of which he has been accused, in his intercourse with Madame du Deffand, at an earlier period of his life.  This harshness, as was noticed by the editor of Madame du Deffand’s letters, in the preface to that publication, proceeded solely from a dread of ridicule, which formed a principal feature of Mr. Walpole’s character, and which, carried, as in his case, to excess, must be called a principal weakness.  “This accounts for the ungracious language in which he so often replies to the importunities of her anxious affection; a language so foreign to his heart, and so contrary to his own habits in friendship.” (7)

Is this, then, the man who is supposed to be “the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious of mortals? -his mind a bundle of inconsistent whims and affectations-his features covered with mask within mask, which, when the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the real man."-"Affectation is the essence of the man.  It pervades all his thoughts and all his expressions.  If it were taken away, nothing would be left.” (8)

He affected nothing; he played no part; he was what he appeared to be.  Aware that he was ill qualified for politics, for public life, for parliamentary business, or indeed for business of any sort, the whole tenor of his life was consistent with this opinion of himself.  Had he attempted to effect what belongs only to characters of another stamp -had he endeavoured to take a lead in the House of Commons-had he sought for place, dignity, or office-had he aimed at intrigue, or attempted to be a tool for others-then, indeed, he might have deserved the appellation of artificial, eccentric, and capricious.

>From the retreat of his father, which happened the year after he entered parliament, the only real interest he took in politics was when their events happened immediately to concern the objects of his private friendships.  He occupied himself with what really amused him.  If he had affected any thing, it would certainly not have been a taste for the trifling occupations with which he is reproached.  Of no person can it be less truly said, that “affectation was the essence of the man.”  What man, or even what woman, ever affected to be the frivolous being he is described?  When his critic says, that he had “the soul of a gentleman-usher,” he was little aware that he only repeated what Lord Orford often said of himself-that from his knowledge of old ceremonials and etiquettes, he was sure that in a former state of existence, he must have been a gentleman-usher,-about the time of Elizabeth.

In politics, he was what he professed to be, a Whig, in the sense which that denomination bore in his younger days,-never a Republican.

In his old and enfeebled age, the horrors of the first French revolution made him a Tory; while he always lamented, as one of the worst effects of its excesses, that they must necessarily retard to a distant period the progress and establishment of civil liberty.  But why are we to believe his contempt for crowned heads should have prevented his writing a memoir of “Royal and Noble Authors?” Their literary labours, when all brought together by himself, would not, it is believed, tend much to raise, or much to alter his opinion of them.