AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES; WITH MEMOIRS AND NOTES. BY JOHN HENEAGE JESSE, AUTHOR OF "MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND DURING THE REIGN VOL. II. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 1843. GEORGE SELWYN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE. HORACE, youngest son of the celebrated minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was born on the 5th of October, 1717. He was educated at Eton, (where he was the contemporary of Gray, the poet, and apparently of George Selwyn,) and afterwards at King's College, Cambridge. Neither his "incomparable letters," nor the history of his life, which comprises the mere tame annals of one who united a love of pleasure and of society, with a taste for literary pursuits, require any lengthened comments in the present work. Lord Byron observes, in his preface to "Marino Faliero," "It is the fashion to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, because he was a nobleman; and, secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters, and of the Castle of VOL. II. B 299848 6 Otranto,' he is the ultimus Romanorum; the author of the Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a feeling love-play: he is the father of the first romance and of the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he may." In 1791 Horace Walpole, then in his seventy-fifth year, succeeded his nephew as fourth Earl of Orford. "The accession of this latter dignity," says Lord Dover, "seems rather to have annoyed him than otherwise. He never took his seat in the House of Lords, and his unwillingness to adopt his title was shown in his endeavours to avoid making use of it in his signature." He seldom, if ever, signed himself "Orford." There was in this, perhaps, a tinge of that affectation, with which his friend Gilly Williams occasionally amuses himself in the course of the present correspondence, and which, in fact, tinged almost every action of Walpole's life. A modern writer observes of him, that "affectation was the essence of the man,”* and Bishop Warburton styles him an "insufferable coxcomb." Nothing, indeed, but that coxcombry, which, in fact, he carried to the verge of the grave, could have induced him to sign himself so significantly in his social letters, "The Uncle of the late Earl of Orford." These, however, are but trifling failings, and ought to detract but little from his many good qualities, * Edinburgh Review, vol. lviii. p. 233. |