CHAPTER III.
Gains of the Grand Tour.—'Epistle to Ashton.'—Resignation of Sir Robert Walpole, who becomes Earl of Orford.—Collapse of the Secret Committee.—Life at Houghton.—The Picture Gallery.—'A Sermon on Painting.'—Lord Orford as Moses.—The 'Ædes Walpolianæ.'—Prior's 'Protogenes and Apelles.'—Minor Literature.—Lord Orford's Decline and Death; his Panegyric.—Horace Walpole's Means.
Although, during his stay in Italy, Walpole had neglected to accumulate the store of erudition which his friend Gray had been so industriously hiving for home consumption, he can scarcely be said to have learned nothing, especially at an age when much is learned unconsciously. His epistolary style, which, with its peculiar graces and pseudo-graces, had been already formed before he left England, had now acquired a fresh vivacity from his increased familiarity with the French and Italian languages; and he had carried on, however discursively, something more than a mere flirtation with antiquities. Dr. Conyers Middleton, whose once famous Life of Cicero was published early in 1741, and who was himself an antiquary of distinction, thought highly of Walpole's attainments in this way,[42] and indeed more than one passage in a poem written by Walpole to Ashton at this time could scarcely have been penned by any one not fairly familiar with (for example) the science of those 'medals' upon which Mr. Joseph Addison had discoursed so learnedly after his Italian tour:—
'What scanty precepts! studies how confin'd!
Too mean to fill your comprehensive mind;
Unsatisfy'd with knowing when or where
Some Roman bigot rais'd a fane to Fear;
On what green medal Virtue stands express'd,
How Concord's pictur'd, Liberty how dress'd;