Lord Dover has justly and forcibly remarked, "that what did the most honour both to the head and the' heart of Horace Walpole, was the friendship which he bore to Marshal Conway; a man who, according to all the accounts of him that have come down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a decree of affection." (6) He then quotes the character given of him by the editor of Lord Orford's works in 1798. This character of Marshal Conway was a portrait drawn from the life, and, as it proceeded from the same pen which now traces these lines, has some right to be inserted here. "It is only those who have had the opportunity of penetrating into the most secret motives of his public conduct, and into the inmost recesses of his private life, who can do real justice to the unsullied purity of his character;-who saw and knew him in the evening of his days, retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and of a statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private -life; happy in the resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by pensions or places-undistinguished by titles or ribbons-unsophisticated by public life, and unwearied by retirement."
To this man, Lord Orford's attachment, from their boyish days at Eton school to the death of Marshal Conway in 1795, is already a circumstance of sufficiently rare occurrence among men of the world. Could such a man, of whom the foregoing lines are an unvarnished sketch-of whose character, simplicity was one of the distinguished ornaments-could such a man have endured the intimacy of such an individual as the reviewer describes Lord Orford to have been? Could an intercourse of uninterrupted friendship and undiminished confidence have existed between them during a period of nearly sixty years, undisturbed by the business and bustle of middle life, so apt to cool, and often to terminate, youthful friendships? Could such an intercourse ever have existed, with the supposed selfish indifference, and artificial coldness and conceit of Lord Orford's character?
The last correspondence included in the present publication will, it is presumed, furnish no less convincing proof, that the warmth of his feelings, and his capacity for sincere affection, continued unenfeebled by age. It is with this view, and this alone, that the correspondence alluded to is now, for the first time, given to the public. It can add nothing to the already established epistolary fame of Lord Orford, and the public can be as little interested in his sentiments for the two individuals addressed. But, in forming a just estimate of his character, the reader will hardly fail to observe that those sentiments were entertained at a time of life when, for the most part, the heart is too little capable of expansion to open to new attachments. The whole tone of these letters must prove the unimpaired warmth of his feelings, and form a striking contrast to the cold harshness of which he has been accused, in his intercourse with Madame du Deffand, at an earlier period of his life. This harshness, as was noticed by the editor of Madame du Deffand's letters, in the preface to that publication, proceeded solely from a dread of ridicule, which formed a principal feature of Mr. Walpole's character, and which, carried, as in his case, to excess, must be called a principal weakness. "This accounts for the ungracious language in which he so often replies to the importunities of her anxious affection; a language so foreign to his heart, and so contrary to his own habits in friendship." (7)
Is this, then, the man who is supposed to be "the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious of mortals? -his mind a bundle of inconsistent whims and affectations-his features covered with mask within mask, which, when the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the real man."-"Affectation is the essence of the man. It pervades all his thoughts and all his expressions. If it were taken away, nothing would be left." (8)
He affected nothing; he played no part; he was what he appeared to be. Aware that he was ill qualified for politics, for public life, for parliamentary business, or indeed for business of any sort, the whole tenor of his life was consistent with this opinion of himself. Had he attempted to effect what belongs only to characters of another stamp -had he endeavoured to take a lead in the House of Commons-had he sought for place, dignity, or office-had he aimed at intrigue, or attempted to be a tool for others-then, indeed, he might have deserved the appellation of artificial, eccentric, and capricious.
>From the retreat of his father, which happened the year after he entered parliament, the only real interest he took in politics was when their events happened immediately to concern the objects of his private friendships. He occupied himself with what really amused him. If he had affected any thing, it would certainly not have been a taste for the trifling occupations with which he is reproached. Of no person can it be less truly said, that "affectation was the essence of the man." What man, or even what woman, ever affected to be the frivolous being he is described? When his critic says, that he had "the soul of a gentleman-usher," he was little aware that he only repeated what Lord Orford often said of himself-that from his knowledge of old ceremonials and etiquettes, he was sure that in a former state of existence, he must have been a gentleman-usher,-about the time of Elizabeth.
In politics, he was what he professed to be, a Whig, in the sense which that denomination bore in his younger days,-never a Republican.
In his old and enfeebled age, the horrors of the first French revolution made him a Tory; while he always lamented, as one of the worst effects of its excesses, that they must necessarily retard to a distant period the progress and establishment of civil liberty. But why are we to believe his contempt for crowned heads should have prevented his writing a memoir of "Royal and Noble Authors?" Their literary labours, when all brought together by himself, would not, it is believed, tend much to raise, or much to alter his opinion of them.
In his letters from Paris, written in the years 1765, 1766, 1767 and 1771, it will be seen, that so far from being infinitely more occupied with "the fashions and gossip of Versailles and Marli than with a great moral revolution which was taking place in his sight," he was truly aware of the state of the public mind, and foresaw all that was coming on.
Of Rousseau he has proved that he knew more, and that he judged him more accurately, than Mr. Hume, and many others who were then duped by his mad pride and disturbed understanding.