Borne Unpublished Letters of Horace Walpole. Edited by Sir Spencer
Walpole. (Longmans and Co. 4s. 6d. net.)—These thirty letters were addressed between the years 1766 and 1792—Horace Walpole died in 1797—to Thomas Walpole, a cousin, and another Thomas, son of the first, whose grandson Sir Spencer Walpole is. There are interesting allusions to current events, the persons and the politics of the time, Horace always showing the temper of mind which made him bang up in his study a facsimile of the death-warrant of Charles I. with the inscription Major Charla. Here is a specimen : "Country gentlemen wou'd like Despotism, provided they c,ou'd be assured of a low land-tax, a good price for Corn and the Game Act." The spelling throughout is curious. Perhaps the most noteworthy letters of the whole are those that relate to Madame duDeffand, her death, and her legacy of her papers, a very troublesome bequest as it turned out.
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