SOURCE: "Horace Walpole as Dramatist," The South Atlantic Quarterly, XXVIII, No. 2, April, 1929, pp. 174-89.

In this essay, Holzknecht reevaluates Walpole's importance to the historical development of drama by examining the romantic elements of The Castle of Otranto alongside the unacted drama The Mysterious Mother.

The varied career of Horace Walpole is perhaps the greatest example English literature affords of what a man can do who is so fortunate as not to be obliged to have a definite aim in life. A dilettante primarily, he combined the rôles of politician, man of the world, literary amateur, art collector, spiteful gossip, archeologist, architect, and patron of art and letters. But dilettante virtuosity dominates everything the Earl of Orford attempted. Like Congreve, he affected even a contempt for authorship¹ as being incompatible with the high social state of a gentleman, and sure that he had once possessed some talents, he...