intrigue, and giving up himself to a quiet life of learned leisure mixed with a little dissipation; and yet that man, pursuing this life for half a century, appears to have come less in contact with the greatest minds of his day than hundreds of his contemporaries of far inferior genius and reputation. With the exception perhaps of General Conway, Walpole has no correspondence with any of the really eminent public men of his time; and the most illustrious of his literary friends, after Gray is gone, are Cole, the dullest of antiquaries, and Hannah More. Warburton, in a letter to Hurd, terms Walpole "an insufferable coxcomb;" and we have no doubt the bold churchman was right. Walpole was utterly destitute of sympathy, perbaps for the higher things of literature, certainly for the higher class of literary men. He had too much talent to be satisfied with the dullness and the vices of the people of fashion with whom he necessarily herded ; but he had not courage enough to meet the more intellectual class upon a footing of equality. For the immediate purpose of this paper, it is of very little consequence what Walpole himself individually thinks of literature and men of letters; but it is of importance to show the relation in which the men of letters stood to the higher classes, and the lofty tone in which one whose passion was evidently the love of literary fame spoke of those to whom literature was a profession, and not an affair of smirking amateurship.

Pope had been dead two or three years when

Horace Walpole bought Strawberry Hill: they were not therefore neighbours. In 1773, Walpole, speaking depreciatingly of his contemporaries, says, Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray;" but he writes not a word to any one of what he had seen of Pope, and the only notice we have (except a party account of the quarrel between Pope and Bolingbroke) is, in 1742, of Cibber's famous pamphlet against Pope, which subsequently raised its author to be the hero of the Dunciad.'

Walpole is evidently rubbing his hands with exultation when he says, "It will notably vex him.” Pope died in 1744. Of the small captains who scrambled for the crowns of the realms of poetry, after the death of this Alexander, there was one who founded a real empire-James Thomson. Walpole says, "I had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee, than Leonidas or The Seasons; as I had rather be put into the round-house for a wrong-headed quarrel, than sup quietly at eight o'clock with my grandmother. There is another of these tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside, who writes Odes in one he has lately published he says, 'Light the tapers, urge the fire.' Had not you rather make gods jostle in the dark, than light the candles for fear they should break their heads?" * Gray, as every one knows, was Walpole's friend from boyhood. The young men quarrelled upon their travels, and after three years were reconciled. Walpole, no doubt, felt a sort of self-important *Horace Walpole to Mann, March 29, 1745.

gratification in the fame of Gray as a poet; yet,
while Gray was alive, Walpole thus described his
conversation: "I agree with you most absolutely
in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst com-
pany in the world. From a melancholy turn, from
living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity,
he never converses easily; all his words are mea-
sured and chosen, and formed into sentences: his
writings are admirable; he himself is not agree-
able."* Yet Walpole was furious when Boswell's
book came out, and Johnson is made to say of
Gray, "Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his
closet, dull everywhere: he was dull in a new way,
and that made many people think him great: he
was a mechanical poet." In 1791 Walpole writes,
"After the Doctor's death, Burke, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and Boswell sent an ambling circular
letter to me, begging subscriptions for a monument
for him-the two last, I think, impertinently, as
they could not but know my opinion, and could
not suppose
I would contribute to a monument for
one who had endeavoured, poor soul! to degrade
my friend's superlatíve poetry. I would not deign
to write an answer, but sent down word by my foot-
man, as I would have done to parish officers with
a brief, that I would not subscribe."+ Walpole,
we have little doubt, considered himself as the
patron of Gray, and Johnson's opinion was an
attack upon his amour-propre. His evident hatred

*Horace Walpole to Montagu, Sept. 3, 1748.
Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, May 26, 1791.

of Johnson probably belonged as much to the order as to the individual. The poor man of genius and learning, who, by his stern resolves and dogged industry, had made himself independent of patronage, was a dangerous example. The immortal letter to Chesterfield on the dedication of the Dictionary was an offence against a very numerous tribe.

It is easy to understand from Walpole's letters, how an author, however eminent, was looked upon in society, except he had some adventitious quality of wealth or birth to recommend him. In 1766 Walpole thus writes to Hume: "You know, in England, we read their works, but seldom or never take any notice of authors. We think them sufficiently paid if their books sell, and, of course, leave them to their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not troubled with their vanity and impertinence. In France they spoil us, but that was no business of mine. I, who am an author, must own this conduct very sensible; for, in truth, we are a most useless tribe." It is difficult to understand whether this passage is meant for insolence to the person to whom it is addressed: for what was Hume but an author? "We read their works"-we, the aristocratic and the fashionable to which class Hume might fancy he belonged, after he had proceeded from his tutorship to a mad lord into the rank of a chargé d'affaires. But then "in France they spoil us;" here the aristocrat is coquetting with the honours of authorship in the face of his brother author. Perhaps

the whole was meant for skilful flattery. Walpole's real estimate of the literary class is found in a letter to Cole, who was too obtuse to take any portion of the affront to himself:-"Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me! He is so dull, that he would only be troublesome; and besides, you know I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning. I laugh at all those things, and write only to laugh at them and divert myself.

Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry Hill, or I would help him to any scraps in my possession that would assist his publication; though he is one of those industrious who are only re-burying the dead: but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is contrary to my system and my humour. I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson, down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray."+

Walpole was too acute not to admire Fielding; yet he evidently delights to lower the man, in the gusto with which he tells the following anecdote :Rigby and Peter Bathurst t'other night carried

66

Horace Walpole to Cole, April 27, 1773.