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William Warburton (1698-1779) was born at Newark on the 24th of December

William Warburton

After the Portrait by Charles Phillips

1698. He was intended to follow his father's profession and be clerk of his native town, but at the age of twentyfive he received holy orders from the Archbishop of York without having enjoyed any college training. He was conscious of his educational deficiencies, and for eighteen years he did hardly anything else but study. In 1741 he became acquainted with Pope, over whose mind Warburton contrived to exercise a curious ascendency. Pope introduced him to the wealthy Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, whose niece Warburton married in 1745. He was now rapidly promoted; in 1757 he was made Dean of Bristol, and in 1759 Bishop of Gloucester.

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Warburton, a man of very high ability, was all his life a fighter; controversy was the

breath of his nostrils, and he conducted

it with unscrupulous vehemence and rancour, but he was a warm and loyal friend. The death of his only son in 1776 paralysed the faculties of Warburton, who lingered in a melancholy condition until June 7, 1779. Richard Hurd (1720-1808), the disciple and ally of Warburton, was a man of similar character, no less arrogant, but with less capacity of kindly feeling. He was long Bishop of Worcester, and refused the Primacy. Dr. Hugh Blair (17181800), once among the most prominent. is now perhaps the most obsolete of English writers. He was the most celebrated pulpit orator of his time, and his lectures and sermons found tens of

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thousands of admirers. Burns came into amusing collision with the redoubtable vanity

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of Blair when he was in Edinburgh in 1787. William Paley (1743-1805) possessed

William Paley

After the Portrait by George Romney

greater penetration of intellect than any of these; his extremely quiet life was spent in passing from one incumbency to another, closing with the valuable rectory of BishopWearmouth. His famous Hora Paulina appeared in 1790. A graphic illustration in his bestknown book, the Evidences of Christianity, 1792, caused him to be called "Pigeon Paley," an elegant sobriquet which he owed to the wit of King George III. His Natural Theology was published in 1802, and set the keystone on the structure of his fame. Paley died at Lincoln on the 25th of May 1805, and was buried in Carlisle Cathedral. The "specious sophist," Soame Jenyns (1705-1787), unpleasantly remembered by his clash of arms

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with Dr. Johnson, had been an earlier author of Evidences of the Christian Religion, 1774

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In his popular Inquiry into the Origin of Evil, 1759, he "ventured far beyond his depth," and Johnson's treatment of it let loose the impertinence of the wits on poor Jenyns, who was a gracious, miscellaneous writer, not without intelligence, and on the whole very harshly dealt with.

In one department of letters this period was very rich. Whether they owed it or no to their familiarity with Parisian society and social modes, those strangely assorted friends, Gray and HORACE WALPOLE, exceeded all their English contemporaries in the composition of charmingly picturesque familiar letters. Less spontaneous, but of an extreme elegance and distinction, were the letters addressed by the fourth Earl of CHESTERFIELD to

Soame Jenyns

After a Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Writers

The Letter his natural son, a correspondence long considered to be the final "protocol of good breeding in deportment. Of a totally different character were the caustic political invectives issued in the form of correspondence, and under the pseudonym of JUNIUS, between 1769 and 1772; but these were letters which gave no pleasure to the recipients, and the form of which precluded all reply. It is, perhaps, not fair to include Junius among the letter-writers, but the correspondence of Chesterfield, Walpole, and Gray will certainly bear comparison with the best in the same class which was produced in France

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View of Strawberry Hill

From "A Description of the Villa of Mr. H. W.," 1784

during the eighteenth century. Walpole, in particular, excels all the French in the peculiarly Gallic combination of wit, mundane observation, and picturesque, easy detail.

Horace Walpole (1717-1797), who died fourth Earl of Orford, was the third son of Sir Robert Walpole of Houghton, the famous Prime Minister. He was born in Arlington Street on the 24th of September 1717. He went to Eton in April 1727, and was a refined and fastidious schoolboy of a type not at that time familiar. Among his earliest friends were the Montagus, Gray, and Richard West. In March 1735 Walpole passed to King's College, Cambridge. In 1737 his mother, Lady Walpole, died, and he was appointed by his father to a post in the Custom House. He exchanged for or added to this other appointments, and, in short, after this time was never again a charge to his family. He did not quit Cambridge, however, until 1739, when he started with Gray on the foreign tour which has already been described in our account of that poet. After Gray left him in May 1741 Horace Walpole fell ill of a quinsy at Reggio, and would have died but for the devotion of Joseph Spence, the antiquary

HORACE WALPOLE

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(1698-1768). When he had recovered he went on to Venice, and then by sea, and through France, to England. During his absence he had been elected M.P. for Callington; a few months later his father was defeated, and resigned, being created Earl of Orford. The whole family retired to Houghton, but the great fallen statesman only survived until 1745; he left his son Horace a decent fortune and his famous house in Arlington Street. In August 1746 Horace Walpole took an apartment within the precincts of Windsor Castle, and began to entertain there; but it did not quite suit him, and, a year later, he bought "a little new farm, just out of Twickenham," from Mrs. Chenevix, the toy-woman. It was itself a toy, "set in enamelled meadows, with

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filigree hedges," and its name was Strawberry Hill. He called it "new," but it was about fifty years old, and it simply served as the nucleus for a little Gothic castle. Walpole amused himself by wholly rebuilding it. and the last addition, "the great north bedchamber," was not finished until 1770. This fantastic mansion was the joy and occupation of Walpole's whole life. In 1754 he was elected M.P. for Castle Rising, and in 1757 for King's Lynn, both Norfolk boroughs in the family interest, but he took little or no continuous part in politics. He had always dabbled in letters, and his correspondence remains to prove to us how admirably he had written in easy prose since childhood; but Horace Walpole's authorship began with the trifling satire, A Letter from Xo Ho, 1757. In this same year he set up at Strawberry Hill his celebrated printing press, his officina arbuteana; the first offspring of which was Gray's Odes. In 1758 Walpole printed his Royal and Noble Authors of England, which was "marvellously in fashion," to his great astonishment; and he collected his Fugitive

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Wednesday, after Breakfast: When Teame home from Lady Mendip's last night, I attempted to finish This myself, but my poor Finger were so hired by all the Work of the Day, that it will require Sir W. Jones's Gift of Sonques to interpret my Pothooks: one would think Arabie Characters were for Agnes had shown me a Volume of their Poems finely pointed at Cashbridge, with a Version, which Mr. Douglas had lent to her, and said were: very simple, and not in the inflated Stile of the East_you shall judge in the first page Jopened, I found a storm of Lightning that had burst into a horse laugh_ I resume the Thread of my Letter. You had not examined Arundel Castle enough, for you do not mention the noble

Extract from a Letter of Walpole's

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