He, however, was not the first among the moderns to achieve a reputation by his correspondence. In the generation before his birth, a French lady, Madame de Sévigné, had, with an affectionate industry, found her chief occupation and pleasure in keeping her daughters in the provinces fully acquainted with every event which interested or entertained Louis XIV. and his obsequious Court; and in the first years of the eighteenth century a noble English lady, whom we have already mentioned, did in like manner devote no small portion of her time to recording, for the amusement and information of her daughter, her sister, and her other friends at home, the various scenes and occurrences that came under her own notice in the foreign countries in which for many years her lot was cast, as the wife of an ambassador. In liveliness of style, Lady Mary Montague is little if at all inferior to her French prototype; while, since she was endowed with far more brilliant talents, and, from her foreign travels, had a wider range of observation, her letters have a far greater interest than could attach to those of a writer, however accomplished and sagacious, whose world was Paris, with bounds scarcely extending beyond Versailles on one side, and Compiègne on the other. To these fair and lively ladies Walpole was now to succeed as a third candidate for epistolary fame; though, with his habit of underrating his own talents, he never aspired to equal the gay Frenchwoman; (the English lady's correspondence was as yet unknown). There is evident sincerity in his reproof of one of his correspondents who had expressed a most flattering opinion: "You say such extravagant things of my letters, which are nothing but gossiping gazettes, that I cannot bear it; you have undone yourself with me, for you compare them to Madame de Sévigné's. Absolute treason! Do you know there is scarcely a book in the world I love so much as her letters?"
Yet critics who should place him on an equality with her would not be without plausible grounds for their judgement. Many circumstances contributed to qualify him in a very special degree for the task which, looking at his letters in that light, he may be said to have undertaken. His birth, as the son of a great minister; his comparative opulence; even the indolent insignificance of his elder brothers, which caused him to be looked upon as his father's representative, and as such to be consulted by those who considered themselves as the heirs of his policy, while the leader of that party in the House of Commons, General Conway, was his cousin, and the man for whom he ever felt the strongest personal attachment,—were all advantages which fell to the lot of but few. And to these may be added the variety of his tastes, as attested by the variety of his published works. He was a man who observed everything, who took an interest in everything. His correspondents, too, were so various and different as to ensure a variety in his letters. Some were politicians, ministers at home, or envoys abroad; some were female leaders of fashion, planning balls and masquerades, summoning him to join an expedition to Ranelagh or Vauxhall; others were scholars, poets, or critics, inviting comments on Gray's poems, on Robertson's style, on Gibbon's boundless learning; or on the impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton; others, again, were antiquarians, to whom the helmet of Francis, or a pouncet-box of the fair Diana, were objects of far greater interest than the intrigues of a Secretary of State, or the expedients of a Chancellor of the Exchequer; and all such subjects are discussed by him with evidently equal willingness, equal clearness, and liveliness.
It would not be fair to regard as a deduction from the value of those letters which bear on the politics of the day the necessity of confessing that they are not devoid of partiality—that they are coloured with his own views, both of measures and persons. Not only were political prejudices forced upon him by the peculiarities of his position, but it may be doubted whether any one ever has written, or can write, of transactions of national importance which are passing under his own eyes, as it were, with absolute impartiality. It may even be a question whether, if any one did so, it would not detract from his own character, at least as much as it might add to the value of his writings. In one of his letters, Byron enumerates among the merits of Mitford's "History of Greece," "wrath and partiality," explaining that such ingredients make a man write "in earnest." And, in Walpole's case, the dislike which he naturally felt towards those who had overthrown his father's administration by what, at a later day, they themselves admitted to have been a factious and blamable opposition, was sharpened by his friendship for his cousin Conway. At the same time we may remark in passing that his opinions and prejudices were not so invincible as to blind him to real genius and eminent public services; and the admirers of Lord Chatham may fairly draw an argument in favour of his policy from Walpole's admission of its value in raising the spirit of the people; an admission which, it may be supposed, it must have gone against his grain to make in favour of a follower of Pulteney.
But from his letters on other topics, on literature and art, no such deduction has to be made. His judgement was generally sound and discriminating. He could appreciate the vast learning and stately grandiloquence of Gibbon, and the widely different style of Robertson. Nor is it greatly to his discredit that his disgust at what he considers Hume's needless parade of scepticism and infidelity, which did honour to his heart, blinded him in a great degree to the historian's unsurpassed acuteness and insight, and (to borrow the eulogy of Gibbon) "the careless inimitable felicities" of his narrative. He was among the first to recognize the peculiar genius of Crabbe, and to detect the impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton, while doing full justice to "the astonishing prematurity" of the latter's genius. And in matters of art, so independent as well as correct was his taste, that he not only, in one instance, ventured to differ from Reynolds, but also proved to be right in his opinion that a work extolled by Sir Joshua, was but a copy, and a poor one.
On his qualifications to be a painter of the way of life, habits, and manners (quorum pars magna fuit) of the higher classes in his day, it would be superfluous to dwell. Scott, who was by no means a warm admirer of his character, does not hesitate to pronounce him "certainly the best letter-writer in the English language;" and the great poet who, next to Scott, holds the highest place in the literary history of the last two centuries, adds his testimony not only to the excellence of his letters, but also to his general ability as that of a high order. "It is the fashion to underrate Horace Walpole, firstly, because he was a nobleman, 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 the last tragedy in our language; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living writer, be he who he may."[1]
[Footnote 1: Byron, Preface to "Marino Faliere." But in the last sentence the poet certainly exaggerated his admiration for Walpole; since it is sufficiently notorious from his own letters, and from more than one passage in his works, as where he ranks Scott as second to Shakespeare alone, that he deservedly admired him more than all their contemporaries put together.]
And it seems not unnatural to entertain a hope that a selection from a correspondence which extorted such an eulogy from men whose own letters form no small part of the attraction of Lockhart's and Moore's biographies, will be acceptable to many who, while lacking courage, or perhaps leisure, to grapple with publications in many volumes, may welcome the opportunity thus here afforded them of forming an acquaintance, however partial, with works which, in their entire body, are deservedly reckoned among the masterpieces of our literature.[1]
[Footnote 1: It may be proper to point out that, in some few instances, a letter is not given in its entirety; but, as in familiar correspondence, it must constantly happen that, while the incidents mentioned in one portion of a letter are full of interest, of others—such as marriages, deaths, &c.—the importance is of the most temporary and transitory character. It may be hoped that the liberty taken of leaving out such portions will be regarded as, if not commendable, at the least excusable.]