(24) The exact cause of this quarrel,” says Mr. Mitford, in his Life of Gray, " has been passed over by the delicacy of his biographer, because Horace Walpole was alive when the Memoirs of Gray were written.  The former, however, charged himself with the chief blame, and lamented that he had not paid more attention and deference to Gray’s superior judgment and prudence.”  See Works of Gray, vol. i. p. 9, Pickering’s edition 1836.  In the “Walpolianae” is the following passage:-"The quarrel between Gray and me arose from his being too serious a companion.  I had just broke loose from the restraints of the University with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself.  Gray was for antiquities, etc. while I was for perpetual balls and plays:  the fault was mine."-E.

(25) Sir Walter Scott says that Walpole, on one occasion, " vindicated the memory of his father with great dignity and eloquence” in the House of Commons; but, as I cannot find any trace of a speech of this kind made by him after Sir Robert Walpole’s death, I am inclined to think Sir Walter must have made a mistake as to the time of delivery of the speech mentioned in the text. [Secker, at that time Bishop of Oxford, says that Walpole “spoke well against the motion.”  See post, letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated March 24, 1742.

(26) Sir Walter Scott is in error when he says that Walpole retired from the House of Commons in 1758, “at the active age of forty-one.”  This event occurred, as is here stated, in March, 1768, and when Walpole was consequently in his fifty-first year.

(27) Letter, dated Arlington Street, March 12th, 1768.  It is but fair to mention, in opposition to the opinion respecting George Grenville, here delivered by Walpole, that of no less an authority than Burke, who says, “Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country,”

(28) He had also offered to share his fortune with Mr. Conway in the year 1744 (see letter of July 20th of that year), in order to enable Mr. Conway to marry a lady he was then in love with.  He ends his very pressing entreaties by saying, “For these reasons, don’t deny me what I have set my Heart on-the making your fortune easy to you.”  Nor were these the only instances of generosity to a friend, which we find in the life of Walpole.  In the year 1770, when the Abb`e Terrai was administering the finances of France, (or, to use the more expressive language of Voltaire, “Quand Terrai nous mangeait,”) his economical reductions occasioned the loss of a portion of her pension, amounting to three thousand livres, to Madame du Deffand.  Upon this occasion Walpole wrote thus to his old blind friend, who had presented a memorial of her case to M. de St. Florentin, a course of proceeding which Walpole did not approve of:-"Ayez assez d’amiti`e pour moi pour accepter les trois mille livres de ma part.  Je voudrais que la somme ne me f`ut pas aussi indiferente qu’elle