LETTER ATTRIBUTED TO SIR R. WALPOLE.
There are many reasons, drawn from style and other internal evidence, which induce P.C.S.S. to entertain strong doubts as to the authenticity of the letter attributed to Sir Robert Walpole (and reprinted from Bankes) in No. 19. Among others it seems very unlikely that a prime minister, confidentially addressing his sovereign (and that sovereign George II.!) on a matter of the greatest import, would indulge in a poetical quotation. And it is remarkable that neither the quotation in question, not any thing at all resembling it, in thought or expression, is to be found in any part of Fenton's printed works. P.C.S.S. has carefully looked them over, in the editions of London, 1717, and of 1810 (Chalmer's Collection, vol. x.), and he cannot discover a trace of it. He had at first imagined that it might be successfully sought for in Fenton's admirable Epistle to William Lamborde (the Kentish antiquary), where there is a remarkably fine passage respecting flattery and its influences; but nothing at all like the quotation cited in the letter is to be found in that poem, which (par parenthèse) seems to have met with much more neglect than it deserves.
P.C.S.S. would further notice the great improbability that Walpole would committed himself in writing, even to his royal master, by such a display of perilous frankness, in treating of the private character and principles of his great rival. He must have been aware that the letter would, most probably, at the decease of the king (then advanced in life) have been found among his majesty's papers, and, with them, have passed into the hands of his successor, by whom it would undoubtedly have been communicated to the very individual with whom it so hardly dealt.
P.C.S.S.