HORACE WALPOLE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 21

HORACE WALPOLE

OOSSfP, LETTER-WRITER

.■VXD HISTORIAN CBy "Aiax.") Sitacc Walpole (1717-1797). A Biojjraphietl Study. By Lewis Melville. London: Hutchinson and Co. . (Publishers), Ltd. (First Notice.) . .Two of my youthful indiscretions ■which I find it hardest to forgive-, since they seem to grow worse instead of. better with the lapse of time, aro called to mind by the appearance of another book on Horace Walpole. The first "is that, having for the sum of. 12s become the purchaser of a beautifullybound 4to copy of Lucan's "Pharsalia, " which was among the first-books struck oil from Walpole's private printing-press at Strawberry Hill, I sold the book for a shilling or two,- and for no other reason than that •it -was too big to carry half-way round - the world. * * " " ;ihe second offence was one- of omission extending o\'cr a period of several months and perhaps even years, when Cunningham's 9-volume edition of "Walpole's Letters" was priced in the remaiuder lists at £2 10s: and I fail,ed to get it. These lost chances aro among the most painful of a booklover's experiences. A book too many —if you are quite sure that it is too many—is easily cured, but a book short uiay maim you for life. Certain it is tliat the loss of those two books is to me "a miss perpetual.'' It has left "an aching void," of which such meagre Walpoliana as I have can only fill a quite insignificant corner. Nor can I hope that Mr. Melville's book-will do much to fill the gap and Cleanse the stuffd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart. It'would not be easy to write ti dull book about Horace Walpole, and it was not to be expected that so accomplished a bookmaker as Mr. Melville —I see that he has no less than 3t> other books to his credit—would succeed in the difficult task. But his book is really not ■what ..he calls it, "a biographical itudy..'.'■_: Still less is it what his, publishers call it. The.well-known and versatile Mr. Lewis Melville, they say in the "blurb" on its jacket, j has in. his now book added yet. another to his brilliant.sends of historical portraits. If there is any brilliant historical portrait in this book, the painter is not Mr Melville but Walpole himself. As ho gays quite frankly in the preface, ■ I have, wherever possible, let the subject #f this biographical sketch state his views on his own work. -Ancl it generally has been possible. , The result is that from three-fourths to nine-tenths of the book —it would be easier to attempt an exact estimate'if tho quotations which often extend for pages at ,t time were indicated by'a different type —is not Melville butrWalpole. But as Walpole's- 3300 letters fill 18 volumes in Dr. and Mrs. Paget Toynbee's great edition, and are in that form practically inaccessible to the ordinary reader, to provide him with; a selection or anthology from the letters is in itself no mean service. It ■was-well done, with a narrative piecing ithe extracts together, by L. B. Seeley:.in "Horace Walpole and His World" (ISS4; 4th edition, 1892), but without an index. Miss Alice D. Greenwood's "Selected Letters of Horace Walpole"—2lo of them with an excellent introduction—makes a very handy and'elegant little volume in "Bohn's Popular Library," but is marred by the lack of an index and even—incredible to relate!—of a table of contents. The "Everyman" selection, ■which I have not seen, is sure to be good. Another selection, which I have admired from a distance, is rather too good. It was brought out iv. 1927 by the Oxford University Press for^Mr. \V. S. lewis, an American collector ana editor, in two admirably illustrated but appallingly heavy volumes. "Even a lectern, says Mr. E. E. Kellett, built for the Great Bible or two alternative Prayer-Books would groan under it. " The-cosfc of this selection was 455; it; was limited tooOO copies, and the editor expressed the naive hope that it might lead his readers to'the "mainland" of "Walpoliana." But at 2s •a he might have ferried thousands across instead of a few hundred. Mr. Melville's work is on a more modest scale than Mr. Lewis's. Though what would have made a good bedside book has been enlarged into a library book and illustrated with portraits, it is not unduly heavy, and its 300 pages seem to represent in fair proportion all the moods and interests of-one of the most prolific and versatile of letter-writers. . a <:■ •::• , «■ In one respect Mr. Melville is too , modest in the claim that he makes for his subject. •. Walpole, he writes, is unquestionably one .of the outstanding figures of the 18th Century; because he did one thing superlatively well. He was the supreme letterwriter of his day. But Walpole is entitled to much higher praise. If he is not supremo among all ■our letter-writers, the reason may he; oddly enough, that the claim is disputed by another 18th century writer. Not long ago I saw that place assigned .to Cowper by a good authority whose name'l cannot recall. Cowper's letters .are doubtless distinguished by a tenderness a'pathos, and a depth which were beyond. Walpolc-'s reach, but' in range and; variety and historic interest Walpole seems.to be without a peer. 'In the vast and still incomplete corves•poridence which occupies I'etor Ciinning- - ham's nine volumes (185--ifeO , writes • Austin-Dobson in Hie -\D.>..B. (ISD9), it •is : not too much to say that there is scarcely a dull page. -. • Almost every ■element of wit and Immour, variety and charm, is present, lor gossip, anecdote, epigram, description, illustration, playful- ' ness pungency, novelty, surprise, there is notning quite like them in England, and Byron did not overpraise them when lie called them "incomparable. ■ •■■' .-i ' ■» • «• ■ '> in his essay on "Horace Walpole," Macaulay attacks "the most eccentric, the-most artificial, the most fastidious, the moßt c-pricioui "»£' men" with an almost Puritanical iruculence, crude.ness, and lack of sympathy. His writings, it is true, says Macaulay, rank as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Strasburg pies among: the - dishes described in the -"Almatiach dcs Oournifinds." But, as the ■■"pnte-dc-fuic-taiis" owc-s it* excellence-to tlw diseases of t 1m- wretched animal which ■ furnishes it, fui'l wnuUl be jrood for nothing if. it were not madr. of livers pre--1 ej.-naturally sv/olJen, so none but an un--1.--HW and disorganised mind could have •

produced such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole. The pearl oyster would really have supplied Maeaulay with a fairer parallel to the disease from which Walpole was suffering than the unhappy goose that was being fattened for a Strasburg pie. To liken Macaulay himself to the animal before which pearls are cast in vain, or even worse than in vain, would savour too much of his own brutality. Let mo rather compare him to a robust Philistine goose mercifully saved from indigestion by regular exercise on a, British common but occasionally revealing "the exuberance of superfluous health" in noises that, are not according to wisdom.

But this is fortunately a case in which Macaulay's practice was better tuan his precept. When he camo to write on "William Pitt" and other ISth century subjects, his treatment of them was informed and enlivened by wholesale depredations from the- writings of the mail whom ho had anathematised. And therein he showed his wisdom, for, as >Sir Leslie Stephen says,

The history of England throughout a very large segment of the lSth Century is simply a synonym for the works of Horace Walpole.