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.