“The Mysterious Mother,” is a production of higher talent and more powerful genius than any other which we owe to the pen of Horace Walpole; though, from the nature of its subject, and the sternness of its character, it is never likely to compete in popularity with many of his other writings.  The story is too horrible almost for tragedy.  It is, as Walpole himself observes,"more truly horrid even than that of Oedipus.”  He took it from a history which had been told him, and which he thus relates:  “I had heard, when very Young, that a gentlewoman, under uncommon agonies of mind, had waited on Archbishop Tillotson, and besought his counsel.  Many years before, a damsel that served her, had acquainted her that she was importuned by the gentlewoman’s son to grant him a private meeting.  The mother ordered the maiden to make the assignation, when, she said, she would discover herself, and reprimand him for his criminal passion:  but, being hurried away by a much more criminal passion herself, she kept the assignation without discovering herself.  The fruit of this horrid artifice was a daughter, whom the gentlewoman caused to be educated very privately in the country:  but proving very lovely, and being accidentally met by her father-brother, who had never had the slightest suspicion of the truth, he had fallen in love with and actually married her.  The wretched, guilty mother, learning what had happened, and distracted with the consequence of her crime, had now resorted to the archbishop, to know in what manner she should act.  The prelate charged her never to let her son or daughter know what had passed, as they were innocent of any criminal intention.  For herself he bade her almost despair.” (45) Afterwards, Walpole found out that a similar story existed in the Tales of the Queen of Navarre, and also in Bishop Hall’s works.  In this tragedy the dreadful interest is well sustained throughout, the march of the blank verse is grand and imposing, and some of the scenes are worked up with a vigour and a pathos, which render it one of the most powerful dramatic efforts of which our language can boast.

The next publication of Walpole, was his “Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third,” one of the most ingenious historical and antiquarian dissertations which has ever issued from the press.  He has collected his facts with so much industry, and draws his arguments and inferences from them with so much ability, that if he has not convinced the public of the entire innocence of Richard, he has, at all events, diminished the number of his crimes, and has thrown a doubt over his whole history, as well as over the credibility of his accusers, which is generally favourable to his reputation.  This work occasioned a great sensation in the literary world, and produced several replies, from F. Guydickens, Esq., Dean Milles, and the Rev. Mr. Masters, and others.  These works, however, are now gathered to “the dull of ancient days;” while the book they were intended to expose and annihilate remains an instructive and amusing volume; and, to say the least of it, a most creditable monument of its author’s ingenuity.