The Press. — London, England, 1858-04-03 00:00:00

fittratart. The Letters of Horace Walpole, EarZ of Orford. Edited by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. Now First Chronologically Arranged. In Niue Vols. Vol. VIII. London : Bentley. WE have followed successively each of the volumes of this valuable edition of Walpole's letters. In the present one we think that Mr. Peter Cunningham shows himself deficient in annotations of a sort appropriate to the nature of Walpole's text. The letters range between the years 1781 and 1785, a most interesting period in our political history, upon which much light has been thrown by the Grenville Correspondence, and by Lord John Russell's (so-called) "Memoirs of Fox." Walpole was not closely informed on the current history of that particular time. His circle of acquaintance was becoming narrower, his health was begin ning to break, and ho was not on special terms of intimacy with many of the politicians who were then paramount in the Senate. It is surprising, for instance, how few are the re ferences to the name of Edmund Burke, and how extremely limited is the light thrown on Buike's public career by the letters of Walpole. At that time, also, Sheridan was coining into note as a politician, and he was certainly much io society in the clubs of that day, yet Walpole scarcely refers at all to him ; and so also with many other rising celebrities, like Wilberforce, Philip Francis, and others. The degree of authority to be given to Wal pole's statements on political matters is a question of importance In tho earlier por tion of his life, and while he lived much in London, and was able to go about and see things with his own eyes, his opportunities were very good, but these necessarily dimi nished, for the reasons stated above. His strong prejudices, and his whimsicalities, make his judgments at all times on passing events not as reliable as could be wished by an historian; and where the dramstis persona of politics are concerned, it is always well to compare Walpole's assertions with other au thorities, and not to accept them without qualification. Contemporary events were not estimated by Walpole according to their real value : he was too apt to judge of them by the degree of interest he fell in them. The letters of Junius, and all the incidents connected with their mysterious publication, including the " Letter to the King," and the prosecu tion of the publisher, attracted very little of Walpole's curiosity. So, also, in the present volume we see how much less information Walpole had on the events then passing than is usually supposed. He did not understand the position which Lord Shelburne held towards the Court and the Opposition ; and of the secrets not long since revealed to the world about the duplicity of the Earl of Shelburne in relation to the Treaty of Versailles Walpole had no concep tion ; nor does he seem to have known what were the suspicions entertained upon Shel burne. And we must say that the annotator would have done well at this portion of Wal pole's letters to have made frequent references to the " Grenville Papers" and to " Fox's Correspondence." Walpole's remarks on the whole story of the " Fox-North Coalition" are certainly deficient in knowledge ; and page after page of wrong guesses and of shallow inductions are printed here without any warning notes " by the learned editor. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on February 18, 1783, Walpole says : Tn one word, my good friend, Lord North and Mr. Fox united their forces and defeated Lord Shelburne in a pitched battle. The town says, that he deferred treating with either till it was too late; and that he did treat with them when it was too late, even last week, when he was rejected by both. • Walpole, then, knew nothing about Lord Shel burne's secret diplomacy for arranging the Treaty of Versailles, and of the double cor respondence which the noble earl had care fully kept concealed from his Rockingham col leagues. The last two hundred pages of this volume are singularly bare of appropriate notes. THE PRESS, APRIL 3, 185 g. " Could Walpole judge an original genius ?" is another of the questions about the Straw berry-hill gossip to which the answer must be qualified. He rails at Johnson in the follow ing fashion : - - • - But I do not know why he called the booksellers heathens, unless for their worshipping such an uncouth idol as he is : yet he has other motives than lucre,—pre judice, and bigotry, and pride, and presumption , . and arrogance, and pedantry are the hags that brew h is ink, though wages alone supply him with paper. The moral character of Johnson has not been appreciated by Lord Macaulay, and Mr. Car lyle has, perhaps, extravagantly over-estimated it. Burke, and the rest of " the Club," in cluding Sir Joshua Reynolds, fully valued Johnson. How did Walpole estimate Mrs. Siddons ? Here is Walpole's account of her : She is a good figure, handsome enough, though neither nose nor chin according to the Greek standard, beyond which both advance a good deal. Her hair is either red, or she has no objection to its being thought so, and had used red powder. Her voice is clear and good ; but I thought she did not vary its modulations enough, nor ever approach enough to the familiar—but this may come when more habituated to the awe of the audience of the capital. Her action is proper, bat with little variety ; when without motion her arms are not genteel. Thus you see, madam, all my objections are very trifling ; but what I really wanted, but did not find, was originality, which announces genius, and without both which I am never intrinsically pleased. All Mrs. Siddons did, good sense or good in struction might give. I dare to say, that were I one-and twenty I should have thought her marvellous; but alas ! I remember Mrs. Porter and the Dumesnil—and remem• ber every accent of the former in the very same part. Yet this is not entirely prejudice: don't I equally recollect the whole progress of Lord Chatham and Charles Towns bend, and does it hinder my thinking Mr. Fox a prodigy ? —Pray don't send him this paragraph too. This passage might have had a fuller note than the following : He saw her u Isabella in Southerne's tragedy of " The Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery," one of her great parts. Walpole was very young when he saw Mrs. Porter in the same part.—CuNinironix. Mrs. Siddons, it must be recollected, suc ceeded on her second appearance in London, having rather failed in the first attempt. Wal pole must evidently have lost his sense of beauty when he wrote of Mrs. Siddons in such frigid terms. We cannot forget that both Gib bon and Burke were amongst her most ardent applauders. " The tears which Garrick for " merly, and Siddons not long since, drew from " me, I should consider as hypocrisy, if I re " mained unmoved at such spectacles on the " real stage of life," Ito. &c , is a passage that occurs at the close of " The Reflections on the French Revolution." We must not be too hard, however, on Walpole. In our own time, Mrs. Jamieson, usually so appreciative and finely discriminative, has dealt out a scanty measure of applause to the renowned tragic actress whom the French stage has recently lost; and the characterisation of Hogarth by Walpole is a choice specimen of encomiastic criticism on an original genius. Under date of May 29th, 1783, Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann : A Mr. Powell, a tool of Lord Holland, and left by him in the Pay-office, was dismissed last year for a deficiency in his accounts of 70,0001. It is not yet known whence this happened; nor do I know, however ill the appearance, that he was guilty of dishonesty. Still, he had sworn to a false account, and was to be prosecuted fur perjury. Mr. Burke, on succeeding Colonel Barre in the Pay-office, restored this man and another disgraced at the same time,—as Burke says, from commiseration of their dig traded shame. Great censure was passed on that restora• tion. Mr. Burke vehemently defended himself in the house, and was supported ; but the men were given up in two days; and in two days more Powell cut his throat. " A Mr. Powell." If Walpole had been more familiar with town politics, he would scarcely have alluded to Powell in that fashion. The death of Powell, along with antecedent trans• actions, are more mixed up with the personal history of Burke than is commonly supposed. Upon the foregoing passage Mr. P. Cunning ham prints a long note from Wright, referring to some of the generally known particulars of those defalcations. But it is important to recollect that many years previously the whole circle of " the Burkes" were severely vilified in the public journals In the letter of " Pliny junior" addressed to the Public Adver tiser there occurs a statement which we copy literatim, and which is worth consideration : P-11, Lord Holland's man, and by his directions, assisted the brothers and their cousin ( i.e., Edmund, Richard, snd William Burke), and th e res t o f t h e knot of knaves, in their deep-laid schemes to raise the India Stock. That is a history too well known to be entered into. It seems not too much to infer that the " P-11" thus vilified in the Public Advertiser was the identical Powell who committed sui cide in 1783 ; and the restoration of Powell to his place is, under any light, a most curious incident in the official life of Burke. It is singular, also. that Lord Holland was spared by Junius; and though it is certain that Burke was not Junius, yet there are good grounds for believing that Junius was more or less mixed up with Burke's circle. In a letter to the Countess of Ossory (Au gust 19th, 1754), Walpole says of Kingsgate (Lord Holland's seat, near Broadstairs) : The situation is uncommon and cheerful, and the buildings and erections so odd, and so little resembling any one ever saw, that a view might, to those who were never there, be passed for a prospect in some half• civilised island discovered by Captain Cook, and, with leave of the editors, more novel than any in the new porn. pour publication. Jam as little surprised that the place, after the first impression, should have excited a thousand less pleasing reflections—there's room for meditation. The italics of the last remark are in the ori ginal letter. The emphatic sentence has clearly an oblique reference to " meditations " on the profuse expenditure of Lord Holland at Kingsgate, and how he got his enormous fortune There are now (1858) but few traces of Kingsgate in existence, though it was once a great " lion" in Kent, and guile-books with pictures were published on it. Kingsgate was the subject of the scorching satirical verses by Gray. There is much, we suspect, yet to be told about the first Lord Holland's political life. We may quote Walpole's opinion on what was called " The Catholic Question." He writes : Irelatid, as far as my spate intelligence extends, is a little come to its senses. Landed property, though no genius, has discovered that popery, if admitted to a com munity of votes, would be apt to inquire into the old titles of estates; and to remember, that prescription never holds against any Church militant, especially not against the Church of Rome. You know I have ever been averse to toleration of an intolerant religion. I have frequently talked myself .boarse, with many of my best friends, on the possibility of satisfying Irish Catholics without re storing their estates. It was particularly silly to revive the subject in this age, when popery was so rapidly de clining. The world had the felicity to see that fashion passing away—for modes of religion sre but graver fashions; nor will anything but contradiction keep fashion up. Its inconvenience is discovered, if let alone; or, a■ women say of their gowns, it is cut and turned, or variety is sought; and some mantua-maker or priest, that wants business, invents a new mode, which takes the faster the more it inverts its predecessor. The scoffing Voltairian levity of the concluding portion of that passage betrays a shallowness of thought which makes one suspect the writer's power of dealing with serious political sub jects. But it is worth noting that Horace Walpole was an " anti-Romish Whig." In the same letter he writes to Mann, " I " really have nothing to tell you, and I know " nothing"—words which happily describe many of these later letters, which are strik int.tly deficient in inner knowledge of the springs of contemporary politics. The letters to Pinkerton on literary subjects were written at this period of Walpole's life, and some parts of them are amongst the best things that he ever did. His remarks on grace in writing are of high critical value, and are familiarised by their publication in the " Walpoliana." On the whole, we are compelled to say that this volume would have been improved by more corrective notes. History of England,* from the Fall of Trolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By J. A. Froude, M.A. Vols. 111., and IV. London: J. W. Parker and Son. (Second Notice.) THE character of Cardinal Pole, as drawn by Mr. Fronde, is an excellent subject for the further application of his own beautiful meta phor. In the early days of the Reformation, Mr. Froude says, " men knew not whether " night would prevail or day, or which of the " two was most divine—night, with its starry " firmament of saints and ceremonies, or day, " with the single lustre of the Gospel sun. So the character of Reginald Pole assumes two distinct abpects, according to the sympa thies of him who contemplates it In the • In our flret notice of this work, in the sentence com mencing "The yeomanry and peasantry had, we think, real grounds of complaint,' .to., the word " gentry " was accidentally omitted before " yeomanry.", 328