in the Strand, MDCCLXVI.

[115] Walpole to Lady Hervey, 2 January, 1766. In a letter to Lady Mary Coke, dated two days later, he says: 'Rousseau set out this morning for England. As He loves to contradict a whole Nation, I suppose he will write for the present opposition.... As he is to live at Fulham, I hope his first quarrel will be with his neighbour the Bishop of London, who is an excellent subject for his ridicule' (Letters and Journals, iii. 1892, xx).

[116] Walpole to Chute, 10 October, 1766.

[117] Lady Mary Coke testifies to the charm of her conversation: 'In the evening I made a visit to Madame du Deffan [sic]. She talks so well that I wish'd to write down everything She said, as I thought I shou'd have liked to have read it afterwards' (Letters and Journals, iii. [1892], 233).

[118] Walpole to Montagu, 7 September, 1769.

[119] Letters of Madame du Deffand, 1810, i. 211 n.

[120] i. e. Soot-water. There were two landscapes in soot-water by Mr. Bentley in the Green Closet at Strawberry.

[121] See chapter ix.

[122] Works, 1798, i. 129.

[123] He says he 'was going to Paris in a day or two.' But his memory must have deceived him, for Chatterton's last letter is dated July 24th, 1769, and, according to Miss Berry, Walpole's visit to Paris lasted from the 18th August to the 5th October, 1769; and this is confirmed by his correspondence.

[124] Works, 1798, iv. 219. In the above summary of the story we have relied by preference on the fairly established facts of the case, which is full of difficulties. The most plausible version of it, as well as the most fair to Walpole, is given in Prof. D. Wilson's Chatterton, 1869.

[125] An example of this is furnished by Miss Seward's Correspondence. 'Do not expect [she writes] that I can learn to esteem that fastidious and unfeeling being, to whose insensibility we owe the extinction of the greatest poetic luminary [Chatterton], if we may judge from the brightness of its dawn, that ever rose in our, or perhaps in any other, hemisphere' (Seward to Hardinge, 21 Nov., 1787).

[126] Works, 1798, iv. 205-45. See also Bibliographical Appendix to this volume.

[127] Henrietta Hobart, Countess Dowager of Suffolk, died in July, 1767. Her portrait by Charles Jervas, with Marble Hill in the background, hung in the Green Bed-chamber in the Round Tower at Strawberry. It once belonged to Pope, who left it to Martha Blount; and it is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. ii. of Cunningham's edition of the Letters.

[128] 'The Duke of Gloucester'—wrote Gilly Williams to Selwyn, as far back as December, 1764—'has professed a passion for the Dowager Waldegrave. He is never from her elbow. This flatters Horry Walpole not a little, though he pretends to dislike it.'

[129] The idea was borrowed from an inscription upon a statue at Milan: 'Non me Praxiteles, sed Marcus finxit Agrati!'

[130] From a passage in a letter of 15 Sept., 1787, to Lady Ossory, it appears that this, though printed, was withheld, on account of certain difficulties caused by the over-weening curiosity of Walpole's 'customers' (as he called them), the visitors to Strawberry. According to the sheet of regulations for visiting the house, it was to be seen between the 1st of May and the 1st of October. Children were not admitted; and only one company of four on one day.

[131] 'It is not much larger than an old lady's flower-knot in Bloomsbury,' said Lady Morgan in 1826.

[132] See p. 6.

[133] See p. 117 n.

[134] It was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1781, and was Bunbury's acknowledgment of the praise given him by Walpole in the 'Advertisement' to the fourth volume of the Anecdotes of Painting, 1 Oct., 1780. A copy of it was shown at the Exhibition of English Humourists in Art, June, 1889.

[135] In a note to Madame du Deffand's Letters, 1810, i. 201, the editor, Miss Berry, thus describes this picture: It was 'a washed drawing of Mad. la Duchesse de Choiseul and Mad. du Deffand, under their assumed characters of grandmother and granddaughter; Mad. de Choiseul giving Mad. du Deffand a doll. The scene the interior of Mad. du Deffand's sitting-room. It was done by M. de Carmontel, an amateur in the art of painting. He was reader to the Prince of CondÉ, and author of several little Theatrical pieces.' It is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. vii. of Walpole's Letters, by Cunningham, 1857-59. Mad. du Deffand's portrait was said to be extremely like; that of the Duchess was not good.

[136] 'It is now the MusÉe Carnavalet, and contains numberless souvenirs of the Revolution, notably a collection of china plates, bearing various dates, designs, and inscriptions applicable to the Reign of Terror' (Century Magazine90, p. 600). A washed drawing of Madame de SÉvignÉ's country house at Les Rochers, 'done on the spot by Mr. Hinchcliffe, son of the Bishop of Peterborough, in 1786,' was afterwards added to this room.

[137] Both these pictures are in existence. The Scott belongs to Lady Freake, and was exhibited in the Pope Loan Museum of 1888.

[138] Both these are engraved in Cunningham's edition of the Letters, the former in vol. iv., p. 465, the latter in vol. ix., p. 529.

[139] This was the Amsterdam edition of 1707, in 2 vols. 12mo., inscribed 'E libris, A. Pope, 1714;' and lower down, 'Finished ye translation in Feb. 1719-20, A. Pope.' It also contained a pencil sketch by the poet of Twickenham Church.

[140] Walpole wrote an epilogue—not a very good one—for Mrs. Clive when she quitted the stage; and in the same year, 1769, the Town and Country Magazine linked their names in its 'TÊte-À-TÊtes' as 'Mrs. Heidelberg' (Clive's part in the Clandestine Marriage) and 'Baron Otranto' (a name under which Chatterton subsequently satirized Walpole in this identical periodical). See Memoirs of a Sad Dog, Pt. 2, July, 1770.

[141] Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole, created Baron Walpole of Wolterton in 1756. He died in 1757. His Memoirs were published by Coxe in 1802.

[142] 'The chief boast of my collection,' he told Pinkerton, 'is the portraits of eminent and remarkable persons, particularly the miniatures and enamels; which, so far as I can discover, are superior to any other collection whatever. The works I possess of Isaac and Peter Oliver are the best extant; and those I bought in Wales for 300 guineas [i.e., the Digby Family, in the Breakfast Room] are as well preserved as when they came from the pencil (Walpoliana, ii. 157).

[143] It is printed in both the Catalogues.

[144] At the sale in 1842, King Henry's dagger was purchased for £54 12s. by Charles Kean the actor, who also became the fortunate possessor, for £21, of Cardinal Wolsey's hat.

[145] Here is his own reference to this, in a letter to Montagu of 14 Oct., 1756: 'The only thing I have done that can compose a paragraph, and which I think you are Whig enough to forgive me, is, that on each side of my bed I have hung Magna Charta, and the Warrant for King Charles's execution, on which I have written Major Charta; as I believe, without the latter, the former by this time would be of very little importance.'

[146] See p. 7 n.

[147] 'Dr Dee's black stone was named in the catalogue of the collection of the Earls of Peterborough, whence it went to Lady Betty Germaine. She gave it to the last Duke of Argyle, and his son, Lord Frederic, to me' (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 12 Jan., 1782)

[148] This was afterwards moved to the Little Cloister at the entrance, where it appears in the later Catalogue. At the sale of 1842 the bowl, with its Gothic pedestal, was purchased by the Earl of Derby for £42.

[149] Not far from the Chapel was 'a large seat in the form of a shell, carved in oak from a design by Mr. Bentley.' It must have been roomy, for in 1759 the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury (the last two, daughter and mother), occupied it together. 'There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in the shell,' says the delighted Abbot of Strawberry. (Walpole to Montagu, 2 June.)

[150] In a note to the obituary notice of Walpole in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1797, p. 260, it is stated that this library was 'formed of all the publications during the reigns of the three Georges, or Mr. W.'s own time.'

[151] This was exhibited at South Kensington in 1867 by Viscount Lifford, and is now (1892) at Austin House, Broadway, Worcester.

[152] Works, 1798, ii. 395-98.

[153] Kendal House now no longer exists.

[154] An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight, 1773.

[155]

Gay's Journey to Exeter.

[156] Gunnersbury House (or Park), a new structure, now belongs to Lord Rothschild.

[157] The Old Pack Horse, somewhat modernized by red-brick additions, still (1892) stands at the corner of Turnham Green. It is mentioned in the London Gazette as far back as 1697. The sign, a common one for posting inns in former days, is on the opposite side of the road.

[158] Hammersmith church was rebuilt in 1882-3.

[159] Sir Baptist Hickes, once a mercer in Cheapside, and afterwards Viscount Campden, erected it circa 1612. At the time to which Mr. Cunningham is supposed to refer, it was a famous ladies' boarding-school, kept by a Mrs. Terry, and patronized by Selwyn and Lady Di. Beauclerk.

[160] The (with all due deference to the writer) quaint and picturesque old church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Kensington High Street, at which Macaulay, in his later days, was a regular attendant, gave way, in 1869, to a larger and more modern edifice by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A.

[161] Old Kensington House, as it was called, has also been pulled down. One of its inmates, long after the days of 'Madam Carwell,' was Elizabeth Inchbald, the author of A Simple Story, who died there in 1821.

[162] Now Lord Listowel's. It stands near the Prince's Gate into Hyde Park.

[163] Restored and remodelled in 1861, and now the Church of the Holy Trinity.

[164] The Hercules Pillars, where Squire Western put up his horses when he came to town, stood just east of Apsley House, 'on the site of what is now the pavement opposite Lord Willoughby's.'

[165] The Duke of Queensberry's house afterwards became 138 and 139 Piccadilly.

[166] This is No. 106,—the present St. James's Club. It was built in 1764 by George, sixth Earl of Coventry, some years after the death of his first wife, the elder Miss Gunning.

[167] Letters, by Cunningham, 1857-9, ix. xx.-xxi.

[168] Kirgate, who will not be again mentioned, fared but ill at his master's decease, receiving no more than a legacy of £100,—a circumstance which Pinkerton darkly attributes to 'his modest merit' having been 'supplanted by intriguing impudence' (Walpoliana, i. xxiv). There is a portrait of him, engraved by William Collard, after Sylvester Harding, the Pall Mall miniature painter, who also wrote in 1797 for Kirgate some verses in which he is made to speak of himself as 'forlorn, neglected, and forgot.' He had an unique collection of the Strawberry Press issues, which was dispersed at his death, in 1810.

[169] It was his good sense rather than his inclination that made him condemn one with whom he had many points of sympathy. Speaking of the quarrel of Johnson and Chesterfield, he says, 'The friendly patronage [i. e. of the earl] was returned with ungrateful rudeness by the proud pedant; and men smiled, without being surprised, at seeing a bear worry his dancing-master.'

[170] 'Jephson's Count of Narbonne has been more admired than any play I remember to have appeared these many years. It is still [Jan., 1782] acted with success to very full houses' (Malone to Charlemont, Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Rept., App., Pt. x., 1891, p. 395). Malone wrote the epilogue.

[171] 'Silly Dr. Goldsmith' he calls him to Cole in April, 1773. 'Goldsmith was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts,' he says again to Mason in October, 1776.

[172] The rules of the so-called Female Coterie in Albemarle Street, together with the names of the members, are given in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1770, pp. 414-5. Besides Walpole and Miss Lloyd, Fox, Conway, Selwyn, the Waldegraves, the Damers, and many other 'persons of quality' belonged to it.

[173] The Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, Lord Ossory's brother. He afterwards became a General, and Secretary at War. At this time he was a captain in the Grenadier Guards. As a littÉrateur he had written The Bath Picture; or, a Slight Sketch of its Beauties; and he was later one of the chief contributors to the Rolliad. Besides being the life-long friend of Fox, he was a highly popular wit and man-of-fashion. Lord Ossory put him above Walpole and Selwyn; and Lady Holland is said to have thought him the most agreeable person she had ever known. He died in 1813.

[174] One of the three beautiful sisters painted by Reynolds,—Elizabeth Laura, afterwards Viscountess Chewton; Charlotte Maria, afterwards Countess of Euston; and Anne Horatia, who married Captain Hugh Conway. 'Sir Joshua Reynolds gets avaricious in his old age. My picture of the young ladies Waldegrave is doubtless very fine and graceful, but it cost me 800 guineas' (Walpoliana, ii. 157).

[175] He was not successful as regards Hogarth, whose widow was sorely and justly wounded by his coarse treatment of Sigismunda, which is said to have been a portrait of herself. The picture is now in the National Gallery.

[176] Miss Hawkins (Anecdotes, etc., 1822, p. 103) did not think highly of these performances: 'Unless the proportions of the human figure are of no importance in drawing it, these 'Beauclerk drawings' can be looked on only with disgust and contempt.' But she praises the gipsies hereafter mentioned (p. 260 n.) as having been copied by Agnes Berry.

[177] See pp. 158, 159.

[178] The exact sum was £40,555. Cipriani and West were the valuers. Most of the family portraits were reserved; but so many of the pictures were presents that it is not easy to estimate the actual profit over their first cost to the original owner.

[179] Walpole to Mann, 4 Aug., 1779.

[180] This, according to Harrison's Memorable Houses, 3rd ed., 1890, p. 62, is Lord Orford's number as given in Boyle's Court Guide for 1796.

[181] According to a note in the selection from Madame du Deffand's Correspondence with Walpole, published in 1810, iii. 44, these letters were at that date extant. But all the subsequent letters were burnt by her at Walpole's earnest desire—those only excepted which she received during the last year of her life, and these, also, were sent back when she died.

[182] Tonton was a snappish little dog belonging to Madame du Deffand, which, when in its mistress's company, must have been extremely objectionable. In January, 1778, the MarÉchale de Luxembourg presented her old friend with Tonton's portrait in wax on a gold snuff-box, together with the last six volumes of Madame du Deffand's favourite, Voltaire, adding the following epigram by the Chevalier de Boufflers:—

At Madame du Deffand's death, both dog and box passed to Walpole, the latter finding an honoured place among the treasures of the Tribune. (See A Description of the Villa, etc., 1774, p. 137, Appendix of Additions.)

[183] The MSS., which included eight hundred of Madame du Deffand's letters, were sold in the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842 for £157 10s.

[184] Walpole, as in the case of Madame du Deffand, had taken the precaution of getting back his letters, and at his friend's death not more than a dozen of them were still in Mann's possession. According to Cunningham (Corr., ix. xv), Mann's letters to Walpole are 'absolutely unreadable.' An attempt to skim the cream of them (such as it is) was made by Dr. Doran in two volumes entitled 'Mann' and Manners at the Court of Florence, 1740-1786, Bentley, 1876.

[185] Mrs. Clive is buried at Twickenham, where a mural slab was erected to her in the parish church by her protÉgÉe and successor, Miss Jane Pope, the clever actress who shed tears over the Beauclerk drawings (see p. 244). Her portrait by Davison, which is engraved as the frontispiece to Cunningham's fourth volume, hung in the Round Bedchamber at Strawberry. It was given to Walpole by her brother, James Raftor.

[186] 'Whom she [Madame de Genlis] has educated to be very like herself in the face,' says Walpole, referring to a then current scandal. At this date, however, it is but just to add that the recent investigations of Mr. J. G. Alger, as embodied in vol. xix. of the Dictionary of National Biography, tend to show that it is by no means certain that Pamela was the daughter of the accomplished lady whom Philippe EgalitÉ entrusted with the education of his sons.

[187] He is not explicit as to his creed. 'Atheism I dislike,' he said to Pinkerton. 'It is gloomy, uncomfortable; and, in my eye, unnatural and irrational. It certainly requires more credulity to believe that there is no God, than to believe that there is' (Walpoliana, i. 75-6). But Pinkerton must be taken with caution. (Cf. Quarterly Review, 1843, lxxii. 551.)

[188] In 1786 she had dedicated to him her Florio, A Tale, etc., with a highly complimentary Preface, in which she says: 'I should be unjust to your very engaging and well-bred turn of wit, if I did not declare that, among all the lively and brilliant things I have heard from you, I do not remember ever to have heard an unkind or an ungenerous one.'

[189] This (we are told) was Lady Di.'s chef-d'oeuvre. It was a water-colour drawing representing 'Gipsies telling a country-maiden her fortune at the entrance of a beech-wood,' and hung in the Red Bedchamber at Strawberry.

[190] Walpole to Lady Ossory, 11 Oct., 1788.

[191] Walpole to Pinkerton, 26 Dec., 1791.

[192] Mary Berry died 20th Nov., 1852; Agnes Berry, Jan., 1852. They were buried in one grave in Petersham churchyard, 'amidst scenes'—says Lord Carlisle's inscription—'which in life they had frequented & loved.' H. F. Chorley (Autobiography, etc., 1873, vol. i., p. 276) describes them as 'more like one's notion of ancient Frenchwomen than anything I have ever seen; rouged, with the remains of some beauty, managing large fans like the Flirtillas, etc., etc., of Ranelagh.' See also Extracts from Miss Berry's Journals and Correspondence, 1783-1852, edited by Lady Theresa Lewis, 1865.

[193] Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ch. v.

[194] This is engraved in vol. ix. of Cunningham, facing the Index; while the MÜntz, above referred to, forms the frontispiece to vol. viii.

[195] The writer of the obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1797, says that Dance's portrait is 'the only faithful representation of him [Walpole].' Against this must be set the fact that it was not selected by the editor of his works; and, besides being in profile, it is certainly far less pleasing than the Lawrence.

[196] It must, by his own account, have been peculiar. 'Walking is not one of my excellences,' he writes. 'In my best days Mr. Winnington said I tripped like a peewit; and if I do not flatter myself, my march at present is more like a dabchick's' (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 18 August, 1775).

[197] Anecdotes, etc., by L. M. Hawkins, 1822, pp. 105-6.

[198] 'I have lately become acquainted with your friend Mr. Walpole, and am quite charmed with him.'—writes Malone to Lord Charlemont in 1782. 'There is an unaffected benignity and good nature in his manner that is, I think, irresistibly engaging' (Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Rept., App., Pt. x., 1891, p. 395).

[199] Tonton. See note to p. 250.

[200] Another passage in the Walpoliana (i. 71-2) explains this: 'Regularly after breakfast, in the summer season, at least, Mr. Walpole used to mix bread and milk in a large bason, and throw it out at the window of the sitting-room, for the squirrels; who, soon after, came down from the high trees, to enjoy their allowance.'

[201] 'I cannot go up or down stairs without being led by a servant. It is tempus abire for me: lusi satis' (Walpole to Pinkerton, 15 May, 1794).

[202] 'I have persisted'—he tells Gray from Paris in January, 1766—'through this Siberian winter in not adding a grain to my clothes and in going open-breasted without an under waistcoat.'

[203] He was probably thinking of Spectator, No. 228: 'The Indian answered very well to an European, who asked him how he could go naked: I am all Face.' Lord Chesterfield wished his little godson to have the same advantage. 'I am very willing that he should be all face,' he says in a letter to Arthur Stanhope of 19th October, 1762.

[204] Walpoliana, i. xi-xiv.

[205] See Mr. Robins's Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill, etc. (1842), 4to. It is compiled in his well-known grandiloquent manner; but includes an account of the Castle by Harrison Ainsworth, together with many interesting details. It gave rise to a humorous squib by Crofton Croker, entitled Gooseberry Hall, with 'Puffatory Remarks,' and cuts.

[206] Walpole to Montagu, 12 March, 1768.

[207] The full titles of these memoirs are Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of King George II. Edited by Lord Holland. 2 vols. 4to., 1822; and Memoirs of the Reign of King George III. Edited, with Notes, by Sir Denis Le Marchant, Bart. 4 vols. 8vo., 1845. Both were reviewed, more suo, by Mr. Croker in the Quarterly, with the main intention of proving that all Walpole's pictures of his contemporaries were coloured and distorted by successive disappointments arising out of his solicitude concerning the patent places from which he derived his income,—in other words (Mr. Croker's words!), that 'the whole is "a copious polyglot of spleen."' Such an investigation was in the favourite line of the critic, and might be expected to result in a formidable indictment. But the best judges hold it to have been exaggerated, and to-day the method of Mr Croker is more or less discredited. Indeed, it is an instance of those quaint revenges of the whirligig of Time, that some of his utterances are really more applicable to himself than to Walpole. 'His [Walpole's] natural inclination [says Croker] was to grope an obscure way through mazes and souterrains rather than walk the high road by daylight. He is never satisfied with the plain and obvious cause of any effect, and is for ever striving after some tortuous solution.' This is precisely what unkind modern critics affirm of the Rt. Honourable John Wilson Croker.

[208] Idler, No. lxxvii. (6 Oct., 1759).

[209] See Appendix, p. 320. To the advocates of the rival school Walpole's utterance, perhaps inevitably, appears in a less favourable light. 'Horace Walpole published an Essay on Modern Gardening in 1785, in which he repeated what other writers had said on the subject. This was at once translated, and had a great circulation on the Continent. The jardin À l'Anglaise became the rage; many beautiful old gardens were destroyed in France and elsewhere; and Scotch and English gardeners were in demand all over Europe to renovate gardens in the English manner. It is not an exhilarating thought that in the one instance in which English taste in a matter of design has taken hold on the Continent, it has done so with such disastrous results' (The Formal Garden in England, 2nd edn., 1892, p. 86).