lived in the big busy world; who lie abed all the morning, calling it morning as long as you please; who sup in company; who have played at faro half my life, and now at loo until two or three in the morning; who have always loved pleasure, haunted auctions. .. How I have laughed when some of the magazines have called me the learned gentleman. Pray don't be like the magazines." This was written to his most intimate friend, who knew it was all a joke, but Mr. Macaulay takes it for Gospel, and says he ought to have been ashamed of himself, a man of his years; forty-three, as the reviewer is so good as to inform the reader. "He wished to be a celebrated author, and yet to be a mere idle gentleman, one of the epicurean gods of the earth, who do nothing at all, and who pass their existence in the contemplation of their own perfections. He did not like to have anything in common with the wretches who lodged in the little courts behind Saint Martin's Church, and stole out on Sundays to dine with their bookseller. He avoided the society of authors. He spoke with the most lordly contempt of the best among them." Anything more cruelly unjust than this was never penned, it has hardly a shadow of a resemblance—hardly foundation enough even for one of Mr. Macaulay's unscrupulous antitheses. He says in the same page that Walpole had an extreme dislike to be considered a man of letters, but wished to be a celebrated author. How dreadfully absurd! It is like the sailor who preferred brandy, but would rather have rum. It is probable that he did not seek the company of "the wretches" from behind Saint Martin's Church, and that he preferred the society of such men as Selwyn, and Gray, and George Montagu, and Marshal Conway. Wretches are not exactly the people whose society anybody would court, when they could as easily enjoy that of witty, well-educated, and polite friends. But many of the authors of his day were the personal friends of Walpole, for whom he always expressed the highest admiration. Gray was neither a lordling nor a fashionable gentleman, but he lived in habits of the greatest familiarity with him, and the first book published at the Strawberry press, was his Odes. He corresponded often with Gibbon and Hume, and spoke of them not with lordly contempt, but in the warmest terms of praise. He also corresponded extensively with many of the lesser lights of his time, and sought their aid in the composition of some of his books; he treated Bentley with the kindness of a brother, and published his father's edition of Lucan, partly out of regard to the son, and partly, as he says, because of all the classics he was thought to breathe too brave and honest a spirit to be put into the hands of the Dauphin and the French. He used to visit Hogarth, and took more pleasure in the society of Mrs. Cline, his neighbor, than in that of the duchesses by whom he was surrounded. Instead of doing nothing, he seems never to have been idle. He ransacked all the old castles and abbeys in the kingdom, wrote letters innumerable, published many large volumes under his personal supervision, attended to his parliamentary duties for nearly thirty years, made occasional trips to Paris, and a considerable part of his life was an invalid with the gout. He had an eye for everybody's perfections but his own, and his personal imperfections were a constant jest with himself. Mr. Macaulay gives Walpole the credit of understanding the French language, but denies that he had any knowledge of its higher uses, and censures him for not discerning what no other man of his time did, the exact result which would follow from the philosophical writings of the time of Louis the Fifteenth, the corruption of the court and the bigotry of the priesthood. He says, even of Montesquieu, he speaks with less enthusiasm than of that abject thing, Crebillon Junior.' Of the Esprit des Lois, Walpole speaks in several places in terms of the most extravagant praise, calls it the most delightful book he has ever read, and quarrels with some of his Florentine friends for not liking it as well as he does himself. Of the other author, the only commendation he bestows. upon him is in these very grave lines: "On my sofa A Latin book who ever saw ? But Crebillon and Calprenede ?" His naming Crebillon and Calprenede together, shows in what estimation he must have held "that abject thing." It is hardly possible that Calprenede could have been one of his reading authors. He names Crebillon Junior but once again, and then it is to show him up as a dirty coxcomb. But he was a popular author in his day, just as Eugene Sue and Paul de Kock are in ours; and Walpole, in giving an order for the likeness of some of the famous men in France, ordered one of Crebillon Junior, as a notorious personage, among the rest. This is the only proof of his enthusiasm for that author, while he has given many unequivocal ones of his admiration of Montesquieu. He was an admirer of Voltaire, and they wrote each other complimentary letters. But he laughed at Jean Jacques with all the rest of the world, and had no sympathy with the French mathematicians, for in common with many other imaginative men, he had no more power than a tub of water, to retain a mathematical demonstration. He could remember for ever a bon mot, or the form of a "lean window fat with saints," but a rule in arithmetic was no sooner learned than forgotten. It was a peculiarity which he confessed without reserve. If he had been ambitious to appear what he was not-in other words, a man of affectations-he would have taken pains to disguise a weakness which the world usually regards with contempt. It is not easy to conceive why Mr. Macaulay should take such pains to misrepresent an author whom he has laid his hand upon, for the sake of a long article; we can neither attribute his mistake to ignorance of his subject, nor to malevolence. He is a reviewer by trade, and has learned that abuse gives a zest to an article, which candor will not impart. He writes to be read himself, and not to induce the world to read others. In most of his reviews he steps between his reader and his author, and instead of opening a communication between them, establishes a non-intercourse, and appropriates to his own use the attention which rightfully belongs to the subject of his essay. We doubt whether anybody who should get his first impressions of Walpole from reading Mr. Macaulay's review, would ever have the courage to look at any of that author's works. general survey of what he has written concerning them, we should say that Pitt was a strutting, mouthing, ranting actor," &c., &c., continues the reviewer. But nothing of the kind could be conceived from what Walpole has written; in fact, the very reverse must be the opinion of any man who gleans his knowledge of Pitt from what Horace Walpole has written concerning him. The truth is, that this is the character which Mr. Macaulay had himself formed of the Earl of Chatham; and in his review of Thackeray's History, he thus expresses himself: "Pitt had one fault, which, of all human faults, is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely affected. He was an actor in the closet, an actor at council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes." Walpole, on the contrary, expresses a uniform and enthusiastic admiration of him, not only in letters addressed to him, but in his letters addressed to others who must have known what his real feelings were. In a letter giving an account of a debate in the House of Commons, he speaks thus of Pitt: "My uncle did justice to himself, and was as wretched and dirty as his whole behavior had been. Pitt spoke at past one for an hour and thirty-five minutes. There was more humor, wit and vehemence; finer language, more boldness; in short, more astonishing perfection, than even you, when you are used to him, can conceive. He was not abusive, yet very attacking on all sides. He ridiculed my Lord Hilsboro', crushed poor Sir George, terrified the attorney, lashed my Lord Granville, painted my Lord of Newcastle, and even hinted up to the Duke "If we were to form an opinion of his eminent contemporaries from a " &c. Again he says of Pitt: "I knew he had a Gorgon's head, composed of bayonets and pistols, but I little thought he could tickle to death with a feather." But when Pitt had sold himself for a coronet and a pension, he indulges in some desponding remarks about human integrity, but he makes no depreciating reflection on his talents. Mr. Macaulay, after spelling him backwards, reading him crosswise, judging of his performances by looking on the wrong side of the tapestry, construing as jests his serious declarations, and regarding his jokes as solemn truths; and, not unfrequently, making palpable misrepresentations, concludes at last that it is easiest to describe him by negatives; and having condemned him for everything that he was, proceeds to condemn him for everything that he was not. Such a terrible ordeal as this no man could pass through with a whole skin, and Walpole, of course, comes out of the hands of his merciless reviewer without a rag on his back, or a sound spot on his body. But, after all, Walpole is a popular author, more so now than at his death. He has ten readers now, where he had one during his lifetime. This is a fact which Mr. Macaulay well knows, and he acknowledges that "it is impossible to deny that Walpole's works have real merit, and merit of a very rare, though not of a very high kind. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say that, though nobody would for a moment compare Claude to Raphael, there would be another Raphael before there would be another Claude. And we own that we expect to see fresh Humes and fresh Burkes before we again fall in with that peculiar combination of moral and intellectual qualities to which the writings of Walpole owe their extraordinary popularity.' Sentences like these have a very knowing look, but they are entirely unmeaning. Sir Joshua admits, without intending to do so, that Claude was a greater artist than Raphael, as Mr. Macaulay, misled by his false reasoning, allows Walpole to have been a greater man, a more original genius, as he undoubtedly was, than either Hume or Burke, although he tries to make him appear the reverse. It is very true that nobody would ever think of comparing Claude with Raphael, as nobody, unless it were a newspaper critic, to whom anything is allowable, would think of comparing Tom Moore to Lord Bacon, for the reason that there is no point of resemblance between them. If Reynolds's estimate of Claude and Raphael be just, the one excels the other exactly in the degree in which he is placed at a distance from competition. What other test of greatness can we have in an artist, whether with a pen or a pencil, than the difficulty of approaching him. For our own part, we agree entirely with Mr. Macaulay, in the expectation of seeing a dozen Burkes and Humes before we see another Walpole. Burke Of and Hume were not of the men, any more than Walpole, who leave their mark upon the age in which they live; but we believe that the latter will leave more fertilizing matter upon the banks of Time, as he glides into succeeding ages, than both of the others. Burke would have smothered the new-born Spirit of Liberty in the flowers of his eloquence. His poetical rhapsody about Marie Antoinette was once in the mouth of every schoolboy. late years it seems to have grown stale. The French revolution is beginning to assume a different aspect to what it wore when Louis the Sixteenth and his ruler, the Queen, were continually exhibited as the chief personages in that unparalleled drama. Walpole's descriptions of the French court, a few years before the revolution began, make even a mild and merciful man almost impatient to see the guillotine at work, and instead of wondering at the scenes of September, 1792, in the prisons of Paris, we marvel at their not taking place a long time before. Mr. Macaulay, having admitted in two or three lines that Walpole has real merit, immediately repents of it, and labors through two or three pages to prove that though his writings are admirable, they ought not to be admired; allows that he was a good letter-writer, but says he "had evidently studied it as an art." For what reason? That he might express his thoughts with ease and correctness? No. But because, "there was nothing vulgar in writing a letter." He will not allow the poor devil the privilege of doing anything from a decent motive. Even his unstudied friendly epistles, written solely for the eye of his intimate friend, concerning his own private affairs, are, according to the Reviewer, huge affectations, composed with an eye to effect. Nothing can be more evident than that his letters were as unstudied as his breathing. If they contained a particle contained a particle of affectation, what charm could they have for us? If he had studied letter-writing as an art, he must have commenced the study at a very early age, for we find the same peculiarities, the same unequalled force of expression in those written at the age of twenty, that we see in those written fifty years afterwards. The pretensions of an author should be judged of from his best, and not his worst productions. In common things most men are alike. It would be absurd enough to judge of Lord Bacon's merits by comparing him with Sir Matthew Hale, or of Burns by measuring him with Cobbet: but it is in a similar manner that Mr. Macaulay justifies his depreciating view of Walpole. Compelled to admit that he is the most readable of authors, that he delights, by his manner of handling, with subjects that other men had in vain endeavored to render attractive, he winds up by observing, in reference to Walpole's sketches of character, "What a difference between these daubs and the masterly portraits of Clarendon !" What a difference, indeed! It would be as just to say, what a difference between Boz's Quilp and Milton's Satan. But Walpole's sketches are the reverse of daubs. His outlines are sharp, clear, and decided, and alive with individuality and character; scratchy, beyond dispute, but then they are the scratches of a sharp-pointed instrument, guided by an unfaltering hand. Of all the names in English literature, Clarendon's is the last that should have been named in comparison with his. If he was like anybody, it was Hogarth. He illustrated the same age and the same characters; and his sketches always give us the same feelings which we experience in looking at Hogarth's engravings and pictures. Their manner of handling is very much alike. Walpole has sets of paintings that will compare with the Marriage à la Mode, in point of finish, tone, solidity of color, pathos, humor, and individuality of character. His letters are all alive with figures. As we open his volumes, they fly out like bees from a hive. As Goldsmith said of Butler, he has more thoughts than lines. Indeed, every line is a picture, every word a thought. His power of condensation is like Shakspeare's. Mr. Macaulay says that he has fewer passages of skip than any other author. He has none. It would be difficult to find a word that could be left out in the whole eight volumes of his letters. His expressions are often grotesque, but they are never indistinct. You understand at a glance what he means. Speaking of the Empress Catharine, he says: "I wonder such a principal performer can be spared out of hell." He says no more about her, and nothing more was necessary. His pet character was the Duke of Newcastle; and his delineation of that strange animal is as perfect, as unique, as anything in the range of fiction. It is equal to anything in Sterne, or Molière, or Fielding; it is almost as good as Falstaff. After all his absurd tricks, his grotesque sayings, we see him at last a grave old gentleman in retirement. This does not mar the keeping of his picture in the least, it was necessary to its perfectness; just as Falstaff's death-bed was necessary to convince us that he was a real man, and not a mere whim. His ridiculous ladies, and he has scores of them, are the most absurd, but the most amusing creatures that ever existed in books. Lady Townshend, who fell in love with the square shoulders of Lord Kilmarnock, and would dine nowhere the day after his execution, lest they should serve up a rebel pie; Miss Chudleigh, with her two noble husbands; Lady Gordon, who invited the handsome Poniatowski to dinner, and received him, dressed like Venus, with her two sons in the character of Cupids, with pasteboard wings and bows and arrows; the Lady-Marys, who ran away with their footmen; are characters that we miss in the pages of the historian, but they throw more light on the manners of an age than the pompously useless details of battles, or the most exact accounts of the negotiations and intrigues of ambassadors and cabinet ministers. We have not noticed a tithe of Mr. Macaulay's bitter sayings against Walpole; he will not allow him even the common feelings of humanity; denies that he was capable of friendship, and yet Walpole's attachments were as lasting and as romantic as a woman's; his affection for General Conway was as unequivocal as a mother's; his letters to Sir Horace Mann are alone a monument of steady and consistent friendship; as are those to Gray; to George Montagu; to Madame du Deffaud; to the Earl of Hertford, and many others. But what we have already done, prevents our doing what we intended at first: to give a slight sketch of Walpole's life and genius, and just as we are ready to begin our work, we find that our space is filled. But the subject is worth attending to, and we may resume it. Walpole is an author who is daily quoted by our press, but there seems to be a kind of free-masonry among the craft, which binds every one to bestow a contemptuous epithet upon him. He is called a petit-maître, a penny-a-liner, and an aristocrat. No man was ever less of either than he. At the best he is only called a letter-writer. It so happens that his best things are contained in letters; but they are not essentially epistles. They might have been published like the Spectator, or like Tristam Shandy, or Swift's tracts. Everybody writes letters, while but very few write books, and yet there are scores of good books written where there is one letter that will bear reading a second time. But rare as the talent of letter-writing may be, Walpole's genius is infinitely above that of a mere epistolizer. If Hogarth had made his sketches on a letter sheet, and sent them by mail to a friend, he would have been entitled to the credit of a mere "letter-writer," with the same propriety that Walpole is. His style is a rapid vehicle of thought. He had much to write, and but a limited space to put it in. A man who must put a dozen important facts into one sheet of paper, will, of necessity, do it tersely, if not elegantly. Walpole did both. If he had been compelled to live by his pen, and receive pay for his letters in proportion to their length, although he might have produced twice as many as he did of double their length, we doubt whether one of them would be read now, instead of the eight volumes which are read and re-read like a pleasing story. He says in one of his letters: "You cannot imagine how astonished a Mr. Seward, a clergyman, was, who came to Rugby while I was there. Strolling about the house he first saw me with Louis, sitting on the pavement of the lumber room, all over cobwebs, and dirt, and mortar; then found me in his own room, on a ladder, writing on a picture; and half an hour afterwards, on the grass in the court, with the dogs and the children, in my slippers and without my hat. But you would have died at his surprise, when he saw me walk into dinner dressed, and sit by Lady Hertford. Finding me not quite ignorant added to the parson's wonder. He broke out to my Lady Hertford, and begged to know who and what sort of man I was, for he had never met with anything of the kind." Many is the Parson Seward whom he has since confounded. Indeed, all his reviewers seem to have been quite as bewildered as the astonished clergyman, and after trying in vain to solve him, are obliged to exclaim, that they never before met with anything of the kind. THE STARLET. FROM THE DANISH OF STAFFELDT, (1808). BY JAMES G. PERCIVAL. THERE stood a star in the heaven's blue, A milder glance I never knew, And it filled me with delight. Methought all beauty and loveliness met I watched the bright star till I saw it set, Each night 'mid the dew of the flowers I lay, "Till the misty veil of the morning grey But since I have met thee, charmer dear, I seek not the bliss that invites me here, |