HORACE WALPOLE

367 Pieces in Verse and Prose. His more important work, Anecdotes of Painting in England, came from the Strawberry Press in 1762-63; his romance, The Castle of Otranto, was published in 1764. He now gave his pen and his press a rest, and went in 1765 to Paris and Versailles, where he was presented to the French royal family, of whom he has preserved a most entertaining account. Paris he thought "the ugliest, beastliest town in the universe," although its society welcomed and caressed him. He met Madame du Deffand, whom he called at first "an old blind debauchee of wit," but with whom he presently struck up what became a lifelong and devoted friendship. After his return from this somewhat momentous visit to France, Walpole continued to produce publications, the most ambitious of which belong to the same weeks of the early spring of 1768, the paradoxical white-washing of Richard III., called The Historic Doubts, and the grim tragedy of The Mysterious Mother. He was henceforth more and more occupied with the mundane duties of entertaining at Strawberry Hill, and of holding elaborate and witty correspondence with his friends. In 1779 he left the historic house where he was born in Arlington Street, and took one, after a tedious suit in Chancery, in Berkeley Square; in 1780 he lost, at the age of eighty-four, his lively old friend, Madame du Deffand. Her place was in a measure taken by two delightful young women, Mary and Agnes Berry-"my two Straw Berries"-whom he prevailed upon, some years later, to come and live at Cliveden. In 1792 Horace Walpole underwent what he called "the empty metamorphosis" of succeeding his nephew as Earl of Orford. He still continued to entertain the world; when he was seventy-eight Queen Charlotte was his guest. He died in Berkeley Square on the 2nd of March 1797, and was buried at Houghton. Horace Walpole was the ideal of a petit maître in manner; "he always entered a room in a style of affected delicacy, chapeau bras between his hands, knees bent and feet on tiptoe." He usually dressed in lavender, with partridge silk stockings and gold buckles, and with lace ruffles and frill. He was more interesting to his own generation as a virtuoso than in any other capacity; to ours he is the type of the eighteenth-century exquisite person of quality, and the most animated letter-writer of an age which positively lives again in his admirably vivacious correspondence. Horace Walpole is far from being the most lovable, or the most thoughtful, or the most pathetic, but he is easily the wittiest and most graphic of English letter-writers, and the sixty-years' chronicle of his familiar epistles forms his main and immortal work.

WALPOLE'S ACCOUNT OF LORD BALMERINO'S EXECUTION.

The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with sawdust, the block new-covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards he then surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon masts upon ships in the river; and pulling out his spectacles,

read a treasonable speech, which he delivered to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so sweet a Prince, that flesh and blood could not resist following him; and lying down to try the block, he said, "If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all down here in the same cause!" He said if he had not taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill-usage of him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas. Two clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said, "No, gentlemen; I believe you have already done me all the service you can." Then he went to the corner of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warden to give him his periwig, which he took off, and put on a night-cap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal for battle. He received three blows, but the first certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but the insensibility of one too. As he walked from his prison to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with spectators, he cried out, "Look, look, how they are all piled up like rotten oranges!"

Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), was born in London on the 22nd of September 1694. He was the son of the third Earl, and

his mother, Lady Elizabeth Savile, was the daughter of the Marquis of Halifax, who wrote the admirable essays. The main part of the career of Chesterfield belongs to politics. He entered the House of Commons in 1715, and spoke there six weeks before he was of age, thus rendering himself liable to a heavy fine. This was the beginning of a parliamentary career which lasted for forty years. In 1745-46 Chesterfield was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and greatly distinguished himself by the breadth of his policy. He had succeeded to the earldom in 1726, and was now offered a dukedom, which he refused. Chesterfield in his retirement cultivated the art of manners in its most exquisite degree, and his last words "Give Dayrolles a chair"-show that he was polite to the final moment of his life. He died at ChesterDuring his lifetime,

field House, South Audley Street, on the 24th of March 1773.

although a patron of letters, Chesterfield published nothing but two or three political tracts. But immediately after his death was issued by his widow Melusina von Scheulenburg, a collection of the Letters which he had written to his natural son, the child of a certain Madame du Bouchet; in this Philip Stanhope (1732-1768), whom he had made his heir, Chesterfield's hopes and ambitions were concentred. The Letters had been written as a guide to the lad in principles, in deportment, and in sentiment. Chesterfield knew that his son was weak and vague; he had a passionate desire to strengthen and direct him in what he intended should be the business of his life, "Negotiation abroad, and Oratory in the House of Commons at home." But the young Stanhope "was not calculated to shine"; his whole course, culminating in his early death, was a cruel disillusion for his father. The Letters of 1774 enjoyed a prodigious success, and are still a kind of classic. The politeness of Chesterfield was proverbial, but he contrived-probably through no fault of his own, but through the carelessness of a servant-to infuriate Johnson. Even by this witness, however, it is admitted that the manners of Chesterfield were exquisitely elegant.

FROM CHESTERFIELD'S "LETTERS."

Good manners are to particular societies what good morals are to society in general,— their cement and their security. And as laws are enacted to enforce good morals, or at least to prevent the ill effects of bad ones, so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied and received, to enforce good manners and punish bad ones. And indeed there seems to me to be less difference both between the crimes and punishments than at first one would imagine. The immoral man, who invades another's property, is justly hanged for it; and the ill-bred man, who by his ill-manners invades and disturbs the quiet and comforts of private life, is by common consent as justly banished society. Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an implied compact between civilised people as protection and obedience are between kings and subjects; whoever, in either case, violates that compact, justly forfeits all advantages arising from it. For my own part, I really think that, next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.

The series of polemical letters which appeared in The Public Advertiser under the pseudonym of JUNIUS produced a sensation which has never been paralleled in English political life and literature. The first of these epistles was printed on the 21st of January 1769, the last precisely three years later. Junius attacked the Government of the Duke of Grafton, which included Mansfield, North, and Granby, and his main point at first was their failure to support Wilkes, that champion of the democracy. The author of these letters remained throughout unknown, even to the publisher of the newspaper which printed them; although every effort was made to discover him, he was able to boast "I am the sole depositary of my secret, and it shall die with me." It was after these scandalous and brilliant diatribes had appeared at intervals for nearlya year, and when public curiosity was at its height, that Junius raised a perfect. fury of sensation by attacking the King himself. Nobody now felt safe; as Burke said, "Kings, lords, and commons are but the sport of his fury." It is generally admitted that the style of Junius was superior to his principles; he posed as a sort of Radical, but was in favour of taxing the colonies; he did not disdain to retail private scandal, and his magnificent invection often betrays

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a callous indifference to veracity. On the other hand, of the patriotism of Junius there can be as little question as of his courage. His letter to the

Edmund Burke

King displays the former no less than his terrible philippics against the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton the latter. The correspondence of Junius ceased abruptly, but Woodfall, the editor of The Public Advertiser, reprinted the letters in two volumes in 1772. Extraordinary exertions have been made, but made in vain, to discover the name and rank of Junius. Nearly forty persons have been from time to time suggested, including Lord George Sackville (17161785), Horne Tooke (17361812), and the second Earl Temple (1711-1779). The greatest favourite of conjecture during the nineteenth century was Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818). But nothing is decided, nothing known; and, after a hundred and thirty

years, we have advanced no further than Lord North had when he said, "The great boar of the wood, this mighty toils and foiled the hunters."

Junius, has broken through the

FROM THE LETTER OF JUNIUS TO THE KING (December 19, 1769).

SIR, It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress which has ever attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth till you heard it in the complaints of your people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your education. We are still inclined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on which all the civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should long since have adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility of complaint. The doctrine inculcated by our laws, "that the king can do no wrong," is admitted without reluctance. We separate the amiable good-natured prince from the folly and treachery of his servants, and the private virtues of the man from the vices of his government. Were it not for this just distinction, I know not whether your majesty's condition, or that of the English nation, would deserve most to be lamented. I would prepare your mind for a favourable reception of truth, by removing every painful offensive

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