He loved letter-writing, and had evidently, studied it as an art.  It was, in truth, the very kind of writing for such a man, for a man very ambitious to rank among wits, yet nervously afraid that, while obtaining the reputation of a wit, he might lose caste as a gentleman.  There was nothing vulgar in writing a letter.  Not even Ensign Northerton, not even the Captain described in Hamilton’s Bawn,—­and Walpole, though the author of many quartos, had some feelings in common with those gallant officers,—­would have denied that a gentleman might sometimes correspond with a friend.  Whether Walpole bestowed much labour on the composition of his letters, it is impossible to judge from internal evidence.  There are passages which seem perfectly unstudied.  But the appearance of ease may be the effect of labour.  There are passages which have a very artificial air.  But they may have been produced without effort by a mind of which the natural ingenuity had been improved into morbid quickness by constant exercise.  We are never sure that we see him as he was.  We are never sure that what appears to be nature is not disguised art.  We are never sure that what appears to be art is not merely habit which has become second nature.

In wit and animation the present collection is not superior to those which have preceded it.  But it has one great advantage over them all.  It forms a connected whole, a regular journal of what appeared to Walpole the most important transactions of the last twenty years of George the Second’s reign.  It furnishes much new information concerning the history of that time, the portion of English history of which common readers know the least.

The earlier letters contain the most lively and interesting account which we possess of that “great Walpolean battle,” to use the words of Junius, which terminated in the retirement of Sir Robert.  Horace entered the House of Commons just in time to witness the last desperate struggle which his father, surrounded by enemies and traitors, maintained, with a spirit as brave as that of the column of Fontenoy, first for victory, and then for honourable retreat.  Horace was, of course, on the side of his family.  Lord Dover seems to have been enthusiastic on the same side, and goes so far as to call Sir Robert “the glory of the Whigs.”

Sir Robert deserved this high eulogium, we think, as little as he deserved the abusive epithets which have often been coupled with his name.  A fair character of him still remains to be drawn; and, whenever it shall be drawn, it will be equally unlike the portrait by Coxe and the portrait by Smollett.