The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, FEBRUARY 27,1858.

the rest, this is a good library book. There
are a few new letters, and a note or two from
the MSS. of Croker, who was a link between
Walpole's age and our own.
In our general views about the character
and genius of Walpole, we take up an inter-
mediate position, somewhere between Lord
Macaulay and Miss Berry. Macaulay's esti.
mate of him is unjust, because ho was on the
look out, more suo, for good striking contrasts ;
and he made his Walpole piquant by making
him an antithesis. On this theory, it was
necessary, among other things, to exaggerate
the trifling character of his interest in
politics ; but follow him in the two volumes
before us, and you find him sincerely wrapped
up in the American war, and with a very keen
sense of the future importance of the American
people. In fact, Walpole had far more real
practical good sense—downright English sa-
gacity—than nine-tenths of those who have
favoured us with so much satire on his relish
for trifles. He was a trifler for fear of' being
thought to have failed in higher things. He
affected to set supreme importance upon
costly baubles because he was afraid that
people would say that the son of Sir Robert
Walpole had failed in Parliament or letters.
He wore a mask; but he knew perfectly well
what his real face was, and would have ad-
mirably turned the laugh against any man
who supposed that he did not know the diffe-
rence between an interest in China and an
interest in the Constitution. His was not the
highest philosophy, but it was a philosophy—
not a mere coxcombry from which any clumsy
hand can draw away the curtain. The weak
parts in his character let in good as well as
evil. The sensitiveness which made him
mentally a friend of ridicule made him also
zealous in the cause of poor Admiral Byng ;
the vanity which kept him alive to observa-
tion also sharpened him to observe : it was
like that of the peacock, which has, yet, a
hundred eyes in its tail.
Suppose we draw on the present volumes of
his letters for some illustrations of our view?
Many are to Mason, a man whom we cannot
bring ourselves to like—not because he was a
bigoted Whig, merely (old Johnson used to
say that he was both " Whig " and "Prig"),
but because there was something coarse and
hard about the man's mind—an element which
prevented us from being surprised when we
found his tragedies unreadable. Well, Mason
is wonderfully taken up by Walpole, who
ranks the " Heroic Epistle " (in which we
never could find above one good line) above
the " Dunciad." Here we have a specimen of
the peculiar mixed character of Walpole. He
loves literature ; he relishes Mason's talents—
hich were, we are bound to say, remarkable;
and yet he cannot but depreciate other men
whom, with his judgment, he surely ought to
have ranked at least as high as Mason. Fancy
his speaking, as in the following paragraphs,
of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith :
My last volume of the " Anecdotes of Painting " has
long been finished, and as a debt shall some time or other
be published, but there I take my leave of ➢fessieurs the
readers. Let Or. Johnson please this age with the fustian
of his style, and the meanness of his spirit; both are good
and great enough for the taste and practice predominant.

Dr. Goldsmith is dead of a purple fever, and I think
might have been saved if he bad continued James's powder,
which had had much effect, but his physician interposed.
His numerous friends neglected him shamefully at last, as
if they had no business with him when it WAS too serious
to laugh. He had lately written epitaphs for them all,
some of which hurt, and perhaps made them not sorry that
his own was the first necessary. The poor soul had some-
times parts, though never common sense.

What is the explanation of this sort of thing
from a man that neither wanted sense nor
feeling? It was a kind of mockery assumed
to disguise his own consciousness that his
literary reputation was not equal to his am-
bition. Not that he was to be deceived by the
success which he really did get, and which in
its way was considerable ; he had high and
good dews of literature, and knew that he had
really failed in deserving or acquiring a fame
of sufficient dignity. So, he took refuge in
his quality, and in bons-mots and painted glass,
and tried to be a trifler. What makes him such
a peculiar study (and we consider him a diffi-
cult character) is, that he did not succeed ;
that even when he gossips, he is a thinker, not
much beluw Rochefoucauld or Pope ; that the

flashes of his wit can be seen by, as well as
being pretty for their own own sake; and that
the very contortions of his agonised egotism
present a kind of dignity as a spectacle—ate
not the flutteriugs of a butterfly, but the
struggles of a nature that with much weakness
has something noble in it. Perhaps the
reader will find a confirmation of the fore-
going in the following passages. We take the
first from a letter to the Hon. W. C. Conway
in MO:—

Whoever reported that I was writing anything, must
have been so totally unfounded, that they either blundered
by guessing without reason, or knew they lied—and that
could not be with any kind Intention ; though saying I am
going to do what I am not going to do, is wretched enough.
Whatever is said of me without trail', anybody is welcome
to believe that pleases.
In fact, though I have scarce a settled purpose about
anything, I think I shall never write any more. I have
written a great deal too much, unless I had written better,
and I know I should now only write still worse. One's
talent, whatever it is, does not improve at near sixty—yet,
if I liked it, I dare to say a good reason would not stop
my inclination ;—but I am grown most indolent in that
respect, and most absolutely indifferent to every purpose of
vanity. Yet without vanity lam become still prouder and
more contemptuous. I have a contempt for my country-
men that makes me despise their approbation. The
applause of slaves and of the foolish mad is below ambi-
tion. Mine is the haughtiness of an ancient Briton, that
cannot write what would please this age, and would not if
he could.

Whatever happens in America, this country is undone.
I desire to be reckoned of the last age, and to he
thought to have lived to be superannuated, preserving my
senses only for myself and fur the few I value. I cannot
aspire to be traduced like Algernon Sydney, and content
myself with sacrificing to him amongst my tares. Un-
alterable in my principles, careless about most things below
essentials, indulging myself in trifles by system, annihi-
lating myself by choice, but dreading folly at an unseemly
age, I contrive to pass my time agreeably enough, yet see
its termination approach without anxiety.
The second occurs in one of those to Mason
of the year 1773. He has been reading the
first volume of Mason's Gray—his best book,
and one which will always be memorable as
having suggested the form of Boswell's " Life
of Johnson" :

Of my two friends and me, I only make a most indif-
ferent figure. I do not mean with regard to parts or
talents ; I never one instant of my life had the superlative
vanity of ranking myself with them. They nct only pos-
sessed genius, which I have not, great learning, which is
to be acquired, and which I never acquired, but both Gray
and West had abilities marvellously premature. What
wretched boyish stuff would my contemporary letters to
them appear, if they existed, and which they both were so
good-natured as to destroy ! What unpoetic t hingx were
mine at that age, some of which unfortunately do exist,
and which I yet could never surpass; but it is not in that
light I consider my own position. We had not got to
Calais before Gray was dissatisfied, for I was a boy, and
he, though infinitely more a man, was not enough so to
make allowances. Hence am I never mentioned once with
kindness in his letters to West. This hurts me for him as
well as myself. For the oblique censures on my want of
curiosity, I have nothing to say. The fact was true—my
eyes were not purely classic—and, though I am now a dull
antiquary, my age then made me taste pleasures and diver-
sions merely modern. I say this to you, and to you only,
in confidence. Ido not object to a syllable. I know how
trifling, bow useless, how blameable I have been, and sub•
mit to hear my faults, both because I have had faults, and
because I hope I have corrected some of them ; and though
Gray hints at my unwillingness to be told them, I can say
truly that to the end of his life he neither spared the repri-
mand nor mollified the terms, as you and others know,
and I believe have felt.

There is heart, if there is also an inferior
element, in these words ; and a man must be
somewhat harsh, we think, who refuses to hear
its beating through Horace's laced waistcoat.
As for the literary style and merit of the
letters, it would be almost supeefltous to
analyse these, and quite superfluous to praise
them. The letters have a place of their own
in our literature, as safe as that of Pope or
Goldsmith ; and, what is more, so peculiar
a place that nothing is ever likely to shake
them from it. Other men's letters aro in-
teresting because of their works—Walpole's
letters are his works. They represent his
whole genius ; and as, besides, some egotism
is inevitable in letter writing, they also repre-
sent himself. They are, of course, the result
of a highly artificial cultivation—but then it
is that degree of cultivation which, like the
best breeding, has come back to nature again;
so that they have all the ease of a girl prat-
tling to her sweetheart, Red all the finish of
Talleyrand talking to Louis XVIII. There is
a new letter in the sixth volume to Lord Nune-
ham, from which we shall quote a few pieces
for the sake of its novelty, and also because it
is quite iu his lightest manner:—