hopes and fears, who had learned to rate power, wealth, and fame at their true value, and whom the conflict of parties, the rise and fall of statesmen, the ebb and flow of public opinion, moved only to a smile of mingled compassion and disdain.  It was owing to the peculiar elevation of his character that he cared about a pinnacle of lath and plaster more than about the Middlesex election, and about a miniature of Grammont more than about the American Revolution.  Pitt and Murray might talk themselves hoarse about trifles.  But questions of government and war were too insignificant to detain a mind which was occupied in recording the scandal of club-rooms and the whispers of the back-stairs, and which was even capable of selecting and disposing chairs of ebony and shields of rhinoceros-skin.

One of his innumerable whims was an extreme unwillingness to be considered a man of letters.  Not that he was indifferent to literary fame.  Far from it.  Scarcely any writer has ever troubled himself so much about the appearance which his works were to make before posterity.  But he had set his heart on incompatible objects.  He wished to be a celebrated author, and yet to be a mere idle gentleman, one of those Epicurean gods of the earth who do nothing at all, and who pass their existence in the contemplation of their own perfections.  He did not like to have anything in common with the wretches who lodged in the little courts behind St. Martin’s Church, and stole out on Sundays to dine with their bookseller.  He avoided the society of authors.  He spoke with lordly contempt of the most distinguished among them.  He tried to find out some way of writing books, as M. Jourdain’s father sold cloth, without derogating from his character of Gentilhomme.  “Lui, marchand?  C’est pure medisance:  il ne l’a jamais ete.  Tout ce qu’il faisait, c’est qu’il etait fort obligeant, fort officieux; et comme il se connaissait fort bien en etoffes, il en allait choisir de tons les cotes, les faisait apporter chez lui, et en donnait a ses amis pour de l’argent.”  There are several amusing instances of Walpole’s feeling on this subject in the letters now before us.  Mann had complimented him on the learning which appeared in the Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors; and it is curious to see how impatiently Walpole bore the imputation of having attended to anything so unfashionable as the improvement of his mind.  “I know nothing.  How should I?  I who have always lived in the big busy world; who lie a-bed all the morning, calling it morning as long as you please; who sup in company; who have played at faro half my life, and now at loo till two and three in the morning; who have always loved pleasure; haunted auctions. . . .  How I have laughed when some of the Magazines have called me the learned gentleman.  Pray don’t be like the Magazines.”  This folly might be pardoned in a boy.  But a man between forty and fifty years old, as Walpole then was, ought to be quite as much ashamed of playing at loo till three every morning as of being that vulgar thing, a learned gentleman.