The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 1

by Horace Walpole

January, 1840.

(1) Sketch of the Life, etc.

(2) The coincidence of remarkable names in the two families of Mann and Walpole, would lead one to imagine that there was also some connection of relationship between them-and yet none is to be traced in the pedigree of either family. Sir Robert Walpole had two brothers named Horace and Galfridus-and Sir Horace Mann's next brother was named Galfridus Mann. If such a relationship did exist, it probably came through the Burwells, the family of Sir Robert Walpole's mother.

(3) "Sir Robert Walpole's expression, when he found that Pulteney had consented to be made Earl of Bath."

(4) "Fox was secretary at war."

ADVERTISEMENT.

To the first edition of Lord Orford's works, which was published the year after he died, no memoir of his life was prefixed: his death was too recent, his life and character was too well known, his works too popular, to require it. His political Memoirs, and the collections of his Letters which have been subsequently published, were edited by persons, who, though well qualified for their task in every other respect, have failed in their account of his private life, and their appreciation of his individual character, from the want of a personal acquaintance with their author.

The life contained in Sir Walter Scott's Biographical Sketches of the English Novelists labours under the same disadvantages. He had never seen Lord Orford, nor even lived with such of his intimates and contemporaries in society as survived him.

Lord Dover, who has so admirably edited the first part of his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, knew Lord Orford only by having been carried sometimes, when a boy, by his father Lord Clifden to Strawberry Hill. His editorial labours with these letters were the last occupation of his accomplished mind, and were pursued while his body was fast sinking under the complication of disease, which so soon after deprived Society Of One Of its most distinguished members, the arts of an enlightened patron, and his intimates of an amiable and attaching friend. Of the meagreness and insufficiency of his memoir of Lord Orford's life prefixed to the letters, he was himself aware, and expressed to the author of these pages his inability then to improve it, and his regret that circumstances had deprived him, while it was yet time, of the assistance of those who could have furnished him with better materials. His account of the latter part of Lord Orford's life is deficient in details, and sometimes erroneous as to dates. He appears likewise to have been unacquainted with some of his writings, and the circumstances which led to and accompanied them. In the present publication those deficiencies are supplied from notes, in the hands of the writer, left by Lord Orford, of the dates of the principal events of his own life, and of the writing and publication of all his works. It is only to be regretted that his autobiography is so short, and so entirely confined to dates. In estimating the character of Lord Orford, and in the opinion which he gives of his talents, Lord Dover has evinced much candour and good taste. He praises with discrimination, and draws no unfair inferences from the peculiarities of a character with which he was not personally acquainted.

It is by the Review of the Letters to Sir Horace Mann, that the severest condemnation has been passed and the most unjust impressions given, not only of the genius and talents, but of the heart and character, of Lord Orford. The mistaken opinions of the eloquent and accomplished author (5) of that review are to be traced chiefly to the same causes which defeated the intentions of the two first biographers. In his case, these causes were increased, not only by no acquaintance with his subject, but by still farther removal from the fashions, the social habits, the little minute details, of the age to which Horace Walpole belongs,-an age so essentially different from the business, the movement, the important struggles, of that which claims the critic as one of its most distinguished ornaments. A conviction that these reasons led to his having drawn up, from the supposed evidence of Walpole's works alone, a character of their author so entirely and offensively unlike the original, has forced the pen into the feeble and failing hand of the writer of these pages,-has imposed the pious duty of attempting to rescue, by incontrovertible facts, acquired in long intimacy, the memory of an old and beloved friend, from the giant grasp of an author and a critic from whose judgment, when deliberately formed, few can hope to appeal with success. The candour, the good-nature of this critic,-the inexhaustible stores of his literary acquirements, which place him in the first rank of those most distinguished for historical knowledge and critical acumen,-will allow him, I feel sure, to forgive this appeal from his hasty and general opinion, to the judgment of his better informed mind, on the peculiarities of' a character often remarkably dissimilar from that of his works.