The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-22 00:00:00

HORACE WALPOLE'S LETTERS TO SIR IL

MANX Vols. 3 4. Bentley, London, 1844.
The most characteristic feature in these volumes
—in which Walpole's correspondence with Sir Horace
Mann is brought to a close—is the memoir entitled
" Short Notes of my Life," which profes-es to be a
brief summary of the principal events in the author's
life from the year 1724 down to the year 1779, at
which period the manuscript abruptly terminates.
Horace Walpole, it may be remembered, is constantly
declaiming in his letters against the self-conceit and
pedantry of literary men ; their society, with a few
exceptions, he describes as being irksome to him in
the extreme; and nothing seems to give him greater
annoyance than the supposition that any of his friends
or correspondents should mistake him for one of the
fraternity. Like Congreve, when Voltaire honoured
him with a visit, in token of his admiration of his
abilities as a dramatist, Walpole professes to be a gen-
tleman and not an author, just as though it were im-
possible that the two characters could be combined '
in the same individual. When resident in London,
he represents himself as sedulously avoiding all
literary coteries, and when in Paris eschews them
with equal pertinacity, observing in one of his letters
to that overrated wit, George Selwyn, "I have left
off going to the Baron D'Olbuch's dinners, for there
was no bearing the authors, philosophers, and savans,
of which he has a pigeon-house full." We always
thought that there was a g ood deal of affectation in
this disclaimer of authorship, and dislike to the com-
panionship of literary men, and Horace Walpole's
" Short Notes" of his life have confirmed us in the
justice of our hypothesis. In these " Notes"—which
he insisted on his executors not allowing to be pub-
lished until a certain number of years after his death,
and which are now for the first time given to the
world—he catalogues, with all the circumstantial
minuteness of an auctioneer, not only every volume
which he produced, and the exact year and even day
of the month on which he produced it, but every
scrap of prose and poetry which he wrote, com-
mencing with a boyish copy of Latin verses, which
he composed on the marriage of Frederick, Prince of
Wales, and which he takes special care to add, were
thought worthy of being published in a Cambridge
periodical of that period. And yet the man who is
thus nervously solicitous to make posterity acquainted
with everything he wrote, no matter how trivial, and
who regards his literary compositions as the most im-
portant events of his life, is the same who professes an
utter indifference to literary reputation, and thinks it
beneath his dignity to associate on equal terms with
authors ! The truth is, Horace Walpole was a man
eaten up with vanity; the ruling passion of his life
was a thirst for distinction in the world of letters ; he
could not obtain this to the extent he desired ; and
took refuge, therefore, from disappointment, in an
ill-concealed, supercilious indifference. The grapes
were sour, but they were only sour when he found
they were above his reach. But the widely diffused
fame which he so much coveted, but missed, during
his life, has been amply awarded him by the public
voice since his death. He is now generally allowed
to he the most brilliant letter-writer in the language,
and neither time, nor circumstance, nor the proverbial
caprice and mutability of fashion, are ever likely to
diminish his celebrity in this familiar and delightful
branch of literature. The letters contained in the
volumes before us, which were written at an ad-
vanced period of the author's life, are penned, for the
most part, in a subdued and sober vein ; there are oc-
casional flashes of. wit in them ; but shrewd, worldly
common sense, flavoured here and there with a spice
of piquant sarcasm, are their chief recommendations.
As a specimen of his most earnest and animated
manner, we subjoin Walpole's defence of his cele-
brated father, Sir Robert:—
"Last year Mr. Fox was burnt in effigy ; now, Mr. Pitt
is.—Oh ! my dear sir, it is all a farce ! On this day,
about an hundred years ago (look at my date), was born
the wisest man I have seen. He kept his country in
peace for twenty years, and it flourished accordingly.
He injured no man, was benevolent, good-humoured, and
did nothing but the common necessary business of the
State. Yet he was burned in effigy too ; and so traduced
that his name is not purified yet !—Ask why his me-
mory is not in veneration ? You will be told, from li-
bels and trash, that he was the Grand Corrupter.—
What ! did he corrupt the nation to make it happy, rich,
and peaceable? Who was oppressed during his admi-
nistration ?—Those saints, Bolingbroke and Pulteney,
were kept out of the paradise of the Court ; aye, and the
Pretender was kept out and was kept quiet. Sir Robert
fell : a rebellion ensued in four years, and the crown shook
on the King's head. The nation, too, which had been to-
lerably corrupted before his time, and which, with all its
experience and with its eyes opened, has not cured it-
self of being corrupt, is not quite so prosperous as in the
day of that man, who, it seems, poisoned its morals.
Formerly it was the most virtuous nation on earth I
Under Henry the Eighth and his children there was no
persecution, no fluctuation of religion : their ministers
shifted their faith four times, and were sincere honest
men ! There was no servility, no flattery, no contempt
of the nation abroad, under James the First. No ty-
ranny under Charles the First and Laud ; no factions,
no civil war ! Charles the Second, however, brought
back all the virtues and morality, which, somehow or
other, were missing. His brother's was a still more
blessed reign, though in a different way ! King Wiilisas
was disturbed and distressed by no contending
factions, and did not endeavour to bribe them to
let him pursue his great object of humbling France!
The Duke of Marlborough was not overborne in a
similar and more glorious career by a detestable
cabal !—and if Oxford and Bolingbroke did remove him,
from the most patriotic motives, they, good men ! used
no corruption ! Twelve peerages showered at once, to
convert the House of Lords, were no bribes ; nor was a
shilling issued for secret services ; nor would a Member
of either House have received it ! Sir R. Walpole came,
and, strange to tell, found the whole Parliament, and
every Parliament, at least a great majority of every Par-
• hament, ready to take his money. For what ?—to undo

their country !—which, however wickedly as he meant,
and ready as they were to concur, he left in every re-
spect in the condition he found it, except in being im-
proved in trade, wealth, and tranquillity ; till its friends
who expelled him, had dipped their poor country in a
war ; which was far from mending its condition. Sir
Robert died, fortelling a rebellion, which happened in
less than six months, and for predicting which he had
been ridiculed : and in detestation of a maxim ascribed
to him by his enemies, that everyman has his price, the
tariff of every Parliament since has been as well known
as the price of beef and mutton ; and the universal elec-
tors, who cry out against that traffic, are not a jot less
vendible than their electors.—Was not Sir Robert Wal-
pole an abominable Minister ?"

COMnMISSION OF LUNACY A Commission of
Lunacy was held at the Red Lion, Camberwell, yes-
terday, before F. Barlow, Esq., to inquire into the state
of mind of Mr. Charles Davis, of Peckham-house
Asylum, aged forty. The alleged lunatic was formerly
a linendraper, in Eaton-street, Pimlico. In 1829 he
married, and settled 5,0001. upon his wife, after death
to her issue, and, in failure, to the survivor. Mrs.
Davis died in February last, leaving 4,3001. of the
money in the Three-per-Cent. Consols; and the Com-
mission was issued for the purpose of obtaining that
amount to apply to his use. After Mr. Davis and his
wife had been in business two years they indulged in
such gross habits of intoxication that the linen-
drapery was soon given up. They then took lodgings in
Queen-street, Northampton-square, and at a coffee-shop
in St. Peter's-lane, St. John-street. In Nov., 1842, some
policemen apprehended him for running after her
Majesty's carriage, with his hat off ; he was conveyed
to St. George's Hospital and had his head shaved, and
on being taken home to St. Peter's-lane, the surgeon of
the hospital directed that a keeper should be engaged
for him. When in liquor he was never fit to be trusted.
The alleged lunatic's wife left him in December, 1842,
to live with another man ; he then became completely
destitute, and in June, 1843, Capt. Davis, his brother,
took him away to Andover. He had continued speech-
less from December to June. Mr. White, the senior
surgeon of the Holborn union, was satisfied that from
the 24th of June to 29th July last, Mr. Davis was in a
state of insanity ; he was very obstinate, and would not
speak for a week at a time ; he would walk up and
down the ward, and throw himself into dramatic atti-
tudes. lie was not at all violent. The jury returned a
verdict of unsound mind since June, 1843.
THE WEATHER AND THE CROPS.—The accounts
from the country on the whole are favourable. There
has been a good deal of rain in many districts, which
has given new life to the crops. One of the provincial
journals states that " the crops are improving ama-
zingly ; indeed, we had no expectation of seeing the
brown roots of a fortnight ago converted into the thick-
ening braids of this date. The pastures are also much
mended, and there is some little inquiry again for graz-
ing cattle that were scarcely saleable on any terms. The
I only thing we hear of going wrong with the farmer is
the potato crop."