SOME LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE.* SIR. PAGET TOYNBEE has given
us a Supplement, in two volumes, to the late Mrs. Toynbee's large edition of The Letters of Horace Walpole, which is, and must remain, the standard, both for
the correctness of the text, and for the number of letters included it. The Supplement " contains 258 letters for parts of letters). Of these, 110 are now printed for the first time ; twenty-three
are now first printed in full ; and 125 are reprinted from various sources." Mr. Toynbee's work, in everything he touches, Is always admirable ; and as regards these two volumes we need only congratulate him on the good fortune which has rewarded the patience of his research.
In the second volume there are 126 pages of additions and corrections to Mrs. TOynbee's work. It is a pity these do not include the necessary information about Harry Furnese, which is required, but is not given, in Mrs. Toynbee's notes. Walpole speaks of him and Lord Sandys as " two of the most ridiculous objects" ; and, more contemptuously, as "that old rag of Lord Bath's quota to an administration, the mute Harry Furnese." He died in 1758, and, at the sale of his pictures, some realized good prices. A Katherine Furnese married first Lord Rockingham, and afterwards Lord North.
There are two charming portraits of Walpole as a little boy, reproduced from miniatures in the possession of Mr. Ralph Nevin. We could wish that the still prettier painting of him at the age of ten, which is the frontispiece to Cunningham's edition, had been reproduced for a larger circulation in these volumes.
Of the correspondence now first printed, the early letters to Mann are interesting because they add to our knowledge of Walpole's Italian tour, and give us some information about the movements of the Pretender and his sons. One mentions the rupture with Gray. There is an inimitable begging-letter from Conyers Middleton, which, with Walpole's reply, is a classic example of the relations between client and patron. Middleton sends him some " deeds or charters granted formerly by your ancestors. . . . Parchments are seldom presented to the great, without a petition annexed to them : and since modesty would have restrained me from offering mine in person, I choose to send it by a messenger that cannot blush." The petition, of which this is the magnificent prelude, is that Sir Robert• should be induced to bestow on him, "what he never received or asked before from any minister, some mark of public favour proper to his character and profession." Walpole replies " When I am so happy to succeed in assisting the fortunes of any indifferent person, I am apt to challenge some desert to myself ; but whenever my little interest shall conduce to your emolument, tho' my solicitation may have been stronger, my merits in your service will appear much less, from your own character's being your warmest advocate." Whether the matter went beyond this exchange of complicated and elaborate civilities we do not. know ; but in a later letter Middleton writes that he has " had many effectual proofs of the sincerity of your good wishes towards me, but have always found reason to believe, that those who had power, never had any inclination to do me any real service."
Some letters to Mme. du Deffand have also been discovered, but the list of missing letters, very largely from this correspondence, the bulk of which are known to have been destroyed, amounts to nearly fifty pages. The letters to Dr. Lort supply some further information about the Chatterton affair. In this, if all the facts be weighed without prejudice, Walpole was blameless. An unk-nown person wrote to him for help on the pretext of writings which were manifestly spurious. Walpole wrote a very kind and considerate answer, which is more than the average man would have done in the circumstances. He knew nothing about the writer, or his life, or his difficulties. There was no further correspondence. Walpole can have no responsibility for Chatterton's subsequent proceedings, or for his tragic end. As a matter of fact, Chatterton made a fair living by writing when he came to London, and want of money was not the sole cause of his suicide.
As to the rupture with Gray, two people had been thrown together for several years in the trying circumstances of a journey ; and in the end they got on one another's nerves. The explanation is simple and natural, and no other is required. It could not have been an easy matter to travel with Gray, whose character can scarcely be described as flexible or accommodating. Their renewed and cordial intercourse is a sufficient refutation of the absurd reasons which have been given for their misunderstanding.
Walpole stands in the first rank among British authors, and it is little to our credit that he has not figured in any series of our Men of Letters. Alone among English letter-writers he comes near the perfection of the best French "corre.spondence. As Mme. du Deffand judged him superior in wit to Mme. de Sevigne, we may be allowed to think him not far below that inimitable writer. They have both left us incomparable pictures of the Grand Siicle, and of the eighteenth century, not only enshrining a departed spirit, but preserving a world charged with colour and vitality. Fortune had placed them admirably, so that they could observe the play of life, both in the extent of its effects, and in its secret springs and resources. But it is not sufficient to be placed well. Those very defects which have been urged against Walpole's character are the essential qualities of his art. Letter-writing is the most urbane branch of literature ; and to practise it well one must be a little vain, a little indiscreet ; one must have a touch of malice, a colour of prejudice, a vivacity of temper ; one must be amused, and polite, and sympathetic, and indifferent, all in a breath. O'ne must have a genius for curiosity, the power of judging character and of distinguishing motives from pretexts, of inviting confidences and sharing them. But above and beyond all this is a natural aptitude for friendship, which begins where mere worldly wisdom ends ; and the variety, the number, and the constancy of Walpole's friends are a sufficient refutation of those critics who pretend to see in him nothing but the fop and the amateur. That any of his correspondents should show his letters, he found it difficult to forgive. He had the good sense to know their value, but he was determined that they should not become public property in his own lifetime, and ho took every possible means to prevent it. He has been accused of writing for the public. He wrote for posterity, which is quite another matter. The value of the letters as historical evidence is great ; but in themselves they are greater than any history. He will describe a party to Vauxhall, or the fall of a Ministry, or a victorious battle with an equal care for detail; giving them an equal importance, and thus preserving for us something of the illusion and incoherence of reality. To that
worldly philosophy life is but a brilliant and continuous improvisation, never completely realized, or remembered, or foreseen ; and perhaps, because of this, it achieves a truer representation than history, which, in attaching a particular value to some carefully selected facts, attempts to teach humanity what it will never learn.
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