BOOKS
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
HORACE WALPOLE when he was an old man, "turned of seventy-one," was persuaded by Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry to put down in writing the stories of his elders and con- temporaries which he had told them so readily in conversation. There won't be any history in them, he announces. But immediately afterwards he is suggesting that the South Sea schemes did much to establish the House of Brunswick on the British Throne, "by diverting the national attention from the game of Faction to the delirium of Stockjobbing." For the most part he writes very amusing gossip of Kings and Queens and courtiers : it was not for nothing that" the first vehement inclination" he ever expressed was to see the King. Mr. Paget Toynbee now prints these Reminiscences of Walpole for the first time in full, and appends a hitherto unpublished notebook of Walpole's Notes of Conversations with Lady Suffolk (Clarendon Press).
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